The preservation of healthy human body and function for every patient should be the goal of all health practitioners. Dentistry is not an exception to this philosophy. The loss of human tooth structure should be regarded as a serious injury and never to be considered lightly, therefore it is imperative to provide the most comprehensive and conservative care to all teeth. In past few decades, the improvements of scientific method and technology has led to a better understanding of oral micro flora and dental materials resulted in the shifting of caries management method from G.V. Black's "Extension for prevention" to the modern "Minimally invasive" approach in dentistry. The minimally invasive approach to dental caries encompasses the science of detection, diagnosis and treatment on the microscopic level. The approach also establishes a proper doctor-patient relationship thus empowering and educating the patient to take responsibility for their own dental health. It has been widely accepted that the restorative materials and preparation designs are not the cure for caries. The dentist must recognize that the caries is a bacterial disease and the elimination of disease should be the priority before initiating any restorations. The proper sequence of caries management should be the introduction of preventive strategies such as oral hygiene instructions, remineralisation regiments, and risk assessments followed by minimal surgical interventions. Using the laser technology in the aspect of surgical intervention has many clinical advantages. Some of the clinical benefits include its selectivity for carious tissue, reduction of needs for local anaesthesia, decontamination effect of preparation surfaces, minimal thermal stimulus to pulp chamber, increase surface adhesion for composite materials, and other soft tissue applications. A critical evaluation of disadvantages on laser should also be considered when implementing its use in the clinical practice. The combination of caries prevention program, disease control, risk assessment and laser technology application on the surgical intervention significantly reduce the long term restorative needs thus preserve more healthy natural tooth structures, which complimenting the concept of minimally invasive dentistry. This presentation summarized various articles within the past 15 years regarding to topics of minimal invasive dentistry and laser technology usage in dentistry. *Corresponding author: Natalia Elson DDS, Clinical Instructor, NYU College of Dentistry, New York, E-mail: email@example.com


In the article features of criminal responsibility for criminal acts against traffic safety according to the new Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania, which came into force since May 1, 2003 are examined. The system of criminal acts against traffic safety, corpus delicti of the crimes, some definitions are analyzed in comparison with another Criminal Code of Lithuania /approved in 1961/ and codes of foreign countries. The author states that it should be positively evaluated that criminal acts against traffic security are systematized on the grounds of specific object and placed in the separate section, also the structure of respective corpus delicti is revised in this Criminal Code. It should be emphasized that in comparison with foreign legal acts, the system of criminal acts against traffic security instituted in the Criminal Code of Lithuania definitely differs in its extent, construction of concrete dispositions and types of penalty. In this article some aspects of decriminalization are reviewed, for example operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or narcotic, psychotropic and other intoxicating substances if commission thereof is repeated within one-year period, and the main changes made by the legislator regarding the criminal acts against traffic safety are briefly explained. In general the author discusses the construction of the Article 281 that foresees responsibility for causing serious consequences by violating road traffic rules. In the Article 281 criminal responsibility is differentiated considering two main criteria: a degree of consequence (large material damages, moderate or serious bodily injury, death of a human being) and a fact of drunk or intoxicated driving. The author analyzes some aspects of the signs of this crime and assesses some problematic issues of terminology used by the legislator in the Article 281. Furthermore, attention is paid to forms of guilt – criminal negligence and recklessness – that can be considered to be typical to road traffic rules violation. The article also presents a short review and analysis of punishments for this crime. The author states that criminal policy in this field is becoming milder but it should be noted that in some cases the legislator is inconsistent with institutionalizing sanctions.


One of the most promising prophylactic agents being tested to control Penaeus monodon larval diseases is furanace (6-hydroxymethyl-2 2(5-nitro-2-furyl) vinyl pyridine). To evaluate further its suitability as a chemotherapeutic agent, its effects on the population growth of Chaetoceros calcitrans, the diatom used as feed for the zoeal stages, was examined. Chaetoceros populations of uniform density (initial density in all runs: 130-141x10 SUP-3 cells /ml) were placed in nine white, circular (382 sq cm), plastic basins. The physio-chemical characteristics of the culture water were as follows: salinity, 28 . 5-30 . 0 ppt; pH, 8 . 62-8 . 72; temperature, 23-25 . 5 degree C; dissolved oxygen, 7 . 1-9 . 3 ppm; nitrate, 0 . 03-0 . 07 ppm; and ammonia, 0 . 005-0 . 03 ppm. Preweighed furanace granules were dissolved in the culture water, with resulting concentrations of 1 and 2 mg/l (3 replicates each). A set of replicates without furanace served as the control. Population counts of the diatom were taken after 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 hr exposures. After 4 hr, the population decreased in all three levels. The population in 2 mg/l furanace showed the lowest count and that in control the highest. The population means are not statistically different from one another. The results of the study show that the furanace causes reductions in Chaetoceros population at all durations of exposure.


The number of waiting vehicles that can cross a signalized intersection in a given period of time depends basically on how soon the vehicles begin to move after the signal changes to green and how fast each individual vehicle in the queue reacts to the acceleration of the vehicle immediately ahead. This process continues until all cars in the queue are progressing or have progressed through the intersection. The dissipation of a queue of vehicles after the signal changes to green depends on the reaction time and acceleration characteristics of each individual driver and vehicle. Thus, the total time for a group of vehicles to pass through a signalized intersection can vary considerably depending on the alertness and aggressiveness of the individual drivers, their familiarity with the intersection in question, and the acceleration characteristics of the vehicles, which the drivers control. This paper attempts to give a new viewpoint on the calculation of the departure headways and of the start-up lost times at signalized intersections in urban areas. Departure headways are the time intervals between vehicles departing from the signalized intersection; start-up lost time is defined as the excess time that is needed for a number of vehicles to pass through the signalized intersection compared with that would be needed if the signal did not exist. Data was collected for a considerable number of signalized intersection approaches in the Athens, Greece area. Data collection through contemporary techniques included lane width, lane position (inside lane versus outside lane, etc.), time of day (morning-peak versus afternoon-peak) and the posted speed limit (48km/h, 56km/h, 64km/h, or 72km/h). Statistical analyses were performed


Francine-Dominique Liechtenhan. Les trois christianismes et la Russie. Les voyageurs occidentaux face a l'Eglise orthodoxe russe (XV^sup e^-XVIII^sup e^ siecle). Mondes russes: Etats, Societes, Nations. Paris: CNRS Editions, 2002. 208 pp. Illustrations. Bibliographic selective. Index des noms. euro22.00, paper."If the Pope believes that he is infallible," Peter the Great is reported to have said when he visited Paris, "then he is a fool; and if he doesn't so believe, then he is a scoundrel" (p. 130). Such vignettes are the stuff of Catherine Leichtenhan's brief, trenchant, and interpretive account of the Russian Church, and of the goals and attitudes of Catholic and Protestant visitors, residents, and outside observers of Russia, from 1246 to 1796. Among the leitmotifs are the mutually compulsive Catholic drive to "recoup" Russia and the resolute Orthodox rejection, tempered by calculating, diplomatic baiting; the greater Protestant interest in material profit over proselytizing; the norm of foreign ignorance concerning the inner life of the Russian Church; and a rather high degree of depravity among foreign residents. Protestants and Catholics manipulated each other's texts-for example, Abraham Wicquefort's suppression of the anti-Catholic motifs of Adam Olearius's account (1659-date of publication). Criticism of Orthodoxy, as by Jean Chappe d'Aucheroche (1768) and Nathanael Wraxall (1776) sometimes anchored the overall smearing of Russia as barbaric. The proto-anthropological Dane, Peter von Haven, compared Russian Orthodoxy to what he knew of Judaism (1744). All in all, this book makes for lively and fascinating reading.Liechtenhan sees Western negativity towards Russian Orthodoxy hearkening back to the charges of ignorance and paganism by John of Piano Carpini and William Rubruck in the thirteenth century, strengthened by Sigismund von Herberstein's accusations of corruption and servility (1517-1549), and continuing down to the end of the eighteenth century, As a result, the rare positive attitudes elicit interest: for example, Johann Fabri's anti-Lutheran idealization (fed to him by Russian diplomats) of the primitive purity of Russian Christianity (1526); Jacob Reutenfels's proposal to judge Russians on their own terms and approach them as equals (1674-1680); and respect for Russian religious art or pilgrimages on the part of Augustin von Meyerberg (1661), Johann Korb (1700), John Cook (1770), John King (1772), and Jacob Stahlin (1787). …


In this paper, we revisit the classical representation of 3D point clouds as linear shape models. Our key insight is to leverage deep learning to represent a collection of shapes as affine transformations of low-dimensional linear shape models. Each linear model is characterized by a shape prototype, a low-dimensional shape basis and two neural networks. The networks take as input a point cloud and predict the coordinates of a shape in the linear basis and the affine transformation which best approximate the input. Both linear models and neural networks are learned end-to-end using a single reconstruction loss. The main advantage of our approach is that, in contrast to many recent deep approaches which learn feature-based complex shape representations, our model is explicit and every operation occurs in 3D space. As a result, our linear shape models can be easily visualized and annotated, and failure cases can be visually understood. While our main goal is to introduce a compact and interpretable representation of shape collections, we show it leads to state of the art results for few-shot segmentation. Code and data are available at: https://romainloiseau.github.io/deep-linear-shapes


Nowhere was the linguistic diversity of the New World more extreme than in California, where an extraordinary variety of village-dwelling peoples spoke seventy-eight mutually unintelligible languages. This comprehensive illustrated handbook, a major synthesis of more than 150 years of documentation and study, reviews what we now know about California's indigenous languages. Victor Golla outlines the basic structural features of more than two dozen language types, and cites all the major sources, both published and unpublished, for the documentation of these languages - from the earliest vocabularies collected by explorers and missionaries, to the data amassed during the twentieth-century by Alfred Kroeber and his colleagues, and to the extraordinary work of John P. Harrington and C. Hart Merriam. Golla also devotes chapters to the role of language in reconstructing prehistory, and to the intertwining of the language and culture in pre-contact California societies, making this work, the first of its kind, an essential reference on California's remarkable Indian languages.


