Diverse eukaryotic cells crawl through complex environments using distinct modes of migration. To understand the underlying mechanisms and their evolutionary relationships, we must define each mode, and identify its phenotypic and molecular markers. Here, we focus on a widely dispersed migration mode characterized by dynamic, actin-filled pseudopods that we call "α-motility." Mining genomic data revealed a clear trend: only organisms with both WASP and SCAR/WAVE---activators of branched actin assembly---make pseudopods. While SCAR has been shown to drive pseudopod formation, WASP9s role in this process is murky. We hypothesize that these genes together represent a genetic signature of α-motility, and are used for pseudopod formation. WASP depletion from human neutrophils confirms that both proteins are involved in explosive actin polymerization, pseudopod formation, and cell migration, and colocalize to dynamic signaling structures. Moreover, retention of WASP together with SCAR correctly predicts α-motility in disease-causing chytrid fungi, which we show crawl at >30 μm/min with actin-filled pseudopods. By focusing on one migration mode in many eukaryotes, we identified a genetic marker of α-motility and evidence for a widely distributed mode of cell crawling with a single evolutionary origin.


Projection neurons migrate radially from their place of birth deep in the center of the brain to find their final position in the growing brain. Interneurons, however, although they are similarly born in the deep portions of the brain, migrate tangentially to find their final homes. Marín et al. now elucidate some of the signals that guide migrating interneurons along their pathway. The secreted signal semaphorins, and their receptors, neuropilins, already known for their ability to guide the course of growing axons in the spinal cord, are instrumental in guiding the path over which these interneurons migrate. O. Marín, A. Yaron, A. Bagri, M. Tessier-Lavigne, J. L. R. Rubenstein, Sorting of striatal and cortical interneurons regulated by semaphorin-neuropilin interactions. Science 293, 872-875 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Concerns over climate change and climatic variability are growing in South Asia because of the potential detrimental impacts of these phenomena on livelihoods. Such growing concerns demonstrate a need to assess how farmers simultaneously cope with extreme events and adapt to climatic variability. Based on household surveys of 2660 farm families conducted in Nepal's Terai, coastal Bangladesh, and the Indian state of Bihar, this paper seeks to (1) explore farmers' coping strategies under adverse weather events; (2) identify key adaptation measures used by farmers; and (3) explore the policy interventions required to adjust agriculture to climatic variability. The study reveals that migration is the most important coping strategy of the households in Bihar and coastal Bangladesh, while reliance on credit markets is the most important in Terai. Farmers in the areas with higher rainfall variability pursue a higher number of coping strategies compared to farmers in areas with lower rainfall variability. Food available months are also higher in areas with higher rainfall variability. Across all sites, the most frequently mentioned adaptive practices are changing cropping patterns and adoption of resilient crop varieties. A large number of farmers place emphasis on breeding crop varieties that tolerate adverse weather. Governments should implement a number of planned activities to cope with adverse events, with the aim that these activities would be synergistic with adaptation to climate change.


"Imagining Tomorrow" takes a lively and informative look at the future as envisioned in the American past. Covering the period from the 1880s to the present, it examines the expectations that various groups of Americans held regarding the technology of tomorrow. The book contributes to our understanding of twentieth-century culture, technology and what may be called the history of the future.Six of the ten essays in the book probe the future imagined for particular inventions, such as the electric light, x-ray, radio, and computer. Two others explore the way architects and designers repackaged the traditional house and city into exciting and evocative images of the future. The remaining two essays focus respectively on the novels of 19th-century technological utopians and 1930s world's fairs, both popular forums for speculating about technology and the future.Joseph J. Corn, a Lecturer in the Program on Values, Technology, Science, and Society at Stanford University, served as general editor for the volume and provides an overall historical perspective in an introduction and epilogue. The other contributors are Paul Ceruzzi, Steven L. Del Sesto, Susan J. Douglas, Brian Horrigan, Folke T. Kihlstedt, Nancy Knight, Carolyn Marvin, Jeffrey L. Meikle, Howard P. Segal, and Carol Willis.


An epidemic spreading in a network calls for a decision on the part of the network members: They should decide whether to protect themselves or not. Their decision depends on the trade off between their perceived risk of being infected and the cost of being protected. The network members can make decisions repeatedly, based on information that they receive about the changing infection level in the network. We study the equilibrium states reached by a network whose members increase (resp. decrease) their security deployment when learning that the network infection is higher (resp. lower). Our main result is that as the learning rate of the members increases, the equilibrium level of infection increases. We demonstrate this result both when members are strictly rational and when they are not. We characterize the domains of attraction of the equilibrium points. We validate our conclusions with simulations on human mobility traces.


At 09:26, on April 14, 2016(LT), the first Kumamoto EQ (Mj6.5) occurred at depth of 11 km in Kumamoto Prefecture. This EQ is thought the foreshock of the main shock (Mj7.3) at 01:25 on April 16 (LT). In this paper, we will show the results of b-value changes in time and space for the 2016/04/16 Kumamoto Earthquakes base on Gutenberg–Richter law. We used the JMA earthquake catalog (2010/01/01-2016/04/16) and earthquakes shallower than 20 km depth. For the investigation of spatial changes, we analyzed the region of E129-133 (deg.) and N31.0-34.5 (deg ) with interval of G=0.05 (deg). We take the circle with radius R = 60 (km) and the number of earthquake N in the circle for computation. We set N=80,100 as a threshold and if N<80 or 100, we do not compute b-values. For the investigation on temporal changes, we used the moving window method of a certain number of earthquakes. We take the number of earthquake of the windows 200 and 100 with shift of 100 and 50, respectively. The details will be shown in the presentation.


This paper investigates the transmission of fossil fuel commodity spot market price changes to procurement costs of U.S. power producers. We measure and compare the speed and magnitude with which spot prices predict procurement costs using restricted access fuel price data. Natural gas spot prices are quickly reflected in procurement costs. Coal spot prices offer very little predictive power to coal procurement costs. Although not causal, the empirical results also show differences across regulatory status. These findings may have implications for the electricity market deregulation literature that creates marginal cost curves as a competitive benchmark.


We analyze the effects of a large place-based policy, subsidizing up to 50% of investment costs of manufacturing firms in East Germany after reunification. We show that a 1-percentage-point decrease in the subsidy rate leads to a 1% decrease in manufacturing employment. We document important spillovers for untreated sectors in treated counties, untreated counties connected via trade and local taxes, whereas we do not find spillovers on counties in the same local labor market. We show that the policy is at least as efficient as cash transfers to the unemployed, but is more effective in curbing regional inequality.


In light of international scrutiny, what might be next steps toward redress for the Korean and other World War II Military Sex Slaves, in terms of strategic framing of their claims to reparatory justice? More particularly, viewed through a lens of American redress experiences, and particularly the U.S. apology and reparations for the Japanese American World War II internment, what might human rights tenets of reparatory justice offer established governments faced with challenges to their legitimacy as democracies in the face of unredressed human rights transgressions? Redressing the wounds of injustice has become a matter central to the future of civil societies. Whether a country heals persisting wounds is increasingly viewed as integral, (1) domestically, to enabling it to deal with pain, guilt and division linked to its past in order to now live peaceably and work productively, and (2) globally, to claiming legitimacy as a democracy genuinely committed to human rights (which affects a country's standing on international security and responsible economic development.) People and governments -- especially democracies with histories of human rights abuses -- all have a stake in justice that repairs. This larger stake in democratic legitimacy that a country like Japan has -- especially as it seeks to expand its influence in international security -- lies at the heart of this assessment of strategic future paths toward "Comfort Women" redress.


Abstract:This article is a contribution to critiques of the mainstream trends in financial literacy education and argues that they typically produce a profound financial illiteracy by obfuscating the systemic and structural dimensions of debt, financial hardship, and the patterns of financialization, thus reaffirming a neoliberal trend to privatize social problems. I explore how this financial illiteracy dovetails with the production of "white ignorance" and the erasure of the racialized injustices of contemporary global capitalism. While the case study of financial literacy educational materials targeting Indigenous people in Canada largely confirms this approach, it also gives us clues as to what another, better financial literacy might look like. The article concludes by asking what financial literacy education for the radical imagination might look like and what the further decolonization of that education might imply. It ends with a celebration of settler-colonial bankruptcy as a moral and political-economic opening for a radical way forward.


With more than six thousand species, amphibians are more diverse than mammals and are found on every continent save Antarctica. Despite the abundance and diversity of these animals, many aspects of the biology of amphibians remain unstudied or misunderstood. "The Ecology and Behavior of Amphibians" aims to fill this gap in the literature on this remarkable taxon. It is a celebration of amphibian life and the ecological and behavioral adaptations that have made it a successful component of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Synthesizing seventy years of research on amphibian biology, Kentwood D. Wells addresses all major areas of inquiry, including phylogeny, classification, and morphology; aspects of physiological ecology such as water and temperature relations, respiration, metabolism, and energetics; movements and orientation; communication and social behavior; reproduction and parental care; ecology and behavior of amphibian larvae and ecological aspects of metamorphosis; ecological impact of predation on amphibian populations and antipredator defenses; and aspects of amphibian community ecology. With an eye toward modern concerns, "The Ecology and Behavior of Amphibians" concludes with a chapter devoted to amphibian conservation. An unprecedented scholarly contribution to amphibian biology, this book is eagerly anticipated among specialists.


