Objective: Many studies point to the negative impact of discrimination on the psychological and social functioning of ethnic minority persons. The realization of these studies across multiple European countries enables a systematization of this knowledge, which is our goal in the present work. Method: This study presents a systematic review and a meta-analysis of the correlates of perceived ethnic discrimination among ethnic minority persons living in European countries. Results: The analyses of 121 effect sizes reveal that discrimination is positively associated with symptoms of psychiatric disturbances, depression, psychosis, perceived stress, and externalizing behavior. Discrimination is also negatively associated with the self-esteem, positive evaluation of life, self-efficacy/mastery, well-being, and psychological adaptation of migrants. The results show that the strength of these relationships is, in some cases, moderated by persons' gender, age, and ethnicity and countries' multicultural preference and countries' rating in the Migrant Integration Policies Index (MIPEX), namely, in regard to labor market mobility, permanent residence, and antidiscrimination policies. Conclusions: The detrimental effect of discrimination on many psychosocial dimensions emphasizes the need for governmental agencies to develop systemic and concrete interventions to decrease ethnic prejudice in Europe. Moreover, the results show that fostering multiculturalism, and implementing broad antidiscrimination policies has a protective function in the face of discrimination. Enforcing the implementation of these policies can be a fundamental way to promote the psychological adjustment of ethnic minority persons.


BACKGROUND
Histamine has been assumed to contribute to embryo-uterine interactions due to its vasoactive, differentiation and growth-promoting properties. However, its exact functions in pregnancy are unclear. The histamine-degrading enzyme diamine oxidase (DAO) is produced in high amounts by the placenta and has been supposed to act as a metabolic barrier to prevent excessive entry of bioactive histamine from the placenta into the maternal or fetal circulation.

METHODS
The literature available on PubMed published in English between 1910 and 2008 has been searched using the isolated and combined key words histamine, diamine oxidase, pregnancy, placenta, endometrium, miscarriage, implantation, pre-eclampsia, intrauterine growth retardation, diabetes and embryonic histamine-releasing factor (EHRF).

RESULTS
High expression of the histamine-producing enzyme histidine decarboxylase in the placenta, histamine receptors at the feto-maternal interface and the existence of an EHRF suggest a physiological role of histamine during gestation. The balance between histamine and DAO seems to be crucial for an uncomplicated course of pregnancy. Reduced DAO activities have been found in multiple heterogeneous complications of pregnancy such as diabetes, threatened and missed abortion and trophoblastic disorders. Whether women with histamine intolerance suffer from more complicated pregnancies and higher abortion rates due to impaired DAO activities and if low DAO levels or genetic modifications in the DAO gene might therefore represent a prognostic factor for a higher risk of abortion, has not been investigated yet.

CONCLUSIONS
Low activities of the histamine-degrading enzyme DAO might indicate high-risk pregnancies, although high intra- and interindividual variations limit its value as a screening tool.


We use a perturbation method to study gravitational waves from a spinning test particle scattered by a relativistic star. The present analysis is restricted to axial modes. By calculating the energy spectrum, the wave forms, and the total energy and angular momentum of gravitational waves, we analyze the dependence of the emitted gravitational waves on particle spin. For a normal neutron star, the energy spectrum has one broad peak whose characteristic frequency corresponds to the angular velocity at the turning point (a periastron). Since the turning point is determined by the orbital parameter, there exists a dependence of the gravitational wave on particle spin. We find that the total energy of l=2 gravitational waves gets larger as the spin increases in the antiparallel direction to the orbital angular momentum. For an ultracompact star, in addition to such an orbital contribution, we find the quasinormal modes excited by a scattered particle, whose excitation rate to gravitational waves depends on the particle spin. We also discuss the ratio of the total angular momentum to the total energy of gravitational waves and explain its spin dependence.


ABSTRACT Populism is a relevant but contested concept in political communication research. It has been well-researched in political manifestos and the mass media. The present study focuses on another part of the hybrid media system and explores how politicians in four countries (AT, CH, IT, UK) use Facebook and Twitter for populist purposes. Five key elements of populism are derived from the literature: emphasizing the sovereignty of the people, advocating for the people, attacking the elite, ostracizing others, and invoking the 'heartland'. A qualitative text analysis reveals that populism manifests itself in a fragmented form on social media. Populist statements can be found across countries, parties, and politicians' status levels. While a broad range of politicians advocate for the people, attacks on the economic elite are preferred by left-wing populists. Attacks on the media elite and ostracism of others, however, are predominantly conducted by right-wing speakers. Overall, the paper provides an in-depth analysis of populism on social media. It shows that social media give the populist actors the freedom to articulate their ideology and spread their messages. The paper also contributes to a refined conceptualization and measurement of populism in future studies.


Abstract. This study presents the spatial and temporal variability of δ18O and δ2H isotope signatures in precipitation of a south Ecuadorian montane cloud forest catchment (San Francisco catchment). From 2 September to 25 December 2010, event sampling of open rainfall was conducted along an altitudinal transect (1800 to 2800 m a.s.l.) to investigate possible effects of altitude and weather conditions on the isotope signature. The spatial variability is mainly affected by the altitude effect. The event based δ18O altitude effect for the study area averages −0.22‰ × 100 m−1 (δ2H: −1.12‰ × 100 m−1). The temporal variability is mostly controlled by prevailing air masses. Precipitation during the times of prevailing southeasterly trade winds is significantly enriched in heavy isotopes compared to precipitation during other weather conditions. In the study area, weather during austral winter is commonly controlled by southeasterly trade winds. Since the Amazon Basin contributes large amounts of recycled moisture to these air masses, trade wind-related precipitation is enriched in heavy isotopes. We used deuterium excess to further evaluate the contribution of recycled moisture to precipitation. Analogously to the δ18O and δ2H values, deuterium excess is significantly higher in trade wind-related precipitation. Consequently, it is assumed that evaporated moisture is responsible for high concentrations of heavy isotopes during austral winter.


This article argues that the extent to which political office-holders can effectively attain and wield authority is a function of the stock of 'leadership capital.' Drawing on the concept of political capital, we define leadership capital as aggregate authority composed of three dimensions: skills; relations; and reputation of a leader. Leadership capital ebbs and flows over time within a trajectory of acquisition, expenditure and inevitable depreciation. We present a Leadership Capital Index (LCI) that systematically maps out the three broad areas combining concrete measures with interpretive aspects. This can be used as a tool for systematically tracking and comparing the political fortunes of leaders in a way that is both more nuanced and robust than exclusive reliance on the latest approval ratings. We offer an illustrative case study of Tony Blair demonstrating the LCI. We conclude by discerning several promising paths for future development of the LCI.


Heritage's revival as a respected academic subject has, in part, resulted from an increased awareness and understanding of indigenous rights and non-Western philosophies and practices, and a growing respect for the intangible. Heritage has, thus far, focused on management, tourism and the traditionally 'heritage-minded' disciplines, such as archaeology, geography, and social and cultural theory. Widening the scope of international heritage studies, A Museum Studies Approach to Heritage explores heritage through new areas of knowledge, including emotion and affect, the politics of dissent, migration, and intercultural and participatory dimensions of heritage.

Drawing on a range of disciplines and the best from established sources, the book includes writing not typically recognised as 'heritage', but which, nevertheless, makes a valuable contribution to the debate about what heritage is, what it can do, and how it works and for whom. Including heritage perspectives from beyond the professional sphere, the book serves as a reminder that heritage is not just an academic concern, but a deeply felt and keenly valued public and private practice. This blending of traditional topics and emerging trends, established theory and concepts from other disciplines offers readers international views of the past and future of this growing field.

A Museum Studies Approach to Heritage offers a wider, more current and more inclusive overview of issues and practices in heritage and its intersection with museums. As such, the book will be essential reading for postgraduate students of heritage and museum studies. It will also be of great interest to academics, practitioners and anyone else who is interested in how we conceptualise and use the past.


Abstract:This article examines two Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois) women, Eliza Pierce and Lydia Pierce (unrelated), within the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Their participation in an ostensibly assimilationist, progressive institution was balanced by congruities between traditional Haudenosaunee cultural elements and the activities of the WCTU. I argue that while both women were Christians and supporters of Euro-American educational practices, they worked to preserve many traditions of the Iroquois, notably women's participation in the political and familial realms. Thus, Haudenosaunee WCTU members both defended and redefined tradition while asserting their place in the twentieth-century United States.


Axion is a promising candidate of dark matter. After the Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking, axion strings are formed and attached by domain walls when the temperature of the universe becomes comparable to the QCD scale. Such objects can cause cosmological disasters if they are long lived. As a solution for it, the Lazarides-Shafi mechanism is often discussed through introduction of a new non-Abelian (gauge) symmetry. We study this mechanism in detail and show configuration of strings and walls. Even if Abelian axion strings with a domain wall number greater than 1 are formed in the early universe, each of them is split into multiple Alice axion strings due to a repulsive force between the Alice strings even without domain wall. When domain walls are formed as the universe cools down, a single Alice string can be attached by a single wall because a vacuum is connected by a non-Abelian rotation without changing energy. Even if an Abelian axion string attached by domain walls is created due to the Kibble Zurek mechanism at the chiral phase transition, such strings are also similarly split into multiple Alice strings attached by walls in the presence of the domain wall tension. Such walls do not form stable networks since they collapse by the tension of the walls, emitting axions.