In recent years, the development of responsive polymers has expanded significantly owing to the constant development of new chemistries and controlled polymerization methods, which allow for the synthesis of complex and well-defined polymer architectures with predictable structure-to-function behaviour. These polymers exhibit multifarious changes of their properties by the application of physicochemical stimuli, be these reversible sol–gel transformations, hydrophilic–hydrophobic transitions, shape and volume changes, or assembly–disassembly ordering. The coupling of these responsive properties with suitable chemistries has generated novel polymeric materials with on-demand healing properties that can be precisely modulated and fine-tuned. In this review article, we discuss the interplay of key chemical reactions, which (usually) take place on crosslink points or on structural elements of polymeric materials with responsive modalities that drive the healing/remending mechanisms in a highly controllable manner. We examine representative emerging examples of bulk healable polymers in the form of polymer solids (elastomers, rigid polymers and hydrogels) and membranes that are designed for various uses in biomaterials science, bioelectronics, sensors, actuators and coating technologies, and analyse their potential for real-world applications.


Learn how to make free phone calls to more than 75 million people, and dirt-cheap phone calls to practically everyone else, anywhere on Earth! You can do it with Skype. This book will help you get started fast, with any computer: Windows, Mac, Linux, even Pocket PC. Then, take Skype to the limit, with SkypeIn, SkypeOut, instant messaging, secure file transfer, even video calling. Set up and customize Skype in just minutes Take Skype on the road--avoid expensive hotel phones and international calls Transform your PC into a state-of-the-art Skype videophone Troubleshoot Skype connections and audio quality Discover even more ways to save money, simplify life, even build your business!Written by Skype insiders, this is the only official guide to Skype. It's up-to-date, easy-to-use, quick, simple . . . and above all, FUN!Bonus coverage for more experienced users: Skype architecture, security, and advanced configuration.


OBJECTIVE: To estimate the risk for spina bifida associated with the common mutation C677T of the MTHFR gene in a country with a relatively low prevalence of NTDs. DESIGN: Case-control study. SUBJECTS: Cases: 203 living patients affected with spina bifida (173 myelomeningocele and 30 lipomeningocele); controls: 583 subjects (306 young adults and 277 unselected newborns) from northern and central-southern Italy. SETTING: Cases: three spina bifida centres; young adult controls: DNA banks; newborn controls: regional neonatal screening centres. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Prevalence of the C677T genotypes in cases and controls by place of birth; odds ratios for spina bifida and estimated attributable fraction. RESULTS: The prevalence of T/T, T/C, and C/C genotype was 16.6%, 53.7%, and 29.7% in controls and 25.6%, 43.8%, and 30.6% in cases, respectively. We found no differences between type of defect or place of birth. The odds ratio for spina bifida associated with the T/T genotype v C/C plus T/C was 1.73 (95% CI 1.15, 2.59) and the corresponding attributable fraction was 10.8%. No increased risk was found for heterozygous patients (OR=0.79, 95% CI 0.53-1.18). CONCLUSION: This study, as well as the meta-analysis we updated, shows that homozygosity for the MTHFR C677T mutation is a moderate risk factor in Europe, and even in Italy where there is a relatively low prevalence of spina bifida. The estimated attributable fraction associated with this risk factor explains only a small proportion of cases preventable by periconceptional folic acid supplementation. Thus, other genes involved in folate-homocysteine metabolism, their interaction, and the interaction between genetic and environmental factors should be investigated further.


The benefits of reusing artifacts in the software development process are well-known in the software engineering community, and the earlier in the system development life-cycle reuse is attempted, the more benefit can be expected. Thus, we highlight the reuse of requirement specifications, leading to greater reuse of other artifacts such as models, code and tests. This paper presents an approach to the requirements reuse, supported by a tool that gives suggestions for reuse from requirement patterns, a patterns catalog and traceability between requirements. The efficiency and effectiveness of the approach were evaluated using a quasi- experiment in a university. We conducted a quantitative evaluation of the approach, and an assessment of participants' perceptions regarding the use of the approach and the computational tool. Finally, we performed a qualitative assessment using the GQM method, from the point of view of experts in the area of requirements engineering, in order to obtain more indicators of the feasibility of applying the approach in companies. The results of the quasi-experiment indicate that the approach presented makes the activities of requirement elicitation and specification about 40% more efficient and effective in terms of the way they are conducted, without the support of the approach. Regarding the perceptions on the use, the experimental group positively evaluated the proposed approach and the developed tool. Based on the evaluation by the GQM method, indicators were obtained that the approach assists in activities of requirement elicitation and specification, from the point of view of experts.


Math. Mag. 94 (2021) 150–158. doi:10.1080/0025570X.2021.1873039 c © Mathematical Association of America We invite readers to submit original problems appealing to students and teachers of advanced undergraduate mathematics. Proposals must always be accompanied by a solution and any relevant bibliographical information that will assist the editors and referees. A problem submitted as a Quickie should have an unexpected, succinct solution. Submitted problems should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Proposals and solutions should be written in a style appropriate for this Magazine. Authors of proposals and solutions should send their contributions using the Magazine's submissions system hosted at http://mathematicsmagazine.submittable.com. More detailed instructions are available there. We encourage submissions in PDF format, ideally accompanied by LATEX source. General inquiries to the editors should be sent to firstname.lastname@example.com.


If the constitutional law casebooks are a reliable guide, most teach the Fourteenth Amendment, like other parts of the Constitution, by presenting separately the various doctrinal topics it has raised.[1] The principal clauses of the Amendment, or really those in the second sentence of Section 1[2]—the Equal Protection, Due Process, and Privileges or Immunities Clauses—are generally extracted from its text and classes are structured around the leading cases decided under each and the resulting doctrine. Cases under the Equal Protection or Due Process Clause may be further separated. Based on the class of claimants, for instance, the cases involving racial and gender equality and affirmative action may be presented as distinct topics. Further subdivision may group the cases involving education, employment, and voting, for instance. Sometimes equal protection and due process both appear, either because claimants raised, or opinions addressed, each constitutional hook or because an equal protection claim against the federal government was necessarily brought under the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Incorporation receives some, although much briefer, treatment, casebook page allocation suggests.[3]

Some such conceptual approach is common and sensible. It is important for students to learn something about the history, doctrine, and analytical approaches regarding the various distinct clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, to read the important cases and understand the arguments the Court found convincing and those it rejected. And it is impossible to begin to understand the Fourteenth Amendment without studying its principal clauses.


ABSTRACT The East Berlin Formation is a 200-m fluvial and lacustrine sequence of red and gray sandstone and mudstone that accumulated in a tropical rift valley during Early Jurassic time. The hematite pigment that colors the red beds is authigenic, produced by four post-depositional processes. (1) Brown and yellow-brown limonite that stained the surfaces of the detrital particles of sand and mud converted to hematite by aging. (2) In the sandstone, pervasive intrastratal solution of Fe-silicate grains, especially pyroxene, amphibole, epidote, chlorite, and biotite provided iron for precipitation of hematite, or a red ferric oxide precursor that then aged to hematite. These two processes were volumetrically the most important in generating hematite pigment. (3) In all the red beds, abundant mag etite grains were oxidized to hematite; ilmenite grains were oxidized to hematite-rutile. (4) In the sandstones, replacement of Fe-silicate grains by dolomite cement yielded additional iron for hematite cement. Conversion of limonite stains on clay particles to hematite by aging was the major source of hematite in flood-plain grayish red mudstone, a darker red (lower value and less yellow hue) than the interbedded stream channel sandstone of pale red and pale yellowish brown colors. Intrastratal solution of Fe-silicate grains in the fluvial and lacustrine sandstones produced an average of about 3 percent by volume of hematite cement. Pyroxene, amphibole, epidote, chlorite, and biotite grains were consistently protected from post-depositional solution in the impermeable dolomite concretions and grayish red mudstone of the flood-plain deposits and also in lacustrine gray mudstone. The limonite surface stains on detrital particles in the lakes were removed in the reducing, organic-rich bottom w ter so that the impermeable lacustrine gray mudstone and black shale are not reddened by aging of limonite to hematite nor by intrastratal solution.