The efficacy of an absorbable antimicrobial agent trimethoprim-sulphamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) in the management of children with persistent diarrhoea was evaluated in a double blind, randomised, and placebo controlled trial. Of the 55 patients studied, 28 received TMP-SMX, and 27 received placebo. A trend in stool weight reduction was observed from the third day after the drug was started, and the reduction was statistically significant on day 6 and day 7. However, the difference in total stool output (g/kg) up to day 7 was not significantly different between the two groups. The proportion of children whose diarrhoea resolved by day 7 (therapeutic success) was significantly more in the treatment group compared with the placebo group (23 v 15). Additionally, mean duration of diarrhoea in the group that received TMP-SMX was less compared with the placebo group (6.0 v 8.3 days); this difference, however, was not significant. Hospital infection (probably nosocomial infection) was significantly less in the TMP-SMX treated group (1 v 10). The results of our study indicate that TMP-SMX has a clinical benefit in respect of reducing the stool output, and higher recovery rate within seven days of treatment. In addition, it prevented possible hospital acquired infection.


Abstract Background Variations in the age patterns and magnitudes of excess deaths, as well as differences in population sizes and age structures, make cross-national comparisons of the cumulative mortality impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic challenging. Life expectancy is a widely used indicator that provides a clear and cross-nationally comparable picture of the population-level impacts of the pandemic on mortality. Methods Life tables by sex were calculated for 29 countries, including most European countries, Chile and the USA, for 2015–2020. Life expectancy at birth and at age 60 years for 2020 were contextualized against recent trends between 2015 and 2019. Using decomposition techniques, we examined which specific age groups contributed to reductions in life expectancy in 2020 and to what extent reductions were attributable to official COVID-19 deaths. Results Life expectancy at birth declined from 2019 to 2020 in 27 out of 29 countries. Males in the USA and Lithuania experienced the largest losses in life expectancy at birth during 2020 (2.2 and 1.7 years, respectively), but reductions of more than an entire year were documented in 11 countries for males and 8 among females. Reductions were mostly attributable to increased mortality above age 60 years and to official COVID-19 deaths. Conclusions The COVID-19 pandemic triggered significant mortality increases in 2020 of a magnitude not witnessed since World War II in Western Europe or the breakup of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. Females from 15 countries and males from 10 ended up with lower life expectancy at birth in 2020 than in 2015.


The surging popularity of zombies in modern American fiction, film, and television is rooted in a form of "a-religious" apocalypticism: a fatalistic view of the world and the future without any hope for deliverance. This worldview contains a handful of intriguing similarities with the ancient Jewish eschatological expectations that appear in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This study surveys four prominent themes that are shared between the scrolls and the American hit television series, The Walking Dead: (1) expectations for the "last days"; (2) a persecution complex that produces doctrines of a "remnant"; (3) need for social preservation through "ritual" purity; and (4) "insider / outsider" polemics. This comparative exercise attempts to show how zombies in popular culture are one reflection of our own existential, socio-economic angst that finds expression in a post-modern, post-Christian context.


We present stellar evolution calculations of the remnant of the merger of two carbon-oxygen white dwarfs (CO WDs). We focus on cases that have a total mass in excess of the Chandrasekhar mass. After the merger, the remnant manifests as an $L \sim 3 \times 10^4 L_\odot$ source for $\sim 10^4$ yr. A dusty wind may develop, leading these sources to be self-obscured and to appear similar to extreme AGB stars. Roughly $\sim 10$ such objects should exist in the Milky Way and M31 at any time. As found in previous work, off-center carbon fusion is ignited within the merger remnant and propagates inward via a carbon flame, converting the WD to an oxygen-neon (ONe) composition. By following the evolution for longer than previous calculations, we demonstrate that after carbon-burning reaches the center, neutrino-cooled Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction leads to off-center neon ignition in remnants with masses $\ge 1.35 M_\odot$. The resulting neon-oxygen flame converts the core to a silicon WD. Thus, super-Chandrasekhar WD merger remnants do not undergo electron-capture induced collapse as traditionally assumed. Instead, if the remnant mass remains above the Chandrasekhar mass, we expect that it will form a low-mass iron core and collapse to form a neutron star. Remnants that lose sufficient mass will end up as massive, isolated ONe or Si WDs.


ABSTRACT This article broadens our knowledge of post-war holidaymaking (c. 1950–80) by adopting the Isle of Man as a case study. A popular holiday resort from the late nineteenth century, the Isle of Man experienced considerable political turbulence during the 1950s and 1960s about how best to stay competitive as a seaside resort, where authorities employed uniquely stringent methods to contain rowdiness and protect the island's 'respectable' atmosphere. The first two sections examine the leisure habits of the young and working class in a holiday context, integrating this analysis with perceptions of their behaviour gleaned from oral interviews with local residents. The concluding section explores how the presence of holidaymakers on the Isle of Man – uniquely among seaside resorts in the British Isles – informed (and in some cases emboldened) a sense of national identity. Oral history, complemented by the Hansard reports of the Isle of Man parliament and local press coverage, sheds light on the activities of the post-war working class at play, and how the presence of holidaymakers fortified Manx national consciousness.


Methyl-coenzyme M reductase (MCR), the enzyme responsible for the microbial formation of methane, is a 300-kilodalton protein organized as a hexamer in an alpha2beta2gamma2 arrangement. The crystal structure of the enzyme from Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum, determined at 1.45 angstrom resolution for the inactive enzyme state MCRox1-silent, reveals that two molecules of the nickel porphinoid coenzyme F430 are embedded between the subunits alpha, alpha', beta, and gamma and alpha', alpha, beta', and gamma', forming two identical active sites. Each site is accessible for the substrate methyl-coenzyme M through a narrow channel locked after binding of the second substrate coenzyme B. Together with a second structurally characterized enzyme state (MCRsilent) containing the heterodisulfide of coenzymes M and B, a reaction mechanism is proposed that uses a radical intermediate and a nickel organic compound.


Measuring high-level corruption is subject to extensive scholarly and policy interest, which has achieved moderate progress in the last decade. This article develops two objective proxy measures of high-level corruption in public procurement: single bidding in competitive markets and a composite score of tendering 'red flags'. Using official government data on 2.8 million contracts in twenty-eight European countries in 2009–14, we directly operationalize a common definition of corruption: unjustified restriction of access to public contracts to favour a selected bidder. Corruption indicators are calculated at the contract level, but produce aggregate indices consistent with well-established country-level indicators, and are also validated by micro-level tests. Data are published at http://digiwhist.eu/resources/data/.


A variety of data-driven approaches have been developed in the recent past to capture the properties of hydrological data for improved modeling. These include artificial neural networks (ANNs), fuzzy logic and evolutionary algorithms, amongst others. Of late, kernel-based machine learning approaches have become popular due to their inherent advantages over traditional modeling techniques. In this work, support vector machines (SVMs), a kernel-based learning approach, has been investigated for its suitability to model the relationship between the river stage, discharge, and sediment concentration. SVMs are an approximate implementation of the structural risk minimization principle that aims at minimizing a bound on the generalization error of a model. These have been found to be promising in many areas including hydrology. Application of SVMs to regression problems is known as support vector regression (SVR). This paper presents an application of SVR to model river discharge and sediment concentration rating relation. The results obtained using SVR were compared with those from ANNs and it was found that the SVR approach is better when compared with ANNs.


The Mossbauer effect is the recoilless absorption and emission of γ-rays by specific nuclei in a solid (Mossbauer 1958a, 1958b), and provides a means of studying the local atomic environment around the nuclei. It is a short-range probe, and is sensitive to (at most) the first two coordination shells, but has an extremely high energy resolution that enables the detection of small changes in the atomic environment. Mossbauer spectroscopy therefore provides information on phase transformations at the microscopic level.

Mossbauer spectra of materials can be recorded under a large range of conditions, including temperatures from near absolute zero to at least 1200°C, and pressures to at least 100 GPa. Spectra can also be collected under different strengths of external magnetic field, currently to at least 15 T. This enables in situ observations of changes to the atomic environment before, during and after phase transformations under varying conditions. For phase transformations that are quenchable, it is possible to characterise changes between polymorphs at conditions where spectral resolution is optimal. Over 100 different Mossbauer transitions have been observed, although unfavourable nuclear properties limit the number of commonly used nuclei. The 14.4 keV transition in 57Fe is by far the most studied, and will be the focus of this chapter since iron is the most relevant nucleus for mineralogical applications.

The aim of this chapter is to provide a brief background to Mossbauer spectroscopy within the context of phase transformations. The relevant parameters are summarised and the effect of temperature and pressure are discussed, particularly with reference to identifying phase transformations and characterising the electronic and structural environment of the Mossbauer nuclei. Instrumentation is summarised, particularly as it relates to in situ measurements of phase transformations, and a brief survey of applications is given. The appendix includes a worked example that …


Measures of Active Labor Market Policy are widely used in European countries, but despite many econometric evaluation studies no conclusive cross-country evidence exists regarding ?what program works for what target group under what (economic and institutional) circumstances??. This paper results from an extensive research project for the European Commission aimed at answering that question using a meta-analytical framework. The empirical results are surprisingly clear-cut: Rather than contextual factors such as labor market institutions or the business cycle, it is almost exclusively the program type that matters for program effectiveness. While direct employment programs in the public sector appear detrimental,wage subsidies and ?Services and Sanctions? can be effective in increasing participants? employment probability.


