A particulate component of small dimensions (100 to 150 A) and high density is described in the ground substance of the cytoplasm of mammalian and avian cells. In many cell types that seem to have in common a high degree of differentiation, the new component is preferentially associated with the membrane of the endoplasmic reticulum; whereas in other cell types, characterized by rapid proliferation, it occurs more or less freely distributed in the ground substance of the cytoplasm. In the Discussion an attempt is made to integrate the observations presented in this paper with the already available cytological, histochemical, and cytochemical information.


Objective: The principle of replacing prandial insulin
lispro with a once-weekly GLP-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) in type 2 diabetes inadequately
controlled on a multiple daily insulin injections regimen was tested with
albiglutide.

Research Design and Methods: In this treat-to-target study, basal+prandial
insulin was optimized over 4 weeks before participants were randomized (1:1) to
albiglutide plus optimized basal insulin glargine and lispro (dose reduced by 50%
at randomization; subsequently lispro injections were fully discontinued 4 weeks
later) (n=402), or to continued optimized lispro plus optimized glargine
(n=412).

Results: Mean±SD HbA1c at baseline, 7.8±0.6% (61±7 mmol/mol) in the albiglutide+glargine group and 7.7±0.6% (60±7 mmol/mol) in the
lispro+glargine group, were reduced at week 26 to 6.7±0.8% (49±8 mmol/mol) and 6.6±0.8%
(48±8 mmol/mol); respectively (LS difference 0.06% [95% CI, −0.05 to 0.17]; noninferiority
P<0.0001). In the albiglutide+glargine
group, 218 participants (54%) replaced all prandial insulin without
reintroducing lispro up to week 26. Total daily prandial insulin dose was
similar at baseline but was lower by 62U/day (95% CI −65.9 to −57.8; P<0.0001) at week 26 in the
albiglutide+glargine group  and the total number of weekly injections was also
reduced from 29 to 13 per week. Less severe/documented symptomatic hypoglycemia (57.2% vs. 75.0%) occurred
in the albiglutide+glargine group with meaningful weight differences (LS
mean±SE: −2.0±0.2 vs. +2.4±0.2 kg; P<0.0001)
vs. lispro+glargine. Gastrointestinal adverse events were higher with
albiglutide+glargine (26% vs. 13%).

Conclusions: A
once-weekly GLP-1RA was able to substitute for prandial insulin in 54% of
people, substantially reducing the number of prandial insulin injections; glycemic
control improved, with the added benefits of weight loss and less hypoglycemia
in the GLP1RA arm. Replacing prandial insulin with a weekly GLP-1RA can simplify
basal+prandial insulin treatments and achieve better outcomes in type 2
diabetes.


Iridium(III) complexes containing quinoline-appended polypyridyl ligands [Ir(ppy)2(qip)]+ (1) and [Ir(bhq)2(qip)]+ (2) {ppy = 2-phenylpyridine, bhq = benzo[h]quinoline, Qip = 2(1H)-quinolinone-3(1H)-imidazo[4,5f][1,10]phenanthrolin-2-yl} have been synthesized and characterized. The structure of complex 2 has been determined by single crystal X-ray crystallography. The experimental photophysical properties of the complexes have been compared with the theoretically obtained results by density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) studies. The HOMO of the complexes is mainly localized on the iridium atom while the LUMO is mainly localized on the proximal position of the N–N donor polypyridyl ligand and the LUMO+1 is localized on the distal portion of the N–N donor polypyridyl ligand. The binding of complexes to double-stranded calf thymus DNA (CT-DNA) has been investigated by absorption and emission spectroscopic techniques. The electrophoretic mobility shift assay of plasmid DNA in the presence of complexes shows DNA aggregation at micro-molar concentration. These complexes have low toxicity and their strong intracellular luminescence highlights their potential as theragnostic agents.


Background: Recent studies have identified several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the population that are associated with variations in the risks of many different diseases including cancers such as breast, prostate and colorectal. For ovarian cancer, the known highly penetrant susceptibility genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2) are probably responsible for only 40% of the excess familial ovarian cancer risks, suggesting that other susceptibility genes of lower penetrance exist. Methods: We have taken a candidate approach to identifying moderate risk susceptibility alleles for ovarian cancer. To date, we have genotyped 340 SNPs from 94 candidate genes or regions, in up to 1,491 invasive epithelial ovarian cancer cases and 3,145 unaffected controls from three different population based studies from the UK, Denmark and USA. Results: After adjusting for population stratification by genomic control, 18 SNPs (5.3%) were significant at the 5% level, and 5 SNPs (1.5%) were significant at the 1% level. The most significant association was for the SNP rs2107425, located on chromosome 11p15.5, which has previously been identified as a susceptibility allele for breast cancer from a genome wide association study (P-trend = 0.0012). When SNPs/genes were stratified into 7 different pathways or groups of validation SNPs, the breast cancer associated SNPs were the only group of SNPs that were significantly associated with ovarian cancer risk (P-heterogeneity = 0.0003; P-trend = 0.0028; adjusted (for population stratification) P-trend = 0.006). We did not find statistically significant associations when the combined data for all SNPs were analysed using an admixture maximum likelihood (AML) experiment-wise test for association (P-heterogeneity = 0.051; P-trend = 0.068). Conclusion: These data suggest that a proportion of the SNPs we evaluated were associated with ovarian cancer risk, but that the effect sizes were too small to detect associations with individual SNPs.


Few studies have examined how insect outbreaks affect landscape‐level hydrologic processes. We report the hydrologic effects of the invasive, exotic hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) in a headwater catchment in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The study watershed experienced complete mortality of an evergreen tree species, Tsuga canadensis (L.) Carr. (eastern hemlock), after infestation was first detected in 2003. Hemlock mortality resulted in a ~6% reduction in basal area in the watershed, and this loss was primarily concentrated in riparian zones. We used a paired‐watershed approach to quantify changes in water yield and peak stormflow using streamflow data from the infested watershed and a nearby watershed with significantly lower hemlock basal area. We hypothesized that yield would increase shortly after hemlock infestation but decrease over the longer‐term. We found that annual yield did not increase significantly in any year after infestation but decreased significantly by 12·0 cm (~8%) in 2010. Monthly yield also decreased after infestation, but changes were limited to the dormant season. The decline in yield is likely to persist as hemlock is replaced by species with higher transpiration rates. Peakflow increased significantly after infestation during the two largest flow events in the post‐infestation period. Changes in stormflow during extreme events may have been temporary as another evergreen, Rhododendron maximum, may have mitigated some of the changes after hemlock loss. Thus, streams draining watersheds where eastern hemlock has been lost due to HWA infestation demonstrate permanent reductions in yield and transient increases in peakflow during large‐flow events. Published 2014. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.


The order Gruiformes, for which even familial composition remains controversial, is perhaps the least well understood avian order from a phylogenetic perspective. The history of the systematics of the order is presented, and the ecological and biogeographic characteristics of its members are summarized. Using cladistic techniques, phylogenetic relationships among fossil and modern genera of the Gruiformes were estimated based on 381 primarily osteological characters; relationships among modern species of Grues (Psophiidae, Aramidae, Gruidae, Heliornithidae and Rallidae) were assessed based on these characters augmented by 189 characters of the definitive integument. A strict consensus tree for 20,000 shortest trees compiled for the matrix of gruiform genera (length = 967, CI = 0.517) revealed a number of nodes common to the solution set, many of which were robust to bootstrapping and had substantial support (Bremer) indices. Robust nodes included those supporting: a sister relationship between the Pedionomidae and Turnicidae; monophyly of the Gruiformes exclusive of the Pedionomidae and Turnicidae; a sister relationship between the Cariamidae and Phorusrhacoidea; a sister relationship between a clade comprising Eurypyga and Messelornis and one comprising Rhynochetos and Aptornis ; monophyly of the Grues (Psophiidae, Aramidae, Gruidae, Heliornithidae and Rallidae); monophyly of a clade (Gruoidea) comprising (in order of increasingly close relationship) Psophia , Aramus , Balearica and other Gruidae, with monophyly of each member in this series confirmed; a sister relationship between the Heliornithidae and Rallidae; and monophyly of the Rallidae exclusive of Himantornis . Autapomorphic divergence was comparatively high for Pedionomus , Eurypyga , Psophia , Himantornis and Fulica ; extreme autapomorphy, much of which is unique for the order, characterized the extinct, flightless Aptornis .

In the species–level analysis of modern Grues, special efforts were made to limit the analytical impacts of homoplasy related to flightlessness in a number of rallid lineages. A strict consensus tree of 20,000 shortest trees compiled (length = 1232, CI = 0.463) confirmed the interfamilial relationships resolved in the ordinal analysis and established a number of other, variably supported groups within the Rallidae. Groupings within the Rallidae included: monophyly of Rallidae exclusive of Himantornis and a clade comprising Porphyrio (including Notornis ) and Porphyrula ; a poorly resolved, basal group of genera including Gymnocrex , Habroptila , Eulabeornis , Aramides , Canirallus and Mentocrex ; an intermediate grade comprising Anurolimnas , Amaurolimnas , and Rougetius ; monophyly of two major subdivisions of remaining rallids, one comprising Rallina (paraphyletic), Rallicula , and Sarothrura , and the other comprising the apparently paraphyletic 'long–billed' rails (e.g. Pardirallus , Cyanolimnas , Rallus , Gallirallus and Cabalus and a variably resolved clade comprising 'crakes' (e.g. Atlantisia , Laterallus and Porzana , waterhens ( Amaurornis ), moorhens ( Gallinula and allied genera) and coots ( Fulica ). Relationships among 'crakes' remain poorly resolved; Laterallus may be paraphyletic, and Porzana is evidently polyphyletic and poses substantial challenges for reconciliation with current taxonomy. Relationships among the species of waterhens, moorhens and coots, however, were comparatively well resolved, and exhaustive, fine–scale analyses of several genera ( Grus , Porphyrio , Aramides , Rallus , Laterallus and Fulica ) and species complexes ( Porphyrio porphyrio –group, Gallirallus philippensis –group and Fulica americana –group) revealed additional topological likelihoods. Many nodes shared by a majority of the shortest trees under equal weighting were common to all shortest trees found following one or two iterations of successive weighting of characters. Provisional placements of selected subfossil rallids (e.g. Diaphorapteryx , Aphanapteryx and Capellirallus ) were based on separate heuristic searches using the strict consensus tree for modern rallids as a backbone constraint.

