# Talks continue on intensity payments for consultants {#article-title-2}

Consultants' negotiators and officials from the NHS Executive have been discussing criteria for the intensity payments which were due to be paid from 1 April under the agreement reached for the distribution of the £50m recommended by the Doctors' and Dentists' Review Body in 1999.

At the last meeting of the Central Consultants and Specialists Committee (CCSC), the chairman of the negotiators, Mr Derek Machin, invited the committee to try out a versionof a proforma. This involved three levels of supplement—one for day intensity of work and two for differing levels of disturbance outside normal working hours.

The committee welcomed the progress that had been made, but were concerned about the practical difficulties of implementing a scheme along the lines proposed, instead of an across the board enhancement of salary. They thought that it would be bureaucratic and depend on subjective judgments about doctors' workload.

Mr Machin agreed to report the CCSC's concerns to the NHS Executive. Negotiations on the other changes to the contract (1 January, p 63) will get underway when the issue of the supplements has been …


This study utilizes textual analysis to understand the representation of two female protagonists', Kamala Khan and Olive Silverlock, agency within the first volume of Ms. Marvel and Gotham Academy. Crossing comic worlds, this study seeks to determine whether or not these representations align with any waves of feminism, or continue postfeminist dialogue within media. Panel by panel, word by word, expression by expression, this researcher notes, categorizes, and analyzes these protagonists' words marked as text, behaviors performed, and expressions shown through artistic representation on the page. Situated on a cross-roads between postfeminism and the potential fourth wave of feminism, this study applies the Holistic Agency Spectrum Scale, constructed by Clark and Henderson (2016), to measure Kamala Khan's and Olive Silverlock's individual, social, and authoritative agency. As female representation within comics continues to rise, it is important to accurately determine whether these representations are a true step forward or merely a reiteration of the past.


In approving settlements of derivative actions that include fees for plaintiff's attorney, courts typically announce that attorney's fees are approved if a substantial benefit is obtained. In fact, courts, particularly Delaware courts, approve settlements in shareholder derivative actions that included substantial fees for plaintiff's attorney, despite the absence of a corresponding benefit to the corporation. Frequently, the "benefit" obtained is a reform in corporate governance, which is of dubious value to the corporation. To deter frivolous litigation, courts should resist the temptation to approve these settlements just to dispose of the litigation. The paper concludes that fees should not be approved unless the settlement (a) generates a common fund out of which such fees may be paid, (b) produces an intangible benefit reasonably susceptible of valuation, or (c) reflects a strong nexus between the relief sought in the complaint and the relief obtained.


Abstract. Mountain regions are highly sensitive to global climate change. However, large scale assessments of mountain environments remain problematic due to the high resolution required of model grids to capture strong lateral variability. To alleviate this, tools are required to bridge the scale gap between gridded climate datasets (climate models and re-analyses) and mountain topography. We address this problem with a sub-grid method. It relies on sampling the most important aspects of land surface heterogeneity through a lumped scheme, allowing for the application of numerical land surface models (LSMs) over large areas in mountain regions or other heterogeneous environments. This is achieved by including the effect of mountain topography on these processes at the sub-grid scale using a multidimensional informed sampling procedure together with a 1-D lumped model that can be driven by gridded climate datasets. This paper provides a description of this sub-grid scheme, TopoSUB, and assesses its performance against a distributed model. We demonstrate the ability of TopoSUB to approximate results simulated by a distributed numerical LSM at around 104 less computations. These significant gains in computing resources allow for: (1) numerical modelling of processes at fine grid resolutions over large areas; (2) efficient statistical descriptions of sub-grid behaviour; (3) a "sub-grid aware" aggregation of simulated variables to coarse grids; and (4) freeing of resources for computationally intensive tasks, e.g., the treatment of uncertainty in the modelling process.


Spanish small businesses rarely file for bankruptcy, and Spanish bankruptcy rates are among the smallest in the world. The historical inadequacy of the Spanish insolvency system has led most enterprises to rely on the de facto alternative mortgage system, which implies, among other things, overinvestment by debtors in fixed tangible assets. This latter effect can be particularly detrimental to the enabling environment of novel entrepreneurship. It is therefore of interest to examine whether the change in the bankruptcy regime that took place in Spain some ten years ago, with the establishment of specialised commercial courts (Juzgados de lo Mercantil), had any positive effect on bankruptcy rates. In this paper, the staggered timing of the new courts establishment is exploited in order to estimate an endogenous treatment model with a binary policy variable. The results support the direction of the reform, but the size of the estimated parameter suggests further efforts in that direction.