Black Hawk made his final public appearance at a Fourth of July celebration in Fort Madison, Iowa in 1837. He seems an unlikely attendee at such a patriotic function. Five years earlier, he had been at war with the United States-throwing the frontier into a panic from Michigan to St. Louis and lending his name to the last armed Algonquian resistance to American expansion east of the Mississippi. In 1833, Black Hawk was a prisoner-of-war, brought to Washington to meet with President Jackson, and sent on a tour of the Eastern cities to assure him that future conflict between his people and the Americans could result only in the annihilation of the Natives. Upon his eventual release, the war-chief became a published author and pleaded his own justification for going to war-and unrepentantly fixed blame for the conflict firmly on the conduct of American officials.1 Yet, in 1837, he stood with his former enemies and one-time captors celebrating the birth of a nation that had sought to destroy him. At the festivities, he joined in thirteen toasts-with cold water in his glass rather than the more potent potables preferred by his white associates. When it came his turn to speak, Black Hawk raised his glass and gave a short speech that concluded, "A few summers ago I was fighting against you. I did wrong perhaps, but that is past-it is buried-let it be forgotten. Rock River was a beautiful country. I liked my towns, my corn-fields, and the home of my people. I fought for it-it is now yours-keep it as we did."2 Black Hawk's advice went unheeded. Thousands upon thousands of American settlers flooded into northern Illinois in a remarkably short time and irrevocably altered the landscape to suit their own needs. In less than two generations, the newcomers cleared the woodlands, drained the marshes, and broke the prairie. They replaced the native grasses with domesticated crops and created a region of unprecedented agricultural productivity. They developed the region's industrial capacity as well-digging canals, laying railroads, and building cities of a size that dwarfed anything that had come before. Determined to coerce Nature into submission, they even reversed the flow of the Chicago River. With each passing year, it became more difficult to remember-or even imagine-the historical past that had led to such development. In 1837, Black Hawk and other Native people-removed from Illinois but neither inaccessible nor forgotten-stood as living reminders of a time that preceded the arrival of an American population and the transformations that followed. Generations passed and the frontier shifted west. Most Indians went with it. New immigrants supplanted the pioneer families of Illinois and there arose a fundamental disconnection between the present and the past. By 1900, fearing the loss of the region's "ancient" history and the social cohesion it provided, various individuals and groups worked to preserve its memory...even if that meant re-inscribing it on a landscape that would have appeared wholly alien to the people whose lives were being commemorated. Paul Angle, one of the most respected historians of Illinois, pointed out that, although his state possessed a captivating history, its own citizens were generally unfamiliar with more than small segments of it. "And travelers from outside the state,"he added,"of whom there are many thousands annually, may cross from boundary to boundary without becoming acquainted with any part of fllinois's heritage except, perhaps, that it was the home of Abraham Lincoln, and that his body is buried in our soil."3 George Palmer, another member of the Illinois State Historical Society (ISHS), echoed these sentiments. He pointed out that Illinois offers "a story as rich in history and romance of any of her sister States; but... that it would be difficult to induce then citizens of Massachusetts or Virginia to accept this assertion."4 He and Angle agreed also that Illinois residents were too often ignorant of the history even of their own localities. …


Abstract. Most studies evaluating cloud in general circulation models present new diagnostic techniques or observational datasets, or apply a limited set of existing diagnostics to a number of models. In this study, we use a range of diagnostic techniques and observational datasets to provide a thorough evaluation of cloud, such as might be carried out during a model development process. The methodology is illustrated by analysing two configurations of the Met Office Unified Model – the currently operational configuration at the time of undertaking the study (Global Atmosphere 6, GA6), and the configuration which will underpin the United Kingdom's Earth System Model for CMIP6 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6; GA7). By undertaking a more comprehensive analysis which includes compositing techniques, comparing against a set of quite different observational instruments and evaluating the model across a range of timescales, the risks of drawing the wrong conclusions due to compensating model errors are minimized and a more accurate overall picture of model performance can be drawn. Overall the two configurations analysed perform well, especially in terms of cloud amount. GA6 has excessive thin cirrus which is removed in GA7. The primary remaining errors in both configurations are the in-cloud albedos which are too high in most Northern Hemisphere cloud types and sub-tropical stratocumulus, whilst the stratocumulus on the cold-air side of Southern Hemisphere cyclones has in-cloud albedos which are too low.


Stroke and Blood Coagulation • A study of the coagulation parameters of 87 normal controls (ages 50 to 80) were compared with those of 33 patients with thrombotic stroke and 55 patients with diabetes mellitus of the same age distribution. There were no significant differences when tested for the influence of sex or age. Twenty-seven tests of clotting were done on each specimen, a total of 4,725. Significant differences were detected between normals versus patients with thrombotic stroke (fibrinogen level, glass clotting time, silicone clotting time, heparin tolerance, platelet count and retarded thromboplastin generation time BaSO4 1:50 dilution) and between normals versus patients with diabetes (prothrombin time, silicone clotting time, platelet count, thromboplastin generation time and retarded thromboplastin generation time) when subjected to computer analysis. The clinical significance of these differences is not of practical value in the diagnosis or as a guide to therapy for stroke. Additional


Local peoples living in protected areas often have a different understanding about their natural space than do non-local groups that promote and declare such areas ''protected.'' By designing pro- tected areas without local involvement, or understandings of local social differentiation and power, natural resources management schemes will likely be unsuccessful. Protected area Cerro Guanacaure in southern Honduras has been subject to many development projects, most of which have failed, and the local inhabitants observe that degradation of natural resources continues. However, this case study shows that this does not mean locals view natural resources simply in an individualistic, utilitarian way. They also see their surroundings in an ecological way, and a sociocultural way. This assessment is based upon in-depth interviews with local leaders and 208 fixed format interviews of park inhabitants in Cerro Guanacaure.


I argue that Adam Smith's impartial spectator synthesizes the process through which we form our moral community, our identities, and our characters. It reminds us of our deeply social nature, and of the possibility of building a society of autonomous individuals who can transcend themselves and flourish through affective communication. The impartial spectator guards our uniqueness and makes us part of a shared world.


Both suicide and violence among adolescents are prevalent phenomena in the world. Objectives. To determine the prevalence of suicidal ideation and its association with tendency to violence towards others, in school-aged youths. Material and methods. Analytical cross-sectional study conducted in the Peruvian Amazon city of Pucallpa, between March and April 2008. Questions about the tendency to violence and suicidal ideation were applied from adapted questionnaire of mental health. The sample was selected systematically, were 530 adolescents from 12 to 19 years-old in the three largest schools in the city. Results. 31.3% of those polled presented passive wishes to die, 21.1% thought to commit suicide and 18.1% attempted suicide at least once in life, predominantly in females and in the group from 15 to 19 years-old. The trend of violence is expressed in thought (51.7%) and violent behavior (18.7%) predominantly in males (p<0,001). By multivariate analysis, suicidal ideation was associated with violent behavior (OR = 4.9 IC95% 1.4-17.5) and not with heteroaggressive thinking (OR = 2.1 IC95% 0.9-4.9). Conclusions. There is high prevalence of suicidal ideation and have thought to commit suicide was associated with violent behavior. Track and treating violent adolescents can contribute to decrease violence and risk of suicide.


To describe a patient who presented to a family medicine clinic with symptoms typical for cholecystitis, but eventually was diagnosed with omental infarction. A 37-year-old Caucasian man reported with right upper quadrant pain suspicious for cholecystitis. In light of negative abdominal ultrasound, computed tomography scan was performed, and omental infarction was identified. The patient was treated conservatively with a good outcome. Omental infarction is rarely described in medical literature, and it is often missed or misdiagnosed. There are increasing numbers of reports that describe omental infarction being diagnosed as various types of acute abdomen. With increased utilization of advanced imaging, omental infarction is being found to be responsible for presentations of the acute abdomen that were misdiagnosed. Proper diagnosis prevents invasive mismanagement and an unnecessarily prolonged hospital stay.


The aim of this paper is to present an integrated review exploring the theme of self-sabotage in romantic relationships. Self-sabotage or self-handicapping is a cognitive strategy employed by individuals as self-protection; primarily aimed at preserving self-esteem and self-image. When faced with failure, the individual can justify the outcome as due to the handicap itself (i.e., an external cause), whereas, if faced with success, the individual can emphasise their ability to withstand the barriers of handicap (i.e., an internal cause). The hypothesis is that the self-handicapper creates obstacles which impede success or withdrawal effort to maintain self-esteem and competent public and private self-image. Most of the research undertaken regarding the practice of self-handicapping has been conducted in the context of education, work, and sporting activities. However, in other contexts this phenomenon is less explored and loosely defined. With regards to romantic relationships, there is a distinct lack of knowledge to explain why some people, having successfully initiated a relationship, embark upon what appears to be a path to certain dissolution of that engagement. Studies will need to be conducted to provide evidence for this phenomenon and directions for practical approaches in relationship counselling.


Studies of the content of persuasive messages in which the central arguments of the message are scrutinized have traditionally relied on the technique of thought-listing to assess argument strength. Although the validity of the thought-listing procedure is well documented, its utility can be limited in situations involving nonadult populations and sensitive topics. In this paper, we present a self-reported scale that can be used to assess perceived argument strength in contexts where thought-listing may be less appropriate. This scale taps into perceived argument strength from multiple points of view, including but also extending beyond the potential of the argument to elicit positive and negative thoughts. Reliability and validity of this scale were assessed in health communication contexts involving anti-drug public service announcements (PSAs) directed at adolescents and anti-smoking PSAs targeting adults. Evidence of convergence between this scale and the thought-listing technique was also obtained using the classical comprehensive exam arguments.


