Behavioural ecologists aim at providing insights into the evolutionary and ecological processes that shape animal behaviour. Mate choice is a decision faced by most animals that can strongly affect an individual's reproductive success, an important fitness component. This behaviour has therefore the potential to show many adaptations which have been the subject of a vivid research interest over the last decades.
Studies on mate choice have typically focused on female preferences for traits that increase a male's overall attractiveness, which supposedly reflects the male's absolute quality. Preferences for such traits are expected to provide females with benefits such as good paternal care or 'good genes' for their offspring. Nevertheless, in some species, individuals actually show little consensus on what represents a high-quality partner. Such individually-specific preferences are poorly understood, but it has been hypothesized that they have evolved to optimise genetic compatibility (to increase offspring viability) or, although rarely mentioned, to optimise behavioural compatibility (to facilitate joint parental care). The zebra finch is a life-time monogamous passerine whose mating preferences for putative quality traits have been widely studied but where no such quality indicator has been repeatedly shown to influence mating decisions. In this species, preferences seem instead largely idiosyncratic.
In this thesis, I investigated whether female zebra finches choose genetically and/or behaviourally compatible social mates (Chapters 2 and 3). More precisely, I measured, in a large-scale breeding design, the fitness consequences of free mate choice for compatibility while experimentally controlling for effects of overall quality (Chapter 3). In this system, genetic incompatibility results in embryo mortality and therefore hatching failure, while behavioural incompatibility results in offspring mortality. I therefore expected social mate choice for genetic and/or behavioural compatibility to optimise embryo and offspring survival (Chapter 3). Moreover, I tested whether siblings who grew up together avoid choosing each other as social partner; in other words, if they avoid inbreeding depression by choosing a genetically more compatible partner (Chapter 2). In addition, I performed a meta-analysis of published experiments on zebra finches that allow for different mechanisms of kin discrimination to take place (Chapter 2). Finally, I investigated whether females enhance their extra-pair behaviour when paired to an apparently genetically incompatible male to obtain compatible genes benefits (Chapter 1). Indeed, extra-pair behaviour is largely hypothesized to be an adaptive response that would allow females to compensate for a potentially sub-optimal social mate choice. Specifically, I tested whether female extra-pair mating evolved as a counter strategy when females experience low hatching success with their social partner, that is to say whether female extra-pair mate choice targets fertility benefits and/or compatible genes benefits (Chapter 1).
Contrary to all expectations derived from optimality, zebra finches were unable to identify partners with whom they would minimise embryo mortality (Chapter 3), or to recognize unfamiliar kin on the basis of genetic similarity per se to minimize inbreeding depression (meta-analysis of Chapter 2), and did not adjust their extra-pair mating behaviour in response to repeated hatching failure (Chapter 1). This suggests that, in zebra finches, individuals have not evolved any ability (other than avoiding familiar kin, experiment of Chapter 2) to judge genetic compatibility of any kind, despite the adaptive value of such behaviour.
Finally, allowing free social mate choice did enhance pair fitness due to direct compatibility benefits (Chapter 3). This thesis provides therefore the first evidence of mate choice for behavioural compatibility. Nevertheless, the adaptive significance of the underlying choosiness remains speculative (Chapter 3). A null model consisting of random non-adaptive genetic variation in sensory systems and variation in phenotypes that are better at stimulating some sensory systems than others might well account for the observed fitness differences between compatible and incompatible pairs.
This study highlights that there are limits to adaptation.


Much time is spent asking questions during parliamentary debates. To what extent are they answered? This paper investigates this question by examining budget debates in post-1945 France, Sweden, and the UK as well as in the European Parliament from 1996 to 2001. The purpose is to introduce an empirical approach to a theoretical discussion of whether globalisation weakens deliberative democracy within nations while strengthening it between them. It is found that deliberative reciprocity was unexpectedly stable within nations in the course of post-1945 Western globalisation, and that questions are more often answered in national parliaments than in the European Parliament. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these findings for competing visions of political debate as a means for reaching consensus or as an expression of irresolvable conflict.


the aim of this paper is to study the connection between occupational health and safety (OHS) and increasing employee productivity in construction industry from the point view of contractors in Gaza strip. This has been done by identifying strategies that effectively promote both safety and productivity during a construction task. In this study, a quantitative research was adopted as the main statistical component. The survey approach (descriptive and analytical survey) has been chosen and has been conducted through some faceto-face interviews and a written closed and semi closed questionnaire for a chosen sample with a size of forty three people from the construction population. After making validity test, relia-bility test, and descriptive analysis, the test of the relative importance index (RII) has been conducted to determine the relative importance of various factors. Strategies that can be followed to effectively affect safety and productivity were resulted from the survey feedback. These strategies fall under five major groups; planning, training, monitoring, communication skills, and inspection. Results indicated that "Training workers to carry out works properly, especially in the new types of work" factor has been ranked in the 1st position with regard to its importance in sustaining safety and productivity of project. This factor belongs to the "training group". The research is only confined to the safety and productivity relationship in the public construction environment in Gaza strip, but not the west bank. The small sample size of the survey would probably not be indicative of the general population of contactors in Gaza strip, although the most of the results were reasonably accepted and were related to the literature review. More research is needed to understand the topic since literature on safety and productivity in Palestine and surrounding region is very limited. Construction companies need to substantially improve OHS as well as improving construction productivity and reducing costs. Contractors need to plan for a strategy to achieve that, and need to move from strategies to implementation. In other words, contractors are recommended to act strategically to protect workers by continuously identifying hazardous conditions and by training and monitoring.


Abstract. Remote sensing digital image mosaic refers to the splicing of two or more remote sensing images into a panoramic image to meet the application requirements of wide images. It is becoming more and more important to cover large areas of mosaic images. The data pre-processing and mosaic process are different for different images. In this paper, the declassified intelligence satellite photography (DISP) in the 1960s was used as experimental data, taking Qujing in Yunnan Province as an example, a total of 92 scene images were used for DISP image processing and seamless mosaic. Firstly, In order to make full use of the image, it is necessary to perform orthorectification on the KH-4B images covering Qujing. Considering that the satellite orbit parameters and other parameters are unknown, several models for orthorectification of satellite images are proposed. After experiments and analysis, it is concluded that the third order polynomial is the optimal. Secondly, given the problem of radiation imbalance caused by the difference of time phase, the histogram equalization method is used for color balance, the image of the seam line is eliminated. Finally, the seamless mosaic is achieved. The map of the 1960s DISP in Qujing is obtained. The map can provide material basis for future research and other fields. The processing methods of historical images can be used for reference by others.


We consider the problem of simultaneous variable selection and estimation in additive, partially linear models for longitudinal/clustered data. We propose an estimation procedure via polynomial splines to estimate the nonparametric components and apply proper penalty functions to achieve sparsity in the linear part. Under reasonable conditions, we obtain the asymptotic normality of the estimators for the linear components and the consistency of the estimators for the nonparametric components. We further demonstrate that, with proper choice of the regularization parameter, the penalized estimators of the non-zero coefficients achieve the asymptotic oracle property. The finite sample behavior of the penalized estimators is evaluated with simulation studies and illustrated by a longitudinal CD4 cell count data set.


Background & aim: Diabetes is one of the most common health problems in the world that can be controlled through educational programs. Therefore, this study was carried out to evaluate the effect of educational intervention based on extended theory of reasoned action on self-care behaviors in patients with type 2 diabetes. Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, 90 patients with type 2 diabetes were assigned into experimental (45 people) and control (45 people) groups using stratified randomization method. Data collection tool was a questionnaire based on the extended theory of reasoned action and self-care behaviors. Data were collected before and 3 months after the intervention. Data analyses were performed by parametric statistical tests using SPSS-20. Results: The results showed that mean scores of all structures of extended theory of reasoned action has increased significantly in the intervention group after educational intervention (p<0.05). However, changes were not significant in control group (p>0.05). Educational intervention had also significant effect on promotion of self-care behaviors in patients of the intervention group. Conclusion: The findings of the current study showed that designing interventions based on extended theory of reasoned action can be an appropriate framework to improve self-care behaviors in patients with type 2 diabetes.


Voting Advice Applications (VAA) are web tools that are used to inform increasing numbers of voters during elections. This increasing usage indicates that VAAs fulfill voters' needs, but what these needs are, is unknown. Previous research has shown that such tools are primarily used by young males and highly educated citizens. This suggests that VAAs are generally used by citizens who are already well-informed about politics and may not need the assistance of a VAA to make voting decisions. To analyze the functions that VAAs have for their users, this study utilizes unique user data from a popular Dutch VAA to identify different user types according to their cognitive characteristics and motivations. A latent class analysis resulted in three distinct user types that vary in efficacy, vote certainty, and interest: doubters, checkers and seekers. Each group uses the VAA for different reasons at different points in time. Seekers' use of VAAs increases as election day approaches; less efficacious and less certain voters are more likely to use the tool to become informed.