In May to July 1931, a series of financial panics shook central Europe before spreading to the rest of the world. This article explores the role of cross‐border banking linkages in propagating the central European crisis to Britain and the US. Using archival bank‐level data, the article documents US and British banks' exposure to central European frozen credits in 1931. Central European lending was mostly done by large and diversified commercial banks in the US and by small and geographically specialized merchant banks/acceptance houses in Britain. Differences in the organization of international bank lending explain why the central European crisis disturbed few US banks but endangered many British financial institutions.


Depression and anxiety frequently occur together or in extension of each other. According to a previous study in depressed inpatients, a high trait anxiety level correlated with a positive response to the diazepam test (DT) and a low trait anxiety level with a negative response to the test. The aim of this study is to investigate whether positive reaction to the DT is related to a positive response to fluvoxamine and whether a negative reaction to the test is related to positive response to imipramine. The DT was performed in 130 patients diagnosed with a depressive disorder. Following the DT, the patients were randomly assigned to double-blind treatment with either imipramine or fluvoxamine. Doses of both antidepressants were adjusted to attain predefined blood levels, and the outcome was evaluated 4 weeks after attaining these blood levels. Twenty-two patients had a positive response to the DT, whereas 108 patients had a negative response. Although a positive DT is correlated with a high level of trait anxiety, no differences in depressive symptomatology and antidepressant response were found between patients with a positive and a negative DT.


This paper examines efficient and decentralized monitoring of objects moving in a transportation network. Previous work in moving object monitoring has focused primarily on centralized information systems, like moving object databases and geographic information systems. In contrast, in this paper monitoring is in-network, requiring no centralized control and allowing for substantial spatial constraints to the movement of information. The transportation network is assumed to be augmented with fixed checkpoints that can detect passing mobile objects. This assumption is motivated by many practical applications, from traffic management in vehicle ad hoc networks to habitat monitoring by tracking animal movements. In this context, this paper proposes and evaluates a family of efficient decentralized algorithms for capturing, storing and querying the movements of objects. The algorithms differ in the restrictions they make on the communication and sensing constraints to the mobile nodes and the fixed checkpoints. The performance of the algorithms is evaluated and compared with respect to their scalability (in terms of communication and space complexity), and their latency (the time between when a movement event occurs, and when all interested nodes are updated with records about that event). The conclusions identify three key principles for efficient decentralized monitoring of objects moving past checkpoints: structuring computation around neighboring checkpoints; taking advantage of mobility diffusion and separating the generation and querying of movement information.


A new architecture for matching the data protected with an error-correcting code (ECC) is presented in this brief to reduce latency and complexity. Based on the fact that the code word of an ECC is usually represented in a systematic form consisting of the raw data and the parity information generated by encoding, the proposed architecture parallelizes the comparison of the data and that of the parity information. To further reduce the latency and complexity, in addition, a new butterfly-formed weight accumulator (BWA) is proposed for the efficient computation of the Hamming distance. Grounded on the BWA, the proposed architecture examines whether the incoming data matches the stored data if a certain number of erroneous bits are corrected. For a (40, 33) code, the proposed architecture reduces the latency and the hardware complexity by ∼32% and 9%, respectively, compared with the most recent implementation .


Transformers and storage systems in the electrical grid must be provisioned or sized just as routers and buffers must be sized in the Internet. We prove the formal equivalence between these two systems and use this insight to apply teletraffic theory to sizing the electrical grid, obtaining the capacity region corresponding to a given transformer and storage size. We conduct a fine-grained measurement study of household electrical load. These measurements are essential for two reasons. First, we use them to construct reference models for home loads; these models are used to find the capacity region using the teletraffic theory. Second, these measurements are used in numerical simulations that are done to validate our analysis. More specifically, we compare results of numerical simulations with the results from teletraffic theory. We show not only that teletraffic theory agrees well with numerical simulations but also that it closely matches with the heuristics used in current practice. Moreover, our analysis permits us to develop sizing rules for battery storage electrical grid, advancing the state of the art.