Digitization is the biggest advance in the history of photography. While some seasoned photographers may still be wary of the filmless technique, unbiased children have easily found their way into the digital world. Children are excited by the instant gratification of capturing an image and immediately seeing the result. With todays digital cameras, what used to be an expensive and disappointing process is now as easy as pie. Enthusiastic and confident children are able to handle digital cameras with remarkable skill. The instant feedback motivates them to continue exploring, and soon they are able to create small masterpieces full of inspiration and fantasy. Photography for Kids introduces children between the ages of 8 and 14 to the world of photography. Technical conceptslike how a digital camera actually worksare explained in a way that is easy for children to understand. The book emphasizes creativity and presents techniques for capturing exciting images.


The beginnings of psychology are usually dated from experimental psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis in the late nineteenth century. Yet the period from 1700 to 1840 produced some highly sophisticated psychological theorising that became central to German intellectual and cultural life, well in advance of similar developments in the English-speaking world. Matthew Bell explores how this happened, by analysing the expressions of psychological theory in Goethe's Faust, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and in the works of Lessing, Schiller, Kleist, and E. T. A. Hoffmann. This study pays special attention to the role of the German literary renaissance of the last third of the eighteenth century in bringing psychological theory into popular consciousness and shaping its transmission to the nineteenth century. All German texts are translated into English, making this fascinating area of European thought fully accessible to English readers for the first time.


Laos is one of the poorest and least developed countries in Southeast Asia and living conditions, livestock production and cultural practices place large proportions of the population at risk of exposure to a range of parasitic and viral zoonoses. Surveys of humans, pigs and dogs were conducted to determine the prevalence of and risk factors associated with the transmission of Taenia solium and related Taenia species, Trichinella spp., soil-transmitted helminths (STH), and viral zoonoses including Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), hepatitis E virus (HEV), swine influenza virus (SIV) and Nipah virus (NiV). Surveys were conducted in villages and slaughterhouses in four ethnically diverse provinces of northern Laos.

The human, pig and dog populations studied had a very high prevalence of parasite infection and zoonotic transmission between humans and animals was apparent for multiple species including taeniaisis/cysticercosis, trichinellosis and hookworms. Cysticercosis in the human population was relatively rare with a prevalence of less than 2%, although a focal distribution and concentration of cases in a small number of villages was evident. Taenia saginata was the dominant Taenia species infecting people and T. hydatigena was the dominant species infecting pigs. Trichinella spiralis was the only species detected in pigs and we found serological evidence that human exposure to Trichinella larvae was common. STH infections were very common and the poorest members of the survey population and people of the Mon-Khmer ethnic group were at greatest risk of having an STH infection.

JEV was identified as being hyper-epizootic in northern Laos and remains an unmanaged threat to human health. The hemagglutination inhibition seroprevalence of JEV in the pig population was 74.7% and IgM seroprevalence of 2.3 % peaked in the monsoonal wet season months. Seroprevalence of HEV was 21.1% and the molecular characterisation of HEV isolates from village pigs demonstrated genetic homogeneity with human HEV isolates from China.

This thesis presents new data on a wide range of neglected tropical diseases, ranging from parasitic infections associated with poverty and poor sanitation through to non-discriminating zoonotic viruses. The zoonotic and neglected tropical diseases circulating in Laos are, undoubtedly, a major burden on public health and wellbeing and initiatives to prevent transmission are urgently required.


When health insurance reforms involve non-linear price schedules tied to payment periods (for example, a quarter or a year), the empirical analysis of its effects has to take the within-period time structure of incentives into account. The analysis is further complicated when demand data are obtained from a survey in which the reporting period does not coincide with the payment period. We illustrate these issues using as an example a health care reform in Germany which imposed a perquarter fee of e10 for doctor visits and additionally set an out-of-pocket maximum. This co-payment structure results in an effective "spot" price for a doctor visit which decreases over time within each payment period. Using this variation, we find a substantial effect of the new fee, in contrast to earlier studies of this reform. Overall, the probability of visiting a physician decreased by around 2.5 percentage points in response to the new fee for doctor visits. We verify the key assumptions of our approach using a separate data set of insurance claims in which the reporting period effects are absent by construction.


We propose a novel approach to performing change-detection based on sparse representations and dictionary learning. We operate on observations that are finite support signals, which in stationary conditions lie within a union of low dimensional subspaces. We model changes as perturbations of these subspaces and provide an online and sequential monitoring solution to detect them. This approach allows extension of the change-detection framework to operate on streams of observations that are signals, rather than scalar or multi-variate measurements, and is shown to be effective for both synthetic data and on bursts acquired by rockfall monitoring systems.


High-frequency response of a system with drifting electrons in a highly doped graphene and surface polar optical phonons of a polar substrate is considered. For this interacting system, we obtained a dielectric function, frequencies and decrement/increment of cooperative plasmon-optical phonon oscillations. We found, that the response is significantly depends on the degree of nonequilibrium of the electrons. In particular, interaction between drifting plasmons and surface polar optical phonons leads to an instability of the electron subsystem due to Vavilov-Cherenkov effect. We suggest that the hybrid system - graphene on a polar substrate - is capable to be used in amplifiers or generators of THz electromagnetic radiation.


Water distribution systems are critical infrastructure systems enabling the social and economic welfare of a community. While normal failures are expected and repaired quickly, low-probability and high consequence disruptive events have potential to cause severe damage to the infrastructure and significantly reduce their performance or even stop their function altogether. Resilient infrastructure is a necessary component towards achieving resilient and sustainable communities. Resilience concepts allow improved decision making in relation with risk assessment and management in water utilities. However, in order to operationalize infrastructure resilience concepts, it is fundamental to develop practical resilience assessment methods such as the methodology and tool proposed in this research, named Effective Resilience Assessment Methodology for Utilities (ERASMUS). ERASMUS utilizes a stochastic simulation model to evaluate the probability of resilient response from a water distribution system in case of disruption. This methodology utilizes a parametric concept of resilience, in which a resilient infrastructure system is defined in terms of a set of performance parameters compared with their socially acceptable values under a variety of disruptive events. The methodology is applied to two actual water distribution networks in the East and West coasts of the US.


Over a period of several weeks 16 male students in a middle school were required to complete a project to measure their level of engagement using Information Communication Technology (ICT). During the lessons students were observed by the classroom teacher, two pre-service teachers and an ICT education lecturer, who assisted, photographed, videoed and interviewed students. Students were also requested to complete survey questions on three occasions throughout the project. The project required student to use anything they desired, technology or otherwise, to research and present their findings in order persuade the observers to choose their group's project. The tasks of the onlookers were to observe whether students were engaged, or otherwise, in the production and presentation of their project. The degree of engagement when using ICT is dependant on a student's ability to choose how and when to implement ICT. Engagement is the combination of feelings (emotional), observable actions or performance (behavioural) and perceptions and beliefs (cognitive). Many observations were made about the students' choice of whether to use ICT or not and this paper addresses the results of their engagement in the task.


Within the Australian constitutional system, two aspects of Commonwealth power have for decades remained elusive: the Commonwealth's capacity to spend public moneys; and the scope and nature of executive power. A constitutional challenge to part of the Australian Government's response to the global financial crisis provided an opportunity for the High Court to shed light on both issues. The challenge impugned Commonwealth payments to taxpayers designed to provide a rapid fiscal stimulus to the Australian economy. The Commonwealth principally defended the legislation that authorised the payments on the alternate bases of a substantive spending power founded in s 81 of the Constitution and the executive power vested by s 61. The High Court's decision, Pape v Commissioner of Taxation (2009) 238 CLR 1, represents a radical reappraisal of the constitutional requirements for the valid appropriation and expenditure of Commonwealth funds and points to a fundamental reconsideration of the nature of executive power in Australia. This article presents a detailed examination of the decision and its implications for constitutional jurisprudence. It questions the approach adopted by the majority in construing executive power and contends that more careful consideration ought be given to British constitutional principle in future decisions.


The Spatial Turn as a transdisciplinary phenomenon in the Humanities was established in the 1990s, and, especially in the last few decades, geography seems to have pervaded critical analysis and language. According to contemporary geographical and environmental perspectives, the setting in narratives is not only a background defining the place where the plot is located but a complex system that is central to the construction of literary texts. Wuthering Heights (1847) provides an excellent case study. Emily Brontë's novel is certainly characterized by its topography. Although different sources had been collected by the writer from a wide range of models across the country in Yorkshire, they were then reassembled to form a landscape that is both familiar and uncanny, self-consistent and reminiscent of real buildings and sceneries. Besides, the dynamics between displacement, departures and arrivals and the seeming immobility of the landscape is a crucial pattern of the novel. In Wuthering Heights, the natural world of the moors and its geographies are reminders of history and memory. Brontë's weaving together of emotional stories into the moorlands suggests a mutual exchange between nature and culture. The writer constructs a textured geography representing the cycles of change, family history, and passion that have created that space.


Pedagogy, as a human and social science and as a profession, has a history that has its roots in classical Greece. It has had a particularly significant evolution as Sozialpädagogik in the eighteenth-century Mitteleuropa , as was the case for other social or psychological sciences and related professions. Today, it presents itself as an autonomous science, which is also a field of transposition and integration of inputs from other sciences and other forms of knowledge, to turn everything into specifically educational purposes. The profession, in turn, takes place at the level of the intermediate applicability between theory and practice and is highly compat-ible with other social and health professions and open to dialogue and teamwork. With these assumptions, it is able to respond positively to the specific and new educational problems that contemporary complexity urgently poses by calling this profession into question. The chapter offers an essential, rigorous, and organic presentation of one of the new branches of General Pedagogy: Professional Pedagogy. The pedagogist carries out a higher intellectual profession whose focus is education in all social domains, and in all ages of life. A solid theoretical and methodological basis allows the pedagogist to treat individual cases using lexicon, techniques, procedures, and conceptual and operational tools of a strictly specific nature.