We document the heterogeneity across sectors in the impact labor and input-output links have on industry agglomeration. Exploiting the available degrees of freedom in coagglomeration patterns, we estimate the industry-specific benefits of sharing labor needs and supply links with local firms. On aggregate, coagglomeration patterns of services are at least as strongly driven by input-output linkages as those of manufacturing, whereas labor linkages are much more potent drivers of coagglomeration in services than in manufacturing. Moreover, the degree to which labor and input-output linkages are reflected in an industry's coagglomeration patterns is relevant for predicting patterns of city-industry employment growth. JEL classifications: J24, O14, R11


Two eye-tracking experiments investigated the effects of masculine versus feminine grammatical gender on the processing of role nouns and on establishing coreference relations. Participants read sentences with the basic structure My  is a   such as My brother is a singer in a band. Role nouns were either masculine or feminine. Kinship terms were lexically male or female and in this way specified referent gender, i.e., the sex of the person referred to. Experiment 1 tested a fully crossed design including items with an incorrect combination of lexically male kinship term and feminine role name. Experiment 2 tested only correct combinations of grammatical and lexical/referential gender to control for possible effects of the incorrect items of Experiment 1. In early stages of processing, feminine role nouns, but not masculine ones, were fixated longer when grammatical and referential gender were contradictory (Bruder male–Sängerin fem/brother–[female] singer). In later stages of sentence wrap-up there were longer fixations for sentences with masculine than for those with feminine role nouns. Results of both experiments indicate that, for feminine role nouns, cues to referent gender are integrated immediately, whereas a late integration obtains for masculine forms.


In this paper we explore the dynamics of the South African decision-making process, with specific reference to the South Africa-European Union (SA-EU) Trade, Development and Co-operation Agreement (TDCA). The aim is to identify and understand the key characteristics of the policy formulation process, and then explore briefly the extent to which stakeholders in South and southern Africa were incorporated. We adopt and adapt a decisionmaking model in order to construct a template that can be used to evaluate critically the South African policy formulation process. The template suggests there are four key components to be considered; the statal process, detached observers, the internal environment and the external environment. We conclude that whilst in theory the South African decision-making process is both transparent and inclusive, in reality there are shortcomings that may exclude certain sections of civil society.


We review our recent studies of rubber system using coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CGMD) simulation. The CGMD simulation is one of the powerful tools to clarify the molecular chain dynamics of the rubber material in the deformation process. In this review, we show two topics listed below; the stretching of the rubber material in which the cross-linker is included, and the chain dynamics near the filler. In the first topics, we observe the chain conformation in the stretching. In this process, we can obtain the one or two strong force line of bonds. This nature indicates that the deformation of the rubber takes place in non-affine process in the nano-scale. In the second topics, we study the molecular motion near the filler, so called in the bound rubber layer. We construct the two models; the grafting chain model and the adsorbed chain model. We observe the local mean square displacement and the local glass transition temperature. We can observe that the chain moves slowly near the filler due to the restriction of the grafting or due to the attractive interaction between filler and polymer.


1. Apolipoprotein B-48, the transport protein for chylomicrons, is identical with apolipoprotein B-100 for the first 48% of its sequence. No antiserum has yet been reported that can recognize apolipoprotein B-48, but not apolipoprotein B-100. 2. In the present study an antiserum was raised to the C-terminal sequence of apolipoprotein B-48, using specific chemical reactions to ensure that the charged carboxyl group of the C-terminal isoleucine residue was free. In a Western blot the antiserum was shown to bind to a protein band having the characteristics of apolipoprotein B-48, but not to apolipoprotein B-100. 3. In the early evening 11 subjects were given a test meal which contained 40 g of mixed oil and retinyl palmitate. Blood samples were collected over 9 h. Chylomicron-enriched fractions were prepared and analysed for triacylglycerol, retinyl palmitate and apolipoprotein B-48, the latter after separation using SDS/PAGE and visualization by chemiluminescence on a Western blot. Both triacylglycerol and apolipoprotein B-48 showed an early peak at 1 h, which was not seen with retinyl palmitate. All three substances gave a broader peak between 5 and 6 h postprandially. Retinyl palmitate concentrations declined rapidly during the late (6-9 h) postprandial period, but apolipoprotein B-48 concentrations remained elevated. 4. This study has shown that an antiserum has been produced which is specific for apolipoprotein B-48. This has enabled measurement of postprandial concentrations of the protein that revealed features of chylomicron metabolism which have not been reported previously.


Abstract Gangs have long been considered a source of violence and insecurity, but they are increasingly identified as a cause of instability and a threat to the state. Yet gangs operate mainly in non-conflict settings, raising questions about whether applying a conflict lens to understand gangs is appropriate. Marked differences appear between armed groups and gangs when considering concepts of ungoverned spaces, the state, violence, and sustainability. Few gangs reach the threshold of posing a direct challenge to the state; this makes comparisons with other armed groups difficult and suggests the need for a more specific analytical lens.


The main scientific problems investigated in this article deal with technical evaluation of quality attributes of the main components of e-Learning systems (referred here as DLEs - Digital Libraries of Educational Resources and Services), i.e., Learning Objects (LOs) and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). The main research object of the work is the effectiveness of methods of DLE components quality evaluation. The aim of the article is to analyse popular existing LO and VLE technical evaluation tools, and to formulate new more complex tools for technical quality evaluation of LOs and VLEs based on requirements for flexible DLE, as well as to evaluate most popular open source VLEs against new more complex criteria. Complex tools have been created for the evaluation of DLE components, based on a flexible approach. The authors have analysed existing tools for technical evaluation of LOs, and it was investigated that these tools have a number of limitations. Some of these tools do not examine different LO life cycle stages, and other insufficiently examine technical evaluation criteria before LO inclusion in the repository. All these tools insufficiently examine LOs reusability criteria. Therefore more complex LO technical evaluation tool is needed. It was investigated that this new more complex LO technical evaluation tool should include LO technical evaluation criteria suitable for different LO life cycle stages, including criteria before, during and after LO inclusion in the repository as well as LO reusability criteria. The authors have also examined several VLE technical evaluation tools suitable for flexible DLE, and it was investigated that these tools have a number of limitations. Several tools practically do not examine VLE adaptation capabilities criteria, and the other insufficiently examines general technical criteria. More complex VLE technical evaluation tool is needed. Therefore the authors have proposed an original more complex set of VLE technical evaluation criteria combining (1) General (Overall architecture and implementation; Interoperability; Internationalisation and Localisation; Accessibility) and (2) Adaptation (Adaptability; Personalisation; Extensibility and Adaptivity) VLE technical evaluation criteria. The authors have also selected and proposed to use the universal, clear and convenient DLE components' evaluation rating tool, and have evaluated three most popular open source VLEs against technical (both general and adaptation) criteria in conformity with this rating tool.


Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act of 2015 This bill requires the Department of Justice (DOJ) to analyze existing law enforcement accreditation standards, recommend additional areas for the development of national standards, recommend the adoption of additional standards, and adopt policies and procedures to encourage accreditation of law enforcement agencies. It authorizes DOJ to make grants to federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies to obtain accreditation from certified organizations. The legislation authorizes DOJ to make grants to state, local, or tribal governments, public and private entities, or consortia to study law enforcement agency management and operations standards and to develop pilot programs to address law enforcement misconduct. DOJ must study the prevalence and effect of any law, rule, or procedure that allows a law enforcement officer to delay the investigation and prosecution of law enforcement misconduct. The legislation establishes the Task Force on Law Enforcement Oversight within DOJ to coordinate the detection and referral of complaints of alleged law enforcement misconduct. Law enforcement agencies must report data regarding practices on traffic violation stops, pedestrian stops, frisk and body searches, and use of deadly force. Data must include the number of incidents of each practice broken down by race, ethnicity, age, and gender of the officers, employees, and members of the public involved in the practice. DOJ must create a medallion for distribution to survivors of each law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty and memorialized on the wall of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial.


We report on full-polarization radio observations of the Perseus cluster (Abell 426) using the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) at wavelengths from 81-95 cm. We detect faint, very extended polarized emission throughout the cluster region. We have employed a novel technique, Rotation Measure synthesis (Brentjens & de Bruyn, 2005, A& A, 441, 1217) to unravel the polarization properties of the emission across the full field of view. We detect polarized emission over a wide range of RM from about 0 to 90 radm(-2). Low RM emission (RM 30 rad m(-2) on the other hand, shows organized structures on scales up to a degree and displays rapidly fluctuating polarization angles on scales of the synthesized beam. A Galactic foreground interpretation for the high RM emission can not be ruled out, but appears extremely implausible. WSRT observations at 21 cm of the RM of a dozen discrete sources surrounding the Perseus cluster indicate a smooth large-scale gradient in the Galactic foreground RM. The diffuse structures have a clear excess RM of about 40 rad m(-2) relative to these distant radio galaxies. This excess Faraday depth, the generally good spatial association with the cluster and the different morphology of the high RM emission, compared to the genuine Galactic foreground emission, all point to an association of the high RM emission with the Perseus cluster. The polarized emission reaches typical surface brightness levels of 0.5-1 mJy per 2' x 3' beam and must be rather highly polarized (greater than or similar to 20%). Due to dynamic range limitations and lack of sensitivity to large-scale structure we have not yet detected the corresponding total intensity. Most of the polarized emission, located at distances of about 1 degrees from the cluster centre, appears too bright, by about 1-2 orders of magnitude, to be explainable as Thomson scattered emission of the central radio source off the thermal electrons in the cluster. However, this remains a viable explanation for the highly polarized 21 cm emission from the inner 10'-20' and part of the 81-95 cm emission. The bulk of the emission associated with the Perseus cluster may instead be related to buoyant bubbles of relativistic plasma, probably relics from still active or now dormant AGN within the cluster. A lenticular shaped structure, referred to as the lens, and measuring 0.5-1 Mpc is strikingly similar to the structures predicted b En beta lin et al. ( 1998, A& A, 332, 395). At the western edge of the cluster, we detect very long, linear structures that may be related to shocks caused by infall of gas into the Perseus cluster along the Perseus-Pisces filamentary structure of the cosmic web.