An ensemble in data mining is the strategy that combines a set of different classifiers together to generate an integrated classification system to classify new instances. In the early research, an ensemble outperforms any of its individual components. Stacking is one of the most influential ensemble among the proposed ensemble schemes. Stacking applies a two-level structure: the base-level classifiers output their own predictions and the meta-level classifier takes the outputs as its input to generate final decision. Most of the existing studies focus on the meta-level classifier adoption, and few on the topic about determining the configuration of both base-level classifiers and the meta-level classifier together. This work is inspired by the Ant Colony Optimization which is good at solving combinatorial optimization problems. We propose an ACO-Stacking ensemble approach and also perform some preliminary experiments to compare our approach with some well-known ensembles. The preliminary results show that the performance of the ACO-Stacking is promising.


Bioretention is a method of storm water management that includes several processes following the natural hydrological cycle. Bioretention, or variations of it, include rain gardens and bioswales, infiltrates, filtrates, evapotranspirates, and help to store and manage storm water run-off. A bioretention cell retains water, removes pollutants, and provides water elements for urban green areas. Although bioretention is a promising method for multifunctional storm water management, its construction details should not be copied from other climatic areas. A direct application may dismiss local conditions, materials, and construction practices. This study aimed to adapt construction details for bioretention to Finnish local practices and conditions and to formulate bioretention constructions that balance water, soil, and vegetation. First, construction details were reviewed, then local adaptations were applied, and finally, the application and two variations of growing media in two construction depths were tested in a test field in Southern Finland. Sandy growing media allowed the efficient retention of water during the first year, but failed to provide vital growth. The use of topsoil and compost in the growing media improved growth, but held high electrical conductivity after infiltration. All the experimental cells in the test field showed activity during the melting periods, both during winter and spring. If bioretention plays a multifunctional role in urban design and engineered ecology, the design parameters should not only focus on storm water quantity, but also on quality management and vegetation growth.


High tropospheric NO 2 amounts are occasionally detected by space-borne spectrometers above cloudy scenes. For monitoring of near-ground air pollution such data are not directly applicable because clouds shield the highly polluted planetary boundary layer (PBL). We present a method based on trajectories which implicitly estimates the additional sub-cloud NO 2 distribution in order to model concentrations at ground stations. The method is applied to a transbound-ary pollution transport episode which led to high NO 2 vertical tropospheric column densities (VTCs) over middle Eu-rope observed by the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) instrument above clouds on 17 February 2001. The case study shows that pollution originally residing near the ground in central Germany, the Ruhr area and adjacent parts of the Netherlands and Belgium has been advected to higher tropospheric levels by a passing weather front. Combining the above-cloud NO 2 VTCs with trajectory information covering the GOME columns and including their sub-cloud part yields an estimate of the total NO 2 distribution within the tropospheric columns. The highly polluted air masses are then traced by forward trajectories starting from the GOME columns to move further to the Alpine region and their impact there is assessed. Considering ground-based in-situ measurements in the Alpine region, we conclude that for this episode, at least 50% of the NO 2 concentration recorded at the sites can be attributed to transboundary transport during the frontal passage. This study demonstrates the potential of using NO 2 VTCs from GOME detected above clouds when combined with transport modelling.


Red blood cells of 40 wild mice captured at four different locations in the Ann Arbor area were typed for the presence of 15 different H-2 antigens by direct hemagglutination test. Fifteen different phenotypes were found and all were different from those determined by known H-2 alleles of the laboratory mice. Great similarity between phenotypes of mice from the sane location was observed. This is interpreted as further evidence for the deme structure of natural mouse population.


This paper examines strategies for integrating decision cases in the design of college courses. The benefits of decision cases are acknowledged but teaching strategies that rely solely on decision cases are challenged. A lack of real-world experience and knowledge among students can limit the effectiveness of teaching exclusively with decision cases in undergraduate or graduate classes. In such classes, decision cases need not be the sole teaching approach. Cases are much more often combined with lectures, problem sets and other teaching techniques. Suggested guidelines for incorporating cases into the design of courses are based on five critical topics: 1) course educational objectives, 2) the sequencing of case and other course material, 3) necessary facilities, timing and support 4) the number and mix of cases desirable in a course, and 5) evaluation of students.


Shadowed areas and interference at cell borders pose great challenges for future wireless broadband systems. Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP) coherent joint transmission has shown the potential to overcome these challenges by turning harmful interference into useful signal power. However, there are obstacles to overcome before coherent joint transmission CoMP can be deployed. Some of these are the investigated in this thesis.First, coherent joint transmission requires very accurate Channel State Information (CSI), but unfortunately long system latencies cause outdating of the CSI. This can to some extend be counteracted by channel predictions. Two schemes are here investigated for predicting downlink Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) channels; Kalman filters and "predictor antennas". The first is well suited for slow moving users, e.g. pedestrians or cyclists, as it does not require any special antenna setup. The second, which utilizes an extra antenna, located in front of the main receive antennas, is well suited for vehicular users, such as buses or trams, as these require long spatial prediction horizon.Second, a user grouping and resource allocation scheme is investigated. This scheme forms CoMP groups by local resource allocations and provides multi-user diversity gains very close to the optimal gains, found through an extensive combinatorial search. It has very low complexity, requires less feedback capacity than other schemes and places no demands on backhaul capacity.Finally, a linear precoder, which is robust to errors in the CSI, is investigated. This precoder takes the covariances of the channel errors into account while optimizing a Mean Squared Error (MSE) criterion. The MSE criterion includes design parameters that can be used as flexible tools for low dimensional searches with respect to an arbitrary optimization criterion, e.g. a weighted sum-rate criterion. The precoder design is also extended to handle backhaul constraints.Results show that with the combination of these three schemes: channel predictions, the proposed user grouping and resource allocation scheme and the robust linear precoder, then coherent joint transmission will indeed provide large capacity gains.


We present a graph-based planning and replanning algorithm able to produce bounded suboptimal solutions in an anytime fashion. Our algorithm tunes the quality of its solution based on available search time, at every step reusing previous search efforts. When updated information regarding the underlying graph is received, the algorithm incrementally repairs its previous solution. The result is an approach that combines the benefits of anytime and incremental planners to provide efficient solutions to complex, dynamic search problems. We present theoretical analysis of the algorithm, experimental results on a simulated robot kinematic arm, and two current applications in dynamic path planning for outdoor mobile robots.


Popular journalists and prejudiced pundits have portrayed the Sri Lankan ethnic problem solely as an issue between two communities—the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils. To the outside world the Tamil problem appears to affect directly only those persons of the Dravidian ethnic stock who are either Hindus or Christians, speak Tamil as their mother tongue and live in the Northern and Eastern districts of the country. Because of this over simplification the interests and aspirations of others, who are also either Tamils or Tamil speaking, have been extremely marginalised if not totally ignored. The Indian Tamils who arrived in Sri Lanka as plantation labourers during the British Raj, are also of the Dravidian stock numbering nearly 900,000. A majority of these workers have now become permanent residents of the country under the Srima-Shastri Pact of 1964 and a subsequent parliamentary act in 1986. They live mostly in the central hills of Sri Lanka and are commonly known as the Up-country Tamils. Even though they are of the same ethnic stock, speak Tamil language and follow the Hindu religion, their socio-political affinity with the Tamils of the North and East has not been and is not very close. The fact that these Tamils, because of their population location and government's language and educational policy, are more fluent in Sinhalese than their counterparts in the North and East makes this separation even wider.


Background Tuberculosis (TB) control is considered primarily a public health concern, and private sector TB treatment has attracted less attention. Thus, the size and characteristics of private sector TB drug sales remain largely unknown. Methodology/Principal Findings We used IMS Health data to analyze private TB drug consumption in 10 high burden countries (HBCs), after first mapping how well IMS data coverage overlapped with private markets. We defined private markets as any channels not used or influenced by national TB programs. Private markets in four countries – Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia and India – had the largest relative sales volumes; annually, they sold enough first line TB drugs to provide 65–117% of the respective countries' estimated annual incident cases with a standard 6–8 month regimen. First line drug volumes in five countries were predominantly fixed dose combinations (FDCs), but predominantly loose drugs in the other five. Across 10 countries, these drugs were available in 37 (loose drug) plus 74 (FDCs) distinct strengths. There were 54 distinct, significant first line manufacturers (range 2–11 per country), and most companies sold TB drugs in only a single study country. FDC markets were, however, more concentrated, with 4 companies capturing 69% of FDC volume across the ten countries. Among second line drugs, fluoroquinolones were widely available, with significant volumes used for TB in India, Pakistan and Indonesia. However, certain WHO-recommended drugs were not available and in general there were insufficient drug volumes to cover the majority of the expected burden of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB). Conclusions/Significance Private TB drug markets in several HBCs are substantial, stable, and complicated. This calls for appropriate policy and market responses, including expansion of Public-Private Mix (PPM) programs, greater reach, flexibility and appeal of public programs, regulatory and quality enforcement, and expansion of public MDR-TB treatment programs.