These analyses were considered with respect to assessments of robustness, homoplasy related to flightlessness, challenges and importance of fossils in cladistic analysis, previously published studies and biogeography, and an annotated phylogenetic classification of the Gruiformes is proposed.


Abstract Conceptualizing climate as a distinct variable limits our understanding of the synergies and interactions between climate change and the range of abiotic and biotic factors, which influence animal health. Frameworks such as eco-epidemiology and the epi-systems approach, while more holistic, view climate and climate change as one of many discreet drivers of disease. Here, I argue for a new paradigmatic framework: climate-change syndemics. Climate-change syndemics begins from the assumption that climate change is one of many potential influences on infectious disease processes, but crucially is unlikely to act independently or in isolation; and as such, it is the inter-relationship between factors that take primacy in explorations of infectious disease and climate change. Equally importantly, as climate change will impact a wide range of diseases, the frame of analysis is at the collective rather than individual level (for both human and animal infectious disease) across populations.


ABSTRACT
 Astrapotheria is an order of extinct South American herbivores recorded throughout the continent, from the late Paleocene to middle Miocene. Here we describe Hilarcotherium castanedaii, gen. et sp. nov., an Uruguaytheriinae astrapothere from sediments of La Victoria Formation (middle Miocene) in the Tolima Department, Upper Magdalena Valley, Colombia. H. castanedaii, represented by a partial skull, mandible, and some postcranial remains, is characterized by (1) unique dental formula, with 0/3i, 1/1c, 1/1p, and 3/3 m; and (2) lower canines with subtriangular transverse section at the base. Hilarcotherium differs from the equatorial Uruguaytheriinae genera Xenastrapotherium and Granastrapotherium in (1) having three lower incisors; (2) the diagonal implantation of the lower canines; (3) lower molars with lingual cingulid; (4) the presence of the hypocone in the third upper molar; and (5) the presence of an anterolingual pocket in the fourth upper premolar. Our phylogenetic analysis supports the monophyly of the subfamilies Astrapotheriinae and Uruguaytheriinae. Within the latter, we confirm the monophyly of the neotropical clade (Hilarcotherium, Xenastrapotherium, and Granastrapotherium). H. castanedaii shows some plesiomorphic features such as the aforementioned presence of the i3 and the developed hypocone in the last upper molar. Its estimated body mass (1303 kg) is intermediate among Astrapotheriidae. http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:82377B38-8B39-4D71-9117-FD17CB329238


The transport pathways of carbon monoxide (CO) in the African Upper Troposphere (UT) during the West African Monsoon (WAM) is investigated through the assimilation of CO observations by the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) in the MOCAGE Chemistry Transport Model (CTM). The assimilation setup, based on a 3-D First Guess at Assimilation Time (3-D-FGAT) variational method is described. Comparisons between the assimilated CO fields and in situ airborne observations from the MOZAIC program between Europe and both Southern Africa and Southeast Asia show an overall good agreement around the lowermost pressure level sampled by MLS (~215 hPa). The 4-D assimilated fields averaged over the month of July 2006 have been used to determine the main dynamical processes responsible for the transport of CO in the African UT. The studied period corresponds to the second AMMA (African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses) aircraft campaign. At 220 hPa, the CO distribution is characterized by a latitudinal maximum around 5° N mostly driven by convective uplift of air masses impacted by biomass burning from Southern Africa, uplifted within the WAM region and vented predominantly southward by the upper branch of the winter hemisphere Hadley cell. Above 150 hPa, the African CO distribution is characterized by a broad maximum over northern Africa. This maximum is mostly controlled by the large scale UT circulation driven by the Asian Summer Monsoon (ASM) and characterized by the Asian Monsoon Anticyclone (AMA) centered at 30° N and the Tropical Easterly Jet (TEJ) on the southern flank of the anticyclone. Asian pollution uplifted to the UT over large region of Southeast Asia is trapped within the AMA and transported by the anticyclonic circulation over Northeast Africa. South of the AMA, the TEJ is responsible for the tranport of CO-enriched air masses from India and Southeast Asia over Africa. Using the high time resolution provided by the 4-D assimilated fields, we give evidence that the variability of the African CO distribution above 150 hPa and north of the WAM region is mainly driven by the synoptic dynamical variability of both the AMA and the TEJ.


We present a formal semantics of the C programming language, covering both the type system and the dynamic behaviour of programs. The semantics is wide-ranging, covering most of the language, with its most significant omission being the C library. Using a structural operational semantics we specify transition relations for C's expressions, statements and declarations in higher order logic. The consistency of our definition is assured by its specification in the HOL theorem prover. With the theorem prover, we have used the semantics as the basis for a set of proofs of interesting theorems about C. We investigate properties of expressions and statements separately. In our chapter of results about expressions, we begin with two results about the interaction between the type system and the dynamic semantics. We have both type preservation, that the values produced by expressions conform to the type predicted for them; and type safety, that typed expressions will not block, but will either evaluate to a value, or cause undefined behaviour. We then also show that two broad classes of expression are deterministic. This last result is of considerable practical value as it makes later verification proofs significantly easier. In our chapter of results about statements, we prove a series of derived rules that provide C with Floyd-Hoare style "axiomatic" rules for verifying properties of programs. These rules are consequences of the original semantics, not independently stated axioms, so we can be sure of their soundness. This chapter also proves the correctness of an automatic tool for constructing post-conditions for loops with break and return statements. Finally, we perform some simple verification case studies, going some way towards demonstrating practical utility for the semantics and accompanying tools. This technical report is substantially the same as the PhD thesis I submitted in August 1998. The minor differences between that document and this are principally improvements suggested by my examiners Andy Gordon and Tom Melham, whom I thank for their help and careful reading.


Lignin is a polyphenolic heteropolymer constituting between 18 to 35% of lignocellulose and is recognized as preventative of cellulosic biofuel commercialization. Paenibacillus polymyxa CR1 was isolated from naturally degrading corn stover and shown to produce alcohols using lignin as a sole carbon source. Genome sequencing and comparative genomics of P. polymyxa CR1 identified two homologs, a Dyp-type peroxidase and a laccase, which have previously been implicated in lignin metabolism in other bacteria. Knockout mutants of the identified genes displayed no growth deficiency and P. polymyxa CR1 is incapable of metabolizing common aromatic intermediates of lignin, suggesting the bacterium employs a novel catabolic pathway. To identify genes involved in lignin metabolism, a transposon library was generated and screened for abnormal lignin growth phenotypes. The results contained within will help elucidate the genetic basis of known functions helping delineate regulatory pathways and metabolic versatility in P. polymyxa relevant to lignin metabolism.


This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the economic, legal and public policy rationales for the application of taxes and other fiscal measures on health-related commodities. The motivation for such taxes has been more often linked to the fiscal revenues generated than to their potential public health benefits. However, especially in more recent times, an increased emphasis has been placed on the latter by many governments, as evidence emerged of the adverse public health, social and economic consequences of the consumption of certain commodities. An increasing number of governments are seeking to expand their use of fiscal measures to promote healthier behaviours, not only by increasing tax rates on commodities such as tobacco products and alcoholic beverages, but also by exploring the scope for taxing selected foods and non-alcoholic beverages as a way to make people's diets healthier. A number of countries apply different tax rates to certain food categories, and some have specific taxes on foods high in salt, sugar or fat, and on sugary drinks. Only in the past two years, countries such as Denmark, Hungary, Finland and France introduced taxes on various foods and non-alcoholic beverages, and many more have been debating the possible use of similar measures. The key public health rationale for the use of taxes on health-related commodities lies in their ability to change people's consumption behaviours. Additional health benefits may derive from the role possibly played by taxes as incentives to product reformulation. For instance, in 2012, many beer producers in the United Kingdom decreased the alcohol content of their brands sold in the United Kingdom by 0.2% to avoid an increase in duties. As with other attempts to use taxes to prevent some adverse outcome (e.g. environmental taxes), a key issue becomes the proximity of the tax point to the behaviour being targeted. The closer is the tax point to the behaviour, then (other things being equal) the more likely is the tax to have a beneficial impact. Excises introduced for public health purposes illustrate the dilemma clearly. Although for administrative reasons the tax may be levied earlier in the supply chain, the tax point is generally the purchase of the product by a consumer. Tobacco is always harmful, in whatever way and quantity it is consumed (although the harm will be even greater in an environment which results in secondary smoking). The relationship is less strong with alcohol, because the quantity consumed and the manner in which it is consumed (e.g. regular vs. binge drinking) determines the harm which may be caused. This relationship is even looser with diet-related taxes. This does not mean that taxation is an inappropriate instrument, but rather that, in addition to the harms discouraged by the tax, the welfare of a broader group of consumers will be affected.


In games with incomplete information, conventional hierarchies of belief are incomplete as descriptions of the players' information for the purposes of determining a player's behavior. We show by example that this is true for a variety of solution concepts. We then investigate what is essential about a player's information to identify behavior. We specialize to two player games and the solution concept of interim rationalizability. We construct the universal type space for rationalizability and characterize the types in terms of their beliefs. Infinite hierarchies of beliefs over conditional beliefs , which we call Delta-hierarchies, are what turn out to matter. We show that any two types in any two type spaces have the same rationalizable sets in all games if and only if they have the same Delta-hierarchies.