Data Quality (DQ) has been an acknowledged issue for a long time. Several researchers have indicated that maintaining the quality of data is often acknowledged as problematic, but is also seen as critical to effective decision-making in engineering asset management (AM). The study presents an AM specific DQ framework, which aims to provide a comprehensive structure for understanding, identifying AM DQ problems in an organised way. The framework was examined in a preliminary case study of two large Australian engineering organisations. The empirical findings from the research were used to validate the proposed AM DQ framework. As AM data and informational needs are very different to a typical business environment, a gap exists in the availability of DQ solutions for engineering asset management. Thus there is a need for the development of DQ solutions for engineering asset management.


Motivated by recent empirical evidence, we consider a large service system in which the patience time of each customer depends on his service requirement. Our goal is to study the impact of such dependence on key performance measures, such as expected waiting times and average queue length, as well as on optimal capacity decisions. Since the dependence structure renders exact analysis intractable, we employ a stationary fluid approximation that is based on the entire joint distribution of the service and patience times. Our results show that even moderate dependence has significant impacts on system performance, so considering the patience and service times to be independent when they are in fact dependent is futile. We further demonstrate that Pearson's correlation coefficient, which is commonly used to measure and rank dependence, is an insufficient statistic, and that the entire joint distribution is required for comparative statics. Thus, we propose a novel framework, incorporating the fluid model wit...


The support of mission-critical use cases is an ambitious goal of the upcoming fifth generation of mobile networks. In addition to challenging requirements regarding reliability and latency, particular use cases need to be supported in high mobility scenarios as well. To avoid extensive system simulations and enable studies of very small outage probabilities, we integrate mobility effects into an existing signal-to-interference- plus-noise ratio (SINR) model by combining the model with results from a mobility simulation. An evaluation of the model corroborates that high mobility can severely deteriorate the reliability performance in traditional single-connectivity architectures. As potential countermeasures, inter- and intra-frequency multi-connectivity are identified. Results show that high reliability of 99.999% or greater becomes possible if a sufficient number of connections is utilized.


Biologics such as vaccines, recombinant proteins and antibodies are used to treat or prevent different chronic and complex diseases and they have a high market share. Improvements in biotechnology, leads increased production and use of these products. Because of high manufacturing cost, they are expensive and have significant drawbacks about their use and patient accessibility. Biosimilars are cost-effective therapeutic alternatives of biologics, which can be marketed after the expiry of the patent of the reference biologic. Biosimilars can provide cheaper alternatives and they can help reduce health care expenditure significantly. Although there are many publications related to the importance of biosimilars in the literature, there are not enough studies on the role of the pharmacist from development to pharmacovigilance of these drugs. In this article, besides the importance of these drugs we addressed the crucial contribution of the pharmacists in preparation of biosimilar drugs, establishing regulations and approval pathways to take place in the market and the investigation of the side effects after marketing. We also emphasized the role of pharmacist at development, manufacturing, dispensing, post-marketing pharmacovigilance, regulations and usage of biosimilars.


This paper estimates the effect of worldwide tax changes on output following the narrative approach developed for the United States by Romer and Romer (2010). The analysis uses a novel dataset on value-added taxes for 51 countries (21 industrial and 30 developing) for the period 1970-2014 to identify 96 tax changes. It then uses contemporaneous economic records to classify such changes as endogenous or exogenous to current (or prospective) economic conditions. In line with theoretical distortionary and disincentive-based arguments, and using only exogenous tax changes, the main finding is that the effect of tax changes on output is highly non-linear. The tax multiplier is essentially zero under relatively low/moderate initial tax rate levels and more negative as the initial tax rate and the size of the change in the tax rate increase. Based on a global sample, these novel non-linear findings suggest that the recent consensus pointing to large negative tax multipliers in industrial countries, particularly in Europe (e.g., Alesina, Favero, and Giavazzi, 2015), (i) is not a robust empirical regularity, and (ii) is mainly driven by high initial tax rates in these countries. The paper also shows that the bias introduced by misidentification of tax shocks critically depends on the procyclical or countercyclical nature of endogenous tax changes. The relevance of the arguments is evaluated both for the novel global sample and for Romer and Romer's U.S. dataset.


The aim of this paper is to enrich the SWOT analysis by utilizing the five change stages of process development: birth, growth, harvesting, storage, and transformation. Each quadrant of the matrix of the SWOT model could be represented by one stage and the phases between stages correspond to transformation. The five-change processes originate from phases of the seasonal life cycle based on the Chinese Ying-yang and five elements theory. This study tries to establish a plausible bridge between Western two-dimensioned quadruple categories (2 x 2 frameworks) and Chinese five elements. In addition, integrating the concept of business life cycle with the SWOT analysis provides the policy maker with a dynamic approach to effective strategies. Finally, the managerial implications of each stage are discussed from the perspective of Chinese five elements.


In the Fischer–Tropsch (FT) synthesis, a mixture of CO and H2 is converted into hydrocarbons and water with diluted organics. This water fraction with oxygenated hydrocarbons can be processed through aqueous-phase reforming (APR) to produce H2. Therefore, the APR of FT water may decrease the environmental impact of organic waters and improve the efficiency of the FT process. This work aimed at developing a kinetic model for the APR of FT water. APR experiments were conducted with real FT water in a continuous packed-bed reactor at different operating conditions of temperature (210–240 °C), pressure (3.2–4.5 MPa) and weight hourly space velocity (WHSV) (40–200 h−1) over a nickel-copper catalyst supported on ceria-zirconia. The kinetic model considered C1-C4 alcohols as reactants, H2, CO, CO2 and CH4 as the gaseous products, and acetic acid as the only liquid product. The kinetic model included seven reactions, the reaction rates of which were expressed with power law equations. The kinetic parameters were estimated with variances and confidence intervals that explain the accuracy of the model to estimate the outlet liquid composition resulting from the APR of FT water. The kinetic model developed in this work may facilitate the development of APR to be integrated in a FT synthesis process.


In traditional shielding design, thicknesses of shieldings have been determined so that calculated shielding properties multiplied by safety factors do not exceed design limits. A shielding design margin is defined for the safety factors that are included in the estimated shielding thicknesses in the design process. Sensitivities of the shielding design margin to the fusion reactor scale and amount of material are examined for a typical fusion experimental reactor such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). From these investigations, supposing the shielding design margin can be made smaller by up to half the typical value of 3 used in a reactor, the amount of toroidal coil, transformer coil, and other torus component materials can be reduced by 1.5, 0.7, and 0.7%, respectively. If one includes a reactor building and accessory facilities that are not affected by the shielding design margin, the whole reactor material reduction becomes 0.55%. Since reactor cost is assumed to be proportional to the amount of material, the 0.55% reduction may be worth $55 million when the estimated price of the reactor is assumed to be $10 billion.


Objectives We compared the accuracy of NOGA endocardial mapping for delineating transmural and non-transmural infarction to the results of cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (cMRI) with late gadolinium enhancement (LE) for guiding intramyocardial reparative substance delivery using data from experimental myocardial infarction studies. Methods Sixty domestic pigs underwent diagnostic NOGA endocardial mapping and cMRI-LE 60 days after induction of closed-chest reperfused myocardial infarction. The infarct size was determined by LE of cMRI and by delineation of the infarct core on the unipolar voltage polar map. The sizes of the transmural and non-transmural infarctions were calculated from the cMRI transmurality map using signal intensity (SI) cut-offs of>75% and>25% and from NOGA bipolar maps using bipolar voltage cut-off values of <0.8 mV and <1.9 mV. Linear regression analysis and Bland-Altman plots were used to determine correlations and systematic differences between the two images. The overlapping ratios of the transmural and non-transmural infarcted areas were calculated. Results Infarct size as determined by 2D NOGA unipolar voltage polar mapping correlated with the 3D cMRI-LE findings (r = 0.504, p<0.001) with a mean difference of 2.82% in the left ventricular (LV) surface between the two images. Polar maps of transmural cMRI and bipolar maps of NOGA showed significant association for determining of the extent of transmural infarction (r = 0.727, p<0.001, overlap ratio of 81.6±11.1%) and non-transmural infarction (r = 0.555, p<0.001, overlap ratio of 70.6±18.5%). NOGA overestimated the transmural scar size (6.81% of the LV surface) but slightly underestimated the size of the non-transmural infarction (−3.04% of the LV surface). Conclusions By combining unipolar and bipolar voltage maps, NOGA endocardial mapping is useful for accurate delineation of the targeted zone for intramyocardial therapy and is comparable to cMRI-LE. This may be useful in patients with contraindications for cMRI who require targeted intramyocardial regenerative therapy.


The Internet has created a permanent and pervasive treasure trove of digital fingerprints beyond any scale created by prior information technologies such as television, radio, or the telephone. Internet users increasingly live their private lives in public through the self-immolation of their own privacy. Blogging, photo sharing, texting, instant messaging, and other postings on social media sites obliterate the division between the public and the private spheres. Facebook is where a less educated person can share with friends but this also means sharing how inept they are in managing privacy settings. Wearing gang styles such as a baseball cap worn backwards, colored bandanas, and baggy pants are considered to be cool styles by minority youth but create misleading stereotypes when viewed by mainstream Americans. A minority youth wearing a six-point star, a crescent moon, or a Playboy Bunny symbol to be cool is, in effect, sporting a self-inflicted digital scarlet letter, as these are also styles associated with gang membership. These stigmatizing images are posted on a 24/7 worldwide bulletin board, creating a virtual Scarlet Letter that negatively impacts educational, employment, and other opportunities. We provide a sociological overview of how social media amplifies stereotypic images of the poor that undermine their economic and educational opportunities. We explore the ways that increased Internet and social media usage is a catalyst for advancing equality but also can devalue the uneducated and the poor. The Internet has lifted the veil of individual privacy, so that information about factors like race, class, gender, sexual orientation, obesity, physical handicaps, unpopular opinions, and nonmainstream clothing styles become easily visible to employers, potential employers, college admissions personnel, law enforcement officials, welfare providers, loan companies, landlords, merchants, and many other societal decision makers. Youthful hijinks should not stigmatize an individual forever. We argue for a limited right to be forgotten especially "relevant, when the data subject has given their consent as a child, when not being fully aware of the risks involved by the processing, and later wants to remove such personal data especially on the Internet." The EU's "right to erasure" provision would be particularly useful to America's poor and less educated who seek to remove evidence of their spoiled identity.