Current methods for freezing mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) result in poor post-thaw function, which limits the clinical utility of these cells. This investigation develops a novel approach to preserve MSCs using combinations of sugars, sugar alcohols, and small-molecule additives. MSCs frozen using these solutions exhibit improved post-thaw attachment and a more normal alignment of the actin cytoskeleton compared to cells exposed to dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO). Osteogenic and chondrogenic differentiation assays show that cells retain their mesenchymal lineage properties. Genomic analysis indicates that the different freezing media evaluated have different effects on the levels of DNA hydroxymethylation, which are a principal epigenetic mark and a key step in the demethylation of CpG doublets. RNA sequencing and quantitative real time-polymerase chain reaction validation demonstrate that transcripts for distinct classes of cytoprotective genes, as well as genes related to extracellular matrix structure and growth factor/receptor signaling are upregulated in experimental freezing solutions compared to DMSO. For example, the osmotic regulator galanin, the antiapoptotic marker B cell lymphoma 2, as well as the cell surface adhesion molecules CD106 (vascular cell adhesion molecule 1) and CD54 (intracellular adhesion molecule 1) are all elevated in DMSO-free solutions. These studies validate the concept that DMSO-free solutions improve post-thaw biological functions and are viable alternatives for freezing MSCs. These novel solutions promote expression of cytoprotective genes, modulate the CpG epigenome, and retain the differentiation ability of MSCs, suggesting that osmolyte-based freezing solutions may provide a new paradigm for therapeutic cell preservation.


The epidemiological and clinical features of recurrent herpes simplex virus ocular infection (RHSV) were studied. Of 108 patients with primary herpes simplex virus ocular infection (PHSV) who were followed up for two to 15 years 35 (32%) suffered one or more recurrent attacks. The recurrence rate was significantly higher in patients under 20 years of age, but there was no significant difference between recurrence rates in males and females. Of 35 patients with RHSV 17 (49%) had one recurrent attack, 14 (40%) had between two and five, and four (11%) had between six and 15 attacks. The mean time interval between PHSV and the first four RHSV attacks was 10 months, and was shorter in subsequent attacks. The duration and severity of RHSV were reduced in successive recurrences. Patients with more severe conjunctivitis and lid lesions during PHSV ocular infection had a higher incidence of recurrent infection. The severity of the corneal signs in PHSV had no influence on the incidence of recurrent infection. Several clinical forms of RHSV were observed. Conjunctivitis associated with lid lesions was observed in 29 (83%) patients. In six (17%) patients the disease presented as an acute follicular conjunctivitis without characteristic lid or corneal lesions. Dendritic ulcer was found in three (9%) patients, and in one of them it was associated with a disciform keratitis. A chronic blepharoconjunctivitis developed in eight (23%) patients. The epidemiological and clinical features of RHSV were compared with those of PHSV.


Community corrections professionals may employ shared decision making (SDM) in many ways with those they supervise who have serious mental illness (SMI). This study examined the psychometric properties of the Community Corrections Shared Decision Making Scale (CCSDM), an instrument developed to measure attitudes that support SDM in community corrections settings. Community corrections professionals were surveyed as to their support of collaborative decision making with their supervisees with SMI. Exploratory factor analysis (n = 146) and confirmatory factor analysis (n = 145) were used to explore and validate the scale's factor structure. Results indicate the CCSDM functions as an internally consistent, two-factor scale useful for measuring attitudes toward SDM with people who have SMI and are under community supervision. Respondents were generally supportive of SDM. Given the benefits of SDM, assessment of these beliefs is essential to inform implementation strategies aimed at establishing SDM policies and practices in community corrections settings.


This article attempts to account for how the static spatial relations of location between objects are encoded in Mandarin Chinese with Levinson's notions of frames of reference and Talmy's concept of Figure-Ground relations as theoretical guidance. Space is relational in nature, and spatial relations are embodied concepts that are at the heart of our conceptual system. That's why they cannot be seen in the way physical objects are observed. Accordingly, I am inclined to propose that spatial relations are not natural entities in the physical world, but abstract ones that are construed and conceptualized subjectively by human beings. In accordance with the relational nature of space, Mandarin Chinese speakers usually encode the abstract spatial relation X Spatially Relates To Y into a linguistic representation as X V Y (P) where P is optional, when a pure static spatial relation of location between objects is construed, or into a linguistic representation as X VP zai Y P where VP stands for verbs of posture, when the object being located is conceived as being spatially related in a certain manner with respect to the reference object. Usually, such linguistic representations as X V Y (P) and X VP zai Y P are usually realized in Mandarin Chinese as two types of locative constructions: spatial relation constructions of containment/enclosure and spatial relation constructions of proximity/adjacency. What's more, though locative constructions are related in some way to existential constructions in Mandarin Chinese, they are actually distinct from each other in three ways from a cognitive linguistics perspective: (i) they encode different spatial relations, (ii) they reveal different Figure-Ground relations, and (iii) there is a difference in definiteness of the two nominals involved.


This disorder is a form of hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, which is a condition resulting from a lack of production of certain hormones that direct sexual development. These hormones are normally made in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. Males born with hypogonadotropic hypogonadism often have an unusually small penis (micropenis) and undescended testes (cryptorchidism). At puberty, most affected individuals do not develop secondary sex characteristics, such as the growth of facial hair and deepening of the voice in males, the start of monthly periods (menstruation) and breast development in females, and a growth spurt in both sexes. Without treatment, most affected men and women are unable to have biological children (infertile).


On 13 September 2007, Robert Peston broke the news that Northern Rock had become a victim of the global credit crunch and was seeking an emergency loan from the Bank of England. It was the latest in a long line of scoops by this award-winning journalist. Over the weeks that followed, the Government found itself exposed to the Rock to the tune of 57 billion, or almost GBP2000 for every taxpayer.As Robert Peston shows in his fascinating new book, the seeds for the collapse of Northern Rock and the upheavals in the financial markets were sown years before. WHO RUNS BRITAIN? is the first time anyone has drawn all the threads together to weave a story that's rich in extraordinary characters and outrageous feats of economic bravado. This book is about the widening gap between the super-rich and the rest of us. It explores and explodes the myth that the financial creativity of those who are amassing these vast fortunes is good for the wider economy and for all of us. Whether you're a financial expert or just have a bank account, WHO RUNS BRITAIN? is a book you must read.


Background Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent that affect millions of people worldwide.Homeopathic system is gaining popularity due to its efficacy in chronic diseases. Ultra-diluted Aconitum napellus is a homeopathic medicine used by clinicians for treatment of acute anxiety. Aim Objective of this study is to test the efficacy of Aconite on experimental anxiety models of Wistar rats. Methodology 18 Female Wistar rats were divided into Control, Anxiety, and Anxiety + Aconite (ANX+ACO) groups. Acute stress was induced by restraining the rats for six hours daily for five days in Anxiety and ANX + ACO groups. After five days of stress, a single dose of Aconite 200cH was given to ANX + ACO group through oral gavage, whereas control and anxiety group rats were maintained with a normal diet. Following this, behavioral assessment was done. Histological sections of the hippocampal area were taken and stained with Hematoxylin and Eosin and also Cresyl violet stain.Results It was observed that the Aconite treated group had more number of entries and also the percentage of time spent in the open arm was higher than the stressed anxiety group. Histological study of the brain tissue procured from all three groups was analyzed. Conclusion It was inferred that ultra-diluted homeopathic Aconite has decreased anxiety in Wistar rats which were subjected to acute restrain stress. However, the decrease was not statistically significant to deduce Aconite as an anxiolytic


Stress-induced hyperglycaemia is prevalent in critical care. Tight glucose control can reduce mortality up to 43%. An adaptive control algorithm utilising insulin and nutritional feed inputs for targeted glycaemic control in critically ill patients is presented. Validation is performed using retrospective patient data (n=19) in simulated glucoregulatory trials. Conventional sliding-scale and insulin-only methods are compared. Results show a reduction in mean glucose levels, and variability. A 312% increase in time spent in the 46mmol/L normal glucose band compared to slidingscale and a 240% increase compared to the insulinonly protocol is reported. Results are obtained using 60% more insulin and 20% more nutrition across a wide cross-section of ICU patients and patient condition, indicating that the timing of control input administration is more crucial than their absolute amounts. The results show potential in reducing ICU mortality and the risk of severe complications.


Purpose: To investigate the reducing effect of Morinda citrifolia capsules (MCC) on total cholesterol (TC) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) in hypercholesterolemia patients. Methods: This study was a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial, with 60 subjects placed in two groups, viz, experimental (MCC group) and placebo (P group). The first group received two capsules of MCC (each capsule contains 500 mg extract) while the second group received two capsules of placebo (comprised of 500 mg fillers) 3 times daily, for 14 days for both groups. Overnight fasting cubiti venous blood (3 mL) was taken from each subject each time measurements were carried out. TC and LDL-C were measured by spectrophotometric assay using an automated analyzer. Results: The results show that there was significant decrease in TC and LDL-C on day 14, compared to control (P group). Reduction in TC and LDL-C was 13.8 and 15.5 %, respectively. Decrease in TC and LDL-C levels was influenced by factors, such as age, BMI, exercise, diet, and smoking habits. In MCC group, the capsules significantly decreased TC levels ( p < 0.05). Conclusion: The results suggest that 1 g MCC, given orally thrice daily, significantly reduces TC and LDL-C levels in patients with hypercholesterolemia. Keywords: Hypercholesterolemia, Cholesterol levels, Morinda citrifolia