Pre-mRNA splicing is the most critical process in gene expression regulation across eukaryotic species. This reaction is carried out by the spliceosome, a large, dynamic, and wellorganized ribonucleoprotein complex. The spliceosome is composed of five major small nuclear RNAs and an excessive number of associated protein factors. Many protein splicing factors bind and release during splicing to assist the assembly and the modulation of many RNA structures and proteins within the spliceosome. CWC25 is a splicing protein factor that functions in modulating the conformational structure of the spliceosome at the first transesterification reaction. CWC25 binds with its N-terminus to the major groove of the catalytic spliceosome triggering the spliceosome activity. Here, we employed CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering system for targeted mutagenesis to generate CWC25 functional knock-out mutants to understand its molecular function, contribution to splicing regulation and implication in fine-tuning responses to abiotic stress in rice. Our genotyping analysis of the OsCWC25 locus revealed the presence of two mono-allelic and 18 bi-allelic mutant lines. Phenotypic analysis of these mutants, including germination and root inhibition assays, showed that the cwc25 mutants are oversensitive to abiotic stresses such as ABA and salinity. Our data demonstrate that CWC25 plays an important role in regulating plant responses to abiotic stresses.


Urban food systems consist of many stakeholders with different perspectives, different interests and different governance tools. This study aimed at developing potential future scenarios for the food system of Cologne by analysing the system with a Delphi approach. In our research-design, the suitability of the Delphi-method was evaluated not only as a tool for future modelling and scenario design, but also as a communication tool among the group of participants on a multi-stakeholder-platform. As a case study, the Food Policy Council of Cologne, Germany was used. Cologne can be seen as a forerunner among German cities in the development of a new urban food policy. Some of the successful steps to re-envisioning food as an urban system include joining the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, the decision of the City Council to become an edible city and the establishment of a Food Policy Council. For the study it was important to capture participants' visions of a common goal regarding the governance of the urban food system and also to identify mental 'silos'. It was obvious that the municipality of Cologne together with the Food Policy Council made great efforts towards participatory processes to build a vision for a sustainable and regional food supply. However, many stakeholder-groups in the process still work exclusively among themselves and do not actively practice the confrontation with the viewpoints of other relevant groups. This supports the maintenance of 'silos' and leaves little room for face-to-face discussions. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to explore key components of food provisioning in the future for Cologne while confronting all stakeholders (municipal administration and politicians, farmers and food activists) with the perspectives of all group members. We used a multi-stakeholder Delphi approach with 19 panellists to find out essential components of the municipal regional food provisioning system in Cologne. Unique in this Delphi study is the bringing together of municipal administration, regional urban farmers and food activists. The research is still on-going, but preliminary results show that more communication among all relevant actors, especially horizontally among different city departments, in the urban food system is needed.


The reform of public water utilities has received increasing attention over the past decade. In this paper, the reform paths of five public water utilities from five different developing countries are compared. This paper finds that for each case, an external event or crisis brought the issue of water services high on to the political agenda, leading to a window of opportunity in which relatively radical reforms could be implemented. However, as political support for continued reforms withered, performance improvements became difficult to sustain. Without continued political support, performance improvements can be followed by a relapse to poor performance.


This study used Cobb-Douglas Stochastic Profit Frontier to analyze economic efficiency of sorghum farmers in Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya. Using a multi-stage stratified sample of 259 farmers, results depicted a wide range of profit efficiency between the best (0.96) and the worst (0.12) farmer with a mean of 0.17. The actual and potential profit was USD 164.88 ha-1 and USD 969.87 ha-1 respectively. This indicates that, sampled farmers incurred profit-loss of approximately USD 804.99 ha-1. Family labour and fixed capital base were the major contributing factors to sorghum profitability. Drivers of profit efficiency pointed out that, farmers who had more experience in sorghum farming, accessed agricultural credit, attended trainings, lived closer to the market and agro-dealers were likely to be more efficient. To increase profit efficiency, this study therefore advocates for policy strategies targeting these factors. Further, policy move targeting increase in uptake and correct application of fertilizer and other inputs should be reinforced.

 Key words: Improved sorghum varieties, economic efficiency, Cobb-Douglas stochastic profit frontier, Kenya.


The ability of biofilms to form on a range of materials (cementious backfill (Nirex Reference Vault Backfill (NRVB)), graphite, and stainless steel) relevant to potential UK intermediate level radioactive waste (ILW) disposal concepts was investigated by exposing these surfaces to alkaliphilic flocs generated by mature biofilm communities. Flocs are aggregates of biofilm material that are able to act as a transport vector for the propagation of biofilms. In systems where biofilm formation was observed there was also a decrease in the sorption of isosaccharinic acids to the NRVB. The biofilms were composed of cells, extracellular DNA (eDNA), proteins, and lipids with a smaller polysaccharide fraction, which was biased towards mannopyranosyl linked carbohydrates. The same trend was seen with the graphite and stainless steel surfaces at these pH values, but in this case the biofilms associated with the stainless steel surfaces had a distinct eDNA basal layer that anchored the biofilm to the surface. At pH 13, no structured biofilm was observed, rather all the surfaces accumulated an indistinct organic layer composed of biofilm materials. This was particularly the case for the stainless steel coupons which accumulated relatively large quantities of eDNA. The results demonstrate that there is the potential for biofilm formation in an ILW-GDF provided an initiation source for the microbial biofilm is present. They also suggest that even when conditions are too harsh for biofilm formation, exposed surfaces may accumulate organic material such as eDNA.


In this article, we expand and test several theoretical models addressing the longitudinal relationships between bully victimization, depression, academic achievement, and problematic drinking from 3 approaches: Interpersonal risk model, symptom driven model, and a transactional model. Unfortunately, prior research has failed to consider these associations at the within-person level, which is arguably a more relevant level of analysis. Participants were 1,875 students sampled from four Midwestern middle schools and followed for 2 years. Baseline age ranged from 11–13 years with a racially diverse sample (44.3% African American, 29.2% White, 7% Hispanic, 3% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 16.5% Multi-Racial). The current study used an auto-regressive latent trajectory with structured residuals (ALT-SR) model to examine the within-person cross-lagged associations between bully victimization, depression, academic achievement, and problematic drinking. Results indicated support for an interpersonal risk model, where experiences of early bullying victimization resulted in a cascade of problems throughout middle school. Within this interpersonal risk model we also established that academic achievement was a key mechanism linking bully victimization to problematic drinking during adolescence We did not find evidence for a traditional symptom driven model (e.g., stemming from depression); however, we did find long-term problems stemming from early problematic drinking. Results are discussed in relation to prevention interventions for problematic drinking as well as screenings for early adolescent depression, bully victimization, and academic problems.


In recent years, there has been an important growth of online gaming. Today's Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) can contain millions of synchronous players scattered across the world and participating with each other within a single shared game. The increase in the number of players in MMOGs has led to some issues with the demand of server which generates a significant increase in costs for the game industry and impacts to the quality of service offered to players. With the number of players gradually increasing, servers still need to work efficiently under heavy load and, new researches are required to improve the established MMOG system architectures. In dealing with a considerable scale of massively multiplayer online games, several client-server and peer-to-peer solutions have been proposed. Although they have improved the scalability of MMOGs in different degrees, they faced new serious challenges in interest management. In this paper, we propose a novel static area of interest management in order to reduce the delay and traffic of Hybrid P2P MMOGs. We propose to use OPNET Modeler 18.0, and in particular the custom application to simulate the new architecture, which required the implementation of new nodes models and behaviors in the simulator to emulate correctly the new architecture. The scenarios include both client-server and hybrid P2P system to evaluate the communication of games with (125, 500, and 1000) peers. The simulation results show that area of interest management for MMOGs based on the hybrid P2P architectures have low delay and traffic received compared with MMOGs based on client-server system.


An exact theory is presented for calculating electromagnetic scattering by a model heterogeneous particle. The model is a multilayer sphere composed of alternating layers of different dielectric constants in the limit where the number of layers approaches infinity and the layer thickness approaches zero. The scattering analysis for this limiting case is based on a formulation of scattering theory known as the variable-phase method (VPM). A derivation of the VPM formulation is presented. Analytic formulas are derived for the scattering coefficients of the heterogeneous sphere that are generalizations of similar Mie theory formulas for scattering by a homogeneous sphere. The optical properties of the layered heterogeneous mixture are exactly described in this theory by the two effective-media parameters. The solution in the long-wavelength limit is used to derive a new formula for the effective dielectric constant for heterogeneous mixtures.


If feedback is to be framed as purposeful dialogue then both students and teachers have significant roles to play. Students must be willing and able to provide feedback to teachers not only about their learning needs but also about the teaching they experience. In turn, teachers must create the conditions that support active student learning and disclosure. It is against this backdrop that the current interpretive, qualitative research was carried out. Set within the final year of secondary schooling in New Zealand (Year 13) this paper draws on data generated from two semi-structured, focus group interviews. It provides insights into 14 students' perspectives about the role feedback plays in the enhancement of their learning, the kinds of experiences and interactions needed to support their disclosure of learning needs and the dispositions teachers need to exhibit to create a trustful, mutually respectful environment.