Studies of recent decades have shown thousands of kilometers of transportation networks that have presented damage or failure from different types of flows, causing important traffic disruptions. Debris flows running adjacent (or in parallel) to river channels often explain the structural damage to road embankments caused by slope erosion. The probability of expected structural damage caused by a natural hazard may be modeled using fragility curves, which have been developed for transportation infrastructures like bridges and roads exposed to debris flows and are used in risk assessment. There are even fragility curves available to estimate the fragility of road embankments exposed to perpendicular debris flows. However, currently no model is available to estimate the road damage probability of embankments exposed to adjacent debris flows despite their important effects on traffic. This paper aimed to develop fragility curves for road embankments exposed to adjacent debris flows, considering mechanisms of exposed slopes subject to erosion and subsequent embankment instability. Models were calibrated considering flow characteristics in straight and bend channels including three damage states in terms of road traffic capacity loss. Monte Carlo simulations were performed to model potential damage, obtaining fragility curves for two types of roads. Curves were fit to log-normal distributions with a 99.5% confidence level. The analysis demonstrated that the geometric characteristics of road embankments explain their fragility, wherein lower heights and platform widths result in more probable expected damage. The analytical model developed confirmed that the erosive process intensifies in bend zones of channels, resulting in higher damage probability.


All fifty states and the District of Columbia have a judicial disciplinary entity responsible for investigating complaints of ethical wrongdoing by judges and, where appropriate, disciplining or recommending discipline for those judges found to have engaged in misconduct. (1) These jurisdictions also have grievance committees to deal with complaints against lawyers. (2) Whether a state chooses its judges by appointment, election, or some combination of the two, is there an appropriate role for a judicial disciplinary commission or an attorney grievance committee in the selection or evaluation process of judicial candidates? If so, how limited or expansive should that role be? The answers to these questions vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. While all the states have disciplinary systems, there is no uniformity as to whether or to what degree the disciplinary entity may participate in the selection or evaluation process. (3) In Michigan and Mississippi, for example, the Judicial Tenure Commission and the Commission on Judicial Performance, respectively, play no role in the selection process. (4) In Indiana and the District of Columbia, the Commission on Judicial Qualifications and the Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure, respectively, are integral parts of the selection process and in fact double as the judicial nominating entity for some or all judicial vacancies. (5) For example, for vacancies on the Indiana Supreme Court or Court of Appeals, the commission nominates three candidates to the governor, who must choose from among those nominees. (6) In New York, the Commission on Judicial Conduct plays a limited role, required by statute under certain circumstances to reveal information pertaining to candidates under consideration for appointment by the governor or being rated by such entities as a bar association evaluation committee for election or appointment. (7) (Records of attorney grievance committees may be released for "good cause" on order of the Appellate Division. (8) This approach appears to be rooted in the notion that disciplinary entities, while not necessarily oriented toward identifying those best or most qualified for judicial office, are likely to have useful information as to candidates that may be ill-suited for the bench. The overwhelming majority of New York State's 3,400 judges are elected to office. (9) A relative few--judges of the Court of Appeals, the Court of Claims, and the New York City Criminal and Family Courts, for example--are appointed. (10) One of the concerns often expressed regarding a shift from a predominantly elective system to an appointive system is the effective disenfranchisement of the electorate that would result. (11) One of the common rebuttals to this concern is the example of the federal judiciary, which has never been elected and was purposefully designed to be independent of the partisan political process. (12) Without comment on whether an appointive system would be superior or inferior to the electoral method, the New York experience in a predominantly electoral system suggests that in an appointive system, participation by the judicial or attorney disciplinary entity can at least partially compensate for the lack of direct voter participation, assuming--as is the case in New York--that the system reposes the actual authority to nominate and/or confirm in elected representatives of the body politic. (13) Obviously, no system, elective or appointive, is going to be perfect or please every constituency. For any method to work, the public must have justifiable faith in the reasonableness of the structure and the good faith efforts of the participants in fulfilling their responsibilities. Like most professional disciplinary entities, the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct ("the Commission") operates under a strict mandate of confidentiality in the investigative stage of its work. …


This paper focuses on analyzing (Japanese) splogs based on various characteristics of keywords contained in them. We estimate the behavior of spammers when creating splogs from other sources by analyzing the characteristics of keywords contained in splogs. Since splogs often cause noises in word occurrence statistics in the blogosphere, we assume that we can efficiently collect splogs by sampling blog homepages containing keywords of a certain type on the date with its most frequent occurrence. We manually examine various features of collected blog homepages regarding whether their text content is excerpt from other sources or not, as well as whether they display affiliate advertisement or out-going links to affiliated sites. Among various informative results, it is important to note that more than half of the collected splogs are created by a very small number of spammers.


This paper examines the industrial incentives for commercialising advanced materials and, in particular, nanomaterials with reference to issues raised in the technology strategy and technology entrepreneurship literature. We draw on longitudinal empirical data to show that smaller and newer firms are playing an increasing role in the commercialisation of advanced materials innovations. However, new technology based firms face substantial barriers to commercialisation, including access to the complementary assets of large firms and institutions. To illustrate these challenges, we examine a case study of a start-up firm commercialising carbon nanotubes. Through use of an open systems model, we characterize their alliances and interactions in attempting to commercialise their products in several markets. This analysis illustrates the daunting challenges facing start-up firms as they attempt to commercialise advanced materials innovations. The most difficult challenge appears to be one of prioritisation of development objectives and, subsequently, of alliance building. Proposed policy recommendations focus on supporting the entrepreneurial process of matching technology resources and alliance-building with market opportunities.


We address the issue of the learnability of concept classes under three classification noise models in the probably approximately correct framework. After introducing the Class-Conditional Classification Noise (CCCN) model, we investigate the problem of the learnability of concept classes under this particular setting and we show that concept classes that are learnable under the well-known uniform classification noise (CN) setting are also CCCN-learnable, which gives CN = CCCN. We then use this result to prove the equality between the set of concept classes that are CN-learnable and the set of concept classes that are learnable in the Constant Partition Classification Noise (CPCN) setting, or, in other words, we show that CN = CPCN.


Abstract Ultrasonic Velocity Profiling (UVP) is a powerful technique for velocity profile measurements in research and engineering applications as it is the only available method that is cost-effective, relatively easy to implement and applicable to opaque fluid suspensions, which are frequently found in industry. UVP can also be combined with Pressure Drop (PD) measurements in order to obtain rheological parameters of non-Newtonian fluids by fitting theoretical rheological models to a single velocity profile measurement. The flow properties of complex fluids are almost exclusively obtained today using commercially available instruments, such as conventional rotational rheometers or tube (capillary) viscometers. Since these methods are time-consuming and unsuitable for real-time process monitoring, the UVP+PD methodology becomes a very attractive alternative for in-line flow behavior monitoring as well as quality control in industrial applications. However, the accuracy of the UVP+PD methodology is highly dependent on the shape and magnitude of the measured velocity profiles and there are still a few problems remaining with current instrumentation and methods in order to achieve the robustness and accuracy required in industrial applications. The main objective of this research work was to optimize an UVP+PD system by implementing new transducer technology and signal processing techniques for more accurate velocity profile measurements as well as rheological characterization of complex fluids under industrial/realistic conditions. The new methodology was evaluated in two different pipe diameters (22.5 and 52.8 mm) and tested with three different non-Newtonian fluids in order to obtain a wide range of rheological parameters. Results were also compared to conventional rotational rheometry and tube viscometry. It was found that rheological parameters obtained from accurate velocity data across the pipe radius, especially close to pipe walls where the velocity gradient is high, showed better agreement to conventional rheometry than when compared to results obtained using profiles measured with conventional UVP instrumentation and commercial software (Met-Flow SA Version 3.0). The UVP+PD method is now more robust and accurate. The main challenge remaining is to successfully implement a complete non-invasive system in industrial processes that is able to achieve real-time and accurate complex flow monitoring of non-Newtonian fluid suspensions.


The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is a major ligament within the knee joint. Its role is to provide stability and maintain the physiological kinetics and kinematics of the joint. ACL injuries are common as a result of sporting and traffic accidents and current therapeutic options do not fully restore the joint kinetics and kinematics. As such, patients often suffer from increased joint laxity and joint pain following an ACL reconstruction and this can lead to secondary problems such as osteoarthritis. It is believed that improving the ACL graft could help restore the normal kinetics and kinematics of the knee joint and hence postpone or prevent the onset of primary and secondary problems. Tissue engineering has the potential to provide functional tissue to repair or replace injured or diseased tissues in the patient. The ACL is a tissue which could benefit from such developments and thus improve the success of the reconstruction. However, the ACl is a complex structure made up of a highly orientated collagen hierarchy which experiences three dimensional loading in vivo. For an engineered tissue to be functional it is necessary for this orientated structure to be replicated. The appropriate structure is achieved by replication of the in vivo ACL strain pattern which requires combined tensile and torsional loading. Current custommade and commercially available bioreactors have not been able to fully replicate this motion with the necessary feedback and monitoring of mechanical parameters. The aim of this project was to develop a novel bioreactor with physiological mechanical conditioning for the tissue engineering of an anterior cruciate ligament. A bioreactor capable of applying complex tensile and torsional loading to a developing ACL was designed, manufactured and validated. The bioreactor which has been developed is a novel research tool which allows the effect of a number of parameters to be investigated in a 3D loading environment. It can be used for the engineering of connective tissues such as ligaments and tendons and has the potential to be adapted for use with other musculoskeletal tissues such as bone. It could also be used for research to understand the processes involved in the growth and development of tissues.