This paper reports the results of a qualitative study into the teaching practice experiences of eight preservice English language teachers in Hong Kong. Using in-depth interviews, the preservice teachers' practicum experiences are explored in terms of their understandings of the requirements of their teacher education institution and their teaching placement school, their relations with full time teachers within their placement schools, as well as their own beliefs about the teaching and learning of the English language. A contribution of this study is to examine these experiences through the lens of teacher identity construction. Results indicated that participants constructed rigid divisions between different identity positions that they took on, resisted, and rejected during their teaching practice experiences, and that relations between these identity categories were often characterized by antagonism. It is argued that such antagonism may be detrimental to the preservice teachers during their practicum and as they move into full time teaching positions. How these divisions might be challenged is discussed and implications for future research are considered.


Objectives: Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is an opportunistic pathogen known to form biofilms on contact lens and case surfaces that may result in permanent visual loss in cases of microbial keratitis. Because of its multiple drug resistance and extremely low incidence, there is little consensus on treatment. We investigated the predisposing factors, management, and visual outcomes in a small case series of patients to better inform the management of this rarely reported keratitis. Methods: Retrospective analysis of medical records was performed at a single tertiary referral center between 2011 and 2017. The case notes of each microbiology confirmed S. maltophilia keratitis were examined. Results: Six cases were identified (four men) with a median age of 62 years (range 1 month–90 years) and pre-existing ocular surface disease in all cases. At presentation, four patients were using bandage contact lenses and three were on topical antibiotic and steroid medications. Initial antibiotic treatment was intensive topical 0.3% ofloxacin and 5% cefuroxime, which was modified based on corneal scrape culture and sensitivity and clinical findings. One patient chose not to complete the treatment course. The 5 remaining patients had complete resolution of ulceration over a mean of 2.9 months (SD 0.8 months). Conclusions: Contact lens in the context of ocular surface problems, prolonged topical antibiotic and steroid treatments may predispose to S. maltophilia, a rare cause of keratitis. We report successful treatment with case-specific combinations of topical antibiotics such as fluoroquinolone, cotrimoxazole, and/or cephalosporin agents, although visual outcomes remain poor due to corneal scar.


This book explores the possibilities offered by Derrida's work on democracy for interpreting contemporary struggles over democracy in Turkey.

The relationship between democracy and justice seems of unquestionable importance to Derrida, with democracy and justice held in tension by deconstruction. Agnes Czajka offers a qualified endorsement of a 'just democracy', grounded in the possibilities opened up by reading Derrida's work on democracy together with his work on justice. She posits that one way of imagining democracy-to-come might be to imagine it as a 'just democracy', or one poised at the intersection of the aporia of democracy and the (non)imperative to justice. In the particular context of contemporary struggles over democracy in Turkey, she also explores what such comportment toward a just democracy (or a justice of/in democracy) might look like in the context of that 'particular' democracy.


Our world is far richer than previously conceived, yet so ravaged by human activity that half its species could be gone by the end of the present century. These two contrasting themes--unexpected magnificence and underestimated peril--have originated during the past two decades of research. In this timely and important new book, one of our greatest living scientists describes exactly what treasures of the natural world we are about to lose forever and what we can do right now to save them. Destruction of natural habitats, the rampant spread of invasive species, pollution, uncontrolled population growth and overharvesting are the main threats to our natural world. Wilson explains how each of these elements works to undo the web of life that supports us, and why it is in our best interests to stop it. THE FUTURE OF LIFE is a magisterial accomplishment - both a moving description of the world's astonishing animals and plants and a guidebook for the protection of all its species, including our own.