Based on unique data covering individuals, firms, industries and regions for the 1999–2005 period, we contribute with new knowledge concerning the impact of regional variables on spin-offs. Implementing a large number of controls, as well as different estimation techniques and robustness tests, we show that Jacobian externalities have a positive effect on spin-offs. Moreover, using an entropy measure to disentangle unrelated and related variety (RV), we conclude that the effect is confined to RV. These findings are likely to be associated with strong welfare effects: a standard deviation increase (decrease) in related (unrelated) variety increases spin-off propensity by approximately 25%. Other variables are shown to have economic effects of a similar magnitude but may have a different effect across sectors. Sensitivity analyses indicate that the impact of other determinants proposed in the literature (e.g., Marshallian externalities and scale effects) is too small to be detected.


Gyula Klima maintains that Anselm's ontological argument is best understood in terms of a theory of reference that was made fully explicit only by later medievals. I accept the interpretative claim but offer here two objections to the argument so interpreted. The first points up a certain ambiguity in Klima's formulation of the argument, the correction of which requires a substantive revision of the argument's conclusion. The second exploits the notion of semantic closure introduced by Tarski. Klima offers the atheist an 'out' by drawing a distinction between constitutive and parasitic reference. I argue that using Klima's preferred description ('the thought object than which no thought object can be thought to be greater') to refer constitutively to God results in conceptual closure, a condition analogous to semantic closure that renders the instant conceptual scheme inconsistent and subject to paradox. Although the proof ultimately fails, Klima's development of the notions of constitutive and parasitic reference has important and far-reaching implications.


Introduction CT Pulmonary Angiography (CTPA) is the gold standard investigation for suspected pulmonary embolism (PE). Low or intermediate probability clinical prediction (e.g. Wells score) combined with a negative D-dimer effectively rules out PE in over 97% of cases, avoiding the need for CTPA and its inherent risks (radiation exposure and contrast induced nephropathy). This is the recommendation of the BTS guidelines. We undertook a study to examine if the BTS guidelines were being adhered to in our Trust, and whether increasing the D-dimer threshold may safely reduce the need for CTPA. Methods We obtained a list of CTPAs performed within the Trust between September 2009 and September 2011 and searched our pathology system for a contemporary D-dimer result (HemosIL latex immuno-assay). For all patients with a negative D-dimer (≤230ng/mL), we looked for a documented pre-test probability score in the clinical notes or calculated a Wells score if not documented. We then analysed CTPA results with D-dimer between 230–500ng/mL. Results There were 1645 CTPAs performed during the study period, of which 15% had confirmed PE 903(54.9%) had a contemporary D-dimer result, and of these 57(6.3%) had a negative D-dimer, and 193(21.4%) were between 230–500ng/mL. In the negative D-dimer group, 3 (5.3%) had confirmed PE's on CTPA. One was on tranexamic acid, which can falsely lower D-dimer, and 2 had prolonged admissions in whom D-dimer testing was not appropriate. We were able to examine the notes of 39/57 cases and only 3 (8%) had a pre-test probability documented. On review 31/39 (79.5%) had a low to intermediate Wells score and should not have had a CTPA. In the 230–500ng/mL D-dimer group, there were only 4/193 (2.1%) positive CTPAs with a negative predictive value 98%. Conclusions In our Trust, the lack of pre-test probability scoring combined with D-dimer is leading to inappropriate CTPAs. The rate of PE in the patients with a D-dimer between 230–500ng/mL is also very low. A protocol recommending initial treatment pending an urgent respiratory team review prior to CTPA, could safely reduce the number performed in this group, if combined with a low to intermediate pre-test probability score.


The temperature responsive solubility of ionic liquids with 'bulky' polar regions, such as tributyltetradecyl phosphonium chloride ([P44414]Cl), in acidic aqueous solutions is elucidated through a combined experimental and computational approach. The temperature effect in the acidic aqueous biphasic system HCl/[P44414]Cl/H2O was characterised in the range 273 K to 373 K and was found to significantly deviate from the corresponding aqueous biphasic system with NaCl. A new transferable coarse grained MARTINI model for [P44414]Cl was developed, validated and applied to provide a molecular understanding of the experimental results. It is shown that the presence of large aliphatic moieties around the central phosphorus atoms of [P44414]Cl results in a decrease in the electrostatic repulsion between the cationic moieties, leading the [P44414]+ cation to present a behaviour conventionally associated with non-ionic surfactants. This difference in behaviour between HCl and NaCl was shown to result from the greater interaction of the hydronium cation with the micelle surface, thereby enhancing the [P44414]Cl aggregation.


Tachycardia-induced cardiomyopathy is a systolic cardiac dysfunction given by prolonged elevated heart rates in patients with incessant or frequent tachyarrhythmias. Arrhythmias associated with tachycardiomyopathy can be either supraventricular (atrial tachycardia, atrial flutter, atrial fibrillation, AVNRT, permanent junctional reciprocating tachycardia, high rates of atrial pacing) or ventricular (frequent premature ventricular complexes, right ventricular outflow tract tachycardia, LVOT, left ventricular fascicular tachycardia, bundle-branch reentry or high rate of ventricular pacing). Electrophysiological study confirms the clinical diagnosis of tachycardia-induced cardiomyopathy, reveals the arrhythmia mechanism and facilitates catheter ablation that results in complete recovery of ventricular function. This chapter has two parts: 1. Theoretical insight into the pathogenesis of tachycardia-induced cardiomyopathy, clinical manifestations and therapy. 2. Practical issues: we describe our EP lab's experience on electrophysiological study and ablation in patients with tachycardia-induced cardiomyopathy. We will present five cases of ablation: PVCs >30,000/24 h, antidromic tachycardia, 2:1 atrial flutter, persistent atrial fibrillation and RVOT PVCs with nonsustained VT.


In Defense of the Poor Image The poor image is a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution. đđđđđđđđđđThe poor image is a rag or a rip; an AVI or a JPEG, a lumpen proletarian in the class society of appearances, ranked and valued according to its resolution. The poor image has been uploaded, downloaded, shared, reformatted, and reedited. It transforms quality into accessibility, exhibition value into cult value, films into clips, contemplation into distraction. The image is liberated from the vaults of cinemas and archives and thrust into digital uncertainty, at the expense of its own substance. The poor image tends towards abstraction: it is a visual idea in its very becoming. đđđđđđđđđđThe poor image is an illicit fifth-generation bastard of an original image. Its genealogy is dubious. Its filenames are deliberately misspelled. It often defies patrimony, national culture, or indeed copyright. It is passed on as a lure, a decoy, an index, or as a reminder of its former visual self. It mocks the promises of digital technology. Not only is it often degraded to the point of being just a hurried blur, one even doubts whether it could be called an image at all. Only digital technology could produce such a dilapidated image in the first place. đđđđđđđđđđPoor images are the contemporary Wretched of the Screen, the debris of audiovisual production, the trash that washes up on the digital economies' shores. They testify to the violent dislocation, transferrals, and displacement of images – their acceleration and circulation within the vicious cycles of audiovisual capitalism. Poor images are dragged around the globe as commodities or their effigies, as gifts or as bounty. They spread pleasure or death threats, conspiracy theories or bootlegs, resistance or stultification. Poor images show the rare, the obvious, and the unbelievable – that is, if we can still manage to decipher it.


We study the effect of different feedback prescriptions on the properties of the low redshift (z ≤ 1.6) Ly α forest using a selection of hydrodynamical simulations drawn from the Sherwood simulation suite. The simulations incorporate stellar feedback, AGN feedback and a simplified scheme for efficiently modelling the low column density Lyα forest. We confirm a discrepancy remains between Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) observations of the Lyα forest column density distribution function (CDDF) at z ≃ 0.1 for high column density systems (NHI > 1014 cm−2), as well as Lyα velocity widths that are too narrow compared to the COS data. Stellar or AGN feedback – as currently implemented in our simulations – have only a small effect on the CDDF and velocity width distribution. We conclude that resolving the discrepancy between the COS data and simulations requires an increase in the temperature of overdense gas with Δ = 4–40, either through additional HeII photo-heating at z > 2 or fine-tuned feedback that ejects overdense gas into the IGM at just the right temperature for it to still contribute significantly to the Lyα forest. Alternatively a larger, currently unresolved turbulent component to the line width could resolve the discrepancy.