Through the twentieth century, Canadian city politics has operated under the pretense of non-partisanship. Municipal governments have been a refuge for special interests who, garbed in antipartyism and common sense, were left alone to rule their local roosts. For instance, the Civic Non-Partisan Association, Vancouver's dominant political organization and living oxymoron, long espoused the Burkean notion that council "should not be a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests."1 With its recent and massive restructuring of urban government in Ontario however, the government of Premier Mike Harris has rendered Canadians a service: by focussing public attention on "who does what" at both levels of government, Harris inadvertently smoked out almost everyone with a priorized municipal agenda. In spite of its somewhat brutal methods, the Ontario provincial government has provoked a broad rethinking of how local political business should be transacted. Canadian city politics have yet to mature, either as they might or as their citizens have a right to expect. In the small debate about local democracy and citizen-centred government one obvious question is scarcely considered: should formal parties be introduced into civic elections in Canada's major cities?2 Over the years non-partisanship has veiled a conservative and incrementalist policy-making style that seems inappropriate for postmodern metropolises. That non-partisanship is a conservative force is really not all that surprising. Among the political gladiators in Vancouver, Canada's most overtly partisan city, the most conservative faction has seen the city as a business and somehow independent of politics.3 The Maud Commission in Great Britain found anti-party feeling strongest among rural, suburban and more conservative councillors generally. In Canada, voter turnout is very low municipally compared to other political levels, perhaps because the issues at stake are obscured by the lack of coherent policy positions. Debates and decisions of local councils are generally understood to be muddled when not petty; this obscures partisan ties to other levels and to avoid quasi-ministerial accountability for the consequences of council actions. In addition to this general concern with appropriate representation, non-partisan local politics has not been benign but inefficient and wrong. When well-educated citizens are denied fundamental opportunities for reasonable democratic choice, as Henry Milner's comparative study has convincingly argued, municipal electoral participation is discouraged.4 There may well be a growing appreciation among the civic political elite of the importance of these issues in big city elections.5 But by the evidence from the playing fields, little partisanship is admitted to in Canadian city politics in the 1990s.6 Even where they have been most successful over the years, Canada's purely local city parties have been very small cadres, often no more than a few dozen activists in the gladiatorial roles. For example, in Edmonton, the Citizens' Committee that held all council seats between 1945 and 1959 was never a large group: "when founded in 1936 it comprised 41 professionals and businessmen led by the president of the chamber of commerce, and at its nomination meeting in 1962 only 27 members were present, including candidates."7 Enough party-like activity, such as slate-making, has taken place during the twentieth century to inform a small debate as to whether such behaviours, or even open party politics are desirable.8 Across the Prairies, the hypocrisy of pretended non-partisanship prevailed in city elections in Regina and Saskatoon in October, 1988. These elections saw Saskatoon Mayor C. Wright retire after being given an Order-in-Council appointment by the provincial Conservatives, to be replaced by 12-year council veteran and New Democrat Henry Dayday. In Regina's march of the political toreadors, new Mayor D. …


Law schools around the country seek to fill the legal needs of their communities in ways that are both innovative and mutually beneficial to clients and students. This article describes five pro bono and clinical programs, at the University of Richmond School of Law, The Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University, Catholic University Columbus School of Law, the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and Vermont Law School, where law students, under the supervision of law professors or community professionals, provide assistance or legal representation to underserved and often marginalized populations needing help with family law problems, including parents accused of abuse and neglect, youth aging out of foster care, homeless families, survivors of domestic violence, homeless veterans with addiction problems, and female prisoners. To develop their programs, the five law schools from the outset collaborated with partners in the community, and they continue to do so as their programs expand and evolve. In addition to helping and empowering clients, these law schools are providing experiential learning opportunities that are transformative for their students. The authors hope that these programs will be instructive for law schools, other academic institutions, the legal community, and community organizations in developing creative collaborations to ensure better access to justice.


Abstract Based on the method of moments, we derive a general theoretical expression for the time-dependent dispersion of an initial point concentration in steady and unsteady laminar flows through long straight channels of any constant cross-section. We retrieve and generalize previous case-specific theoretical results, and furthermore predict new phenomena. In particular, for the transient phase before the well-described steady Taylor–Aris limit is reached, we find anomalous diffusion with a dependence of the temporal scaling exponent on the initial release point, generalizing this finding in specific cases. During this transient we furthermore identify maxima in the values of the dispersion coefficient which exceed the Taylor–Aris value by amounts that depend on channel geometry, initial point release position, velocity profile and Péclet number. We show that these effects are caused by a difference in relaxation time of the first and second moments of the solute distribution and may be explained by advection-dominated dispersion powered by transverse diffusion in flows with local velocity gradients.


In order to mitigate the adverse effects of starting torque transients and high inrush currents in induction motors, a popular method is to use electronically controlled soft-starting voltages utilizing series-connected silicon-controlled rectifiers (SCRs). Investigation of semioptimum soft-starting voltage profiles was implemented using a flux linkage ABC frame of reference model of a soft-started three-phase induction motor. A state-space model of the soft-starter thyristor switching sequence for the motor and load was developed and implemented in a time-domain simulation to examine winding heating and shaft stress issues for different starting profiles. Simulation results of line starts and soft starts were compared with measured data through which validation of the model was established. In this paper, different induction machine soft-start profiles are shown, and comparisons of starting times, torque profiles, and heating losses are made. Discussion of these results and conclusions as to the near-optimum types of profiles are delineated based on peak torque, starting times, and winding heating criteria


While usage and trends for campus wireless LANs have been extensively studied through various deployment instances, very few studies have been done to study short term deployments of wireless LANs, such as those provisioned at the conference venues. We conduct a detailed study of a dense wireless LAN consisting of 82 access points (APs) deployed to serve over 5000 SuperComputing 2004 users. By studying traffic generated by all layers of the TCP/IP protocol stack, we make several observations that differ from those made by the previous wireless LAN studies. In particular, we find that: applications lacking congestion control were more popular than previously reported, channel error rates were higher, a very high percentage of broadcast traffic was present, and that the client mobility was higher than what was previously observed. The two novel features of our custom traffic analyzer that made these observations possible are: 1) it looks at traffic both from the perspective of the total number of bytes, as well as the total number of packets and 2) it conducts a bi-directional traffic analysis from wireless clients to APs and from APs to clients.


This study is focused on the effect of solar flux conditions on the dynamics of gravity waves (GWs) in the thermosphere. Air density and crosswind in situ estimates from the Gravity Field and Steady‐State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) accelerometers are analyzed for the whole mission duration. The analysis is performed in the Fourier spectral domain averaging spectral results over periods of 2 months close to solstices. A new GW marker (called Cf3 ) is introduced here to characterize GWs activity under low, medium, and high solar flux conditions, showing a clear solar damping effect on GW activity. Most GW signal is found in a spectral range above 8 mHz in GOCE data, meaning a maximum horizontal wavelength of around 1000 km. The level of GW activity at GOCE altitude is strongly decreasing with increasing solar flux. Furthermore, a shift in the dominant frequency with solar flux conditions has been noted, leading to larger horizontal wavelengths (from 200 to 500 km) during high solar flux conditions. The correlation between air density variability and GW marker allows to identify most of the large‐amplitude perturbations below 67° latitudes as due to GWs. The influence of correlated error sources, between air density and crosswinds, is discussed. Consistency of the spectral domain results is verified in the time domain with a global mapping of high‐frequency air density perturbations along the GOCE orbit. This analysis shows a clear dependence with geomagnetic latitude with strong perturbations at magnetic poles and an extension to lower latitudes favored by low solar activity conditions. These results are consistent with previous Challenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP) data analysis and with general circulation models.


In graph theory, there are several techniques known in literature for constructing spanning trees. Some of these techniques yield spanning trees with many leaves. We will use these constructed spanning trees to bound several distance parameters. The cardinality of the vertex set of graph G is called the order , n(G) or n. The cardinality of the edge set of graph G is called the size, m(G) or m. The minimum degree of G, δ(G) or δ, is the minimum degree among the degrees of the vertices of G. A spanning tree T of a graph G is a subgraph that is a tree which includes all the vertices of G. The distance d(u, v) between two vertices u and v is the length of a shortest u − v path of G. The eccentricity , ec (v), of a vertex v ∈ V (G) is the maximum distance from it to any other vertex in G. The diameter , diam(G) or d, is the maximum eccentricity amongst all vertices of G. The radius , rad(G), is the minimum eccentricity among all vertices of G. The average distance of a graph G, μ (G), is the expected distance between a randomly chosen pair of distinct vertices. We investigate how each constructed spanning tree can be used to bound diameter, radius or average distance in terms of order, size and minimum degree. The techniques to be considered include the radius-preserving spanning trees by Erdős et al, the Ding et al technique, and the Dankelmann and Entringer technique. Finally, we use the Kleitman and West dead leaves technique to construct spanning trees with many leaves for various values of the minimum degree δ ≥ k (for k = 3, 4 and k > 4) and order n. We then use the leaf number to bound diameter.