BACKGROUND: To determine if the labor admission test (LAT) can predict fetal distress in a population of laboring women, and in subgroups of low- or high-risk women, who delivered within six hours or between six and 24 hours after LAT.METHODS: The data charts of all women who delivered at Hammerfest Hospital in 1996, 1997 and 1998 were retrospectively read. If the woman was admitted to the hospital because of onset of labor, was in the first stage of labor and delivered within 24 hours after admission, she was included. In the study period, 1639 gave birth and 932 were included in the study. A descriptive analysis of the population and assessment of LAT's sensitivity, positive predictive value, specificity and negative predictive value at different cut-off values was done.RESULTS: In the study population 5.8% had fetal distress, and 5.3% had an operative delivery because of fetal distress. LAT's sensitivity in the whole population was 0.15 and positive predictive value was 0.16. Specificity was 0.95 and positive predictive value was 0.95. In the subgroups of low- and high-risk women, who delivered within six hours or between six and 24 hours after LAT, sensitivity varied between 0 and 0.36, and positive predictive value varied between 0 and 0.27. Specificity varied between 0.92 and 0.96, and negative predictive value varied between 0.89 and 0.97.CONCLUSIONS: According to these results, LAT cannot be recommended as a screening test for fetal distress in labor in low-risk women. Sensitivity is too low, and there are too many false-positive tests. It is unclear if LAT has benefits among high-risk women.


Drawing upon the work of Victor W. Turner on the liminal period of a rite of passage, this study examines the elopements of women in Bosnia. During the elopement, an adolescent woman is between two states of being, one as an unmarried girl, "cura," and another as a married woman, "žena." For a brief period she is "betwixt and between." The finding is that after elopements marriages gain an achieved rather than an ascribed status. While elopements occur within traditional, patriarchal social structures, they defy parental authority over a young person's marriage decision. This study is based on in-depth interviews with Bosnjak (Muslim) and Serbian Orthodox women in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Keywords: elopement, agency, liminality, Bosnia, gender, ethnicity


This article provides insight into the development of tourism research and education in the period 1993–2015 in the Czech Republic. Tourism research and education have a strong tradition dating back to the 1950s, to the time of the former Czechoslovakia. Changes in the political and economic situation in 1989 marked the beginning of a new stage in tourism development. The initial phase was characterized by poorly completed projects and fragmented, uncoordinated approaches to rapidly growing incoming tourism. Currently, research on tourism has been dealt with by the national tourism office, the Czech Tourist Authority – CzechTourism. It was here that the Institute of Tourism was established. Public and private universities operating in the Czech Republic are also significant initiators of support for tourism research at the national and international level. The Society of Scientific Experts on Tourism was founded in 2009 as a platform for tourism research.


Through Hannah Arendt's
inspection of Adolf Eichmann, her studies of Kant's political
philosophy, and Life of the Mind she examines what it means to
think critically and deconstructs the taken-for-granted action of
thought. This paper is premised by the same guiding question as
Arendt asks herself: Could thinking be a condition that makes
people abstain from committing injustice or be conditioned against
it? Arendt, clearly building on Kant, certainly thought it is
probable; suggesting that Eichmann was not purely wicked or laced
with stupidity, but the "macabre comedy" he landed a starring role
in was a result of simple thoughtlessness. Turning to the current
educational environment, critical thinking is a highly pursued, and
increasingly imperative, skill to be learned by America's youth.
The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) directly state that critical
thinking is one of three skills that are needed for children to be
successful in, and out of, school. While the CCSS do not explicitly
define what critical thinking is, it is evident that the
justification for thinking surrounds future success. In this
capacity, critical thinking happens to find itself tied to other
stylish words, such as: marketability, global competition,
accountability, and others. When coupled with current discourse in
education, many are lead to the conclusion that critical thinking
could be the single most important take-away from schooling.
Through an exegetical analysis of Life of the Mind I investigate
the connection between critical thinking and justice and offer
insight into Arendt's reasoning. To understand the current state of
critical thinking, as justified by the CCSS, I conduct a critical
reading of the standards and the literature surrounding it. It is
my hope to reconcile the differences between critical thinking in
the CCSS and what Arendt has to say about this important
action. 1. Arendt, Life of the Mind, 4-5. 2.
"What Parents Should Know," Common Core State Standards Initiative,
accessed September 29, 2015,
http://www.corestandards.org/what-parents-should-know/.


In a globalised society, dance is gaining in importance as a means of conveying body knowledge: It is perceived as an art form in itself, is fostered and cultivated within the bounds of cultural and educational policy, and is increasingly becoming the subject of research. Dance is in motion all over the world, and with it the knowledge that it holds. But what does body knowledge in motion constitute, how is it produced, how can it be researched and conveyed? Renowned choreographers, dancers, theorists and pedagogues describe the unique potential of dance as an archive and medium as well as its significance at the interface between art and science. Contributors are, among others, Gabriele Brandstetter, Dieter Heitkamp, Royston Maldoom and Meg Stuart.


Vesicular transport within the secretory pathway can be arrested by incubating cells at 15 degrees C or 20 degrees C to block exit from the endoplasmic reticulum or trans-Golgi network, respectively. Using this powerful tool we have compared the intracellular sites of endoproteolytic processing of proopiomelanocortin and two prohormone processing enzymes in AtT-20 mouse pituitary corticotrope tumor cells. For comparison, proopiomelanocortin processing was also evaluated in primary neurointermediate pituitary cultures. AtT-20 cells synthesize and store endogenous proopiomelanocortin and prohormone convertase 1; AtT-20 cells expressing high levels of integral membrane or soluble peptidylglycine alpha-amidating monooxygenase were generated by stable transfection. Cells were incubated with [35S]methionine and chased at 4 degrees C, 15 degrees C, 20 degrees C or 37 degrees C. The endoproteolytic processing of peptidylglycine alpha-amidating mono-oxygenase, prohormone convertase 1, and proopiomelanocortin was compared following immunoprecipitation. Endoproteolytic processing of integral membrane and soluble peptidylglycine alpha-amidating monooxygenase proteins was completely blocked by incubation of cells at 20 degrees C. In contrast, prohormone convertase 1 processing from the 87 kDa precursor to the 81 kDa intermediate proceeded to completion at both 15 degrees C and 20 degrees C, while cleavage to generate the 63 kDa prohormone convertase 1 protein was completely blocked at 20 degrees C. In AtT-20 cells and neurointermediate pituitary cultures, generation of beta-lipotropin from proopiomelanocortin continued at a slow but significant rate at 20 degrees C, while processing of beta-lipotropin to beta-endorphin was blocked. Thus prohormone convertase 1 processing begins in the endoplasmic reticulum and is not completed until after the trans-Golgi network, while peptidylglycine alpha-amidating monooxygenase processing begins after the trans-Golgi network. Selected proopiomelanocortin cleavages begin before entry into immature granules.


Resilience and Resistance: Building Sustainable Communities for a Post Oil Age is a collection of columns that had their origin in the local Brattleboro newspapers, The Commons and the Reformer. Together with a couple of original pieces, they serve as the contents of this book. They have been arranged, not in the order they were written, but in a way that hopefully suggests the evolution of Post Oil Solutions over its 10 years. From its start (and continuation) as a community organizing project that operates in the belief that a successful transition to a world beyond fossil fuels involves building sustainable communities whose people are adaptable and resilient, collaborative and sufficient. Then to our good fortune at striking a responsive chord with many folks in the larger Windham County, and nearby Massachusetts and New Hampshire region around local food and the many ways it serves to build community. And then most recently has been our focus with climate change, as well as other political issues, like GMOs and food sovereignty, and social justice, in general. All of these are largely dealt with in the three parts of the body, with a Prologue and Epilogue bracketing them, setting the stage and wrapping things up. Founded by a small group of Windham County residents in June, 2005, Post Oil is a community organizing project whose stated mission is to empower the people of the Central Connecticut River Valley bioregion to develop sustainable, collaborative, and socially just communities leading to a self-sufficient post petroleum society. About Post Oil Solutions: Founded in June, 2005 as a community organizing project, Post Oil Solutions is a 501c3 non-profit whose mission is to empower the people of the Central Connecticut River Valley bioregion to develop sustainable, collaborative, and socially just communities leading to a self-sufficient post petroleum society.' During our nearly 10 years, we have particularly emphasized food security and the building of a resilient and redundant local food system through a variety projects that included bringing the localvore movement to our region; initiating three farmers markets in our area and a CSA; hosting monthly workshops and an annual No Gardener Left Behind Expo about gardening, preserving and cooking local food; running a farm to school program in the area schools; bringing gleaning to southeastern Vermont; starting local food buying clubs; and offering a local food list serve to the public.'In Recognition of Your Outstanding Team Effort to Build Sustainable, Collaborative and Socially Just Communities', the Vermont Sustainable Agriculture Council gave its annual award in 2010 to Post Oil Solutions..We currently have been very involved with climate crisis and amongst other things, host a monthly Climate Change Cafe on the 4th Tuesday of the Month at Brooks Memorial Libraray, Brattleboro, Vermont.


This paper reviews the use of confocal microscopy as it pertains to the identification of G-protein coupled receptors and the study of their dynamic properties in cell cultures and in mammalian brain following their tagging with specific fluorescent ligands. Principles that should guide the choice of suitable ligands and fluorophores are discussed. Examples are provided from the work carried out in the authors' laboratory using custom synthetized fluoresceinylated or BODIPYtagged bioactive peptides. The results show that confocal microscopic detection of specifically bound fluorescent ligands permits high resolution appraisal of neuropeptide receptor distribution both in cell culture and in brain sections. Within the framework of time course experiments, it also allows for a dynamic assessment of the internalization and subsequent intracellular trafficking of bound fluorescent molecules. Thus, it was found that neurotensin, somatostatin and muand delta-selective opioid peptides are internalized in a receptordependent fashion and according to receptor-specific patterns into their target cells. In the case of neurotensin, this internalization process was found to be clathrin-mediated, to proceed through classical endosomal pathways and, in neurons, to result in a mobilization of newly formed endosomes from neural processes to nerve cell bodies and from the periphery of cell bodies towards the perinuclear zone. These mechanisms are likely to play an important role for ligand inactivation, receptor regulation and perhaps also transmembrane signaling. Correspondence


This paper introduces a calculus of state-based software components mod- elled as concrete coalgebras for some Set endofunctors, with specified initial conditions. The calculus is parametrized by a notion of behaviour, introduced as a strong (usu- ally commutative) monad. The proposed component model and calculus are illustrated through the characterisation of a particular class of components, classified as separable, which includes the ones arising in the so-called model oriented approach to systems' design.