One of the fundamental goals of behavioural ecology is to understand the evolution of mating systems and determine how they influence the formation, structure and stability of animal societies. Monogamous mating systems are particularly challenging to understand, since one sex generally has a higher potential reproductive rate than the other and should therefore be selected to mate multiply. In addition, monogamous mating systems often occur within the context of social groups. The presence of other group members and hence potential mates makes the evolution of monogamy even more perplexing, since an individual's immediate opportunities for polygamy are greatly enhanced. Monogamy within the context of social groups also poses problems for understanding why other group members tolerate group-living, given that they are excluded from reproduction, and how conflict over reproduction between group members is resolved if groups are to be stable. In this thesis, I investigated the ecological determinants of the evolution of monogamy and its consequences for the formation, structure and stability of social groups in a coral-dwelling goby, Paragobiodon xanthosomus (Gobiidae).

In chapter 2, I quantified the social structure of natural groups and determined the mating system of P. xanthosomus. Regardless of group size, groups consisted of one mature male and female plus several smaller immature females that were organised into a size-based dominance hierarchy. Observations of breeding behaviour confirmed that P. xanthosomus exhibits a monogamous mating system in which only the mature male and female breed at the expense of the other female group members. To address the evolution of monogamy despite the immediate availability of multiple females within groups, I used field and aquarium experiments to test whether competition between females over limiting nest sites, food or paternal care constrained males to monogamy. Supplemental feeding increased the fecundity of breeding females, suggesting that food is a limited resource for reproduction. Supplemental feeding did not however result in the maturation of other female group members. This suggests that monogamy has evolved because dominant females suppress the reproduction of subordinate females because they are competitors for limited food. Finally, males in pairs that received supplemental food exhibited a diminishing ability to care for enlarged clutches laid by similarly-sized breeding females. This suggests that constraints on paternal care provide additional benefits for females from maintaining a monogamous mating system.

In chapter 3, I investigated the consequences of the monogamous mating system on the maintenance of group-living in P. xanthosomus. Specifically, I applied cooperative breeding theory to determine the factors promoting group-living by non-breeding subordinates given that they obtain no current reproduction within groups due to the monogamous mating system. Using field and aquarium experiments in which coral saturation, costs of movement between corals and the size of available corals was manipulated, I demonstrated that non-breeding group members tolerate group-living because of high costs of movement and benefits from inheriting a territory of high quality. In contrast, coral saturation and position in the hierarchy appeared to have no effect on the occurrence of subordinate dispersal.

In chapter 4, I investigated the mechanisms involved in resolving conflict over rank between group members, and thus promoting the stability social groups given the unequal distribution of reproduction between group members due to the monogamous mating system. Specifically, I tested whether the combination of punishment by dominants in the form of eviction from the group, and cooperation by subordinates in the form of growth regulation had evolved as a means of conflict resolution. Firstly, I conducted a removal experiment in the field and showed that non-breeding subordinate group members form size-based queues in which they wait to inherit dominant breeding status. Conflict over reproduction should be particularly intense in queues since subordinates gain no reproduction while they wait and face the prospect of dying before inheriting a breeding position. Detailed quantification of size ratios between individuals of adjacent rank in groups revealed a prevalence of a specific size ratio between individuals, and analysis of individual growth rates in the field demonstrated that the specific size ratio is maintained over time via the regulation of subordinate growth rates. Staged contest experiments in aquaria between individuals of adjacent rank revealed that the specific size ratio represents a threshold above which subordinates can evict their immediate dominant from the group, but are much more likely to be evicted by their immediate dominant themselves. This suggest that threshold size ratios are being maintained by subordinates as a form of cooperation whereby they avoid becoming a threat to their immediate dominants, and that such cooperation arises in response to the threat of punishment by dominants. Societies in P. xanthosomus are therefore being stabilised as a result of punishment and cooperation acting in concert to promote the resolution of conflict over rank between group members.

Finally in chapter 5, I used a supplemental feeding and removal experiments to explicitly test whether: (1) disproportional acquisition of food resources as a result of differential competitive ability contributed to the maintenance of size differences between individuals within size-based queues, and (2) subordinates are capable of regulating their own growth to avoid inflicting costs on dominants. Supplemental feeding resulted in elevated growth rates of subordinates in both the presence and absence of the breeding female, suggesting that food limitation on subordinates due to competitive exclusion by dominants promotes the maintenance of size differences within size-based queues. Feeding of rank 4 subordinates resulted in some restraining their own growth by reducing their food intake, demonstrating that subordinates are capable of regulating their own growth to avoid breaching the threshold size ratio. The remaining rank 4 subordinates grew in breach of the threshold size ratio and were consequently evicted from the group, suggesting that food availability may also influence the stability of queues. Taken together, both competition over food and subordinate growth restraint in response to the threat of eviction appear to be important in regulating subordinate growth rates and in maintaining well-defined size differences within size-based queues, although social regulation is likely to be the primary factor ensuring the stability of P. xanthosomus societies over time.

In summary, this thesis represents a quantitative and systematic investigation into the mechanisms responsible for, and the links between, the evolution and maintenance of monogamy, social groups, and conflict resolution in a monogamous, group-living fish. In so doing, it provides a comprehensive picture of the mechanisms underlying the formation, structure and stability P. xanthosomus societies, and contributes to a greater understanding of the processes governing the evolution and maintenance of animal societies in general.


Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni) provide important recreational, ecological, and economic benefits, but can also cause substantial damage to agricultural crops. Cervid damage to agriculture creates challenges for wildlife agencies responsible for minimizing crop depredation while maintaining healthy deer and elk populations. Sunflower producers in southwestern Colorado, USA, have experienced high deer and elk damage and were interested in temporary methods to reduce damage that were cost-effective for rotational crops. To address this challenge, we investigated 3 temporary, non-lethal exclusion and repellent techniques for reducing deer and elk damage to sunflowers: 1) a polyrope electric fence, 2) the chemical repellent Plantskydd TM , and 3) a winged fence. During July through October 2011 and 2012, we used a randomized block design to test the efficacy of these techniques by quantifying cervid damage to sunflowers and the number of deer and elk tracks traversing treatmentandcontrolplotboundaries. Usinggeneralized linearmixed modelswefoundthatpolyropeelectric fences reduced deer and elk damage and presence within plots, while the repellent and winged fences did not reduce ungulate activity. Polyrope electric fences may be a suitable tool in areas where wildlife management agencies want to maintain deer and elk populations but reduce seasonal damage by cervids to high-value crops. In Colorado, use of an effective exclusion technique such as polyrope electric fence could also decrease the need for lethal depredation permits and damage compensation payments, and increase satisfaction among producers and thepublic.Published 2014. This articleisa U.S.Government work andisin thepublic domain in the USA.


Exceptional longitudinal exposure through an ignimbrite sheet on the southern flanks of Las Canadas volcano, Tenerife, Canary Islands, reveals a giant regressive bed form, >520 m long. It comprises sourceward-dipping diffuse lenses, ∼50 m long, of massive and diffuse-bedded lapilli tuff. Its architectural relationships indicate that at any one moment in time, deposition was restricted to an ∼50-m-long longitudinal depositional zone, bounded both upslope and downslope by extensive bypassing zones. The regressive architecture shows that the zone of deposition gradually migrated sourceward as the current passed. Nonpersistent scours indicate that the current was locally and momentarily erosive, although at many locations there is little evidence for substantial erosion or deposition, and most of the pyroclastic load seems to have entirely bypassed subaerial slopes to enter the Atlantic Ocean, ∼20 km from the source. The ignimbrite is diachronous, and any single vertical section through it represents only a short phase of the current9s protracted depositional history. Similarly protracted and complex flow histories elsewhere may be easily overlooked at typical field exposures of ignimbrites, turbidites, and lahar deposits, leading to significantly underestimated flow durations and volumes.


Abstract A novel stacked combline antenna was fabricated for driving plasma current in order to control the rotational transform profile in the Large Helical Device. The antenna has ten elements facilitating excitation of fast-wave traveling in the toroidal direction. Each antenna element has an electrical length of a half-wavelength and is supported at the midpoint from the back plate by a metallic block. Such an antenna has two modes: even and odd. A mixed excitation of these modes will reduce the current drive efficiency. The electrical properties of this antenna were studied in an attempt to find ways of exciting a traveling wave of pure even mode. A matching section was used in combination and proved to be a good measure to improve the directionality over that of a bare combline antenna. It is confirmed in this paper that the fabricated real antenna has fairly good even-mode purity keeping the odd-mode intensity at a tolerable level. An antenna with insulating supports instead of the metallic supports is also examined, and it is found that even-mode purity is further improved. For practical uses, an entire system including impedance matching and power circulation is proposed, and sensitivity to a change in plasma loading is analyzed. Finally, the power-handling capability is discussed including estimations of plasma loading and driven current reaching an assertion of consistency with the experimental goal.


Bearing estimation algorithms obtain only a small number of direction of arrivals (DOAs) within the entire angle domain, when the sources are spatially sparse. Hence, we propose a method to specifically exploit this spatial sparsity property. The method uses a very small number of measurements in the form of random projections of the sensor data along with one full waveform recording at one of the sensors. A basis pursuit strategy is used to formulate the problem by representing the measurements in an over complete dictionary. Sparsity is enforced by ℓ1-norm minimization which leads to a convex optimization problem that can be efficiently solved with a linear program. This formulation is very effective for decreasing communication loads in multi sensor systems. The algorithm provides increased bearing resolution and is applicable for both narrowband and wideband signals. Sensors positions must be known, but the array shape can be arbitrary. Simulations and field data results are provided to demonstrate the performance and advantages of the proposed method.