In the first chapter of this thesis, I develop a model that combines intrahousehold bargaining with competition on the marriage market once married, spouses bargain over the allocation of total household income. They have the option of divorce and subsequent remarriage; the value of this outside option is determined endogenously on the marriage market. I use this model to analyse the educational choice. When more women than men obtain a university degree, men without degrees benefit; university educated men, however, are not able to translate this change on the marriage market into a significantly larger share of household income. Hence, men's incentive to invest in education decreases if women's educational attainment increases. Even without assuming any heterogeneity in tastes between men and women, equilibria arise in which men and women decide to become educated at different rates. The second chapter shows empirically, that a woman's propensity to separate from her partner depends positively on male wage inequality on her local marriage market the more heterogeneous potential future mates are in terms of earnings power, the more likely a woman is to end her relationship. This effect is strongest for couples, where one has a college education but the other one does not. The effect is robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls on the individual level, as well as state and time fixed effects and state specific time trends. The third chapter (co-authored with Julio Robledo) develops a two period family decision making model in which spouse bargain over the allocation of individual time and consumption. If inter-temporally binding contracts are not feasible, household time allocation might be inefficient. We compare two threat point specifications, and show that the threat point specification can influence spouses time allocation, not only the distribution of private consumption.


Impaired nitric oxide (NO)–dependent endothelial function is associated with the development of cardiovascular diseases. We hypothesized that erythrocyte levels of nitrosylated hemoglobin (HbNO-heme) may reflect vascular endothelial function in vivo. We developed a modified subtraction method using Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) spectroscopy to identify the 5-coordinate α-HbNO (HbNO) concentration in human erythrocytes and examined its correlation with endothelial function assessed by peripheral arterial tonometry (PAT). Changes in digital pulse amplitude were measured by PAT during reactive hyperemia following brachial arterial occlusion in a group of healthy volunteers (50 subjects). Erythrocyte HbNO levels were measured at baseline and at the peak of hyperemia. We digitally subtracted an individual model EPR signal of erythrocyte free radicals from the whole EPR spectrum to unmask and quantitate the HbNO EPR signals. Results Mean erythrocyte HbNO concentration at baseline was 219+/−12 nmol/L (n = 50). HbNO levels and reactive hyperemia (RH) indexes were higher in female (free of contraceptive pills) than male subjects. We observed a dynamic increase of HbNO levels in erythrocytes isolated at 1–2 min of post-occlusion hyperemia (120+/−8% of basal levels); post-occlusion HbNO levels were correlated with basal levels. Both basal and post-occlusion HbNO levels were significantly correlated with reactive hyperemia (RH) indexes (r = 0.58; P<0.0001 for basal HbNO). Conclusion The study demonstrates quantitative measurements of 5-coordinate α-HbNO in human venous erythrocytes, its dynamic physiologic regulation and correlation with endothelial function measured by tonometry during hyperemia. This opens the way to further understanding of in vivo determinants of NO bioavailability in human circulation.


CBD stands for cannabidiol. It is the second most prevalent of the active ingredients of cannabis (marijuana). While CBD is an essential component of medical marijuana, it is derived directly from the hemp plant, which is a cousin of the marijuana plant. While CBD is a component of marijuana (one of hundreds), by itself it does not cause a "high." According to a report from the World Health Organization, "In humans, CBD exhibits no effects indicative of any abuse or dependence potential.... To date, there is no evidence of public health related problems associated with the use of pure CBD."


This paper aimed to explore a new methodology for vision making and sharing of a local municipality. The study explored using the residents' sense of place as a key element of the vision for the local town in order to ease the conflict or discomfort that can arise among diverse populations of merged municipalities. A method named Visioning with Sense of Place was developed for this study. Analyses identified that the visioning process stimulated the participants to develop a broader sense of place with the new town.
Keywords: Municipal merger, vision, sense of place, correspondence analysis
© 2017 The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK.. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, UniversitiTeknologi MARA, Malaysia.


The theory of conductive heat transfer cannot explain different attenuations of the daily amplitude of peat temperatures (T S ) in hummocks (detectable below the 20-cm depth) and hollows (disappearing above the 10-cm depth). Large readily drained macropores in the upper fibric peat determine a large air permeability and hence may enhance heat transfer by air convection in porous media, driven by temperature gradients between hummock sides and interiors. In this study, the ecosys model was used to simulate a peat thermal regime at Mer Bleue peatland, Ontario, Canada. It was hypothesized that adding the air-convective heat transfer to conductive plus water-convective heat transfers would improve simulations of T S . The results for T S , ground heat fluxes, G, and sensible heat fluxes, H, modeled with and without air-convective heat transfer were tested with continuous hourly measurements from 2000 to 2004 using thermocouples, heat flux plates, and eddy covariance. Simulated air-convective heat transfer caused an average increase in G and a corresponding decrease in H of ∼20 W m -2 from the simulated conductive plus water-convective heat transfer. Hastened soil warming in hummocks resulted in better agreement between measured and simulated hummock T S values with (RMSD of 2.23°C) than without air-convective heat (RMSD of 2.54°C). Enhanced hummock T S caused an indirect increase in hollow T S in the model with (RMSD of 1.68°C) compared to without air-convective heat (RMSD of 1.82°C). Our results suggest that air convection is probably an important mechanism of heat transfer in peat hummocks and should be included in peatland biogeochemical models.


The smartphone industry has experienced a high number of patent cases over the past few years. These cases have highlighted the interplay among patent law, competition law, and the marketplace itself. This paper addresses the informational gap in the ongoing debate among courts, litigants, regulators, standard-setting organizations, and academics about the "royalty stack" for smartphones and the legal and policy implications that follow from the magnitude of such royalties. Using publicly-available data, the paper details U.S. patent royalty costs across smartphone components from wireless technologies to operating systems to user interfaces to outer-product design, addressing royalties on both product-differentiating technologies and standardized functions subject to commitments to license on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory ("FRAND") terms. Where specific royalty information is not publicly available for a particular component, the article provides an overview of the amount of litigation relating to the component as a proxy for the likelihood of royalties.


This textbook is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of the technology and science underpinning nanoelectronics, covering the underlying physics, nanostructures, nanomaterials, and nanodevices. It provides a unifying framework for the basic ideas needed to understand the developments in the field. After introducing the recent trends in semiconductor and device nanotechnologies, as well as novel device concepts, the methods of growth, fabrication and characterization of materials for nanoelectronics are discussed. Coverage then moves to an analysis of nanostructures including recently-discovered nanoobjects, and concludes with a discussion of devices that use a 'simple' scaling-down approach to copy well-known microelectronic devices, and nanodevices based on new principles that cannot be realized at the macroscale. With numerous illustrations and homework problems, this textbook is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in electrical and electronic engineering, nanoscience, materials, bioengineering and chemical engineering. Addtional resources, including instructor-only solutions and Java applets, are available from www.cambridge.org/9780521881722.


Between 1998 and 2003 production increases in Brazil and Vietnam drove down the price of coffee by 73 percent in global markets, triggering the "international coffee crisis". We examine the effect of this exogenous price fall on Colombia's civil war, exploring whether politically-motivated violencee presented different dynamics in the coffee-growing regions relative to the non-coffee regions, during the pre-crisis and crisis periods. Using a difference-in-difference framework, we find causal evidnece that the steep decline in coffee prices substantially increased both the incidence and intensity of Colombia's civil war. We also propose a simple model linking the price shock to violence and empirically examine the relative importance of three potential mechanisms. While crop substitution from coffee to coca explains very little of the variation, a disproportionate increase in poverty in coffee areas is associated with greater violence, as is a lower index of institutional development.


Digital repositories can be catalysts for new knowledge by providing information space and tools to facilitate the work of students, educators, or scientists. The NSF NSDL Materials Digital Library (MatDL) is adapting existing open source "tools", such as an image gallery and a version control system, to meet the needs of users within the materials science community. The tools are being modified to make submission to MatDL an easy step within a user's existing workflow and to avoid redundant effort. These satellite services provided by MatDL are intended to become an integral part of the user's "laboratory or workspace". The paper investigates whether digital repositories can expand their communities and collections by building tools that integrate a digital repository into researchers' workspaces. In the long term, it is anticipated that making submissions to MatDL an easy part of users' regular workflow will increase the likelihood that users will submit resources to the repository. Ultimately, the goal of integrating a repository into users' workspaces is to enhance the impact between research and education. Initial experience of providing these tools and responding to user feedback through MatDL is discussed.


The behavior and performance of job shops have been the focus and attention in both operations research and operations management literature. Job shop scheduling has received this large amount of attention, because it has the potential to dramatically decrease costs and increase throughput, thereby, profits. Moreover, the increasing of product customization creates more job shop environment in manufacturing world. No doubt, a wide variety of approaches to the modeling and solution of job shop scheduling problems have been reported in the literature. But, the research in this area is continuous. In this paper, Multistage Heuristic Algorithm based on priority dispatching rules is developed. This algorithm has been implemented to solve three cases. Schedules generated have been compared with those obtained by means of the basic algorithm. As a result, Multistage Heuristic Algorithm shows the ability of minimizing: machines idle time, total time of machines and makespan.