Introduction
This figure shows an agarose gel image of PCR products to differentiate bacterial species based on variation in the genome content.  Each lane shown on the gel represents an individual bacterial unknown with one lane containing a size referencing ladder. The bands are the PCR products of the intergenic transcribed spacer (ITS), the region between the 16S and 23S ribosomal DNA genes in bacterial genomes. Multiple interval bands within a lane reflect multiple ITS regions of different bacterial species. To visualize bands, PCR products were separated on a high resolution agarose gel that was then stained with ethidium bromide, a DNA binding stain.  For analytical purposes, only dominant bands are considered; these bands were compared to previously empirically-derived bands for referencing by students.
Abbreviations used in the figure:  St (Salmonella typhimurium, 609 bp, 515 bp), Bc (Bacillus cereus, 229 bp), Ea (Enterobacter aerogenes, 591 bp, 443 bp), Ec (Escherichia coli, 539 bp, 436 bp), Kp (Klebsiella pneumoniae, 515 bp, 428 bp), L (Lonza DNA reference ladder, 100 bp ext. range; 3 kb, 2.5 kb, 2 kb, 1.5 kb, 1 kb, 0.8 kb, 0.6 kb, 0.4 kb, 0.1 kb), Ml (Micrococcus luteus, 515 bp), Ms (Mycoplasma smegmatis, 500 bp, 400 bp), Pv (Proteus vulgaris, 826 bp, 619 bp), Pa (Pseudomonas aeruginosa, 556 bp), and Sa (Staphylococcus aureus, 556 bp, 515 bp).
Methods
The following bacterial isolates were obtained from the American Type Culture Collection and used as unknowns: Bacillus cereus, Enterobacter aerogenes, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Micrococcus luteus, Mycoplasma smegmatis, Proteus vulgaris, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These unknowns were incubated overnight on tryptic soy agar plates. Staphylococcus aureus and Salmonella typhimurium were incubated overnight in tryptic soy broth, pelleted, and the supernatant decanted. Either colonies or pelleted cells were suspended in 100 µl of PCR water.  Cells were lysed using 8 µl of Lyse-N-Go reagent (Pierce) and 2 µl of the cell suspension in an 0.2-ml PCR tube.  Upon completion of the Lyse-N-Go thermal cycling program, 15 µl of Apex TaqRed master mix amended with the ARISA primer set was added directly to each PCR tube and amplified following parameters of Cardinale et al. (2).  The primers used were ITSF (5-GTCGTAACAAGGTAGCCGTA-3) and ITSReub (5-GCCAAGGCATCCACC-3).
To separate PCR products, 5 µl of the sample were loaded onto a 2% high resolution agarose gel (USB Corporation) in 1X TAE; also loaded on the gel were 3 µl of Lonza ladder (100 bp ext. range DNA ladder, cat. no. 50322) for referencing. The agarose gel was run for 95 minutes at 100 V; 15% of the 1X TAE running buffer was exchanged with chilled buffer every 15 minutes.  The gel image was obtained by staining with ethidium bromide and capturing in an EpiChemi3 darkroom using the visualization software LabWorks (v. 4.6; excitation 254 nm, ethidium bromide emission filter).
Discussion
Bacterial species differ in the size of the ITS region and visualization of this region though PCR and gel electrophoresis can be used to identify unknown bacterial species (1).  This relates to the applicability of PCR in economically and rapidly distinguishing between bacterial species in comparison with the classical biochemical dichotomous key commonly used in microbiology labs. For example, advanced high school or undergraduate students could perform this analysis and then compare the banding patterns, using dominant bands, to identify their unknown bacterial isolate of interest.
References
1.  Scheinert, P., R. Krausse, U. Ullman, R. Soller, and G. Krupp. 1996. Molecular differentiation of bacteria by PCR amplification of the 16S-23S rRNA spacer. J. Microbiol. Methods 26:103–117.
2. Cardinale, M., L. Brusetti, P. Quatrini, S. Borin, A. M. Puglia, A. Rizzi, E. Zanardini, C. Sorlini, C. Corselli, and D. Daffonchio. 2004. Comparison of different primer sets for use in automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis of complex bacterial communities. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 70:6147–6156.


In this article, we argue for the general importance of normative theories of argument strength. We also provide some evidence based on our recent work on the fallacies as to why Bayesian probability might, in fact, be able to supply such an account. In the remainder of the article we discuss the general characteristics that make a specifically Bayesian approach desirable, and critically evaluate putative flaws of Bayesian probability that have been raised in the argumentation literature.


The IRIS story generation system is a narrative planner that is designed to create suspenseful stories at the story-action level. It uses a set of action templates that are injected into the planning process to create suspense around a given goal. The action templates were evaluated independent of the rest of the IRIS system against a series of other techniques designed to create suspense. Results show that it is possible to use these set of action templates to create localized moments of suspense in a story at the story-action level without the need for discourse-level suspense.


In this paper, we assess the output-oriented technical efficiency of agricultural production functions in order to compare, over time, economic and environmental production processes in the different regions of the Spanish Ebro basin, in a climate change context. The measurement of technical efficiency in agriculture can provide useful information about the competitiveness of farms and their potential to increase its productivity moreover can help in the crops adaptation to water pressure by improving the management of scarce resources. Here, we generate an agricultural water efficiency index to evaluate the adaptation of some Mediterranean crops to the water pressures in this area. We estimate frontier production functions and technical efficiency measures, using panel data models. This will allow us to observe changes in production due to individual specific effects and those that are time specific. To characterize our model, we use historical data, about crop yields, water requirements and climate as well as socio-economic and geographical aspects of the most representative crops in the provinces of the Ebro basin during 1976-2007. Then we generate a ranking of the most efficient crops across geographical areas, given their water use and other inputs, to evaluate policy scenarios with adjustments in water supply.


The acid-base relevant molecules carbon dioxide (CO2 ), protons (H+ ), and bicarbonate (HCO3 - ) are substrates and end products of some of the most essential physiological functions including aerobic and anaerobic respiration, ATP hydrolysis, photosynthesis, and calcification. The structure and function of many enzymes and other macromolecules are highly sensitive to changes in pH, and thus maintaining acid-base homeostasis in the face of metabolic and environmental disturbances is essential for proper cellular function. On the other hand, CO2 , H+ , and HCO3 - have regulatory effects on various proteins and processes, both directly through allosteric modulation and indirectly through signal transduction pathways. Life in aquatic environments presents organisms with distinct acid-base challenges that are not found in terrestrial environments. These include a relatively high CO2 relative to O2 solubility that prevents internal CO2 /HCO3 - accumulation to buffer pH, a lower O2 content that may favor anaerobic metabolism, and variable environmental CO2 , pH and O2 levels that require dynamic adjustments in acid-base homeostatic mechanisms. Additionally, some aquatic animals purposely create acidic or alkaline microenvironments that drive specialized physiological functions. For example, acidifying mechanisms can enhance O2 delivery by red blood cells, lead to ammonia trapping for excretion or buoyancy purposes, or lead to CO2 accumulation to promote photosynthesis by endosymbiotic algae. On the other hand, alkalinizing mechanisms can serve to promote calcium carbonate skeletal formation. This nonexhaustive review summarizes some of the distinct acid-base homeostatic mechanisms that have evolved in aquatic organisms to meet the particular challenges of this environment.


This article presents some ideas and issues related to the creation of a long-term upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) data set using satellite based microwave measurements. Polar orbiting satellites have been measuring UTH for more than a decade now. There are three microwave instruments which can measure UTH from Space: Special Sensor Microwave/Temperature-2 (SSM/T2), Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B (AMSU-B), and Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS). These instruments have channels at 183.31±1.00GHz which are sensitive to UTH. Retrieval of UTH and cloud issues are discussed in detail. Advantage of microwave measurements of UTH over infrared measurements are demonstrated. Preliminary results on the inter-calibration of these instruments are also shown.


Extrusion and indirect extrusion is a very old manufacturing process used in multitudes of applications mainly focused on transportation, household and power industries. Indirect extrusion has found an interesting application in petroleum industry, which resulted in resolving many unsolvable issues over the last few decades. The current and expected future global demand for hydrocarbons became a driving force for researchers to find new comprehensive and cheaper solutions for hydrocarbon production. The challenges faced in oil and gas fields, while drilling, constructing and operating new and old vertical/horizontal wells, are many. The use of indirect extrusion for insitu expansion of sub-surface tubulars used in wells revolutionized the drilling and completion as opposed to one and half decade back. The emergence of solid expandable tubular technology has changed the basics of how we design and construct wells. The original development of the technology was to overcome the challenges faced by the petroleum industry to reach ultra-deep reservoirs, off-shore drilling, drilling in highpressure/difficult zones and repair/maintenance of old/ageing wells. However, it gained significant interest of researchers and operators in providing solutions to wide-range problems. The development of a computational framework using finite element method (FEM) enabled to determine the force required for expansion and resulting dimensional changes in final product, which is of direct assistance to the field engineers. The effect of friction and stress variations along contact surface is also determined.