In the last 5 years, the demand for new goods has increased dramatically with the consumer products business seeing large gains in online sales and still some growth in brick and mortar stores. These types of manufactured products target different customer purchasing behaviours in areas of convenience, shopping, specialty and unsought goods.

Thus, this upward trend in consumer products continues as competition expands globally, emphasis on strategies for innovation gain momentum and there is an ever-increasing focus on customer engagement. At the same time, big business has had an impact on stifling start-ups with expansive market power, widening regulation and an escalated concentration in major industries leading to big companies being able to block new competitors easily. Nevertheless, there is still a need for entrepreneurial new businesses, like start-ups, to help spur/sustain job creation and provide global market competition especially with new products to aid in economic growth. These types of companies have extreme uncertainty which is reflected in the nearly 95% failure rate of start-ups globally. Typically market fit, product/customer value and ineffective product implementation are among the top contributing NPD failure factors.

This paper presents the results of a 4-month study from an entrepreneurial simulation to develop new consumer products with groups of university students (up to prototype stage). Students used some of the significant methods in innovation/new product creation that are prevalent in big business as guides. Some form of these creative strategies from Stage-Gate, Design Thinking and Lean Startup are used in most medium to large size established businesses. Studies with university students have shown to be quite useful in simulating/solving real-world problems. In general, students at universities have access to cutting-edge technology, time to explore and are surrounded by individuals from different disciplines and perspectives similar to what they will face in the real world. They also share some of the traits of start-ups by many having high-risk tolerance, ambition and intelligence to try something new.

The goal of this exercise initially was to evaluate whether the high degree of uncertainty in a start-up environment would be impacted using either the more rigid linear process practices (derived from Stage Gate) or more flexible iterative process practices (from Design Thinking / Lean Startup). These formalized processes typically occur in the more stable New Product Development (NPD) environments of medium to large size established businesses. Some of the specific research outcomes include: comparisons with time spent developing the product, customer concept acceptance and the amount of data related to costs (i.e. development costs, projected ROI). These can be indicators of product success. Nevertheless, other factors became apparent during the simulation and the findings suggest that further research opportunities around innovation methods and start-up success rates should be pursued.


On December 14, 1944, twelve hundred people were watching a matinee performance of Buffalo Bill (starring William Wellman and Maureen O'Hara) in the Rex movie theatre in Antwerp, when a V-2 came down and killed 567 of them. This historical event inspired Thomas Pynchon to write the final episode of Gravity's Rainbow, except of course that he seems to keep what has by that time changed into the Bomb forever suspended instead of letting it come down on the Orpheus theatre in L.A. Interestingly, the proper noun "Rex" appears on page 546 of the novel in connection with Antwerp, not as the name of the movie theatre–which was in fact derived from a Parisian model–but rather as that of the Belgian Fascist party led by Leon Degrelle. Toward the end of the Antwerp paragraph on 546, Katje says that her little brother, Louis, had joined Rex, which she describes with a quotation as "the realm of total souls." The signifier "Rex" brims with hermeneutic possibilities: one could develop the link in GR between movies and Fascism, and thus see the Antwerp paragraph as a slightly veiled confirmation of Siegfried Kracauer's fundamental importance for the novel; or one could interpret the absence of the signifier's cinematic meaning from the Antwerp paragraph as the foreboding–for those who know Antwerp, and to be activated at the beginning of the final episode–of a potential apocalypse.


Surface and interface acoustic waves are two-dimensionally guided waves, as their displacement field is plane-wave like regarding its dependence on the spatial coordinates parallel to the guiding plane, while it decays exponentially along the axis normal to that plane. When propagating at the planar surface or interface of homogeneous media, they are non-dispersive. Another type of non-dispersive acoustic waves which is, however, one-dimensionally guided, has displacement fields localized near the apex of a wedge made of an elastic material. In this short review, their propagation properties are described as well as theoretical and experimental methods which have been used for their analysis. Experimental findings are discussed in comparison with corresponding theoretical work and potential applications of this fascinating type of acoustic waves are presented.


Special-purpose constraint propagation algorithms (such as those for the element constraint) frequently make implicit use of short supports - by examining a subset of the variables, they can infer support for all other variables and values and save substantial work. However, to date general purpose propagation algorithms (such as GAC-Schema) rely upon supports involving all variables. We demonstrate how to employ short supports in a new general purpose propagation algorithm called SHORTGAC. This works when provided with either an explicit list of allowed short tuples, or a function to calculate the next supporting short tuple. Empirical analyses demonstrate the efficiency of SHORTGAC compared to other general-purpose propagation algorithms. In some cases SHORTGAC even exhibits similar performance to special-purpose propagators.


Clinical and experimental data have implicated the posterior superior temporal gyrus as an important cortical region in the processing of socially relevant stimuli such as gaze following, eye direction, and head orientation. Gaze following and responding to different socio-communicative signals is an important and highly adaptive skill in primates, including humans. Here, we examined whether individual differences in responding to socio-communicative cues was associated with variation in either gray matter (GM) volume and asymmetry in a sample of chimpanzees. Magnetic resonance image scans and behavioral data on receptive joint attention (RJA) was obtained from a sample of 191 chimpanzees. We found that chimpanzees that performed poorly on the RJA task had less GM in the right compared to left hemisphere in the posterior but not anterior superior temporal gyrus. We further found that middle-aged and elderly chimpanzee performed more poorly on the RJA task and had significantly less GM than young-adult and sub-adult chimpanzees. The results are consistent with previous studies implicating the posterior temporal gyrus in the processing of socially relevant information.


Rules have a number of desirable properties. It is easy to understand, infer new knowledge, and communicate with other inference systems. One weakness of the previous rule induction systems is that they only find rules within a knowledge base (KB) and therefore cannot generalize to more open and complex real-world rules. Recently, the language model (LM)-based rule generation are proposed to enhance the expressive power of the rules. In this paper, we revisit the differences between KB-based rule induction and LM-based rule generation. We argue that, while KB-based methods inducted rules by discovering data commonalities, the current LM-based methods are"learning rules from rules". This limits these methods to only produce"canned"rules whose patterns are constrained by the annotated rules, while discarding the rich expressive power of LMs for free text. Therefore, in this paper, we propose the open rule induction problem, which aims to induce open rules utilizing the knowledge in LMs. Besides, we propose the Orion (\underline{o}pen \underline{r}ule \underline{i}nducti\underline{on}) system to automatically mine open rules from LMs without supervision of annotated rules. We conducted extensive experiments to verify the quality and quantity of the inducted open rules. Surprisingly, when applying the open rules in downstream tasks (i.e. relation extraction), these automatically inducted rules even outperformed the manually annotated rules.


Reliable uncertainty quantification is a first step towards building explainable, transparent, and accountable artificial intelligent systems. Recent progress in Bayesian deep learning has made such quantification realizable. In this paper, we propose novel methods to study the benefits of characterizing model and data uncertainties for natural language processing (NLP) tasks. With empirical experiments on sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, and language modeling using convolutional and recurrent neural network models, we show that explicitly modeling uncertainties is not only necessary to measure output confidence levels, but also useful at enhancing model performances in various NLP tasks.


One might assume information systems (IS) are developed so systems enhance the user experience and facilitate a satisfying, productive interaction. From prior research, the authors established this assumption was not safe and certain design features amongst some online retailers were atypical of 'good' design elsewhere. It was apparent the transactional process was being used to present consumers with optional extras (and other decisions) that not only slowed the process down, but also stressed and agitated users. The research identified some new and unusual decision constructs such as the 'must-opt'. The objective of the research presented herein is two-fold: to make an incremental contribution in first theorizing and then identifying and categorizing into a taxonomy some new decision constructs alongside established ones encountered throughout on-line Business-to-Consumer (B2C) transactional processes followed by a preliminary study confirming their existence.


This article sets out an optimum synthesis methodology for wheel profiles of railway vehicles in order to secure good dynamic behaviour with different track configurations. Specifically, the optimisation process has been applied to the case of rail wheelsets mounted on double-gauge bogies that move over two different gauges, which also have different types of rail: the Iberian gauge (1668 mm) and the International Union of Railways (UIC) gauge (1435 mm). Optimisation is performed using Genetic Algorithms and traditional optimisation methods in a complementary way. The objective function used is based on an ideal equivalent conicity curve which ensures good stability on straight sections and also proper negotiation of curves. To this end, the curve is constructed in such a way that it is constant with a low value for small lateral wheelset displacements (with regard to stability), and increases as the displacements increase (to facilitate negotiation of curved sections). Using this kind of ideal conicity curve also enables a wheel profile to be secured where the contact points have a larger distribution over the active contact areas, making wear more homogeneous and reducing stresses. The result is a wheel profile with a conicity that is closer to the target conicity for both gauges studied, producing better curve negotiation while maintaining good stability on straight sections of track. The article shows the resultant wheel profile, the contact curves it produces, and a number of dynamic analyses demonstrating better dynamic behaviour of the synthesised wheel on curved sections with respect to the original wheel.


I describe two new species of microhylid frogs from the mountains of the central cordillera of western Papua New Guinea. One of these is in the arboreal genus Oreophryne; the other is in the fossorial genus Xenorhina. The Oreophryne is one of the largest members of the genus and is characterized by a ligamentous connection of the procoracoid to the scapula, webbing between the toes, fifth toe equal in length to the third, and a relatively short leg, wide head, long and narrow snout, and small finger discs. The Xenorhina species is among the smallest species of the genus and is distinguished by having a single odontoid spike, discs with circum-marginal grooves on all toes but the first, inflated lores, and a relatively long leg, short and broad head and snout, and features of color pattern. The Oreophryne is known from two localities approximately 30 km apart, and the Xenorhina is known only from its type locality. Both occur in the high mountains of Western Province, Papua New Guinea.