With the rapidly growing literature across the surgical disciplines, there is a corresponding need to critically appraise and summarize the currently available evidence so they can be applied appropriately to patient care. The interpretation of systematic reviews is particularly challenging in cases where few robust clinical trials have been performed to address a particular question. However, risk of bias can be minimized and potentially useful conclusions can be drawn if strict review methodology is adhered to, including an exhaustive literature search, quality appraisal of primary studies, appropriate statistical methodology, assessment of confidence in estimates and risk of bias. Therefore, the following article aims to: (I) summarize to the important features of a thorough and rigorous systematic review or meta-analysis for the surgical literature; (II) highlight several underused statistical approaches which may yield further interesting insights compared to conventional pair-wise data synthesis techniques; and (III) propose a guide for thorough analysis and presentation of results.


The knowledge of the response of radiation protection detectors in pulsed fields is very important, since this is a typical condition often encountered with stray radiation fields around particle accelerators at CERN and elsewhere. This document presents a proposal for testing a prototype detector and commercial instrumentation in use with the RAMSES monitoring system, due to the unique conditions that can be found in the HiRadMat facility. These tests can be extended to include instrumentation in use at other laboratories, both commercial devices and prototype units, and become an intercomparison benchmark exercise. Additional measurements include Bonner Sphere Spectrometry (BSS) measurements to verify experimentally the neutron spectra and ambient dose equivalent rates simulated by FLUKA inside HiRadMat.


The concept of the random decrement has been used successfully in the damping identification of linear systems. The formulation of the random decrement existing in the literature is based on the assumptions that the dynamic system is linear, time invariant and subjected to Gaussian, white noise excitation. Thus, the principle of superposition can be used in formulating the equation for the random decrement. -- In this study, the concept of the random decrement is extended to nonlinear systems. Using the Fokker-Plank Equation approach, it can be shown that the random decrement formed by calculating the expected value of a stationary random rolling process satisfies the differential equation governing the free roll motion. It is also shown that, the autocorrelation function for the stationary nonlinear roll motion excited by a zero mean, Gaussian, white noise random process, satisfies a linearized free roll equation. Thus the random decrement and the autocorrelation function curves can be used for identifying the parameters in the nonlinear equation of free roll motion. -- The validity, accuracy and reliability of the Random Decrement Technique in determining the parameters of the nonlinear equation for roll motion are investigated in this study. The technique is applied to roll motion obtained from: 1) computer simulation by using a fourth order Runge Kutta routine; 2) experiments of three ship models rolling in a towing tank; 3) full scale tests on a real fishing vessel. A method for evaluating the parameters in the nonlinear roll equation from free roll decay, the random decrement and the autocorrelation function is developed and presented in this study. This method is based on the theory of equivalent linearization. The application of the method provides accurate estimation for the parameters from both simulated and measured data. -- It is shown that the random decrement and the autocorrelation function curves extracted from a history of nonlinear roll response to random excitation closely resemble the measured free roll decay curve. The predicted natural frequency obtained by either the random decrement or autocorrelation function method can be used to determine the value of the metacentric height for a ship rolling under the action of unknown random excitations. The damping coefficients estimated by either method are used to generate free roll decay curve which agrees well with the measured free roll decay curve. -- This method does not rely on a model experiment and does not require the measurement of wave height. In addition, roll response of a ship can be easily measured with the ship underway. It is expected that the method would be particularly useful for assessing roll stability of a ship sailing in a realistic sea.


Abstract Diverse faunas at the Gaddis site near Terlingua, Texas are present at four stratigraphic levels along a hill in the Upper Cretaceous Aguja Formation providing a rich fossil record of the transition from an aquatic environment to dry land while recording exceptional events such as predation and wildfires. Given evidence for minimal transport the microvertebrates, macrovertebrates, coprolites, and plants may be reliably utilized for paleoecological analysis. Paleoenvironments shift upsection from nearshore marine, through tidal channel, to swamp, and, finally, to well-vegetated dry land. The faunas change from a basal layer of oysters with shark teeth to a microvertebrate assemblage just above logs with Teredolites borings and pristine leaves. Above the microvertebrates are diverse macrovertebrates including numerous dinosaurs associated with leaves, logs, and scrambling vines. The macrovertebrate layer is a rich assemblage of herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs, crocodiles, turtles, and rare pterosaurs. Several skeletal elements exhibit signs of predation that include punctures and gouges that precisely match crocodile and theropod teeth also recovered at the site. Abundant plant material that includes charred vines and logs is likely evidence of wildfires having ranged across the area. The preponderance of young dinosaur remains may support a wildfire scenario. An exposed surface with 24 coprolites, two hadrosaur vertebrae, logs, and in situ stumps caps the section. The larger coprolites are likely dinosaurian. Most contain plant materials while one contains a bone fragments suggesting the presence of herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs on the same surface, an occurrence that echoes herbivore/carnivore interactions in the underlying bonebed.


ABSTRACT This study seeks to find the reasons for the rising risk of unemployment for people who have completed basic vocational education and training (VET) in Switzerland. We focus on the long-term structural shift on the demand side of the labour market and its consequences for new entrants' chances of employment in the labour force. A detailed analysis of the development of vacancies for such 'career entrants' in the time period 2001 to 2011 suggests that neither a growing occupational mismatch nor a general shift in the level of education to the disadvantage of workers with vocational education can be made responsible for the rising unemployment of labour market entrants. Instead, the available evidence indicates that a diminishing part of the vacancies suited for VET graduates remains open to entrants because of the increasing job requirements with regard to work experience and further education. Basic vocational education and training alone is increasingly less a guarantee for a smooth entry into the working world.


A comprehensive study is given of smart antennas for wide-band code-division multiple access (WCDMA). It analyzes, evaluates, and presents methods and ideas for the deployment of smart antennas in WCDMA third-generation wireless systems and for future generations. Three major implementations are evaluated and analyzed in a dynamic system simulator: higher order sectorization (HOS), fixed beams (FBs) with secondary common pilot channel (S-CPICH), and FBs with primary common pilot channel (P-CPICH) as a phase reference. The system modeling integrates antenna and wave propagation modeling to evaluate and design smart antennas in wireless communications. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the impact of angular spread of various antenna configurations, the interaction and impact of radio resource management as power tuning of the common channel, scrambling code (SCO) allocation technique, and soft and softer handover algorithm. Moreover, an SCO allocation strategy and an adaptive load-dependent power-tuning algorithm of the P-CPICH are proposed. Furthermore, a signal-to-(interference plus noise) ratio derivation is given. Extensive simulation studies are carried out to evaluate the capacity gains of HOS and FB. The 12-sector sites yield the best system downlink capacity gain compared to three-sector sites equipped with a single antenna, slightly more than three-sector sites equipped with four FBs each. The six-sector sites equipped with two FBs each reduce the gap between HOS and FB systems to 10%


Denis O'Bryen's appointment as marshal of the Vice-Admiralty Court at the Cape of Good Hope in 1806 resulted from his political activism in England during the preceding decades. It must be understood in the context of the system of colonial patent office appointments that operated at the time.


The distribution and localization of serotonin immunoreactive cells in the superior colliculus of the porcupine (Hystrix cristata) was studied using the peroxidase-antiperoxidase method and an antiserum against serotonin. The study was performed on four superior colliculus' of porcupine. Serotonin immunoreactivity showed a dense body of positively labelled cells throughout the superior colliculus. These serotonin immunoreactive cells had a characteristic arrangement corresponding to the laminar structures of the superior colliculus. In this study, the densest concentration of serotonin immunoreactive cells was found in a single tier located within the stratum zonale (SZ) and upper part of the stratum griseum superficiale (SGS). The second densest is located within stratum griseum intermedium (SGI) and the third appears as an incomplete layer, found only in the medial and central parts of the stratum griseum profundum (SGP). On the basis of these findings, serotonin has been suggested to be an inhibitory n...


Eutrophication is one of the most serious global threats to coastal areas. One effect of eutrophication is seasonal macroalgal blooms. As a consequence, large amounts of beach-cast algae are today reported from coastal areas worldwide. In this study, we analyze nonmarket benefits by capturing local residents' Willingness To Pay (WTP) for an environmental program to regularly remove and utilize beach-cast algae to produce bioenergy and biofertilizer. Results indicate a considerable WTP among local residents in the Baltic Sea study site. This WTP estimate together with a potential increase in non-resident beach tourism amounts to potentially substantial welfare benefits from the environmental program. These benefits could encourage similar environmental programs in the future. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


Aims. Despite the advances in child maltreatment research, there is still the need for comprehensive information about how abuse affects a broad range of categories of young adult functioning, and the extent to which these vary by sex. We examined the associations between child physical abuse (PA) and sexual abuse (SA) and six areas of functioning (mental health, physical health, life satisfaction, illegal substance use, alcohol problems and daily smoking). Methods. Data were obtained from the 1983 Ontario Child Health Study and follow-up in 2000/2001 (n = 1893). Multilevel regression estimated the adjusted associations for PA (with severity) and SA with each of the outcomes. Estimates with an entire sample were presented with sex-by-abuse interactions to examine sex differences and then presented separately by sex. Results. In the adjusted model, severe PA and SA were associated with impairment in mental health, and both forms of PA (severe and non-severe) and SA were associated with low life satisfaction. In addition, severe PA was associated with illegal substance use. Child abuse variables were not associated with poor physical health, alcohol problems or smoking. Although sex-stratified analyses revealed different patterns, there was no significant sex difference in the integrated sample. Conclusions. This is among the first community-based studies to show a strong association between child PA and SA and low life satisfaction in young adults. The abuse effects were similar for both sexes.