Each year, potato late blight [Phytophthora infestans] and pink rot [Phytophthora erythroseptica] are responsible for significant postharvest economic losses. Because of restrictions on the use of synthetic fungicides on food, there is currently a need for less toxic, disease-controlling compounds for postharvest application. To address this need, the preventative and curative effects, as well as seed piece phytotoxicity, of various salt compounds were tested using live tubers of the potato 'Superior'. Compounds were tested as dips at the concentrations 0.002, 0.02, 0.2 mol/L and compared with a distilled water dip as a control. Tubers were inoculated with sporangia of P. infestans or active zoospores of P. erythroseptica either before or after treatment with the various compounds. When concentration data were pooled and grouped means were tested for significant differences (P < 0.05), potassium sorbate, sodium metabisulfite, alum, sodium hypochlorite, copper sulfate pentahydrate, acetic acid, and Penncozeb® 75DF applied curatively provided disease inhibition that was significantly greater than that of the control for both late blight and pink rot. When applied as a preventative treatment, all compounds were significantly different (P < 0.05) from the untreated control in the inhibition of pink rot; however, only sodium metabisulfite, sodium hypochlorite, copper sulfate pentahydrate, and Penncozeb 75DF significantly reduced the severity of late blight. Phytotoxicity was observed when sodium hypochlorite, sodium metabisulfite, acetic acid, and copper sulfate pentahydrate were applied as seed piece treatments, at a concentration of 0.2 mol/L. Our studies suggest there is a potential for the use of selected salt compounds for control of postharvest diseases of potato.


An innovative approach using mobile lidar measurements was implemented to test the performances of chemistry-transport models in simulating mass concentrations (PM10) predicted by chemistry-transport models. A ground-based mobile lidar (GBML) was deployed around Paris onboard a van during the MEGAPOLI (Megacities: Emissions, urban, regional and Global Atmospheric POLlution and climate effects, and Integrated tools for assessment and mitigation) summer experiment in July 2009. The measurements performed with this Rayleigh-Mie lidar are converted into PM10 profiles using optical-to-mass relationships previously established from in situ measurements performed around Paris for urban and peri-urban aerosols. The method is described here and applied to the 10 measurements days (MD). MD of 1, 15, 16 and 26 July 2009, corresponding to different levels of pollution and atmospheric conditions, are analyzed here in more details. Lidar-derived PM10 are compared with results of simulations from POLYPHEMUS and CHIMERE chemistry-transport models (CTM) and with ground-based observations from the AIRPARIF network. GBML-derived and AIRPARIF in situ measurements have been found to be in good agreement with a mean Root Mean Square Error RMSE (and a Mean Absolute Percentage Error MAPE) of 7.2 μg m−3 (26.0%) and 8.8 μg m−3 (25.2%) with relationships assuming peri-urban and urban-type particles, respectively. The comparisons between CTMs and lidar at ~200 m height have shown that CTMs tend to underestimate wet PM10 concentrations as revealed by the mean wet PM10 observed during the 10 MD of 22.4, 20.0 and 17.5 μg m−3 for lidar with peri-urban relationship, and POLYPHEMUS and CHIMERE models, respectively. This leads to a RMSE (and a MAPE) of 6.4 μg m−3 (29.6%) and 6.4 μg m−3 (27.6%) when considering POLYPHEMUS and CHIMERE CTMs, respectively. Wet integrated PM10 computed (between the ground and 1 km above the ground level) from lidar, POLYPHEMUS and CHIMERE results have been compared and have shown similar results with a RMSE (and MAPE) of 6.3 mg m−2 (30.1%) and 5.2 mg m−2 (22.3%) with POLYPHEMUS and CHIMERE when comparing with lidar-derived PM10 with periurban relationship. The values are of the same order of magnitude than other comparisons realized in previous studies. The discrepancies observed between models and measured PM10 can be explained by difficulties to accurately model the background conditions, the positions and strengths of the plume, the vertical turbulent diffusion (as well as the limited vertical model resolutions) and chemical processes as the formation of secondary aerosols. The major advantage of using vertically resolved lidar observations in addition to surface concentrations is to overcome the problem of limited spatial representativity of surface measurements. Even for the case of a well-mixed boundary layer, vertical mixing is not complete, especially in the surface layer and near source regions. Also a bad estimation of the mixing layer height would introduce errors in simulated surface concentrations, which can be detected using lidar measurements. In addition, horizontal spatial representativity is larger for altitude integrated measurements than for surface measurements, because horizontal inhomogeneities occurring near surface sources are dampened.


In this study, we identified the problems of applying Guimera et al.'s [9] methods to a target network of articles in academic journals. Guimera et al. proposed both a clustering method and a role analysis model based on clustering. In concrete terms, they defined a Z-SCORE (Zi) and participation coefficient (Pi) as targets for metabolic networks. Although Guimera et al. methods were intended for application to metabolic networks, we believe they can be adapted to the citation networks formed by academic articles. We then proposed a new role analysis method and visualization system as a target of the academic article networks. Specifically, a unique algorithm is used to extract key articles from within clusters, after which role analysis is performed. The results are then evaluated by examining the availability of given academic articles. Finally, we performed a comparative evaluation of our method. Results showed that our method was able to show the movement of key paper innovation more clearly than Guimera et al.'s method.


Purpose: To compare the efficacy of Mineral Trioxide Aggregate (MTA) and Modified Portland Cement (MPC) as pulpotomy medicaments in primary molars.   Methods: A sample of 54 children 4 to 6 years old of age, who had at least one primary mandibular second molar that needed pulpotomy were randomly placed in MTA (n = 28) or MPC (n = 26) groups. After completing the pulpotomy procedures, the teeth received a stainless-steel crown. Clinical and radiographic successes/failures were blindly evaluated at 6 and 12 months, and Fisher's exact test was used to analyze the differences.  Results: At 6- and 12-month follow-ups, MTA and MPC had 100% clinical success rate. Radiographic success rates of MTA were 92.9% at 6 months and 89.3% at 12 months. While the rate for MPC group was 88.5% at both intervals. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups.  Conclusion: The results of this investigation showed that treatment success rate with MPC was comparable to MTA pulpotomy. However, additional clinical research that considers long-term follow-ups is required to test the usefulness of MPC in the pulpotomy treatment of primary teeth.


Hydrogen, one of the most well-known natural molecules, has been used in numerous medical applications owing to its ability to selectively neutralize cytotoxic reactive oxygen species and ameliorate hazardous inflammations. Hydrogen can exert protective effects on various reactive oxygen species-related diseases, including the transplantation-induced intestinal graft injury, chronic inflammation, ischemia–reperfusion injuries, and so on. Especially in the eye, hydrogen has been used to counteract multiple ocular pathologies in the ophthalmological models. Herein, the ophthalmological utilizations of hydrogen are systematically reviewed and the underlying mechanisms of hydrogen-induced beneficial effects are discussed. It is our hope that the protective effects of hydrogen, as evidenced by these pioneering studies, would enrich our pharmacological knowledge about this natural element and cast light into the discovery of a novel therapeutic strategy against ocular diseases.


Facilitated networks are regularly cited in the literature as a means to promote sustainable competitive advantage in small tourism firms. These networks function for a variety of reasons including marketing and innovation; however learning networks specifically seek to encourage learning among entrepreneurs. Once established, the question remains whether such networks can transition from facilitated cooperative learning strategies to become independent learning communities in the longer term.

Little is known about the formation, maintenance or success of these types of learning relationships after facilitated learning structures and supports reach a conclusion. What is known is that these networks, labelled "Evolving Learning Communities" (ELCs) by the author, are devoid of formal structures and consequently autonomy in their structural and relational reasoning is required.
This research sought: to explore the elements and relationships that influence individual learning in Evolving Learning Communities, once facilitated learning supports reach a conclusion.

A comprehensive review of the literature revealed a number of key themes that were incorporated into a model of ELC learning. The ELC model maps the micro-firm owner/manager"s learning development, from the autonomous business setting to the facilitated learning network environment and on to the independent learning network arena, illustrating the evolution of a learning community.

From an interpretivist philosophical position, a longitudinal interpretive case study method incorporating sub-studies for the purposes of cross-validation sought to establish the potential of an ELC situated in the South West of Ireland, to transition from a Facilitated Learning Network (FLN) setting to an independent learning community. Supporting research techniques comprised observation, interviews, on-going ELC communication review and reflective diary maintenance.

The key contribution of this research is the development of an ELC model, which explains the elements and relationships that influence learning at individual, sub-group and community level. The findings suggest that independent learning communities face quite unique learning and development challenges and require quite specific learning supports as a result. As such, the development of the ELC model was a legitimate research exercise.

This thesis concludes with a chapter outlining the study"s contribution to the existing body of knowledge, its research limitations and recommendations for further research.


We introduce a new sample complexity measure, which we refer to as split-sample growth rate. For any hypothesis $H$ and for any sample $S$ of size $m$, the split-sample growth rate $\hat{\tau}_H(m)$ counts how many different hypotheses can empirical risk minimization output on any sub-sample of $S$ of size $m/2$. We show that the expected generalization error is upper bounded by $O\left(\sqrt{\frac{\log(\hat{\tau}_H(2m))}{m}}\right)$. Our result is enabled by a strengthening of the Rademacher complexity analysis of the expected generalization error. We show that this sample complexity measure, greatly simplifies the analysis of the sample complexity of optimal auction design, for many auction classes studied in the literature. Their sample complexity can be derived solely by noticing that in these auction classes, ERM on any sample or sub-sample will pick parameters that are equal to one of the points in the sample.