Objectives: This is the first of a pair of studies designed to assess efficacy, safety and tolerability of onabotulinumtoxinA (BOTOX®) as headache prophylaxis in adults with chronic migraine. Methods: The Phase III REsearch Evaluating Migraine Prophylaxis Therapy 1 (PREEMPT 1) is a phase 3 study, with a 24-week, double-blind, parallel-group, placebo-controlled phase followed by a 32-week, open-label phase. Subjects were randomized (1:1) to injections every 12 weeks of onabotulinumtoxinA (155 U–195 U; n = 341) or placebo (n = 338) (two cycles). The primary endpoint was mean change from baseline in headache episode frequency at week 24. Results: No significant between-group difference for onabotulinumtoxinA versus placebo was observed for the primary endpoint, headache episodes (−5.2 vs. −5.3; p = 0.344). Large within-group decreases from baseline were observed for all efficacy variables. Significant between-group differences for onabotulinumtoxinA were observed for the secondary endpoints, headache days (p = .006) and migraine days (p = 0.002). OnabotulinumtoxinA was safe and well tolerated, with few treatment-related adverse events. Few subjects discontinued due to adverse events. Conclusions: There was no between-group difference for the primary endpoint, headache episodes. However, significant reductions from baseline were observed for onabotulinumtoxinA for headache and migraine days, cumulative hours of headache on headache days and frequency of moderate/severe headache days, which in turn reduced the burden of illness in adults with disabling chronic migraine.


This report describes the design, modeling, and testing of two portable timber bridges, each consisting of two non-interconnected longitudinal glued-laminated timber (glulam) deck panel modules 1.8 m (6 ft) wide. One bridge is 12.2 m (40 ft) long while the other bridge is 10.7 m (35 ft) long. The modules are fabricated in a double-tee cross section. Before fabrication of the modules, researchers collected information on modulus of elasticity of each lumber lamination. After the bridge modules were fabricated, static bending tests were conducted at the laminating plant. During those static bending tests, the bridge modules exhibited linear elastic behavior. When actual lumber property data were used in transformed section and finite element models, the models overpredicted the stiffness of the bridge panels. The transformed section results provided the best agreement with test results. During a subsequent monitoring program, the bridges performed well overall; although some damage occurred to the bridge modules during their removal. The bridges appear to be cost effective alternatives for temporary stream crossing applications. Further work may be needed to determine if this design concept is applicable for permanent bridge applications.


Correlated photon imaging, popularly known as ghost imaging, is a technique whereby an image is formed from light that has never interacted with the object. In ghost imaging experiments, two correlated light fields are produced. One of these fields illuminates the object, and the other field is measured by a spatially resolving detector. In the quantum regime, these correlated light fields are produced by entangled photons created by spontaneous parametric down-conversion. To date, all correlated photon ghost imaging experiments have scanned a single-pixel detector through the field of view to obtain spatial information. However, scanning leads to poor sampling efficiency, which scales inversely with the number of pixels, N, in the image. In this work, we overcome this limitation by using a time-gated camera to record the single-photon events across the full scene. We obtain high-contrast images, 90%, in either the image plane or the far field of the photon pair source, taking advantage of the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen-like correlations in position and momentum of the photon pairs. Our images contain a large number of modes, >500, creating opportunities in low-light-level imaging and in quantum information processing.


1 . Aspects of the histology, ultrastructure and electrophysiology of the trout cerebellum have been studied in order to determine if the intracerebellar organization was similar to that in mammals. An attempt has also been made to elucidate the kind of information carried in the visual afferents to the cerebellum. 2. Histological and ultrastructural studies have revealed that the three cellular layers (molecular, granule-cell and Purkinje-cell layers), the five types of neurones {granule, Purkinje, Golgi, basket and stellate cells) and the two afferent fibres (mossy and climbing) found in mammalian cerebellum are also present in the trout. The basic synaptic connections seen in all vertebrates, viz. climbing fibre to Purkinje cell and mossy fibre to granule cell, were identified. Granule cell axons ascend to the molecular layer where they bifurcate to form parallel fibres which synapse with Purkinje cells. Granule cells have been seen to make synaptic contact with Golgi, basket and stellate cells. Evidence has also been obtained for feedback of Golgi onto granule neurones and both basket and stellate onto Purkinje cells, as occurs in the mammalian cerebellum. Structural differences between the trout and mammalian cerebella include fewer molecular layer interneurones, particularly basket cells, and the absence of any true 1 basket 1 formation around Purkinje cell bodies. 3. Electrophysiological studies in the trout cerebellar corpus revealed many units with responses similar to those of mammalian Purkinje cells. These presumed Purkinje neurones responded to electrical stimulation of the spinal cord (mossy and climbing afferents) or of the cerebellar surface {parallel fibres) with one or several spikes, followed by a period of depression. A surface conditioning stimulus reduced the excitation of single Purkinje neurones by subsequent surface test-stimuli, and depressed the amplitude of the Purkinje cell field potential. Units with responses similar to those of mammalian inhibitory interneurones were recorded from the trout molecular layer. The depression of Purkinje cell activity for both stimulus situations described above is therefore considered to be a consequence of active inhibition of the Purkinje cells by the molecular layer interneurones. Periods of depression occurring in the responses of presumed granule cells and interneurones recorded in the granule cell layer are interpreted as indirect evidence for Golgi inhibition of granule cell activity. It has been concluded from the electrophysiological and ultrastructural data in the trout that Purkinje cells and probably also granule cells are under the control of inhibitory interneurones and that the functional organization of trout cerebellar neurones is similar to that of mammalian cerebella. A major electrophysiological difference between trout and mammalian cerebellum concerns the Purkinje cell giant spike, which is recorded from the Purkinje cell main dendrite rather than soma, and is generated by climbing fibre but not parallel fibre activity. Preliminary studies of visual responses of single cerebellar units suggest that the mossy fibre pathway in the trout may be encoding simple properties of the visual environment, while the climbing fibre system may be concerned with more complex aspects.


PIP: In 1990, the annual population growth rate in Kenya was 3.8%, among the highest rates world wide. The ever growing adolescent fertility rate (111-152/1000 from 1969-1989) contributed to this rapid growth. Further repeat pregnancies among adolescents remained high in the 1980's and ranged from 20%-28.6%, depending on the survey. Even though overall prevalence of pregnancy fell 15.4% between 1978-1984, it remained the same for the 15-19 year old group. Teenage births have made up at least 35% of total deliveries. 1985 data revealed that even though adolescents represent 11-35% of the total obstetric population, problems ranked high among them: 38% of all eclampsia cases and high maternal mortality (102/100,000 vs. 57/100,000 older mothers). Studies showed that adolescents are sexually active, are ignorant about contraception, and do not use contraception. Yet contraceptive and family planning services are free in Kenya. Nevertheless the teenagers are at high risk of an unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and AIDS. In the early 1980s, Kenyatta National Hospital reported 53% of 74.1% of septic abortion cases being single women were between 14-20 years old. Similar results emerged from other studies. Health professionals believed these results to be underestimated, however. In the 1980s, 33% of all adolescents between 13-15 years old in a rural area had gonorrhea. In Kenyatta, 36% of pregnant 15-24 year olds had at least 1 STD while,e only 16% of those 24 years old did. Further, teenagers are especially vulnerable to psychological problems when they 1st learn of their pregnancy. Health services should be geared to meet the specific needs of adolescents, such as contraception education and antenatal services. PMID: 12316815 [PubMed indexed for MEDLINE]


Understanding the demographics of app users is crucial, for example, for app developers, who wish to target their advertisements more effectively. Our work addresses this need by studying the predictability of user demographics based on the list of a user's apps which is readily available to many app developers. We extend previous work on the problem on three frontiers: (1) We predict new demographics (age, race, and income) and analyze the most informative apps for four demographic attributes included in our analysis. The most predictable attribute is gender (82.3 % accuracy), whereas the hardest to predict is income (60.3 % accuracy). (2) We compare several dimensionality reduction methods for high-dimensional app data, finding out that an unsupervised method yields superior results compared to aggregating the apps at the app category level, but the best results are obtained simply by the raw list of apps. (3) We look into the effect of the training set size and the number of apps on the predictability and show that both of these factors have a large impact on the prediction accuracy. The predictability increases, or in other words, a user's privacy decreases, the more apps the user has used, but somewhat surprisingly, after 100 apps, the prediction accuracy starts to decrease.


Social media have been central in informing people about the COVID-19 pandemic. They influence the ways in which information is perceived, communicated and shared online, especially with physical distancing measures in place. While these technologies have given people the opportunity to contribute to public discussions about COVID-19, the narratives disseminated on social media have also been characterised by uncertainty, disagreement, false and misleading advice. Global technology companies have responded to these concerns by introducing new content moderation policies based on the concept of harm to tackle the spread of misinformation and disinformation online. In this essay, we examine some of the key challenges in implementing these policies in real time and at scale, calling for more transparent and nuanced content moderation strategies to increase public trust and the quality of information about the pandemic consumed online.


Creatio ex nihilo is a foundational doctrine in the Abrahamic faiths. It states that God created the world freely out of nothing – from no pre-existent matter, space or time. This teaching is central to classical accounts of divine action, free will, grace, theodicy, religious language, intercessory prayer and questions of divine eternity and, as such, the foundation of a scriptural God but also the transcendent Creator of all that is. This edited collection explores how we might now recover a place for this doctrine and, with it, a consistent elucidation of the God of Abraham in philosophical, scientific and theological terms. The contributions span the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and cover a wide range of sources, including historical, philosophical, scientific and theological. As such, the book develops these perspectives to reveal the relevance of this idea within the modern world.