A surface plasmon (SP) field excited at the metal–air interface by a TM-polarized laser and perturbed by an unpolarized, weakly absorbing laser beam leads to an understanding of the SP decay field's contribution to specular reflection at the near field. The locally perturbed near field results in a spatial variation of the magnitude of the SP decay field due to the photo-thermal effect on the excited SP wave. The SP decay field of different magnitude interferes with the specular reflected field, affecting its polarization and phase characteristics. The changes in the resulting far field are polarimetrically analyzed to extract the polarization ellipse parameters and the phase changes in the entire plasmonic field region. The obtained results are promising for potential applications in all-optical polarization modulators and switches for optical computing.


Multi-keyhole bridges the gap between single keyhole and full-scattering multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels. In this paper, we therefore investigate the multikeyhole effect on the MIMO amplify-and-forward (AF) relay downlink transmission with orthogonal space-time block codes. In particular, we derive the analytical symbol error rate (SER) expression for the considered system with arbitrary number of keyholes. Moreover, SER approximations in the high SNR regime for several important special scenarios of multi-keyhole channels are further derived. These asymptotic results provide important insights into the impact of system parameters on the SER performance. Our analysis is confirmed by comparing with Monte-Carlo simulations.


Many low-income countries (LICs) are integrated into apparel global value chains (GVCs) through foreign direct investment (FDI). This is also the case in Lesotho, which developed into the largest Sub-Sahara African (SSA) apparel exporter to the US under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). More recently, a new apparel export market opportunity has emerged in Lesotho, that of the regional market of South Africa. The two export markets, the US and South Africa, are supplied by different types of FDI firms, affiliates of largely Taiwanese transnational producers and of South African manufacturers that are incorporated into distinct value chains. This paper assesses the implications for upgrading integration into these two value chains in Lesotho, the first value chain characterized by Taiwanese investment and feeding into the US market under AGOA and the second characterized by South African investment and feeding into the South African market. These value chains differ with regard to ownership patterns, end markets, export products, governance structures and firm set-up, investors' motivations and perceptions on the main challenges. These different characteristics have crucial impacts on upgrading possibilities, including functional, process and 'local' upgrading. Thus, from the perspective of upgrading and sustainability, ownership patterns, local embeddedness and market diversification matter. The emergence of South Africa as an alternative end market and the different value chain dynamics operating in the South African retailer-governed value chain open up new opportunities away from those of the AGOA-/Taiwanese-dominated value chain.


Action Unit (AU) detection becomes essential for facial analysis. Many proposed approaches face challenging problems in dealing with the alignments of different face regions, in the effective fusion of temporal information, and in training a model for multiple AU labels. To better address these problems, we propose a deep learning framework for AU detection with region of interest (ROI) adaptation, integrated multi-label learning, and optimal LSTM-based temporal fusing. First, an ROI cropping net is designed to make sure specific interested regions of faces are learned independently, each sub-region has a local convolutional neural network (CNN) whose convolutional filters will only be trained for the corresponding region. Second, multi-label learning is employed to integrate the outputs of those individual ROI cropping nets, which learns the inter-relationships of various AUs and acquires global features across sub-regions for AU detection. Finally, the optimal selection of multiple LSTM layers are carried out to best fuse temporal features, in order to make the AU prediction the most accurate. The proposed approach is evaluated on two popular AU detection datasets, BP4D and DISFA, outperforming the state of the art significantly, with an average improvement of around 13% in BP4D and 25% in DISFA, respectively.


The implementation of Islamization policy in Malaysia, since independence in 1957 and aggressively pursued since the 1980s, has promoted the institutionalization of Sunni Islam. It has led to the expansion of the Islamic bureaucracy including the judiciary and security sectors.The Islamization policy has led to the general Islamization of education. Graduates of the Islamic programmes and institutions have been recruited into the public bureaucracy to protect, strengthen and spread Islam. Since the 1990s, the Islamic bureaucracy, supported by the Barisan Nasional (BN) government, led by UMNO, has been enforcing intensively Islam especially on Muslims through moral policing based on an adherent of Sunni doctrine of Islam. The main purpose of UMNO in projecting Islamization policy and expanding Islamic bureaucracy is its intention to champion Islam in its rivalry against the opposition PAS especially in winning the hearts and minds of the Malays. On 10 February 2015, PM Najib launched the Shariah Index that complements Islamic governance through a more comprehensive Shariah requirement yardstick in eight major areas, namely, legal, politics, economy, social, education, culture, infrastructure, and environment. This will further strengthen UMNO as the defender of Islam in Malaysia. State policy of privileging Islam and expanding its role in governance has undermined the Constitution's secular foundation. Shariah law and court are becoming more important as a result. Thus this policy has a major impact on the fundamental liberties of both Muslims and non-Muslims guaranteed under the Constitution. Ethnic relations too would be adversely affected where the dhimmi (non-Muslims) would live a second-class life and give deference to their Muslim neighbours.


Family caregiving in palliative care is defined broadly as the process in which family members or loved ones provide unpaid care for a terminally ill family member in need of assistance. The care recipient may be a member of the caregiver's family of origin or his or her family of choice, such as a friend or life partner.1 Fiscal constraints in formal care provision means that patients in palliative care are now increasingly dependent on family members for care.2 Indeed, a growing expectation that family members be involved directly in end-of-life care3 4 are likely to increase demands placed on family caregivers in palliative care.

Family caregivers in palliative care assume multiple caregiving roles. They may provide day-to-day physical care to their terminally ill family member.5 Although the psychosocial and existential situation of family caregivers in palliative care are not routinely evaluated,6 family caregivers in palliative care also provide emotional, psychological and existential support to their family member.7 In palliative care, the patient and family are viewed as the unit of care. Family caregivers can be directly involved in the delivery of complex interventions to patients, effectively operating as an extension to formal services. Family caregivers also participate regularly in the decision-making process for palliative care interventions (eg, symptom management, advance care planning, counselling) and can function as key advocators and care co-ordinators for the patient. Not surprisingly, perhaps, burden of care for family caregivers in end-of-life care has shown to be severe and …


The possibility of soliton self-compression of ultrashort laser pulses down to the few-cycle regime in photonic crystal fibers is numerically investigated. We show that efficient sub-two-cycle temporal compression of nanojoule-level 800 nm pulses can be achieved by employing short (typically 5 mm long) commercially available photonic crystal fibers and pulse durations of around 100 fs, regardless of initial linear chirp, and without the need of additional dispersion compensation techniques. We envision applications in a new generation of compact and efficient sub-two cycle laser pulse sources.


Global measurements of atmospheric methane (CH4) concentrations continue to show large interannual variability whose origin is only partly understood. Here we quantify the influence of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on wetland CH4 emissions, which are thought to be the dominant contributor to interannual variability of the CH4 sources. We use a simple wetland CH4 model that captures variability in wetland extent and soil carbon to model the spatial and temporal dynamics of wetland CH4 emissions from 1950–2005 and compare these results to an ENSO index. We are able to explain a large fraction of the global and tropical variability in wetland CH4 emissions through correlation with the ENSO index. We find that repeated El Niño events throughout the 1980s and 1990s were a contributing factor towards reducing CH4 emissions and stabilizing atmospheric CH4 concentrations. An increase in emissions from the boreal region would likely strengthen the feedback between ENSO and interannual variability in global wetland CH4 emissions. Our analysis emphasizes that climate variability has a significant impact on wetland CH4 emissions, which should be taken into account when considering future trends in CH4 sources.


Introduction: Depth acquisition from digital images captured with a conventional camera, by analysing focus/defocus cues which are related to depth via an optical model of the camera, is a popular approach to depth-mapping a 3D scene. The majority of methods analyse the neighbourhood of a point in an image to infer its depth, which has disadvantages. A more elegant, but more difficult, solution is to evaluate only the single pixel displaying a point in order to infer its depth. This thesis investigates if a per-pixel method can be implemented without compromising accuracy and generality compared to window-based methods, whilst minimising the number of input images.

Method: A geometric optical model of the camera was used to predict the relationship between focus/defocus and intensity at a pixel. Using input images with different focus settings, the relationship was used to identify the focal plane depth (i.e. focus setting) where a point is in best focus, from which the depth of the point can be resolved if camera parameters are known. Two metrics were implemented, one to identify the best focus setting for a point from the discrete input set, and one to fit a model to the input data to estimate the depth of perfect focus of the point on a continuous scale.

Results: The method gave generally accurate results for a simple synthetic test scene, with a relatively low number of input images compared to similar methods. When tested on a more complex scene, the method achieved its objectives of separating complex objects from the background by depth, and produced a similar resolution of a complex 3D surface as a similar method which used significantly more input data.

Conclusions: The method demonstrates that it is possible to resolve depth on a per-pixel basis without compromising accuracy and generality, and using a similar amount of input data, compared to more traditional window-based methods. In practice, the presented method offers a convenient new option for depth-based image processing applications, as the depth-map is per-pixel, but the process of capturing and preparing images for the method is not too practically cumbersome and could be easily automated unlike other per-pixel methods reviewed. However, the method still suffers from the general limitations of the depth acquisition approach using images from a conventional camera, which limits its use as a general depth acquisition solution beyond specifically depth-based image processing applications.