A History of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces Kuwaiti Brigadier General Ameen Muhammad Al-Saqr's book Al-Qooah Al-Askariyah Al-Kuwaitiah: Ahad Al-Anaaser Qooah Al-Dawlah Al-Shamlah Lee Radeeah Al-Akhtar an Al-Dawlah (Kuwait military power: one of the aspects of comprehensive national power in determining threats to the state) delves into the history and national security concerns of the Emirate of Kuwait. The book, which was probably printed by the Kuwaiti Armed Forces in 1997, details how Kuwait's strategic thinking has led to an allocation of resources toward their defense and illuminates how threats from Iraq, dating from near the end of the Ottoman period in 1902, helped shape Kuwait's defensive posture. The book, which is perhaps one of only a few Arabic books that details the military strategy and tactics of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) before and after Operation Desert Storm, reveals Kuwait's strategic priorities. Kuwaiti Defense Before Independence Al-Saqr discusses the evolution of Kuwait's armed forces from 1820 to the 1990 invasion of Iraq. Documents reveal that in 1820, Kuwait depended on tribal levies for its security and defense. Kuwait's main source of armaments from 1820 to 1912 came from gifts from government officials, tribal chiefs, war spoils, and purchases from regional markets in Africa, India, and the Persian Gulf area. In 1912, Shiekh Mubarak Al-Sabah, the first emir to face a direct threat to Kuwait, negotiated with the British High Commissioner an agreement granting the tiny emirate 6,000 rifles with ammunition plus another one million rounds of ammunition for older rifles and muskets. The threat came from Iraqi King Ghazi bin Faisal, who assumed the throne from his father, King Faisal, I in 1932. It also had a rudimentary naval force of 35 merchant sailing ships and 150 smaller craft outfitted with different types of weapons. Stages of Development Kuwait's modern military, founded in late 1948, involved the separation of internal security forces from the armed forces, but the distinction did not become official until 1953 when the General of security Services (GSS) gave up units to form the Kuwait Army. The Kuwait Army's chief mission was to secure the border, deter smuggling, secure sensitive installations, and guard the royal family. In 1954, Kuwait's military consisted of a headquarters element and three infantry units, which were posted in Kuwait City and Mubarakiyah Fort, close to the border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. During the reorganization, the military's equipment consisted of rifles, light machineguns, heavy (mounted) machineguns, submachineguns, and pistols. Transportation elements consisted of trucks, jeeps, and armored personnel carriers. The reorganization was created to make the border security mission more efficient. With the acquisition of Daimler military vehicles in 1955, the Kuwait military underwent another reorganization, creating the Sixth Mechanized Infantry Brigade, which was the first brigade-level formation headquartered at Mubarakiyah Fort. The formation stayed in place until 1967, when it transferred to Al-Jahraa. The brigade consisted of infantry, artillery (25-pound cannon), and tank formations, referred to in Arabic as "Kateebah" (battalion). In the late 1950s, Al-Sabah focused on regular military training for recruits from different tribal affiliations and began delineating between specialties within the armed forces, particularly in infantry, artillery, anti-air weapons and missiles, communications, engineering, logistics, military band, military operations, and military health care. In 1953, Kuwait established an air force that until 1958 possessed helicopters, civilian passenger craft, and a single VIP aircraft. After the discovery and development of Kuwait's oil reserves, the Waarah Infantry Battalion was formed under the command of Captain Muhammad Abdul-Aziz Al-Badr, whose mission was to protect oil installations and port facilities at Al-Ahmadiyah. …


A Century of Success: Historically Black Colleges and Universities, America's National Treasure-Annual Report, by the President's Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 1996. 120 pp. The African American Education Data Book, Volume 1: Higher and Adult Education, by Michael T. Nettles and Laura W. Perna. Fairfax, VA: Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute, 1997. 504 pp. $25.00, cloth. A Century of Success marks the first publication of the annual report of The President's Board of Advisors (PBA) on HBCUS. Created by President Clinton's Executive Order 12876, the primary duties of the PBA are to advise the President and to issue "an annual report to the President on participation by historically Black colleges and universities in federally sponsored programs." The PBA is also responsible for reporting to the President on ways to increase "the private sector role in strengthening historically Black colleges and universities with particular emphasis on enhancing institutional infrastructure and facilitating planning, development, and the use of technologies to ensure [their] longterm viability and enhancement." It is important to note that President Clinton was not the first President to sign an Executive Order on HBCUs nor was he the first to establish a PBA with reporting responsibilities. President Carter issued the first Executive Order for HBCUs and subsequent orders were issued by Presidents Reagan and Bush. The first President's Board of Advisors was created by President Bush; its unpublished annual reports were used by the current Board as a reference in preparing A Century of Success. Author William Blakey was employed by the PBA as its primary consultant in preparing the Report. In it, he makes a clear case for the continued strengthening of Black colleges and why federal support to HBCUs should be expanded. Blakey's background as an advocate for Black colleges and his prior work in the legislative and executive branches of the federal government make him well-qualified to author the Report. The Report is organized by thematic emphasis (i.e., "Why Black Colleges" and "Fostering Student Success") and uses this format to guide the discussion leading to the Report's 18 concluding recommendations. Although this approach is helpful, the reader would have found an organization by chapter more useful. The Report also includes an appendix containing a complete listing of 104 HBCU institutions. The most important part of the Report is the section detailing the status of federal compliance with Executive Order 12876. Compliance status is based on fiscal year 1995 data, but it is given without the benefit of context or analysis of prior performance over time. The Report also failed to discuss the impact of specific policy mandates (e.g., response to the end of the Cold War) that govern agency priorities and the relationship of these mandates to HBCU participation in the federal granting and contracting process. In addition, it would have been helpful to include some discussion of the practice of Congressional earmarking of federal funds to institutions of higher education and whether HBCUs were benefitting from this form of largesse. The Clinton PBA points out in its Report that there has been a 21% increase in federal support for HBCUS, up from $1.03 billion in 1992 to $1.25 billion in 1995. A review of the data provided, however, notes most of the heralded increase came in the form of federal student aid to HBCU students and not in the federal grant and contracting areas. For example it is widely known that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology receives more federal grants and contracts on a yearly basis than all of the HBCUs combined. By pointing out the historic neglect of the HBCU community by programs of the federal government, the recommendations of A Century of Success represent both a challenge and an opportunity for the President. …


American Naturalism and the Jews examines the unabashed anti-Semitism of five notable American naturalist novelists otherwise known for their progressive social values. Hamlin Garland, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser all pushed for social improvements for the poor and oppressed, while Edith Wharton and Willa Cather both advanced the public status of women. But they all also expressed strong prejudices against the Jewish race and faith throughout their fiction, essays, letters, and other writings, producing a contradiction in American literary history that has stymied scholars and, until now, gone largely unexamined. In this breakthrough study, Donald Pizer confronts this disconcerting strain of anti-Semitism pervading American letters and culture, illustrating how easily prejudice can coexist with even the most progressive ideals. Pizer shows how these writers' racist impulses represented more than just personal biases, but resonated with larger social and ideological movements within American culture. Anti-Semitic sentiment motivated such various movements as the western farmers' populist revolt and the East Coast patricians' revulsion against immigration, both of which Pizer discusses here. This antagonism toward Jews and other non-Anglo-Saxon ethnicities intersected not only with these authors' social reform agendas but also with their literary method of representing the overpowering forces of heredity, social or natural environment, and savage instinct.


Background: Routine iron supplementation for all pregnant women in order to reduce adverse neonatal outcomes has been a standard practice in developing countries, including Thailand. However, there is evidence that excess iron can affect glucose metabolism and may increase risk of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). This study aims to investigate the association of iron supplementation starting from early gestation and the risk of GDM in non-anemic women. Methods: This retrospective cohort study included non-anemic pregnant Thai women who received their first antenatal care and delivered at Vajira Hospital (Bangkok, Thailand) during January 2008 to December 2009. All pregnant women underwent oral glucose tolerance test during gestational weeks 24 - 28. The proportions of ongoing GDM and birth outcomes were compared between the early oral iron supplementation group (before 16 completed weeks) and the control group (after 16 weeks). Results: There were 1,935 non-anemic pregnant women, 966 in the early supplement group and 969 in the control group. The early supplement group had significantly higher prevalence of GDM than the control group did (9.7% vs. 5.6%, RR: 1.83; 95% CI: 1.29 - 2.59). No significant differences in maternal anemia, gestational age at birth, or neonatal birth weight were observed between groups. Conclusions: Early antenatal iron supplementation in non-anemic pregnant women was found to be associated with significantly increased risk of GDM. J Endocrinol Metab. 2018;8(6):139-143 doi: https://doi.org/10.14740/jem543


By the time she was twenty-four, Virginia Woolf had suffered a series of devastating losses that later she would describe as "sledge-hammer blows," beginning with the death of her mother when she was thirteen years old and followed by those of her half-sister, father, and brother. Yet vulnerable as she was ("skinless" was her word) she began, through these years, to practice her art-and to discover how it could serve her. Ultimately, she came to feel that it was her "shock-receiving capacity" that had made her a writer. Astonishingly gifted from the start, Woolf learned to be attentive to the movements of her own mind. Through self-reflection she found a language for the ebb and flow of thought, fantasy, feeling, and memory, for the shifts of light and dark. And in her writing she preserved, recreated, and altered the dead, altering in the process her internal relationship with their "invisible presences." "I will go backwards & forwards" she remarked in her diary, a comment on both her imaginative and writerly practice. Following Woolf's lead, psychologist Katherine Dalsimer moves backward and forward between the work of Woolf's maturity and her early journals, letters, and unpublished juvenilia to illuminate the process by which Woolf became a writer. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory as well as on Woolf's life and work, and trusting Woolf's own self-observations, Dalsimer offers a compelling account of a young artist's voyage out-a voyage that Virginia Woolf began by looking inward and completed by looking back.