In a much cited 2008 article, Per Pettersson-Lidbom uses regression discontinuity to test for Swedish party effects on economic policies such as municipal taxation, spending and employment. We reassess the issue using the same estimator as Pettersson-Lidbom but new data on all factual coalitions, including minority coalitions as well as those previously deemed as undefined on a left and right wing political scale (constituting about 20 percent of the sample used in Pettersson-Lidbom's study). This makes it possible to remove a systematic bias against centre-right coalitions in Pettersson-Lidbom's study. We find that a majority of the previous findings stand, with sometimes even slightly stronger effects, but not as regards the proportional income tax rate and number of government employees per capita. Parties seem to matter for economic outcomes, but not always, and some parties more than others.


What are cancer patients' perceptions of adjuvant chemotherapy?

Ethnography.

Cancer treatment centre in western Canada.

30 patients with colon or rectal cancer who were regular, irregular, or 1-time participants in a support group.

Field notes were recorded after participant observation at monthly support group meetings lasting 1.5 hours and events, including a full-day retreat and a colorectal cancer forum. The support group was open to patients, caregivers, supporters, and occasional observers. In-depth semistructured interviews were also conducted with 8 participants, with questions probing topics related to cancer diagnosis, treatments, and the support group. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim; both data sets were analysed for themes.

Side effects of chemotherapy . Many patients had ongoing side effects after active chemotherapy, including chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, whereas some patients had only a few side effects. A dominant idea expressed in the support groups was the belief that for chemotherapy to be effective, it had to "hurt" or "cause side effects." When …


A qualitative case study of critical consideration for the SMT in developing inclusive
schools is reported in this study. The study was conducted in one rural district in the
south coast area in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The aim of the study was to
determine the SMT's understanding of inclusive education and to establish what they
consider as important in ensuring that their schools are inclusive. Lastly, it sought to
identify the challenges that they faced in making their school inclusive. This was a single
case study.
The study targeted 5 SMT members who were involved in a focus group interview. Data
analysis in the study influenced by systems theory. The two concepts defined are
inclusive education and school management teams. Both the theoretical framework and
the theory were used as lenses to understand the critical considerations for the SMTs in
developing inclusive schools.
The findings gathered from the study indicate that the SMT had very limited and often
distorted understanding of the policy of inclusive education. It was also clear that they are
not sure of what they consider critical for them as the SMT in the process of developing
inclusive schools. At the same time they were able to indicate many challenges that they
are faced with in their school. The findings suggest that this might be lack or
inappropriate training on inclusive education as well as misunderstandings on inclusive
strategies.
The study concludes that the introduction of policy processes that requires
implementation should ensure that all stakeholders involved are brought on board. It is
important to get buy in from other educators to embrace diversity and understand the
purpose. The process of paradigm shift is difficult to individuals especially when there
are so many changes in the system, people tend to resist change.


A molecularly imprinted polymer was selectively applied for solid-phase extraction and diazinon residues enrichment before high-performance liquid chromatography. Diazinon was thermally copolymerized with Fe3 O4 @polyethyleneglycol nanoparticles, methacrylic acid (functional monomer), 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (co-monomer), and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (cross-linking monomer) in the presence of acetonitrile (porogen) and 2,2-azobisisobutyronitrile (initiator). Then, the imprinted diazinon was reproducibly eluted with methanol/acetic acid (9:1, v/v). The sorbent particles were characterized by X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. The comprehensive study of variables through experimental design showed that the maximum performance was achieved under these conditions: pH 7, 10 mL sample volume, 15 mg sorbent, 10 min vortex time, 5 min ultrasonic time, 200 μL methanol/acetic acid (9:1, v/v) as eluent, and 5 min desorption time. Under optimized conditions, the molecularly imprinted polymer solid-phase extraction method demonstrated a linear range (0.02-5 g/mL), a correlation coefficient of 0.997, and 0.005 g/mL detection limit.


Bias-temperature-stress (BTS) induced electrical instability of the RF sputter amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O (a-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) was investigated. Both positive and negative BTS were applied and found to primarily cause a positive and negative voltage shift in transfer (I DS-V GS) characteristics, respectively. The time evolution of bulk-state density (N BS) and characteristic temperature of the conduction-band-tail-states (TG) are extracted. Since both values showed only minor changes after BTS, the results imply that observed shift in TFT I DS-V GS curves were primarily due to channel charge injection/trapping rather than defect states creation. We also demonstrated the validity of using stretch-exponential equation to model both positive and negative BTS induced threshold voltage shift (DeltaV th) of the a-IGZO TFTs. Stress voltage and temperature dependence of DeltaV th evolution are described.


Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) contends that foods enhanced through biotechnology with recombinant DNA or rDNA-derived traits should not be labeled differently from other foods; however, it supports voluntary labeling when truthful and not misleading. This paper details criteria to ensure proper labeling, including defining and monitoring the use of avoidance terms such as "GMO-free" and addressing problems associated with applying threshold levels.


In this incisive collection of essays which appeared originally in The New Criterion, ten distinguished critics and observers examine the origins and prospects of liberalism, from its roots in thinkers such as Rousseau and Mill to its troubled legacy in twentieth-century pursuits, and its compromising effects in the moral and intellectual life of our culture. Its contributors include Roger Scruton, Keith Windschuttle, Hadley Arkes, Robert Conquest, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Robert Kagan, John Silber, John O'Sullivan, Hilton Kramer, and Roger Kimball. Genuinely provocative."-Kirkus Reviews.


G. Seyitođlu writes: Koçyigit et al. 1999 claim to present evidence for a short phase of N-S compression during the late Miocene to early Pliocene in western Turkey. They argue that this episode intervened betwen the main extensional phases responsible for the Gediz (Alaºehir) graben and hence for the host of related E-W grabens that comprise this exceptionally active region. Their evidence is that the Miocene-lower Pliocene Salihli group in the Gediz (Alaºehir) graben is folded, unlike the unconformably overlying Plio-Quaternary graben infill. I would like to point out that previously published work on the Selendi and Uºak-Güre basins, located immediately to the north of Gediz (Alaºehir) graben, contradicts the regional claim of Koçyiđit et al. 1999. The stratigraphy of these two basins is well established, on the basis of K-Ar (biotite and whole rock) isotopic ages and palynological studies. In the Selendi and Uºak-Güre basins, the lower-middle Miocene Ýnay group is nearly horizontal (Seyitođlu 1997; Seyitođlu et al. 1997; Seyitođlu & Benda 1998). The short phase of regional late Miocene-early Pliocene N-S compression invoked by Kocyiđit et al. 1999 fails to account for the essentially undeformed nature of the Ýnay group. I would also like to point out that Kocyiđit et al. 1999 have given insufficient acknowledgement to some of the earlier work in the region. For example, the Salihli group, and the Acidere, Göbekli and Asartepe formations, were described by Emre (1996) and it is not clear whetherKocyiđit et al. 1999 are using the earlier definitions of


From Earthwise Jump to navigation Jump to search This page is part of a category of pages providing a summary of the geology of the Andover district (British Geological Survey Sheet 283), which extends over approximately 600 km of north-west Hampshire and a small part of eastern Wiltshire. Links to other pages in this category can be found at the foot of the page. Authors: J Thompson, K A Lee, P M Hopson, A R Farrant, A J Newell, R J Marks, L B Bateson, M A Woods, I P Wilkinson and N J Smith.


This article questions whether the strict time limitations for taking the LSAT conflict with law school admissions committees' goals of measuring an applicant's aptitude and predicting who will be good law students or who will be good lawyers. Strictly timed tests, as gate keepers to the legal profession, emphasize test takers' speed, to the detriment of more valuable qualities such as perseverance, accuracy, and care. The article also questions whether the practice of flagging LSAT test scores of law school applicants with disabilities, is discriminatory. The practice of flagging LSAT scores of test takers with disabilities should end, as it has ended for most standardized tests, including the SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, and TOEFL. Flagging LSAT scores of test takers with disabilities stigmatizes law school applicants in the admissions process and is contrary to the goal of federal law in placing test takers with disabilities on equal footing by assessing their abilities, rather than their disabilities.


This study is about comparison of agro-based industry of Tharparkar and barrage area of Sindh, and eighth chapter of the thesis of Ph.D submitted in 2002. Demographic, social and economic conditions are compared with reference of primary and secondary data in detail. Purpose of the study was to give the complete picture of comparison so that valuable findings be drawn and recommendations made to policy maker for prosperity. On the completion of this comparative study it has been observed that: demographic condition shows that the growth of population is showing decreasing trend in 1998 as compared to the census of 1981, in both the areas of Thar and Barrage area. The Agro-based industries, in Barrage area of Sindh, are suitably developed. In this area irrigation is dependent on river Indus, but some times due to lack of rainfalls it suffers a little as happened during 1999-2000. But in terms of economy livestock in this area is constant due to availability of fodder. Thar lacks all these things. Tharparkar, with more rangeland, is much more suitable for livestock industry. Tharparkar requires further development of its livestock. Peoples need awareness about conservation of natural vegetation for their livestock.


Flexible polymeric pipe materials are commonly used as shower hoses or connections to faucets in the last meters of building plumbing, but these tend to leach high concentrations of carbon that encourage bacterial growth. Here we compared the microbiological impact of six such materials, with both a short-term material comparison test and a daily shower simulator operating for eight months. The materials ranked differently in the migration potential and biomass formation potential assays of the comparison test, but overall these results correlated (R2 > 0.77) with long-term biofilm development in the shower simulator. The biofilm concentration after eight months ranged from 2 × 106 cells per cm2 on the control material (PE-Xc) to 2 × 108 cells per cm2 on a typical shower hose (PVC-P). However, the differences in four of the six materials were much less pronounced after eight months than in the early months. The communities were characterized with 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing clustered with both material and time (R2 = 0.31; R2 = 0.25), and correlated strongly with the biofilm concentration (R2 > 0.74). A universal core consisting of 7 genera accounted for 44% of all sequences, and accounted for more of young and high-biomass biofilms. Genera containing opportunistic pathogens were more common in low-biomass pipes. We conclude that choice of materials is not only critical for determining biofilm concentration, but also community composition. Our results show that a seemingly small choice in plumbing material in the final meters of distribution can make a considerable difference in the building plumbing 'exposome'.