Human activities in and around Lake Wuliangsu, in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, triggered environmental changes for which evidence is preserved in the lake sediments. We investigated the past ~150 years of human impacts on Lake Wuliangsu using high-resolution records of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in the sediments. Prior to the 1950s, there were very low concentrations of contaminants in the lake deposits. In the 1950s, relatively higher OCP concentrations and proportions of low molecular weight (LMW) PAHs were related to the intensification of agricultural activity. Since the 1990s, increases in high molecular weight (HMW) PAH concentrations and their proportions, and decreases in OCP concentrations and proportions of LMW PAHs, indicated human impacts on the lake were dominated by industry and urban development. Thus, there have been three periods of human-mediated environmental change in the Lake Wuliangsu basin, inferred from the PAH and OCP records (pre-1950s, 1950s-1990s, and 1990s to present). The inferred changes are consistent with the local socioeconomic data. The agreement between paleolimnologic records from Lake Wuliangsu and socioeconomic data suggests that the lake sediments provide a reliable archive for investigating the environmental history of human impacts on the lake.


Many disinfection by-products (DBPs) are formed during water chlorination, including trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs). Disinfection with chloramines is often used to reduce the production of regulated DBPs. However, chloramination can lead to the formation of N-nitrosamines, including N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), a probable human carcinogen. The formation mechanisms of NDMA are not fully understood. Proposed mechanisms used dimethylamine (DMA) as a model precursor, but results show that certain widely used tertiary dimethylamines (e.g. the pharmaceutical ranitidine) show much higher conversion rates to NDMA than DMA. These amounts of NDMA cannot be explained by current proposed mechanisms. New formation mechanisms have to be proposed to explain the importance of structural characteristics of tertiary amines for NDMA formation.


Maize leaves are organized into two major domains along the proximal-distal axis: a broad flat blade at the distal end of the leaf, and a narrow, thickened sheath that encircles the stem. Between the blade and sheath are two wedge-shaped tissues called auricles, and the ligule, an epidermally derived fringe. Members of the Knotted1 (Kn1) family of mutations change the shape and position of both ligule and auricle, thus disturbing the overall pattern of the leaf. Here we present the results of a mosaic analysis of Gnarley1-R (Gn1-R), which like members of the Kn1 family, affects the ligule and auricle. Gn1-R is distinct, however, in altering the dimensions of cells that make up sheath tissue. To gain insight into the Gn1-R phenotype, we performed a mosaic analysis using X-ray induced chromosome breakage to generate wild-type (gn1+/-) sectors in otherwise Gn1-R leaves. These sectors allowed us to determine whether Gn1-R acts non-autonomously to influence adjacent cells. Most aspects of the Gn1-R phenotype, such as ligule position, inhibition of auricle development, and sheath thickness showed autonomy in the lateral dimension (leaf width). In contrast, all aspects of the Gn1-R phenotype were non-autonomous in the transverse dimension (leaf thickness), suggesting that signaling occurs between cell layers in the leaf. These results support a model for distinct signaling pathways along lateral versus transverse axes of a developing leaf.


Changes in atmospheric composition, such as increasing greenhouse gases, cause an initial radiative imbalance to the climate system, quantified as the instantaneous radiative forcing. This fundamental metric has not been directly observed globally and previous estimates have come from models. In part, this is because current space‐based instruments cannot distinguish the instantaneous radiative forcing from the climate's radiative response. We apply radiative kernels to satellite observations to disentangle these components and find all‐sky instantaneous radiative forcing has increased 0.53 ± 0.11 W/m2 from 2003 to 2018, accounting for positive trends in the total planetary radiative imbalance. This increase has been due to a combination of rising concentrations of well‐mixed greenhouse gases and recent reductions in aerosol emissions. These results highlight distinct fingerprints of anthropogenic activity in Earth's changing energy budget, which we find observations can detect within 4 years.


For a group $G$ and $X$ a subset of $G$ the commuting graph of $G$ on $X$, denoted by $\cal{C}(G,X)$, is the graph whose vertex set is $X$ with $x,y\in X$ joined by an edge if $x\neq y$ and $x$ and $y$ commute. If the elements in $X$ are involutions, then $\cal{C}(G,X)$ is called a commuting involution graph. This paper studies $\cal{C}(G,X)$ when $G$ is a 3-dimensional projective special unitary group and $X$ a $G$-conjugacy class of involutions, determining the diameters and structure of the discs of these graphs.


This article proposes to look afresh at the legacies of communism in urban spaces in post-1989 Poland. Specifically, it investigates the fate of Red Army monuments and explores how these public spaces have been used in the multifaceted and multileveled process of post-communist identity formation. The article suggests that Red Army monuments constitute sites for the articulation of new narratives about the country's past and future which are no longer grounded in the fundamental division between "us" (the nation) and "them" (the supporters of communism) and which are far from being fixed in the binary opposition of the banished and the embraced past. The reorganization of public memory space does not only involve contesting the Soviet past or affirming independence traditions but is rather the outcome of multilayered processes rooted in particularities of time and space. Moreover, the article argues that the dichotomy "liberator versus occupier," often employed as a viable analytical tool by scholars investigating the post-communist memorial landscape, impedes our understanding of the role played by Soviet war memorials in the process of re-imagining national and local communities in post-1989 Eastern Europe.


The present study investigated preparation of bovine and porcine erythrocyte membranes from slaughterhouse blood as bio‐derived materials for delivery of dexamethasone‐sodium phosphate (DexP). The obtained biomembranes, i.e., ghosts were characterized in vitro in terms of morphological properties, loading parameters, and release behavior. For the last two, an UHPLC/–HESI–MS/MS based analytical procedure for absolute drug identification and quantification was developed. The results revealed that loading of DexP into both type of ghosts was directly proportional to the increase of drug concentration in the incubation medium, while incubation at 37°C had statistically significant effect on loaded amount of DexP (P < 0.05). The encapsulation efficiency was about fivefold higher in porcine compared to bovine ghosts. Insight into ghosts' surface morphology by field emission‐scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy confirmed that besides inevitable effects of osmosis, DexP inclusion itself had no observable additional effect on the morphology of the ghosts carriers. DexP release profiles were dependent on erythrocyte ghost type and amount of residual hemoglobin. However, sustained DexP release was achieved and shown over 3 days from porcine ghosts and 5 days from bovine erythrocyte ghosts. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 32:1046–1055, 2016


This paper aims to extract baseball game highlights based on audio-motion integrated cues. In order to better describe different audio and motion characteristics in baseball game highlights, we propose a novel representation method based on likelihood models. The proposed likelihood models measure the "likeliness" of low-level audio features and motion features to a set of predefined audio types and motion categories, respectively. Our experiments show that using the proposed likelihood representation is more robust than using low-level audio/motion features to extract the highlight. With the proposed likelihood models, we then construct an integrated feature representation by symmetrically fusing the audio and motion likelihood models. Finally, we employ a hidden Markov model (HMM) to model and detect the transition of the integrated representation for highlight segments. A series of experiments have been conducted on a 12-h video database to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method and show that the proposed framework achieves promising results over a variety of baseball game sequences.


Intellectual property right transaction is the key link of the successful transformation of scientific and technological achievements, and it plays an important role in the process of promoting the integration of S&T and economy. In order to break the gap between S&T and the economy, the state vigorously advocating the construction of comprehensive service platform for intellectual property rights is based on the whole process of transformation of scientific and technological achievements, but the current real sense of the whole support platform is numbered. Under the guidance of the innovation value chain theory, this paper expounds the connotation and essential characteristics of the one-stop and full-support platform of intellectual property transaction, and summarizes the five-stage model of intellectual property transactions and the basic service requirements during the whole process of intellectual property transactions, then builds the service system of the one-stop and full-support mode based on the overall process of intellectual property transaction and analyzes the unique advantages of the mode. Finally, the paper constructs the internal and external support system so as to improve the construction and development of one-stop and full-support platform mode.


Objective: Immigrants are exposed to many health risks during and after immigration. The impact of immigration on women is greater. The impairment of the women's mental health and barriers to accessing health services bring about many risks associated with pregnancy. In this study, it was aimed to reveal the state of using safe motherhood services among the women aged between 15-49 year old who immigrated from Syria. Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, the data were obtained from Syrian women aged between 15-49 age living in Mardin city center and Kızıltepe in 2016 and agreeing to participate in the study. The sampling size was calculated 384, and the study was carried out among 363 women. Results: The average age of the participants is 28.06 ± 8.39 years and 38.0% is in the 25-34 age group. The rate of those who stated that they did not have any problems when applying to healthcare facilities is 42.3%. Out of 363, 180 (49.6%) women got pregnant after arriving in Turkey. While 162 (90.0%) pregnant women stated that they were examined by health personnel at least once during pregnancy, the rate of those who underwent adequate follow-up (≥4 follow-up) was 46.7%. Of the women, 47.2% who had pregnancy in Turkey were vaccinated against tetanus at least once. Conclusion: Although they found health services to be complicated, the level of benefiting from safe motherhood services was moderate. Despite these positive findings, it is suggested that health care facilities should be tailored for intercultural communication.


PURPOSE
A urethral mobilization and advancement technique for repairing glanular, subglanular and midshaft hypospadias with or without chordee was developed, and has been used for more than 6 years. A brief description of the procedure and the results are presented.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
From 1995 to 2001, 73 boys 4 months to 12 years old underwent repair of glanular (14), subglanular (38) and midshaft (20) hypospadias. Chordee was present in 37 boys. Upon initiating the surgery, a circumcising incision was made proximal to the urethral orifice. The ventral glanular mucosa was preserved. The penile skin was degloved and any chordee was corrected. The meatus was circumscribed and the urethra was mobilized proximally until a 4 to 5:1 ratio was achieved between the length of the mobilized urethra and the initial distance measured from the meatus to the distal margin of the glanular groove. The ventral glans was incised deeply to the corpora cavernosa and the glans wings were mobilized laterally. The urethral meatus was advanced and sutured to the distal glans. The glans wings were approximated over the urethra. The glanular mucosal wings were approximated ventrally, and the skin was resected and closed in the usual fashion. A urethral catheter was left overnight.