Julia Child's TV show, The French Chef , was extraordinarily popular during its broadcast from 1963 until 1973. Child became a cultural icon in the 1960s, and, in the years since, she and her show have remained enduring influences on American cooking, American television, and American culture. In this concise book, Dana Polan considers what made Child's program such a success. It was not the first televised cooking show, but it did define and popularize the genre. Polan examines the development of the show, its day-to-day production, and its critical and fan reception. He argues that The French Chef changed the conventions of television's culinary culture by rendering personality indispensable. Child was energetic and enthusiastic, and her cooking lessons were never just about food preparation, although she was an effective and unpretentious instructor. They were also about social mobility, the discovery of foreign culture, and a personal enjoyment and fulfillment that promised to transcend domestic drudgery. Polan situates Julia Child and The French Chef in their historical and cultural moment, while never losing sight of Child's unique personality and captivating on-air presence.


Hair-like sensors are very common in natural and biological systems. Such sensors are used to measure acoustic pressures, fluid flows, and chemical concentrations among others. Hair-like actuators are also used to control fluid flows and perform temperature management. This study presents a manufacturing technique for a hair-like IPMC transducer. A thorough study is presented on the building process of the sensor. The method used to control the diameter and the electrodes thickness of the transducer is developed. The sensing behavior of the manufactured transducers is experimentally characterized.


Two trials involving the new oral hypoglycaemic drugs saxagliptin and alogliptin have found that neither reduces the risk of cardiovascular events in the short term, contradicting the findings of an analysis earlier this year.

Saxagliptin and alogliptin are dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors and were approved by regulators because they lowered blood glucose in people with diabetes, but it was unclear what effects they might have on the cardiovascular system.

Since 2008, after concerns over the cardiac safety of rosiglitazone, manufacturers of diabetes drugs have to carry out a long term cardiovascular outcome study after approval. One pooled analysis published earlier this year pointed to the possibility that DPP-4 inhibitors lower cardiovascular risk.1

However, both the new trials, published in the New England Journal of Medicine , and conducted as part of the manufacturers' regulatory obligations, found that this might not be the case.

In the saxagliptin (SAVOR TIMI-53) trial, sponsored by AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb, 16 492 patients with a history of, or at risk for, cardiovascular events were randomly assigned to receive saxagliptin or placebo for an average of two …


This working paper investigates the reasons underpinning the growing use and widespread resonance of the concept of 'civilizations' – defined by cultural and religious markers – in scholarly, policy and public discourses, since the end of the Cold War. Such an inquiry is made all the more relevant since the concept of civilizations has not only remained at the level of language. It has, in fact, become embedded, instantiated, and operationalized within the global governance architecture, most prominently with the creation of the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) in 2005. The UNAOC represents a remarkable development in the way international order is being understood and upheld within global governance institutions, as no longer solely dependent on states, or on the advancement of individual rights and economic opportunities, but also on what occurs between and within civilizations. Why have discourses and practices about civilizations acquired the political salience they have in international society at this historical juncture? This paper argues for an understanding of the concept of civilizations as a particular kind of 'empty signifier', underpinned by three overarching logics: a logic of interpretation centered on identity, a logic of critique towards liberal 'end of history' narratives and projects, and a logic of practicality that matches the interests of multiple state and non-state actors. This argument is empirically illustrated through an analysis of how these three logics, which explain the contemporary power and authority of the signifier of civilizations, also structure the mission, bureaucratic apparatus, and operations of the UNAOC.


Autonomy holds a great promise by improving the applications, safety, and efficiency of flight. If little operator input is necessary, unmanned rotorcraft have a wide range of applications ranging from cargo delivery to inspection. Currently unmanned rotorcraft are underutilized because they either have to fly on preplanned missions at high altitude or require careful teleoperation. A capable autonomous rotorcraft will have to react quickly to previously unknown obstacles, land at unprepared sites, and fly with semantic information to enable long-term autonomy in cluttered environments. In this talk we give an overview of how autonomy systems are currently designed and how pushing the performance and safety of these systems challenges current verification paradigms. In particular we will address how a supervisory layer in the motion planning system can improve safety, a sensor steering system enables us to optimize coverage for safe trajectories, and how semantic information can help us guide the rotorcraft.


It is important to identify factors associated with loneliness in older people if effective policies and strategies to prevent and reduce loneliness are to be developed. In this presentation two studies that identify factors associated with loneliness in old age are reported. Strengths and weaknesses of the studies, which differ in design and focus, shed light on issues of importance for future studies on loneliness.The first study was based on data from two waves of SWEOLD, a Swedish longitudinal national survey study (N=613). It aimed to examine the extent to which older people (70+) report feelings of loneliness with a focus on changes in loneliness over time, and on factors predicting loneliness in women and men, respectively. This study showed that older people moved in and out of loneliness over time, but there was a general increase in loneliness as they aged. It also identified gender differences in both incidence and risk factors.The second study was based on data from the Barnsley Social Exclusion in Old Age Study, an English cross-sectional community survey (N=1255), and aimed to identify risk factors for social and emotional loneliness in older people (65+). This study identified different, as well as shared, risk factors for social and emotional loneliness, thereby providing further empirical support for the conceptual separation of emotional and social loneliness.Taken together, these studies demonstrate the importance of: 1) longitudinal research in order to determine risk factors for loneliness; 2) considering women and men separately; and 3) looking at social and emotional loneliness separately. These approaches in combination will aid the development of effective interventions to reduce loneliness in the older population and to ensure those interventions are targeted at the appropriate groups.


U.S. stock portfolios sorted on size, momentum, transaction costs, M/B, I/A and ROA
ratios, and industry classi…cation show considerable levels and variation of return predictability,
inconsistent with asset pricing models. This means that a predictable risk premium is not equal
to compensation for systematic risk as implied by asset pricing theory (Kirby 1998). We show
that introducing market frictions relaxes these asset pricing moments from a strict equality to
a range. Empirically, it is not short sales constraints but transaction costs (below 35 basis
points) that help to reconcile the observed predictability with the Fama-French-Carhart four-
factor model and the Chen-Novy-Marx-Zhang three factor model, and partly with the Durable
Consumption model. Across the sorts, predictability in industry returns can be reconciled with
all models considered with only 25 basis points transaction costs, whereas for momentum and
ROA portfolios up to 115 basis points are needed.


ABSTRACT Extant literature suggests that audit firms establish political connections at the national level to lobby regulators and legislators. In this paper we construct a novel dataset of Big 4 auditors' political connections at the audit office level and examine the implications of auditors' political connections for their audit quality. We find that client firms of politically connected audit offices are less likely to restate their earnings. However, this relation is weaker for politically connected clients. Further analyses reveal that, during the years that are subsequently restated, connected clients of connected offices were able to contract for less audit effort and pay less audit fees relative to their non-connected counterparts. Our results, robust to alternative audit quality measures and endogeneity controls, suggest that, while connected auditors have incentives to deliver high audit quality, they are likely to compromise their independence for politically connected clients.


Parents of children born with risks for intellectual disability (ID) report emotional upheaval and greater support needs compared to those raising a typically developing child. Exploring these parents' needs and experiences is critical for the provision of early intervention and/or paediatric services that benefit the whole family. Consequently, this study aimed to explore the experiences and needs of Maltese parents of young children born with biological risks for ID, during the first five years of life. It adopted a cross-sectional qualitative design, using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith et al., 2009). Four groups of parents, (N=37) depending on their children's age (0;6, 2;0, 3;6 and 5;0 years) were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. Six super-ordinate themes were identified: 'experiencing is true understanding', 'family functioning', 'info-emotional cycle', 'micro-system sociological framework', 'service-needs-resource cycle' and 'experiential challenges'. Socio-cultural influences have affected parents' interpretations of their experiences and needs. Moreover, parents reported that raising an 'at risk' child had an impact on their daily life as a family, as a couple and on their individual lifeworld. Maltese parents felt that their needs were not given their due importance by policymakers and professionals. This warrants the incorporation of parents' needs, together with the needs perceived for their child, in the provision of early intervention and/or paediatric services in Malta. This study also identified parents' experiential differences as the child grow, highlighting the need for regular re-evaluation of parents' needs. Recommendations for changes in Maltese family policy, service provision and education of professionals were proposed to reduce parents' stresses.


The Amazon basin hosts half the planet's remaining moist tropical forests, but they may be threatened in a warming world. Nevertheless, climate model predictions vary from rapid drying to modest wetting. Here we report that the catchment of the world's largest river is experiencing a substantial wetting trend since approximately 1990. This intensification of the hydrological cycle is concentrated overwhelmingly in the wet season driving progressively greater differences in Amazon peak and minimum flows. The onset of the trend coincides with the onset of an upward trend in tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SST). This positive longer‐term correlation contrasts with the short‐term, negative response of basin‐wide precipitation to positive anomalies in tropical North Atlantic SST, which are driven by temporary shifts in the intertropical convergence zone position. We propose that the Amazon precipitation changes since 1990 are instead related to increasing atmospheric water vapor import from the warming tropical Atlantic.


Vivian Gussin Paley is a teacher, writer, lecturer, and advocate for the importance of play for young children. Author of a dozen books about children learning through play, she has received numerous honors and awards including an Erickson Institute Award for Service to Children, a MacArthur Foundation Fellows award, and a JohnDewey Society's Outstanding Achievement Award. Paley taught early-childhood classes for thirty-seven years—chiefly at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools—and in her books she describes and reflects on her own learning experiences shared with thousands of students. Her writings focus primarily on three major areas of concern she sees in children: fantasy, friendship, and fairness. Paley learned early the value of observing and listening to children, recording and studying what they said and did in her classroom, and using what she discovered to improve her teaching and children's lives. In all of this, Paley has been a gatherer and teller of stories, and she remains so in this interview and in her continuing work as a sought-after speaker and consultant. Her latest book, forthcoming in 2010, is The Boy on the Beach: Building Community through Play.