Curtis-Ingerman-Morrow studied the space of circular planar electrical networks, and classified all possible response matrices for such networks. Lam and Pylyavskyy found a Lie group $EL_{2n}$ whose positive part $(EL_{2n})_{\geq 0}$ naturally acts on the circular planar electrical network via some combinatorial description, where the action is inspired by the star-triangle transformation of the electrical networks. The Lie algebra $el_{2n}$ is semisimple and isomorphic to the symplectic algebra. In the end of their paper, they suggest a generalization of electrical Lie algebras to all finite Dynkin types. We give the structure of the type $B$ electrical Lie algebra $e_{b_{2n}}$. The nonnegative part $(E_{B_{2n}})_{\geq 0}$ of the corresponding Lie group conjecturally acts on a class of "mirror symmetric circular planar electrical networks". This class of networks has interesting combinatorial properties. Finally, we mention some partial results for type $C$ and $D$ electrical Lie algebras, where an analogous story needs to be developed.


Paraneoplastic neurological syndromes are uncommon, however, their diagnosis is of major practical importance. The identification of antibodies in the serum or cerebrospinal fluid in central nervous system paraneoplastic syndromes confirms the clinical diagnosis of a paraneoplastic syndrome and allows early identification of an underlying tumour at a stage when it is localised and more amenable to treatment. The failure to identify antibodies in patients with characteristic presentations of underlying neurological paraneoplastic syndromes does not exclude an underlying cancer. Necrotising myelopathy, dermatomyositis, and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy all occur more frequently than expected in patients with cancer but autoantibodies have not yet been identified. Although significant advances have been made in diagnosis, further research is needed in the detection of autoantibodies and the elucidation of their role in the aetiology of neurological disease.


The accumulation of the human capital stock plays a key role to explain the macroeconomic performance across regions. However, despite the strong theoretical support for this claim, empirical evidence has been not very convincing, probably because of the low quality of the data. This paper provides a robustness analysis of alternative measures of human capital available at the level of EU NUTS1 and NUTS2 regions. In addition to the univariate measures, composite indicators based on different construction principles are proposed. The analysis shows a significant impact of construction techniques on the quality of indicators. While composite indicators and labour income measures point to the same direction of impact, their correlation is not overwhelmingly high. Moreover, popular indicators should be applied with caution. Although schooling and human resources in science and technology explain some part of the regional human capital stock, they cannot explain the bulk of the experience.


Skeletal age estimation as a means of assessing development and skeletal maturation in children and adolescents is of great importance for clinical and forensic purposes. The skeletal age of a test population is estimated by comparison with established standards, the most common standards being those in the Radiographic atlas of skeletal development of the hand and wrist published by Greulich and Pyle in 1959. These standards are based on the assumption that skeletal maturity in male individuals is attained by the chronological age of 19 years. Although they have been widely tested, the applicability of these standards to contemporary populations has yet to be tested on a population of African biological origin living in South Africa. We therefore estimated the skeletal age of 131 male Africans aged between 13 and 21 years, using the Greulich–Pyle method which we applied to pre-existing hand–wrist radiographs. Estimated skeletal age was compared to the known chronological age for each radiograph. Skeletal age was on average approximately 6 months younger than chronological age. The Greulich–Pyle method underestimated skeletal age for approximately 74% of the sample and overestimated skeletal age for 26% of the sample. Skeletal maturity as characterised by complete epiphyseal fusion occurred approximately 2.1 years later than Greulich and Pyle's estimate of 19 years. Thus skeletal maturation was still in progress in a large proportion of the 20- and 21-year-old individuals in our study. The Greulich–Pyle method showed high precision but low accuracy and was therefore not directly applicable to African male individuals. Formulation of skeletal age estimation standards specific to South African populations is therefore recommended.


Higher weather volatility may be reflected in higher incidences of weather shocks. Weather shocks could potentially affect the supply of agricultural commodities and their prices. In this study, the effects of weather shocks on agricultural commodity prices in Central Asia are investigated at the provincial scale using monthly data for the period of 2000-2010. The study uses an estimation method, where the idiosyncratic components of the variables are analyzed using Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) panel regression in the presence of cross-sectional dependence and serial autocorrelation. The analysis indicates that weather volatility and, especially, the fluctuations in the availability of irrigation water have statistically significant effects on wheat prices in Central Asia. Weather shocks, involving lower than usual temperatures and precipitation amounts, could create favorable conditions for higher wheat prices in the region.


To identify temporal and spatial patterns in the supply of late-stage fish larvae to the coral reefs of the upper Florida Keys, 3 replicate light traps that collect larvae in the process of set- tling were deployed at each of 2 reefs from May 2002 to February 2004. Traps were deployed every other night from May through October and twice monthly from November through April to examine cross-shelf (2002 and 2003) and alongshore (2002 and 2004) patterns. The nightly abundance of set- tling larvae was compared to concurrently collected environmental data to assess the relationships between these variables and temporal patterns of larval supply. In total, 26 185 fish larvae from 55 families were collected during 174 nights of sampling. Seasonally, the supply of larvae peaked in the late winter to early spring and reached a minimum in late fall. Within-season supply of late-stage larvae was cyclic and strongly related to the lunar cycle, and to a lesser extent, the maximum tidal amplitude cycle. Strong negative correlations between larval supply and both moon illumination and maximum tidal amplitude each night resulted in peak supply of fish larvae between the third quarter moon/minimum amplitude tides and the new moon/maximum amplitude tides. While these cyclic environmental cues provided a high degree of temporal predictability of larval pulses, the magnitude of pulses was stochastic, with some variability related to the passage of mesoscale frontal eddies by the upper Florida Keys. However, the effects of these physical features on larval supply were not con- sistent over time. Spatial variability (kilometer-scale) was greater in the cross-shelf direction than in the alongshore direction: the supply of larval fishes was significantly greater to the fringing reef site (French Reef) than to the inshore patch reef (White Banks), due to either active larval avoidance of inshore environments or depletion of larvae originating offshore as they pass over and settle on the fringing reef.


Commonly law is seen as an alternative to violence, although it relies on violence or its threat for enforcement. Through a study of Israel's campaign to transform international humanitarian law (IHL) by systematically violating it, this essay considers the possibility that violence precedes and even creates law. Israel has a long history of ad hoc 'legal entrepreneurialism,' but its current effort, launched during the second intifada, is institutionalized, persistent, and internally coherent. The essay reviews the specific legal innovations Israel has sought to establish, all of which expand the scope of 'legitimate' violence and its targets, contrary to IHL's fundamental purposes of limiting violence and protecting non-combatants from it.


Introduction THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT formally agreed, on January 16, 1957, to "voluntarily" restrict its exports of cotton textiles and apparel to the United States. According to a number of scholars and political analysts, this first, postwar, voluntary export restraint (VER) for a major manufacturing industry was an ideal solution to what had appeared to be an intractable problem facing the Eisenhower administration (Curzon and Curzon, 1976: 257-59; Yoffie, 1983: 49-50; Aggarwal, 1985: 74-75). Through 1955 and 1956, domestic pressure from the American textile industry for protection against imports from Japan had threatened the Eisenhower administration's efforts to promote the liberalization of international trade as envisioned under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).(1) The administration's efforts had included a push for Japan's inclusion in the GATT over European opposition as well as efforts to extend the president's authority to negotiate tariff reductions under the Reciprocal Trade Act. Although trade expansion was important in and of itself to the Eisenhower administration, top administration officials viewed expanded international trade under GATT as a means to strengthen European and Far Eastern allies against communist expansion from without, and communist subversion from within. From the Eisenhower administration's standpoint, therefore, responding to the demands of the textile industry and its congressional supporters for tariff increases and unilateral quotas against Japan, would have severe political-military as well as international economic ramifications. In contrast, a Japanese VER would relieve the pressure of imports on American producers with limited international costs. Since the Japanese were "voluntarily" cutting back their exports, the Eisenhower administration would not have to overtly violate GATT by turning to unilateral quotas. Nor would the administration have to reinforce the practice of European countries, such as Britain and France, of invoking GATT articles to severely restrict Japanese imports (Zheng, 1988: 52-54). Yet, the Eisenhower administration set another precedent in 1957: specifically, the United States legitimized the VER as a means of resolving trade disputes. Although saving GATT and Japan in the short run, the VER policies of the Eisenhower administration sacrificed the principles and rules of GATT in the long run. The result was the proliferation of managed trade through voluntary restraint and orderly marketing agreements (OMAs) by the United States, the European Community, and others that by the early 1990s covered sectors including textiles and apparel, steel, and automobiles.(2) The irony of the Eisenhower legacy, however, lies deeper than this. This article argues that the dilemma of contending domestic and international pressures faced by the Eisenhower administration from 1955 to 1957, and thus the need to turn to a VER in the first place, could have been avoided. Specifically, the domestic pressure faced by the administration came about not only due to Japanese imports but as a result of the Eisenhower administration's flawed trade policy choices.(3) II Textile Trade Policy: The VER as the Ideal Solution THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION by 1955 faced domestic and international pressure over textile trade policy. This section briefly reviews the dynamics of such pressures and the predominant explanation in the historical and political science literature concerning how such pressures led the Eisenhower administration to the VER.(4) The primary international concern of top officials in the Eisenhower administration was to counteract the spread of communism, especially in Europe and the Far East. Both Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, viewed the expansion of international trade as a vital tool for integrating non-communist countries with the United States and also strengthening the war-torn economies in Europe and Asia. …


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to compare and validate the different classifications of severity in acute pancreatitis (AP) and to investigate which characteristics of the disease are associated with worse outcomes.

SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA
AP is a heterogeneous disease, ranging from uneventful cases to patients with considerable morbidity and high mortality rates. Severity classifications based on legitimate determinants of severity are important to correctly describe the course of disease.

METHODS
A prospective multicenter cohort study involving patients with AP from 23 hospitals in Spain. The Atlanta Classification (AC), Revised Atlanta Classification (RAC), and Determinant-based Classification (DBC) were compared. Binary logistic multivariate analysis was performed to investigate independent determinants of severity.

RESULTS
A total of 1655 patients were included; 70 patients (4.2%) died. RAC and DBC were equally superior to AC for describing the clinical course of AP. Although any kind of organ failure was associated with increased morbidity and mortality, persistent organ failure (POF) was the most significant determinant of severity. All local complications were associated with worse outcomes. Infected pancreatic necrosis correlated with high morbidity, but in the presence of POF, it was not associated to higher mortality when compared with sterile necrotizing pancreatitis. Exacerbation of previous comorbidity was associated with increased morbidity and mortality.

CONCLUSION
The RAC and DBC both signify an advance in the description and differentiation of AP patients. Herein, we describe the complications of the disease independently associated to morbidity and mortality. Our findings are valuable not only when designing future studies on AP but also for the improvement of current classifications.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to evaluate the occurrence and consequences of technical complications in implant-supported restorative therapy.

MATERIAL & METHODS
The occurrence and consequences of technical complications in implant-supported restorative therapy over a mean follow-up period of 5.3 years were assessed based on documentation in files from 2,666 patients. Risk indicators were identified by the use of survival models, considering repeated events. Results were expressed as hazard ratios (HR) including 95% confidence intervals.

RESULTS
Technical complications occurred in 24.8% of the patients. Chipping and loss of retention were the most common, affecting 11.0% and 7.9% of supraconstructions, respectively, while implant-related complications (e.g., implant fracture) were rare. More than 50% of the affected patients experienced technical complications more than once and almost all reported complications led to interventions by a dental professional. The extent of the supraconstruction was the strongest risk indicator for both chipping (HR < 0.2) and loss of retention (HR > 3).

CONCLUSION
Over a 5-year period, technical complications in implant-supported restorative therapy occurred frequently and their management required professional intervention.


The possibility of unaccounted for opacity sources in the UV for late-type stars has often been invoked to explain discrepancies between predicted and observed flux distributions and spectral line strengths. Such missing UV-opacity could among other things have a significant impact on abundance determination for elements whose only relevant spectral features are accessible in this wavelength region, such as Be. Here, the study by Balachandran & Bell ([CITE]) is re-visited in the light of a realistic 3D hydrodynamical solar model atmosphere and the recently significantly downward revised solar O abundance obtained with the same model atmosphere. The amount of missing UV-opacity, if any, is quantified by enforcing that the OH A-X electronic lines around 313 nm produce the same O abundance as the other available diagnostics: OH vibration-rotation and pure rotation lines in the IR, the forbidden [O i] 630.0 and 636.3 nm lines and high-excitation, permitted O i lines. This additional opacity is then applied for the synthesis of the Be ii line at 313.0 nm to derive a solar photospheric Be abundance in excellent agreement with the meteoritic value, thus re-enforcing the conclusions of Balachandran & Bell. The about 50% extra opacity over accounted for opacity sources can be well explained by recent calculations by the Iron Project for photo-ionization of Fe i.


In the absence of adequate police protection in Côte d'Ivoire during the 1990s, hunters began patrolling communities against crime. Worried government ministers portrayed hunters as traditionalists out of place in the modern world and capable of destabilizing it. Officials appealed to distinctions between civil and customary law to repress the hunters' movement in the country's more prosperous areas, but they approved hunters' patrols in peripheral zones, recreating the indirect, customary rule through which French colonizers once regulated hunters. Hunters recognized the contradictions inherent in this compromise and took advantage of them, creating security procedures and networks grounded in their sacrificial hunting ethos and organizational hierarchy. In this way, they encompassed the domain of state security within their hunting roles to stabilize, rather than subvert, the nation-state.


The year 2002 saw a consolidation of power within the ruling State Peace and Democracy Council that resulted in the confidence to free Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest. This resulted almost immediately
 in a thawing, but certainly not any significant melting, of relations with the international community with respect to Burma (Myanmar). Despite her release, however, Aung San Suu Kyi has not given her approval
 for any significant non-humanitarian assistance to be given to the government. Positive developments in the reconciliation process are necessary before any significant lifting of sanctions, and thus overall
 development in the nation, will be possible; to date it appears that this process will be very slow and deliberate and will be undertaken according to the timetable of the government. In the interim, the
 economy of Burma teeters close to collapse and Burma continues to be the poorest country in the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Asia overall. Despite these problems, the fact that Burma
 lies at the crossroads of Asia and is being wooed by China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and several ASEAN members gives the nation recognition beyond its size and economy. The overall future is
 not clear, but the "Dawn of a New Burma" may be breaking.


Under the growing awareness on the global environmental issues, the Japanese Government has been enacting various laws for energy saving and material recycling to promote the formation of environment-friendly society.The input-output analysis is a useful tool to examine the economic structural problems concerning the economic growth, the industrial structure and the environment. Several researches have been conducted to identify the efficiency of energy and resource consumption in Japanese industries and the environmental pollution using input-output analysis. The authors have examined the relationship between the industrial structure and the energy and resource consumption in Japanese regions by employing multiregional input-output tables. However, the former studies have faced the problem of double counting in estimating the energy and resources consumption due to the intermediate transactions among industries.This study aims to cope with the above problem by employing the carbon dioxide emission intensity by industry, which has been estimated by the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan. The paper examines the relationship between the economic growth and the carbon dioxide emission in Japanese regions by applying the multi-regional input-output models for 1975, 80, 85, 90 and 95.The study has revealed that Kanto region (including Tokyo metropolitan region) showed a marked growth in carbon dioxide emission with a rapid economic growth during 1980s. Most of the local regions showed low environmental emission as well as a decline in regional economy.


The Western Australian government entered into agreements for the development of Pilbara iron ore. These saw access provided to iron ore in return for processing. The obligations were specified in terms of what, how much and when processing would take place. Both sides expected that they would be met, if economic. Ore beneficiation, pellets, metallised agglomerates and steel processing were expected, depending on the agreement.

The processing obligations from the 1963 to 1974 agreements have all been met; some to time, some early and some late. They were met as set or as agreed alternatives. Metallised agglomerates and steelmaking were always found to be uneconomic. Alternatives were accepted in their place.

The implementation process was considered using an Ambiguity-Conflict model. The process was an example of political implementation. This was where the agreement parties entered into negotiations when an obligation became due and could not be met. That process allowed for the agreed re-setting of the obligation (type and/or timing). If that re-set obligation was not met, the process would be repeated until an agreed outcome was achieved that would be accepted by the state as discharging the obligation.

The effectiveness of the obligations outcomes was judged against criteria set at the time of their initial negotiation. If the effectiveness test was whether the obligations were met to type and time, then the outcomes would fail. But it is argued that the political implementation process meant this was an unreasonably high test. As the outcomes over time reflected negotiated outcomes, the obligations could be seen to have been effective.

The meeting of the obligations was tested against a policy success framework. The outcomes had less than complete success, but were not failures. However, the inability of the agreements to deliver steelmaking meant that political support for their use has been lost. It is unlikely that they will be used again.


In Amazonia, wetlands constitute about 30% of its entire basin, of which ancient fluvial terraces located in vast interfluvial regions cover a large portion. Although the increased number of permanent plots in the recent years has contributed to improved understanding of regional variation in forest dynamics across the Amazon Basin, the functioning of large lowland interfluvial wetlands remain poorly understood. Here we present the first field-based estimate for tree ages, wood biomass productivity and biomass turnover rates for eight 1 ha plots in wetland and non-flooded forests distributed along the BR-319 Highway along a distance of about 600 km crossing the Purus–Madeira rivers interfluvial region in central-southwestern Amazon Basin. We estimate stand age, wood biomass productivity and biomass turnover rates combining tree-ring data and an allometric equation based on diameter, tree height and wood density and relate these structural parameters to physical soil and hydrological restrictions. Wood biomass and productivity varied twofold among the plots, with wood biomass stocks ranging between 138–294 Mg ha −1 and productivity varying between 3.4–6.6 Mg ha −1 yr −1 . Soil effective depth, topography, structure and mainly soil water saturation significantly affected stand age (64–103 yr) and forest dynamics in terms of annual biomass turnover rates (2.0–3.2%). On harsher soils characterized by a poor structure, low effective depth and high water saturation, biomass turnover rates were increased and forests stands were younger compared to well-drained sites. We suggest that soil constraints, especially soil water saturation, limit the development of the stand structure, resulting in forests with younger stand ages and higher biomass turnover rates compared to forests growing on well-drained soils. We do not find, however, any relation between physical soil restrictions or hydrology and wood biomass productivity, but there is a trend of increasing wood biomass productivity and phosphorus concentrations at the soil surface. Based on our results we establish hypotheses for different dynamical processes between forests growing on waterlogged and well-drained soils and discuss how these results can be applied in the background of conservation as well as the potential development of forest management plans in this region, which will experience increased deforestation due to the construction of the BR-319 Highway crossing the interfluvial region of the Purus–Madeira rivers.