RESULTS
Followup ranged from 6 months to more than 6 years. None of the patients had a urethrocutaneous fistula or meatal stenosis. There were no episodes of new, persistent or recurrent chordee. Two patients had meatal retraction wherein the urethra migrated proximally but still within the glans. Only 1 of these patients required a second procedure. One patient had a hematoma that resolved spontaneously.

CONCLUSIONS
The hypospadias technique described, which uses wide urethral and glanular mobilization and advancement, can be useful for repair of midshaft to distal hypospadias with or without chordee with minimal complications and excellent cosmetic results.


Migraine is a common disabling brain disorder. A subtype of migraine with aura (familial hemiplegic migraine type 2: FHM2) is caused by loss‐of‐function mutations in α2 Na+,K+ ATPase (α2 NKA), an isoform almost exclusively expressed in astrocytes in adult brain. Cortical spreading depression (CSD), the phenomenon that underlies migraine aura and activates migraine headache mechanisms, is facilitated in heterozygous FHM2‐knockin mice with reduced expression of α2 NKA. The mechanisms underlying an increased susceptibility to CSD in FHM2 are unknown. Here, we show reduced rates of glutamate and K+ clearance by cortical astrocytes during neuronal activity and reduced density of GLT‐1a glutamate transporters in cortical perisynaptic astrocytic processes in heterozygous FHM2‐knockin mice, demonstrating key physiological roles of α2 NKA and supporting tight coupling with GLT‐1a. Using ceftriaxone treatment of FHM2 mutants and partial inhibition of glutamate transporters in wild‐type mice, we obtain evidence that defective glutamate clearance can account for most of the facilitation of CSD initiation in FHM2‐knockin mice, pointing to excessive glutamatergic transmission as a key mechanism underlying the vulnerability to CSD ignition in migraine.


Purpose - Lean management is getting more and more attention in today's highly competitive environment. In this context, the aim of this study is to test the hypothesis that efficient (lean) inventory management leads to an improvement in a firm's financial performance. Design/methodology/approach - Data for the analysis came from the ICAP database, which contains financial information on all medium to large Greek firms. The sample period extended from 2000 to 2002. For each year all manufacturing firms with the corporate form of Findings - Preliminary results, obtained by cross-section linear regressions, reveal that the higher the level of inventories preserved (departing from lean operations) by a firm, the lower its rate of returns. Findings are additionally tested by the use of pseudo-likelihood ratio test which constitutes a more reliable tool, thus verifying the robustness of the linearity of the relationship. Research limitations/implications - Given the great number of the possible determinants of performance it is difficult to isolate the effect of inventories even by using large samples and advanced methodologies. Originality/value - Since the results from other empirical studies on the microeconomic determinants and consequences of inventories are somewhat contradictory, this study sheds more light to this issue by employing more sophisticated statistical tests applied to a large and recent sample of Greek manufacturers across different industries.


Discussions of music history curricula in various colleague organizations – the American Musicological Society, the National Association of Schools of Music, and The College Music Society – have raised questions about the efficacy of the traditional multi-semester, chronological music history course sequence. Consideration of the appropriateness of such survey sequences in the twenty-first century might consider a number of questions about the discipline itself, about the needs of students, and about the practicalities that affect curricular change. Is the postmodern rejection of historical narrative compelling, or is it misguided? After "the end of history," might we see new reasons to justify the writing of history? Is history something that our students should learn? Is a survey sequence an effective way to teach it? Should our emphasis be on teaching historical knowledge or on skills? What kind of curriculum options make best sense to a postmodern and digital generation? To what extent do we owe it to our students to help them to meet national norms, expectations of them when they arrive at graduate schools, or accreditation standards? What are the administrative resources or obstacles we face in either continuing or abandoning the sequential music history survey course?


Distributed software-defined networks (SDN), consisting of multiple inter-connected network domains, each managed by one SDN controller, is an emerging networking architecture that offers balanced centralized control and distributed operations. In such networking paradigm, most existing works focus on designing sophisticated controller-synchronization strategies to improve joint controller-decision-making for inter-domain routing. However, there is still a lack of fundamental understanding of how the performance of distributed SDN is related to network attributes, thus impossible to justify the necessity of complicated strategies. In this regard, we analyse and quantify how the performance enhancement of distributed SDN architectures is influenced by inter-domain synchronization levels, in terms of the resulting number of abstracted routing clusters, and network structural properties. Based on a generic network model incorporating link preference for path constructions, we establish analytical lower bounds for quantifying the routing performance under any arbitrarily given network synchronization status. The significance of these performance bounds is that they can be used to quantify the contribution of controller synchronization levels in improving the network performance under different network parameters, which therefore serves as a fundamental guidance for future SDN performance analysis and protocol designs.


ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of a capital gains tax reduction on the stock price of firms that have not historically paid a dividend. If markets are semi-strong-form efficient, one would expect that the market price would have already adjusted prior to the day the announcement was made, assuming no new information was included in the announcement. If markets have not already incorporated the information, there would be a possibility for abnormal returns from investing in the stocks on the date of the announcement. This paper studies the returns from companies prior to, and subsequent to, the capital gains tax reduction announcement date and compares the price changes of non-dividend paying companies to those of similar firms that have historically paid dividends. The a priori expectation of the study is that the majority of a change in prices will take place prior to the announcement date as investors anticipate the likelihood of passage by the Congress and the President. INTRODUCTION From the time firms first began paying their stockholders dividends, an argument has raged between those who believe dividends add to stock value and those who believe dividends detract from stock value. Miller & Modigliani (1961) only add another school of thought by proposing that dividends are irrelevant in a world without taxes. The United States, however, is not a world without taxes and previous research finds a significant positive impact on the price of tax-favored assets from an increase in beneficial tax treatments (Scholes & Wolfson, 1992). The focus of this paper is on the effects of the 1997 reduction of the capital gains tax on the price of stocks that have not historically paid dividends to their shareholders. The study incorporates the use of parametric tests to determine the relative impact of the tax reduction on stocks that do not pay dividends compared to those that do pay dividends. This capital gains tax change was unique in that it: 1) occurred during a period of a relatively bullish market, 2) was not coupled with a change in the ordinary tax rate, and 3) occurred during an otherwise uneventful week in the stock market. These factors aid in distinguishing the unique impact of the tax change on the valuation of common stock. Other studies focus on capital gain tax reductions that are accompanied by changes in the ordinary tax rate and/or market anomalies such as the Crash of '87, which make it much more difficult to gauge the impact of the capital gains tax change. First, it may be helpful to briefly explain the capital gains tax on equity investments and its implications for the stock market. Capital gains are defined as the increase in an asset's value over its purchase price. When the asset is sold, the resulting gains are said to be realized and now subject to taxation at the capital gains tax rate. Until the asset is sold, the gains are referred to as unrealized and are not subject to taxation. Corporate stocks account for 78% of the total amount of capital gains on all assets with the next closest category being bonds. When Congress first established the income tax system in 1913, capital gains were taxed as ordinary income. From 1913 until the beginning of the 1980's, the capital gains tax has, at times, been a favorite way of generating revenue and generating votes, as evidenced by the political timing of changes in the tax laws. Prior to 1986, capital gains and dividend payment were taxed differently with 60% of long-term capital gains exempt from taxation. Such incentives made stocks offering higher capital gains, as opposed to higher dividends, more attractive to investors. In 1 986, Congress passed the 1986 Tax Reform Act which changed the way capital gains were taxed. It essentially brought the taxation of dividends and capital gains to the same level. The act made all capital gains taxable at the same rates as other income. This removed the essence of the preference bias for capital gains as opposed to dividend income. …


The geographic distributions of plant species show marked correlations with the current climate, suggesting that they are likely to shift if climate changes. However, before projecting any such shifts, it is important to establish whether distributions are at equilibrium with the current climate. If they are not, distributional shifts could occur even without climate change, making it difficult to tease apart climate‐induced shifts from shifts occurring naturally without climate change. We forecast the geographical distributions of the 10 most common trees occurring in the Iberian Peninsula using a new method that relaxes the species–climate equilibrium assumption implicit in most species distributions models. For each species, we developed a spatially explicit patch occupancy model (SPOM) with climate‐dependent extinction rates and with colonization rates that depend on both climate and local seed dispersal. Bayesian methods were used to estimate the colonization, extinction and seed dispersal functions against observed colonization and extinction events recorded in repeat surveys of 46 596 forest plots in the Spanish Forest Inventories (1986–96 and 1997–2007). We then simulated distributional changes between the years 2000–2100. Without climate change, 9 of the 10 species substantially increased in regional frequency. These increases occurred primarily within current ranges, although some species also expanded across their range edges. With climate change, one temperate conifer species and two sub‐Mediterranean species would reduce their frequency of occurrence across the studied region, whereas temperate broad‐leaved species were unaffected and Mediterranean species were either unaffected or increased their frequency of occurrence. Synthesis. The analysis suggests that these species are substantially out of equilibrium, such that abundances and ranges would increase without climate change. Climate change may increase, decrease, stabilize or shift distributions, in a way that can only be understood by comparing predictions against baseline scenarios that account for these non‐equilibrium range dynamics.


We develop a complete theoretical model to explain the interaction of modal and chromatic dispersion in optical channels based on vertical cavity surface emitting lasers and multimode fibers. We propose an original formalism to estimate the magnitude of this interaction on the channel bandwidth and mode partition noise power penalty within traditional communication system link models. Simulation results are experimentally validated.