The opportunistic human pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus is able to produce the dark brown pigment pyomelanin by degradation of L-tyrosine. Pyomelanin was shown to protect the fungus against reactive oxygen intermediates as well as cell wall disturbing compounds and is therefore assumed to protect against immune effector cells during the infection process. Several genes for tyrosine degradation and pyomelanin formation are organized in a cluster in the genome of A. fumigatus. Here, we aimed at further analyzing tyrosine degradation and a possible role of pyomelanin in virulence. For this purpose, the function of two not yet characterized genes of the cluster, i.e., hmgX and hmgR, was analyzed. Generation of corresponding gene deletion mutants and reconstituted strains revealed that hmgX and hmgR are essential for tyrosine degradation. Both mutants, ΔhmgX and ΔhmgR, were not able to use tyrosine as sole carbon or nitrogen source and revealed impaired pyomelanin production. HmgR harbors a Zn(II)2Cys6-DNA binding domain. Analyses of the steady state mRNA levels revealed that HmgR acts as a transcriptional activator for the genes of the tyrosine degradation cluster. Consistently, an HmgR-eGFP fusion protein was localized in the nucleus of A. fumigatus cells. By contrast, HmgX was found to be localized in the cytoplasm and does not contribute to regulation of gene transcription. HPLC analyses showed that HmgX is crucial for the conversion of p-hydroxyphenylpyruvate to homogentisic acid, the main intermediate in pyomelanin formation. Thus, HmgX is supposed to function as an accessory factor to mediate specific activity of HppD. Remarkably, the ability to degrade tyrosine and to form pyomelanin is dispensable for virulence of A. fumigatus in a murine infection model.


Spreadsheets are widely used in education to save time and simulate many scenarios in many different disciplines. However, they are not usually employed to provide rich interactions in the class although they provide huge computational powers and relate data in different places. It is argued in this paper that spreadsheets could also be used as an empowering tool for making inferences in the class by enabling students to investigate an open-ended problem, to make discussions about the problem and to share their results by turning a spreadsheet into an empowering tool. Constructivist approach requires students make conjectures and test them through cognitive tools provided such as Dynamic geometry environments. User could be required to investigate an open-ended problem by the help of available macros or templates provided by the instructor in a spreadsheet. It not only motivates the user to participate in the class but also make them think about the problem at hand. Our approach is exemplified through macros prepared for a math class and divisibility features of binomial coefficients were investigated through spreadsheets in this paper.


To the Editor: Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) was first diagnosed in humans in 2012. Human-to-human transmission of MERS-CoV has been limited, and the transmission route is still unclear. On the basis of epidemiologic studies, involvement of an animal host has been suggested (1). Dromedary camels have been identified as a possible intermediate host on the basis of MERS-CoV antibodies and detection of MERS-CoV viral RNA in respiratory swab samples (1–3). Furthermore, MERS-CoV genome sequences obtained from dromedary camels clustered with MERS-CoV sequences obtained from humans linked to the same farm (2). Nonetheless, most persons with MERS-CoV did not report any direct contact with dromedary camels; therefore, how MERS-CoV zoonotic transmission occurs is unclear. MERS-CoV replicates in cell lines originating from a wide variety of different hosts, which suggests the potential for a broader reservoir species range then currently recognized (4). However, unlike in dromedary camels, no serologic evidence pointing toward MERS-CoV infection has been found in goats, sheep, and cows (1).

Contamination of dairy products has been associated with transmission of bacteria and viruses. Shedding of infectious tick-borne encephalitis virus in milk was detected after experimental infection of goats, and the consumption of raw milk has been associated with tick-borne encephalitis virus clusters (5). Similarly, cattle can be infected with foot-and-mouth disease through consumption of raw contaminated milk (6).

Here, we investigate the stability of MERS-CoV in dromedary camel milk, goat milk, and cow milk at different temperatures. MERS-CoV strain Jordan-N3/2012 was diluted in unpasteurized milk or nonsupplemented Dulbecco modified Eagle medium (DMEM, GIBCO, Grand Island, NY, USA) to a final median 50% tissue culture infectious dose of 105.5/mL. We placed 1-mL aliquots in screw-cap tubes (Sarstedt, Numbrecht, Germany) at either 4°C or 22°C and stored them at –80°C at 0, 8, 24, 48, and 72 hours post dilution (hpd) in quintuplicate. Infectious virus titers were determined by endpoint titration on Vero E6 cells in triplicate (7). When MERS-CoV was stored at 4°C, the geometric mean of infectious virus titers decreased over 72 hours; we found they decreased 37% (95% CI 0%–62%) in dromedary camel milk, 64% (95% CI 26%–82%) in goat milk, 56% (95% CI 0%–92%) in cow milk, and 80% (95% CI 70%–86%) in DMEM. At 0–72 hpd, virus titers decreased significantly only in goat milk (p = 0.0139, 1-tailed paired t test) and DMEM (p = 0.0311) but not in dromedary camel milk (p = 0.1414) or cow milk (p = 0.2895). Samples stored at 22°C showed a greater loss of infectivity than did samples stored at 4°C. Infectious virus titers decreased to <15% when samples were stored at 22°C for 48 hours (loss of 88% [95% CI 67%–96%] for dromedary camel milk, 99% [95% CI 98.6%–99.8%] for goat milk, 98% [95% CI 95%–99%] for cow milk, and 97% [95% CI 87%–99%] for DMEM). This decrease was significant by student 1-tailed paired t test analysis comparing t = 0 and t = 48 hpd (p<0.05). However, despite the reduction in virus titer, viable virus could still be recovered after 48 hours. Pasteurization of raw milk can prevent foodborne disease outbreaks caused by a variety of pathogens. We heat-treated dromedary camel, cow, goat milk, and DMEM samples for 30 min at 63°C, after which no infectious virus could be recovered (Figure).

Figure

Viability of MERS-CoV in unpasteurized milk. MERS-CoV strain Jordan-N3/2012 was diluted in milk or DMEM to a final TCID50 of 105.5/mL and stored at either 4°C (A) or 22°C (B). MERS-CoV titer was determined at 0, 8, 24, 48, and 72 hours ...

CoV survival has been studied in phosphate-buffered saline and minimal essential media and, like MERS-CoV, human coronaviruses–229E and -OC43 and severe acute respiratory syndrome–CoV were able to survive in suspension at room temperature for several days (8,9). Moreover, severe acute respiratory syndrome–CoV was completely inactivated after heat treatment at 60°C for 30 min (9).

Human-to-human transmission of MERS-CoV is inefficient, and the transmission route has not yet been revealed. The predominant detection of MERS-CoV by quantitative PCR in nasal swab samples suggests the virus causes upper respiratory tract infection in dromedary camels (3). Which route or combination of routes is responsible for its zoonotic transmission is unclear, and foodborne transmission should not be excluded. Residents of the Arabian Peninsula commonly drink unpasteurized milk. Our results show that MERS-CoV, when introduced into milk, can survive for prolonged periods. Further study is needed to determine whether MERS-CoV is excreted into the milk of infected dromedary camels and, if so, whether handling or consuming contaminated milk is associated with MERS-CoV infection. Recently Nipah virus was transmitted experimentally by drinking , which resulted in respiratory tract rather than intestinal tract infection (10). A similar transmission mechanism for MERS-CoV could result in contamination of the oral cavity and subsequent infection of the lower respiratory tract. Pasteurization of milk can prevent foodborne transmission (9). We showed that heat treatment decreased infectious MERS-CoV below the detection limit of our titration assay, and this might function as a relatively easy and cost-effective measure to prevent transmission.


The present work investigates thermodynamic optimum conditions with respect to resource utilization by varying the operating pressure of flash drum for an existing geothermal power plant. The main focus of the study is to maximize the power output by minimizing the waste of liquid geothermal fluid re-injected to the well. For this purpose a double-flash system has been incorporated and the effect of operating at optimum flash pressures for both primary and secondary flash units is studied. An economic model is developed that calculates the total capital investment based on the cost of major equipments including pumps, flash drums, turbine generators, and condensers. From the results obtained it can be concluded that the plant at Svartsengi currently is working close to the optimum flashing pressure for the single-flash geothermal power plant. Providing an additional flash unit to convert the high temperature liquid coming from primary flash for Svartsengi and Nevada power plants increases the net power output by 12.7% and 28.9% respectively.Copyright © 2005 by ASME


In this book, Alexander Beecroft explores how the earliest poetry in Greece (Homeric epic and lyric) and China (the Canon of Songs) evolved from being local, oral, and anonymous to being textualized, interpreted, and circulated over increasingly wider areas. Beecroft reexamines representations of authorship as found in poetic biographies such as the Lives of Homer and the Zuozhuan, and in the works of other philosophical and historical authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Confucius, and Sima Qian. Many of these anecdotes and narratives have long been rejected as spurious or motivated by naı̈ve biographical criticism. Beecroft argues that these texts effectively negotiated the tensions between local and pan-cultural audiences. The figure of the author thus served as a catalyst to a sense of shared cultural identity in both the Greek and Chinese worlds. It also facilitated the emergence of both cultures as the bases for cosmopolitan world orders.