Background Systemic Autoimmune Rheumatic Diseases (SARDs) are a group of syndromes caused by antibodies inflammation related. Rituximab is a biological drug that targets antigen CD-20 present on the surface of B-Lymphocytes and thus potentially active against SARDs refractories to conventional treatment: steroids and immunosuppressants. Purpose To describe and evaluate safety parameters of the risk management protocol for adults SARDs patients treated with off-label Rituximab. Materials and Methods Descriptive-observational study from January 2011 to July 2012 realised by the Pharmacy and Rheumatology Service. Data were obtained from electronical medical records. Three types of risk management protocol data were evaluated. A) Clinical parameters: infection (including Tuberculosis), cardiovascular disease, severe cytopenia, neoplasia or new neurologic symptoms. B) Complementary tests: hemogram and general biochemistry while on Rituximab. C) Others: adverse events related with Rituximab infusion. Results 21 patients were included (mean age 52.71 ± 16.11 years). Diagnoses were Sjögren's Syndrome (10), Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (4), Mixed Connective Tissue Disease (3), inflammatory myopathy (2), Systemic Sclerosis (1) and Wegener's Granulomatosis (1). Clinical parameters: infection was detected on 5 patients (23%), severe cytopenia in 1 patient (4,7%) and peripheral neurological symptomatology in another one. Nor cardiovascular disease or neoplasia were detected. Complementary tests: patient presented severe thrombocytopenia (platelets< 2.000/mcL) Adverse events infusion related: detected on 19% of patients. Conclusions Rituximab off-label use for SARDs has increased over the last years and pharmacovigilance strategies as well as risk management protocols have proved useful identifying risks, controlling adverse events, improving quality of care and integrating Pharmacist into direct patient care. No conflict of interest.


In this paper, the design of ultra-wide-band antenna for radar application has been proposed. The antenna consists of a circular patch and a ground plane on the adjacent side of the substrate. The proposed antenna is designed using FR-4 substrate with thickness of 1.6 mm thick and relative permittivity value 4.4. The dimension of the substrate is40 mm x 45 mm x 1.6 mm surface. The proposed antenna is designed and simulated using Ansoft HFSS. Also analysed the impedance matching property of two antenna designed with and without slotted patch.


The use of transgenic farm animals presents many challenges to the bioethicist, not least how to analyse the ethical issues within a framework that does not implicitly assume adherence to a normative ethical theory. One possible solution is to use a series of prima-facie principles applied to the interest groups affected by transgenesis. One such scheme is based on the four prima-facie principles of respect for non-maleficence, beneficence, autonomy and justice. This paper illustrates these with respect to transgenic farm animals. The aim of this is a systematic analysis, which includes positive and negative aspects, and which can therefore serve as a starting point for debate in which a range of views exist. One possible interpretation of this analysis is based on Three Rs concept. The use of transgenic farm animals appears to contradict this concept, because, although there is the potential for a reduction in animal numbers, at present, transgenesis is a rapidly expanding field, reversing the recent modest reductions in other areas of laboratory animal use. Moreover, transgenesis permits novel uses of farm animals, such as the production of proteins for human medicine where they were previously obtained from human blood (the opposite of replacement). The technique of transgenesis also misses the point as far as refinement is concerned, by refining the animal to suit the production or experimental protocol, instead of vice versa.


Stable and reversible adhesion to wet surfaces is challenging owing to water molecules at the contact interface. In this study, we develop a hydrogel-based wet adhesive, which can exhibit strong and reversible adhesion to wet and underwater surfaces as well as to dry surfaces. The remarkable wet adhesion of the hydrogel adhesive is realized based on a synergetic integration of bioinspired microarchitectures and water-friendly and water-absorbing properties of the polymeric hydrogel. Under dry conditions, the microstructured hydrogel adhesive exhibits strong van der Waals interaction-based adhesion, while under underwater conditions, it can maximize capillary adhesion. Consequently, the hydrogel adhesive exhibits remarkable adhesion strengths for dry, moist, and submerged substrates. Maximum normal and shear adhesion strengths of 423 and 384, 492 and 340, and 253 and 21 kPa are achieved with the hydrogel adhesive for dry, moist, and submerged substrates, respectively. Our results demonstrate that strong wet and underwater adhesion can be achieved only with the hydrogel-based adhesive with simple microscale architecture.


What are the enabling conditions and driving forces for nature-based solutions in the context of urban sustainability transitions? And how do innovation pathways play a role for nature-based solutions? Innovation pathways are a journey: from the initial idea and its demonstration, to its broader uptake within policy, industry and society. The Innovation Pathways Directory provides an entry point to explore and better understand innovation pathways for nature-based solutions. It presents 12 examples of nature-based solutions, and illustrates the findings through: four targets (happy and healthy cities, water friendly cities, renaturing cities, and resilient and thriving cities); three processes (crisis to connectivity, marginal to mainstream, government to governance); and four actions (leading & visioning, governing & collaborating, experimenting & learning, and mobilising & financing). (Less)


Abstract. Paleoclimatology is a highly collaborative scientific endeavor, increasingly reliant on online databases for data sharing. Yet there is currently no universal way to describe, store and share paleoclimate data: in other words, no standard. Data standards are often regarded by scientists as mere technicalities, though they underlie much scientific and technological innovation, as well as facilitating collaborations between research groups. In this article, we propose a preliminary data standard for paleoclimate data, general enough to accommodate all the archive and measurement types encountered in a large international collaboration (PAGES 2k). We also introduce a vehicle for such structured data (Linked Paleo Data, or LiPD), leveraging recent advances in knowledge representation (Linked Open Data). The LiPD framework enables quick querying and extraction, and we expect that it will facilitate the writing of open-source community codes to access, analyze, model and visualize paleoclimate observations. We welcome community feedback on this standard, and encourage paleoclimatologists to experiment with the format for their own purposes.


Although they have written in various genres, African American writers as notable and diverse as W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker have done their most influential work in the essay form. The Souls of Black Folk, The Fire Next Time, and In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens are landmarks in African American literary history. Many other writers, such as Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and Richard Wright, are acclaimed essayists but achieved greater fame for their work in other genres; their essay work is often overlooked or studied only in the contexts of their better-known works. Here Cheryl A. Wall offers the first sustained study of the African American essay as a distinct literary genre.
Beginning with the sermons, orations, and writing of nineteenth-century men and women like Frederick Douglass who laid the foundation for the African American essay, Wall examines the genre's evolution through the Harlem Renaissance. She then turns her attention to four writers she regards as among the most influential essayists of the twentieth century: Baldwin, Ellison, June Jordan, and Alice Walker. She closes the book with a discussion of the status of the essay in the twenty-first century as it shifts its medium from print to digital in the hands of writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brittney Cooper. Wall's beautifully written and insightful book is nothing less than a redefinition of how we understand the genres of African American literature.


Packet losses increase latency for Web users. Fast recovery is a key mechanism for TCP to recover from packet losses. In this paper, we explore some of the weaknesses of the standard algorithm described in RFC 3517 and the non-standard algorithms implemented in Linux. We find that these algorithms deviate from their intended behavior in the real world due to the combined effect of short flows, application stalls, burst losses, acknowledgment (ACK) loss and reordering, and stretch ACKs. Linux suffers from excessive congestion window reductions while RFC 3517 transmits large bursts under high losses, both of which harm the rest of the flow and increase Web latency.
 Our primary contribution is a new design to control transmission in fast recovery called proportional rate reduction (PRR). PRR recovers from losses quickly, smoothly and accurately by pacing out retransmissions across received ACKs. In addition to PRR, we evaluate the TCP early retransmit (ER) algorithm which lowers the duplicate acknowledgment threshold for short transfers, and show that delaying early retransmissions for a short interval is effective in avoiding spurious retransmissions in the presence of a small degree of reordering. PRR and ER reduce the TCP latency of connections experiencing losses by 3-10% depending on the response size. Based on our instrumentation on Google Web and YouTube servers in U.S. and India, we also present key statistics on the nature of TCP retransmissions.


Abstract. Our structured illumination microscopy (SIM) is based on a spatial light modulator (SLM) instead of an illumination mask, which does not need to be attached to a linear stage. This SIM can easily design the period of the one-dimensional grid related to the optical sectioning strength and can rapidly acquire three-dimensional data. The optimization of SIM with an SLM is proposed. Previous studies primarily varied magnification with a high numerical aperture objective to optimize the axial response. It is feasible to obtain the maximum optical sectioning strength by designing a grid pattern that has an appropriately high spatial frequency and to uniformly cover the entire frequency spectrum of the sample by rotating a grid pattern. We have successfully optimized SIM with such a grid and covered the frequency spectrum by rotating a grid pattern in multiple orientations.