These images represent a fresh view of the human face, obtained through various algorithmic transformations created by digital manipulation of individual pixels or pixel groups of a photograph of a human face. viewers can imagine that they are standing in front of a curious mirror that shows various views of their own faces. In the digital era, the human face can be viewed in a way that was never before possible, due to both digital technologies and the ability of the algorithmic approach to dealing with image elements. Algorithmic manipulation of human facial elements enables one to see the face in a new way, due to the fact that the very same pixels that form the image are transformed or regrouped in unexpected ways. Since we are sensitive to even minor variations in human faces, we can sometimes feel uneasy about these algorithmic manipulations; however, even then we understand that we are discovering something completely new in something so familiar. One more aspect of algorithmic image manipulation is worth mentioning: the fact that one can make a transition from a figurative expression in the photograph to a completely abstract view of the human face. However, the presence of the very same color palette from the original photo makes it difficult for us to believe that new images that arise after manipulation have nothing to do with the original photo. This group of images was created using algorithmic manipulation of a single photograph of a human face. Different algorith-mic techniques were used, all based on separation of a photograph into individual pixels. The entire area of the photograph was then divided into a matrix of equal squares, each represented by a matrix of pixels from a corresponding part of the photograph. One type of algorithmic transformation manipulates pixels inside each square via different techniques (for example, by mirroring pixels related to vertical or horizontal axes passing through the center of the square, or by choosing a single pixel in a horizontal or vertical group of pixels in a square and repeating it in the whole horizontal or vertical line inside a square). Another type of algorithmic transformation randomly repositions whole squares of pixels to different positions.


Australia and New Zealand are both island nations, sharing political, economic and cultural traditions, although there are major differences in land area and in the scale of their economies. In 2007 Australia's population reached 21 million, about five times larger than New Zealand's. Abundant primary resources and modem transport connections have helped both countries become 'the world's champions in challenging the tyranny of distance' (Withers, 2007, p. 21). Their port systems have longstanding maritime trade connections that were strengthened by the Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement of 1983 (Tull, 2006). In the late 1980s New Zealand broke with the long tradition of state regulation of ports and centralised control of waterfront labour by embarking on a major programme of port reform and privatisation (Reveley, 2003). As was the case in the 1890s, when New Zealand pioneered social reform and other state initiatives later adopted in Australia (Wilkes, 1993), Australia quickly followed suit with a raft of measures intended to increase the efficiency of its ports (Tull and Reveley, 2001).


We present a taxonomically complete and topologically robust molecular phylogeny of the Middle American heroine cichlids based on which we review their diversity and genus-level systematics. In order to ascertain the diversity of the group and its phylogeny we have used three nested taxon sampling analyses of the concatenated nDNA/mtDNA datasets and additionally to these analyses we present a summary of the results of a new Next Generation Sequencing-generated nuclear phylogeny based on a data set of ~ 140,000 informative characters. The NGS ddRAD phylogeny has a species-level sampling covering virtually all species (including the enigmatic Cichlasoma microlepis Dahl, 1960) with multiple sequenced specimens per species. Based on our results the Middle American heroine cichlids are made up of three main clades. The three clades (the herichthyines, the amphilophines, and the astatheroines) are however not each other sister groups since they are interspersed with South American (Australoheros, Caquetaia, Chocoheros, Heroina, Mesoheros) and Antillean (Nandopsis) genera and they represent probably two separate colonization events of Middle America from South America, probably via the Antilles. Our study reveals many cases of cytonuclear discordance and/or introgressive hybridization both at the genus and deeper levels stressing the importance to study the nuclear and mitochondrial phylogenetic signals independently and not solely in concatenated analyses. We have found that a great majority of morphological characters are ecologically correlated and that they form only a limited number of functionally-determined combinations – i.e. ecomorphs. We have found five main cranial ecomorphs but only two postcranial ecomorphs (the lotic and lentic ecomorphs, plus the undifferentiated ancestral character combination). The cranial and postcranial ecomorphs are not combined completely randomly having produced thirteen modular whole-body ecomorphs. Both the cranial and postcranial ecomorphs, and even their combinations, have evolved repeatedly in the Middle American cichlids in the same habitats both in sympatry as well as in allopatry. Our analyses of the diversity of Middle American cichlid clade support the existence of 31 genera in Middle America (plus six in South America and one in the Greater Antilles) as separate evolutionary lineages occupying separate adaptive zones. Nine new genera are described here for species and species groups that have lacked a genus level name to this day or were associated with other unrelated genera. We also review the species level diversity based on the mtDNA cytb gene population-level analysis. Furthermore, we provide a new biogeographical analysis of the group which explains their evolutionary history and demonstrates that biogeography is a much better indicator of evolutionary relationships in this fish group than are most morphological characters due to their ecological correlation.


There is a considerable imbalance between non-citizens and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when it comes to information access in deportation proceedings. Created after September 11, one of the original mandates for DHS was to improve intelligence gathering by creating a network of local, state, federal, and even private information sharers. Bureaucratic consolidation, new information technologies, and non-citizens' contingent status give DHS a singular capacity to gather information about them. As a result, DHS prosecutors have vast amounts of information about the non-citizens whom they are trying to remove from the United States. In contrast, non-citizens in these adversarial, trial-type proceedings cannot even get basic information from their own immigration file without filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that typically takes months to adjudicate and results in a heavily redacted response. A similar informational asymmetry led commentators in the 1960s-70s to successfully call for the adoption of discovery in criminal cases, and the same argument weighs in favor of discovery in immigration court. Moreover, the trend in federal agency courts is toward liberal discovery, so much so that immigration courts now stand virtually alone in disallowing it. At the same time, the stakes in immigration court — deportation — are as profound as in any administrative court. Given these serious stakes and the growing consensus in favor of discovery, some discovery may be required as a matter of due process in many immigration cases.


Mentally retarded individuals have been studied almost exclusively as clinical entities, not as persons immersed in the stream of social life. This has led not only to a lack of appreciation for the complexity of their lives and concerns, but also to an underestimation and incomplete understanding of their intellectual and linguistic skills. By exploring aspects of the ongoing linguistic and social lives of retarded individuals in various community contexts, this volume contributes to a growing body of literature which attempts to fill in this inadequate picture. In addition, the studies in this volume offer social scientists insights into the way that stigma such as that associated with intellectual and social incompetence affects social groups and influences conversational behavior and language use.


The death of cells appears to be an undesirable process,
however, cell death can also occur naturally through apoptosis.
Apoptosis is an essential feature of how cells function,
and it plays an indispensable role during the development
and life of the organism. Natural cell death provides the basis
for such everyday processes as the continuous renewal of the
skin. Apoptosis is a newly understood phenomenon, it was
first described in the seventies; the genetic description of
apoptosis was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002.
The life or death of a cell is defined by its environment,
signals leading to apoptosis arrive continuously from the
environment as well as from within the cells. These will lead
to actual cell death only if it is confirmed for the cell that the
soundness of the organism cannot be safeguarded otherwise.
The balance of natural cell death may fall both ways.
Excessive cell death will lead to atrophy, such as the atrophy
of the central nervous system in old age, or as in AIDS.
A defect in the mechanism of apoptosis will lead to an
unlimited proliferation of the given cell, a malignant
tumour.


Some well-known mobile bearing designs have had truly excellent long-term clinical results. Their lower constraint and ability for some self-alignment might have helped reduce the shear forces and torques transmitted to the prosthesis–bone interface, thereby lowering the risk of loosening. However, the most commonly assumed benefit of mobile bearings is the reduction in wear due to less contact stress and reduced cross shear. In a rotating platform, wear can be reduced because the rolling/sliding motion is separated from the transverse rotational motion, which reduces cross-shear. Although it has not been categorically proven clinically, such lower wear expectations with mobile bearings might have influenced the thinking of some total knee replacement (TKR) designers and test engineers. This paper amalgamates invitro TKR wear results from two separate laboratories (in Nebraska and Germany) to present the largest data set ever published on wear, across the widest variety of fixed and mobile bearing TKR designs. Many hundreds of TKR samples were tested with largely similar methodologies using the ISO 14243-1 force-control method. These tests covered 133 different fixed and mobile bearing designs and materials, in total (bicondylar) and unicompartmental forms, and of a wide range of sizes. Clear differences in wear resulted with known superior bearing materials. This illustrates how sensitive and capable of discriminating between low and high wearing implants the force-control wear testing methodology is. However, between both labs, and across all tests, no statistically significant differences were found in wear overall between fixed and mobile bearings. Therefore, the wear of mobile bearing knees is not necessarily less than that of fixed bearings. In both, it depends on the detailed design and materials of the TKR. Testing appears to be necessary with all implant designs, regardless of the history of clinically successful predicates of seemingly similar generic design.


Human papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections (STIs). More than 170 types of HPV have been classified and more than 40 types of HPV can infect the genital tract of humans.[1,2,3] Genital HPV types are divided into two groups based on whether they have an association with cancer. Infections with low-risk types (non-oncogenic) are not associated with cancer but can cause genital warts and benign or low-grade cervical cellular changes. Infections with high-risk types (oncogenic), most notably HPV types 16 and 18, can cause low-grade cervical cellular changes, high-grade cervical cellular changes (moderate to severe Pap test abnormalities), and cancer of the cervix; in addition, some high-risk HPV types have been associated with cancers of the vulva, vagina, anus, penis, and oropharynx.[4] Most HPV infections, whether caused by low-risk or high-risk types, are transient, asymptomatic, and have no clinical consequences. Estimates on the incidence and prevalence of HPV infection are limited because HPV infection is not a reportable infection in any state (genital warts are reportable in a select number of states). In addition, most HPV infections are asymptomatic or subclinical, and therefore not diagnosed. Available HPV-related data primarily focuses on the clinical sequelae of HPV infection, such as genital warts and genitourinary cancers.