Gold is a precious metal which is highly appreciated because of its prominent role in the world of investments, savings, and consumption. Although gold is no longer used as a primary form of currency in some countries, it continues to have a strong influence on the value of the currencies of those countries. Compared to all the other precious metals used for investment and trade, throughout history gold has always been preferred. The value of gold is a factor mentioned in the commodities and futures market. Vietnam does not produce/mine enough gold to meet its domestic requirements. As the country has to import over sixty percent of its gold, Vietnam's gold price is mostly influenced by the world price movements, in turn increasing or decreasing domestically. Therefore, understanding and addressing the factors resulting in gold price disparities is essential in policy adjustments to stabilize the price of gold and prevent speculation, which may cause economic destabilization as well as a loss of competitiveness in Vietnamese market for gold and other precious metals. The study includes monthly data collected between January 2006 and December 2015. Exchange rates, import tax, and seasonal factor data are included in the model as independent variables. According to the empirical findings, the foreign exchange rate had a negative impact on the disparity between Vietnamese gold price and the world price. The import tax has a positive effect on the discrepancies among gold prices, while the seasonal factor variable was not statistically significant at 5 percent and negative concerning the disparity of the gold price.


A 37 year old man presented with a sensation of weakness, irritability, and poor concentration. His blood glucose was 2.4 mmol/L (reference range 3.6-11; 1 mmol/L=18.02 mg/dL). Three months earlier he had noticed a craving for sweets and episodes of weakness, sometimes associated with foggy sensorium. He felt cold, clammy, and fatigued during these episodes and his wife noticed that he acted strangely and had no memory for long periods. After drinking large amounts of cola he felt better and had gained 30 lb (13 kg) in weight during this time. His symptoms recurred when he had not eaten for several hours, particularly at night and in the early morning.

Several days before his current presentation, he had presented to another hospital with similar symptoms and was found to have a blood glucose of 2.6 mmol/L. He responded well to dextrose infusion and was discharged home.

His medical history was unremarkable except for an umbilical hernia repair and back surgery 10 years earlier. He was taking no prescription or over the counter drugs. He did not smoke and drank beer socially. He denied taking illicit drugs. His family history was positive for diabetes but he had not been diagnosed as having diabetes.

On arrival his blood pressure was 124/76 mm Hg, pulse was 94 beats/min, and respiratory rate was 18 breaths/min. He was confused, cold, and clammy. Examination of the rest of the neurological system; skin; joints; and cardiovascular, respiratory, and abdominal systems was unremarkable. His haemoglobin, white blood cell count, and platelet count were in the normal range. Sodium, potassium, urea, creatinine, and liver panel results were normal. Glycated haemoglobin was 5% (31 mmol/mol). He responded to …


Temporal instabilities of a planar liquid jet are studied using direct numerical simulation (DNS) of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with level-set (LS) and volume-of-fluid (VoF) surface tracking methods. $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{2}$ contours are used to relate the vortex dynamics to the surface dynamics at different stages of the jet breakup – namely, lobe formation, lobe perforation, ligament formation, stretching and tearing. Three distinct breakup mechanisms are identified in the primary breakup, which are well categorized on the parameter space of gas Weber number ( $We_{g}$ ) versus liquid Reynolds number ( $Re_{l}$ ). These mechanisms are analysed here from a vortex dynamics perspective. Vortex dynamics explains the hairpin formation, and the interaction between the hairpins and the Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) roller explains the perforation of the lobes, which is attributed to the streamwise overlapping of two oppositely oriented hairpin vortices on top and bottom of the lobe. The formation of corrugations on the lobe front edge at high $Re_{l}$ is also related to the location and structure of the hairpins with respect to the KH vortex. The lobe perforation and corrugation formation are inhibited at low $Re_{l}$ and low $We_{g}$ due to the high surface tension and viscous forces, which damp the small-scale corrugations and resist hole formation. Streamwise vorticity generation – resulting in three-dimensional instabilities – is mainly caused by vortex stretching and baroclinic torque at high and low density ratios, respectively. Generation of streamwise vortices and their interaction with spanwise vortices produce the liquid structures seen at various flow conditions. Understanding the liquid sheet breakup and the related vortex dynamics are crucial for controlling the droplet-size distribution in primary atomization.


According to forecasts by Statistics Sweden the amount of people over 80 years will be over one million by 2060. With this aging the help demand is expected to increase, both with ac-commodation places as well as with relief efforts in the home. Since elderly people are overrepresented in terms of fatalities in fires, fire protection in nursing homes is particularly interesting to study. Especially since forecasts show more people are getting older.There are several types of accommodation and appellations thereof. Accommodation conduct-ed under the health care law or the Social Services act, and has more than three people in need of assistance during an evacuation, is required to submit a written report of its fire pro-tection. After a reform in 2004 a larger amount of the elderly is living alone or in accommo-dation not conducted under the health care law, where the only requirement for occupancy is usually to have reached a certain age. It is reasonable to assume that there is a need for help during an evacuation even among those living alone or in aforementioned type of accommo-dation. Since these, however, are not covered by the same legislation, it is difficult to make demands regarding safety. Generally, same rules applies for these types of accommodation as for ordinary housing.A questionnaire was distributed to nursing homes in Kalmar and the result of this, along with interviews with the emergency services, show that fire protection in nursing homes in the municipality is satisfying. In general the study shows that the building built in 1954 is designed to withstand a fire for a long time whereas the most recently built one is designed to prevent the growth of a fire. The study also points to differences in the estimated time it would take for staff to organize an evacuation.A statistically likely scenario of fatalities in nursing homes related to fires is that a single indi-vidual is affected and the fire is confined to a single compartment. Usually the residents own room or apartment. The underlying cause of the fire is smoking. Appropriate measures to pre-vent such a scenario, for example, would be to use especially fireproof mattresses and furniture and a mobile sprinkler system.Further focus should be given to those who live alone or in aforementioned accommodation not conducted under the health care law, since it might be difficult to ensure adequate fire protection where no staff are available to provide assistance in case of an evacuation.


Since the Treaty of Amsterdam, the EU has developed several instruments delineating cooperation with third countries in the management of migration, borders and asylum in the so-called Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM). Under the 'more for more' mechanism, the EU tries to persuade third countries to strengthen their border controls, restrict their visa policy and readmit irregular migrants with incentives such as trade benefits, visa facilitation or financial support. In its Partnership Framework of 2016, the Commission announced a more proactive approach by shifting its emphasis from the 'more for more' to the 'less for less' mechanism, including leverages and tools of all other policy areas. This article analyses the overall objectives of the GAMM (which are promoting fundamental rights and achieving an equal partnership) and the content of its four pillars. While elaborating on the potential impact on the policies in third countries and the human rights of migrants, it concludes that due to the paradoxical objectives, the cooperation has the potential to create counterproductive effects and an incoherent foreign policy. The absence of criteria on human rights for the selection of partner countries as well as the lack of a mechanism for monitoring or suspending such cooperation lowers the chance of an adequate response in the case of human rights violations. With these considerations in mind, the article explores the content and impact of the EU-Turkey deal and answers the question of whether it serves as a blueprint for a new generation of readmission agreements with other countries. The author concludes that due to the lack of mutual benefits and the differences in human rights standards and practices, transferring the responsibility of refugees to third countries will not prove effective and compliant with EU standards.


The purpose of this narrative qualitative study was to explore the motivation of teachers who enter the teaching profession and stay in the profession in a high-poverty, diverse, Title I school. This study involved interviews with a small sample of elementary teachers and included the use of personal self-reflections. Through purposive and snowball sampling, the researcher selected six licensed, elementary teachers from a school in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Each of these participants had more than three years of teaching experience in the identified setting. Through interviews with and reflective journal entries from each participant, this researcher explored three areas of interest: (1) participants' original motivations to teach, (2) participants' motivations for choosing to teach in a high-poverty, diverse, Title I school, and (3) the participants' motivations to stay in their current teaching positions within this school setting. The themes that emerged from the participants regarding their motivations to teach included personal quality of life, personal fulfillment, and relationships with mentors. Next, half the participants described choosing to teach in a high-poverty, diverse, Title I school, while the other half stated that the school chose them. Finally, participants described several factors that influenced them to stay within the profession, including personal quality of life, making a difference, relationships with colleagues, and relationships with families and students.


In this paper, we present a fine-grained matching method of the services based on a hybrid similarity measure. We propose a novel encoding of the services descriptions, allowing the match between a request and an advertisement in order to make more efficient publishing and searching process of Web services and reduce the number of comparisons required. By this kind of similarity between concepts of profile, a precise matching method is developed to match the profile of the Web services and user. Searching process in the UDDI registry is done via an algorithm that allows us to extract the search concepts and retrieve the top-k services, thereby further reducing the search engine's response time. The approach is illustrated through some experiments both on real and synthetic data to demonstrate its consistency and effectiveness.


A Comprehensive Air‐Quality Model with Extensions (CAMx) version 6.10 simulation was assessed through comparison with data acquired during NASA's 2011 Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality (DISCOVER‐AQ) Maryland field campaign. Comparisons for the baseline simulation (Carbon Bond 2005 (CB05) chemistry, Environmental Protection Agency 2011 National Emissions Inventory) show a model overestimate of NOy by +86.2% and an underestimate of HCHO by −28.3%. We present a new model framework (Carbon Bond 6 Revision 2 chemistry (CB6r2), Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN) version 2.1 biogenic emissions, 50% reduction in mobile NOx, enhanced representation of isoprene nitrates) that better matches observations. The new model framework attributes 31.4% more surface ozone in Maryland to electric generating units (EGUs) and 34.6% less ozone to on‐road mobile sources. Surface ozone becomes more NOx limited throughout the eastern United States compared to the baseline simulation. The baseline model therefore likely underestimates the effectiveness of anthropogenic NOx reductions as well as the current contribution of EGUs to surface ozone.