Introduction: Nowadays beverage companies must focus on maintaining healthy finishedgoods inventory stocks in order to be able to decrease inventory costs, meet customerrequirements and to obtain competitive advantage. However many beverage SMEdon't have an accurate planning and forecasting to manufacturing inventories. Thereforethey often face the problem of optimization in inventory management due to several differentreasons. As a result, company loses its competitiveness. Thus, there is a need tocoordinate Inventory activities of beverage SMEs to improve inventories' planning. The purpose of this study is to analyze how inventory management is organized in a small Chinese beverage company.Frame of reference: This research is based on the theoretical framework relates with InventoryManagement (IM) and Retailer-managed inventory (RMI), vendor-managed inventory(VMI) and Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR).Empirical Data were collected through personal interviews and organization documents.Methodology: The research strategy for this paper is a single case study. This strategy allows investigating topic in its real life context. The inductive approach is used for this research based on qualitative data. The major source of data collection was semi-structured interviews and the company's documents. For analyzing data categorization approach was applied.Conclusion: The study found that inventory management theories presented in scientificliteratures are used in practice. To achieve better inventory management for beverageSMEs, the authors summarize four importance parameters based on literatures and findings.The authors also provide some suggestions based on the importance parameters inthe conclusion to optimize the case company's inventory management.


The common technique used for the construction and maintenance of infrastructure facilities until recently involved traditional open excavation methods. Technological advancements and developments in gathering geotechnical information on our working environment have given birth to the development of new methods which will prevent problems that may have emerged due to the use of traditional methods during the construction of infrastructure facilities. One of these new methods is trenchless technology which is becoming increasingly popular in the infrastructure construction industry. One of its processes, the pipejaking process, is of special importance in busy urban centres and densely populated living quarters as it has proved to be the most sustainable method for working in such environments and for global use. The name of this process is trenchless technology. There is an increasing demand for infrastructure systems, especially in cities, because of increasing populations and varying lifestyles, and in the areas around cities which are environmentally sensitive. Routes of infrastructure (pipelines) to be constructed have many obstructions such as motorways, buildings, railways, rivers, creeks, and canals. The pipejacking process, a trenchless technology to overcome these problems and obstructions, has been achieving an important scope of application in Turkey and the rest of the world. Infrastructure facilities planned to be constructed by the application of this system can be built under every kind of ground condition in a correct, swift, and economic manner, without needing an open excavation and its associated traffic problems and conditions that may cause danger to human life and property. Within the context of this study, the collector line, constructed in Şile district by the pipejacking process (which is 1535 m in length and 800 mm in diameter), was examined, and jacking force length graphics were prepared with the use of jacking force records obtained from the machine. After analysing these graphics, change of coefficients of α adhesion was researched and, for use at cohesioned grounds, an α value was suggested in order to predict friction resistance and accordingly possible jacking force values that may be faced. First, with the assistance of the Plaxis 3D Tunnel Program, considering land conditions, the examined line was modelled. Then, stress values resulting from this modelling and graphic analyses were compared, and observed harmonies or inharmonies were discussed. Lastly, parameters that are effective on these harmonies or inharmonies were defined. In addition, considering jacking forces and stress values observed where bentonite is whether used or not, the lubricant's effect on the jacking action was examined. Within the context of this study, stoppages, lubrication during jacking process, and their effects on the jacking force and stresses were analysed. Thus, a versatile study regarding the pipejacking process has been put forward for consideration.


This article offers a detailed legal and policy analysis of the most far-reaching and already controversial measures presently envisaged by the reform of the EU Tobacco Products Directive, standardized packaging and visual display bans of tobacco products, under EU law. In line with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control - the former prohibits logos, colors, brand images, and promotional elements on packaging other than brand names displayed in a mandated size, font and place, whereas the latter forbids the display of tobacco products at points of sale. Although the analysis predominantly focuses on the adoption of EU-wide schemes mandating these measures within the framework of the revision of the Tobacco Products Directive, it also discusses the legal implications stemming from the adoption of similar mechanisms at the national level. While the actual case law may effectively substantiate the EU's competence to embrace both standardized packaging and display ban, the introduction of these measures, by revealing the shifting nature of the EU overall tobacco policy from the free movement imperative to a public health objective, questions the almost limitless EU's authority to harmonize pursuant the internal market legal basis. In the light of the above, the article examines how these measures score not only under the principle of conferral but also those of proportionality and subsidiarity as well as the trademark system and the fundamental rights regime. Once more, a legislative initiative in the field of tobacco is set to test, under the pressure of the relevant industry, the outer limits not only of EU's legislative action but also of its underlying decision-making process.


While Mexico has potential to grow rapidly, its economic growth has remained low for the past three decades. There is no consensus on the countrys development path or on how to achieve specific goals. Since the policy debate remains ideological and lacks pragmatism, productive development policies (PDPs) are often uncoordinated, redundant or even incongruent with each other. It is therefore important to understand the process whereby PDPs are designed and the institutional setting in which they are are implemented. This paper consequently examines whether PDPs respond to market failures and/or government failures. When PDPs are not designed to address specific market failures they can produce unwanted results or prove completely ineffective. When PDPs do address government failures, it is important to determine the reasons why the failure cannot be corrected in the first place and whether PDPs will be effective at addressing the problem in a second-best manner.


This program was developed to fill a need within the Wallops Flight Facility workflow for automation of the development of vertical plan limit lines used by flight safety officers during the conduct of expendable launch vehicle missions. Vertical plane present-position-based destruct lines have been used by range safety organizations at numerous launch ranges to mitigate launch vehicle risks during the early phase of flight. Various ranges have implemented data submittal and processing workflows to develop these destruct lines. As such, there is significant prior art in this field. The ElLimits program was developed at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility to automate the process for developing vertical plane limit lines using current computing technologies. The ElLimits program is used to configure launch-phase range safety flight control lines for guided missiles. The name of the program derives itself from the fundamental quantity that is computed - flight elevation limits. The user specifies the extent and resolution of a grid in the vertical plane oriented along the launch azimuth. At each grid point, the program computes the maximum velocity vector flight elevation that can be permitted without endangering a specified back-range location. Vertical plane x-y limit lines that can be utilized on a present position display are derived from the flight elevation limit data by numerically propagating 'streamlines' through the grid. The failure turn and debris propagation simulation technique used by the application is common to all of its analysis options. A simulation is initialized at a vertical plane grid point chosen by the program. A powered flight failure turn is then propagated in the plane for the duration of the so-called RSO reaction time. At the end of the turn, a delta-velocity is imparted, and a ballistic trajectory is propagated to impact. While the program possesses capability for powered flight failure turn modeling, it does not require extensive user inputs of vehicle characteristics (e.g., thrust and aerodynamic data), nor does it require reams of turn data after the traditional fashion of the Air Force ranges. The program requires a nominal trajectory table (time, altitude, range, velocity, and flight elevation) and makes heavy use of it to initialize and model a failure turn.


Given feminists' longstanding concerns about the ideological effects of media images, and prompted by the lack of, but continued need for, feminist activism today, some feminist scholars have become increasingly interested in how popular media shape public understandings of feminism, represent its issues, and define its history. Communication scholars also appreciate that both media texts and social movements are produced and received within particular historical contexts, and that controversies over either are discursive sites in which cultural and political values clash and their meanings are negotiated. During the 1970s, second-wave feminism, especially its radical wing, was a controversial movement which threatened to disrupt basic relations between women and men and, therefore, has been much maligned by men, women, anti-feminists, and a new generation of self-proclaimed feminists. Yet, the second wave is often portrayed inaccurately. This dissertation thus reviews key works, theories, and events associated with radical feminism as well as the debates between it and other schools of feminist thought–liberal, Marxist/socialist, psychoanalytic, cultural, and various 'new' feminisms. Then, employing a context-sensitive form of ideological criticism, I examine three films, their promotional strategies, their mainstream critical and scholarly receptions, and how these elements converged with particular feminist discourses within their shared historical contexts. Specifically, I investigate why the horror films Rosemary's Baby (1968), I Spit on Your Grave (1978), and Snuff (1976)–which each featured an exposed, vulnerable, violated, or 'monstrous' female body–became objects of controversy when they tapped into the contemporaneous feminist issues of reproduction, rape, and pornography, respectively, and how the films' receptions reveal ways in which people have made sense of feminism and its issues. I contend that these controversies, both individually and when viewed as a series, were symptomatic of the hegemonic negotiations of second-wave feminism and its attempts to publicize discourses about sex, violence, and the female body, negotiations which were occurring both inside and outside the women's movement. Through these controversial cases, then, we can see feminism's transformation–from an active movement which criticized the structures of women's oppression to a discursive and primarily academic enterprise focused more on criticizing itself.


Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a common psychiatric disorder.
Although it seems that psychotherapy transaction analysis has a significant role in reducing the
symptoms of anxiety, but studies about the effectiveness of these interventions on the GAD symptoms
are not frequent. This study was aimed to study the efficacy of psychotherapy transactional analysis on
decreasing symptoms of GAD.
Materials & Methods: This semi experimental study was conducted on 20 female patients that were
selected from all GAD patients who referred to Urmia psychological clinic and psychiatrist's office
during spring and summer of 2014. The patients were selected through the availability sampling
method and were randomly divided into an experimental and a control group. A pre test and post test
was performed. The patients answered GAD questionnaire. While the control group was just followed,
the experimental group undertook 8-12 sessions of transaction analysis therapy. Finally, both groups
answered GAD questionnaire again. Analysis of the data involved both descriptive and inferential
statistics including mean, standard deviation, Cronbach, t test, and analysis of co-variance.
Results: It was revealed that there were significant differences between the control group and the
experimental group since the level of GAD decreased. (P≤0.01)
Conclusion: The results showed that transactional analysis therapy is effective in decreasing the
symptoms of GAD