The Water Framework Directive (WFD) 2000/60/EC, which has been transposed into the national legislation with the Law 3199/2003 (MoEPPW, 2003), will cause substantial changes in the drinking water pricing policy and the domestic water authorities involved such as the Municipal Enterprises for Water Supply and Sewerage (DEYA). Up to date, drinking water pricing policy has been based only on the recovery of the economic cost and in some cases neither this. Therefore, domestic water is not priced taking into account its real cost. Based on data provided by 74 DEYA representing 2.10 million inh, the average water price is estimated to be 1.19?/m 3 . Analysis of these data reveals a deviation of 41.67% from the real cost. The relation of consumers with the Enterprise, but also that of management and employees, should be a bidirectional relation, in order to be comprehensible by all. Thus, an agreement that will point out that the most excellent quality of water presupposes water policy which will consider sustainability and the current requirements of the Enterprise and of course the consumers should be established between them.


Summary

Information about temporal patterns of ecological responses to species losses is integral to our understanding of the ultimate effects of declining biodiversity. As part of the Tropical Amphibian Declines in Streams (TADS) project, we quantified changes in algal biomass and N cycling in algae in upland Panamanian streams following the widespread decline of larval anurans.
Reach-scale monitoring during and after a catastrophic, disease-driven amphibian decline showed significant 2.8-fold increases (P < 0.05) in algal biomass in pools and 6.3-fold increases in riffles in the 5 months following the decline. 3 years after the decline, the magnitude of this initial change dampened to increases (P < 0.05) of 2-fold in pools and 3.5-fold in riffles over pre-decline levels. Similarly, total organic matter of benthic biofilms, measured as ash-free dry mass (AFDM), increased significantly by 2.2-fold in pools and 2.3-fold in riffles in the initial 5-month post-decline period, with the magnitude of these changes dampening slightly to a 2-fold increase in pools and 1.9-fold increase in riffles over pre-decline levels after 3 years (P < 0.05 for differences at 5 months and 3 years). There were initial increases (P < 0.05) in Chl a:AFDM ratios 5 months after the decline, but ratios had returned to pre-decline levels after 3 years.
Algal food quality (as C/N) increased slightly, but not significantly, during the initial 5-month post-decline period and remained constant over 3 years. Mean δ15N in biofilms in pool habitat (measured over the reach scale) was significantly depleted initially following tadpole declines and remained significantly depleted 3 years after the decline (4.34 ‰ pre- versus 3.24‰ post-; P < 0.05), suggesting that the loss of tadpoles reduced N recycling.
Increases in abundance and production of some grazing macroinvertebrate taxa after the decline may have contributed to the gradual reduction in the difference between initial and longer-term post-decline algal biomass. However, algal biomass was still 2-fold greater than pre-decline levels after 3 years, indicating that grazing macroinvertebrates did not fully compensate for the loss of tadpoles.


Introduction: The optical coherence tomography (OCT) is part of the detection and monitoring of many retinal and optic nerve diseases. Our study aims to create a normative database of the peripapillary fibers thickness for children aged from 3 to 15 years, using a spectral-domain OCT: the Spectralis TM.
Subjects and methods: Prospective study followed at the Amiens academic hospital center in the ophthalmology Saint-Victor center using the Spectralis TM during the first 3 weeks of October 2012. An inclusion criterion was age between 3 and 15. Exclusion criteria were the presence of a retinal disease, optic nerve disease and if the pictures were found to be un exploitable. The thickness of peripapillary fibers was measured according to the age, the side of the eye, the peripapillary area and the spherical equivalent.
Results: This study was able to regroup data on 66 subjects aged 3 to 15 (9 ± 2,9 years), hence 121 eyes studied. The mean refraction in spherical equivalent was of +1,1 ± 2,5 diopters. RNFL thickness was 103 ± 10,2 μm. RNFL thickness was the greatest inferiorly (134 ± 22,2 μm) and superiorly (126 ± 17,2 μm) than nasally (77 ± 15,3 μm) and temporally (74 ± 12,1 μm). No significant difference was found between the retinal nerve fiber thickness of both eyes in the studied sample (p>0,05). The same result was concluded between girls and boys. Nevertheless, the inferior area was found to be significantly thicker than the upper one, also thicker than the nasal and temporal ones (p 0,05).
Conclusion: According to this study, the side, the gender and the age have no significative influence on the fibers thickness. However, it varies depending on the peripapillary area. The duplication of studies on this subject would provide a pediatric database grouping values on the peripapillary optical fiber thickness.


The extent to which human settlement has modified the New Zealand landscape is highly debated; leading to our perception of what is regarded as a "pristine" environment in comparison to what is considered an anthropogenic or naturally altered environment heavily uncertain (McWethy et al 2009). East Polynesia, largely consisting of island ecosystems including New Zealand was one of the last places where human arrival occurred (Wilmshurst et al 2008). As a result, many regions within New Zealand may have escaped the effect of anthropogenic influence. Research using paleolimnological techniques is sufficiently lagging in terms of understanding what impact catchment burning triggered by Māori and European arrival has had on inland aquatic ecosystems. Therefore, this study aimed to 1) Investigate whether human impact signals are apparent in an inland aquatic lake ecosystem within a remnant forested catchment and 2) Investigate the impact of the paleoclimate over the past 1000 years within the context of potential human disturbance. Lake Marion, a small sub-alpine mesotrophic lake located in a supposed forested catchment was examined. It has been assumed that this is a non-impact lowland site, suggesting it could be considered a "pristine" lake ecosystem. Core chronology down-core using 210Pb and 14C was provided to develop an accurate age model. Additionally, the sedimentation record and multiple paleo and environmental proxies including macro charcoal, chironomids and macrofossils were analysed to determine whether these signals of human impact have influenced the aquatic ecosystem. The results indicate a change in the sedimentation record and a statistically significant change in chironomid assemblage at around 1480 A.D., rejecting the notion that Lake Marion is considered a "pristine" ecosystem. The changes in the paleoclimate, in particular the Little Ice Age and enhanced westerlies are indicated to have caused the impact within this catchment. There is suggested evidence of Māori impact at around 1500 A.D. identified through the local charcoal and macrofossil record. This burning occurs after the changes identified at around 1480 A.D., implying that the paleoclimate influenced this local burning rather than Māori arrival. There is no evidence of large charcoal particles within the Lake Marion record during the time of European settlement, indicating there was no local burning from an anthropogenic influence. The beginning of European settlement coincides with the end of the Little Ice Age and a return to a climate similar to that of the Medieval Warm Period observed prior to 1400 A.D., indicating the paleoclimate to have contributed to the changes in the sediment record during this time. The results using the various paleolimnological techniques and multi-proxy analysis outlined in this study will allow for further forested catchments like Lake Marion to be investigated, allowing "pristine" environments to be distinguished from natural and anthropogenic induced changes.


Design stroms which embody the rainfall characteristics of an area are used for the sizing of drainage facilities. The selection of a design strom may significantly influence the design and therfore the cost of those facilities and the ability of public agencies to implement a flood control program in as timely manner. In Clark County, Nevada, the SCS Type II storm was utilized for most rainfall-runoff studies performed prior to 1979. Subsequent to that time, 3-hour design storms have been used for Flood Hazard Studies, Master plan development and other drainage studies. The Corps of Engineers developed five 6-hour storm distributions for their 1988 feasibility study of the Las Vegas Wash and tributaries. A study was conducted to determine what impact the use of 3-, 6- and 24-hour design storms have on the sizing of flood control facilities in the Las Vegas Valley.


Low-grade waste heat recovery is a promising source of renewable energy; however, there are practical challenges in the recovery process. Thermoelectric generators (TEGs) are a viable solution, but their efficiency remains low, thereby limiting their implementation. The performance of TEGs can be enhanced by optimizing the module configuration; however, optimizing all the parameters experimentally using traditional experimental techniques will require several trials, and therefore, it is cumbersome and expensive. Here, we demonstrate the Taguchi method for optimizing TEG modules and demonstrate that full optimization can be achieved in just 25 experiments. The optimization has been achieved in four stages. In the first stage, a numerical model of thermoelectricity is developed and used in the second stage to optimize key geometric parameters of TEGs through the Taguchi method. In the third stage, the Taguchi method is used to optimize the geometric dimensions of the heat sink. Lastly, in the fourth stage, the effect of operating conditions on the performance of TEGs is investigated. The results reveal that the Taguchi method is capable of predicting the near-optimal configuration of TEGs.


Helicobacter pylori is an important causative agent of gastrointestinal and hepatobiliary diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate phylogenetic relationships among H. pylori strains from the oral cavities of healthy individuals, gastric biopsies from gastroduodenal (GI) patients and bile samples from hepatobiliary (HB) patients in the northeast of Thailand. The DNA sequences of a portion of the vacuolating cytotoxin A gene (vacA) were investigated. Phylogenetic trees were constructed using the neighborjoining and maximum-likelihood methods. The vacA sequences of H. pylori fell into four main groups on the trees. Strains from healthy persons fell into two widely separated but well-supported groups, while most H. pylori vacA sequences from HB patients were distributed in another two groups. In contrast, the H. pylori strains from GI patients were scattered across the tree, without a clear geographical pattern. In conclusion, the sequence of vacA may be useful to classify the genetic relationship of H. pylori derived from different sources.