Alkaline exonuclease and single-strand DNA (ssDNA) annealing proteins (SSAPs) are key components of DNA recombination and repair systems within many prokaryotes, bacteriophages and virus-like genetic elements. The recently sequenced β-proteobacterium Laribacter hongkongensis (strain HLHK9) encodes putative homologs of alkaline exonuclease (LHK-Exo) and SSAP (LHK-Bet) proteins on its 3.17 Mb genome. Here, we report the biophysical, biochemical and structural characterization of recombinant LHK-Exo protein. LHK-Exo digests linear double-stranded DNA molecules from their 5′-termini in a highly processive manner. Exonuclease activities are optimum at pH 8.2 and essentially require Mg2+ or Mn2+ ions. 5′-phosphorylated DNA substrates are preferred over dephosphorylated ones. The crystal structure of LHK-Exo was resolved to 1.9 Å, revealing a 'doughnut-shaped' toroidal trimeric arrangement with a central tapered channel, analogous to that of λ-exonuclease (Exo) from bacteriophage-λ. Active sites containing two bound Mg2+ ions on each of the three monomers were located in clefts exposed to this central channel. Crystal structures of LHK-Exo in complex with dAMP and ssDNA were determined to elucidate the structural basis for substrate recognition and binding. Through structure-guided mutational analysis, we discuss the roles played by various active site residues. A conserved two metal ion catalytic mechanism is proposed for this class of alkaline exonucleases.


ABSTRACT Aim: Homeless people have limited access to medical care despite their higher risk for medical illnesses. The aim of our study was to describe the demographic and clinical features as well as the outcomes of lung cancer in homeless people and to calculate the costs for the treatment. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 22 homeless patients diagnosed with lung cancer between 2005 and 2013 at a single center in Seoul metropolitan city, South Korea. Costs were calculated referring to health care claims obtained from the Seoul National University Boramae Medical Center. Results: The median age of patients was 62 years and all patients were male. 68% were current or ex-smoker. Histologic diagnoses were as follows: non-small cell lung cancer (n = 16), small cell lung cancer (n = 3) or unknown (n = 3). Most of the patients (78%) had an advanced disease (stage IIIB; n = 2, stage IV; n = 15); five patients (23%) died during their initial hospitalization with a median survival of 1.5 months (0.4-2.4 months); seven (32%) were lost to follow-up after an initial outpatient visit or discharge from initial admission, with a median follow-up duration of 14 days (1-30 days) and only five patients (23%) received an appropriate treatment for their lung cancer (palliative chemotherapy and/or tyrosine kinase inhibitor, n = 3; whole-brain radiation therapy, n = 1; craniotomy and tumor removal, n = 1), with a median follow-up duration of 12.6 months (1.3-19.7 months). In contrast, four of five patients with an early stage of disease (22%, stage I; n = 4, stage IIA; n = 1), received a curative surgery. Their median follow-up duration was 25.9 months (2.5-77.3 months). In total, median follow up duration and days of hospitalization were 30 days and 26 days, respectively. The median treatment costs amounted to e8,922 (based on an exchange rate of Korean Won 1440 = Euro e1), constituting 47.3% of the per capita income in 2013. 98% of the costs were attributed to the inpatient treatment. The National Health Insurance paid 85% of the costs and the remainder was financed by the homeless shelter in which the patient lived or by the Seoul Metropolitan Government if the patient lived on the streets. Conclusions: Among the homeless, lung cancer is associated with a poor prognosis and substantial costs during the relatively short follow-up and survival period. Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


A flexible controller for optimal control of linear time-varying stochastic systems with multiple time delays is developed. The plants to be controlled are represented using a multi-input multi-output controlled autoregressive moving average model. The delays are described using a diagonal matrix. Input and output filters in the form of linear time-varying moving average operators are introduced into a generalized minimum variance control cost functional in order to meet the needs of various applications. The controller is applicable to a large class of linear time-varying systems.


Abstract. Past mass loads, especially LGM (Last Glacial Maximum), may cause the viscoelastic response of the Earth, this phenomenon is the so-called glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). GIA not only includes the horizontal and vertical motions of the crust but also the shape, the gravity field and rotation axis of the earth. Due to the uncertainties in the ice loading history and the mantle viscosity, modeling GIA will be difficult and challenging in Antarctica. The GPS velocity field provides an effective method to constrain the GIA vertical velocity; however, to obtain the high-precision GPS velocity field, we must consider the effects of common mode error(CME) and the choice of optimal noise model (ONM). We used independent component analysis(ICA) to remove the CME recorded at 79 GPS stations in Antarctica and determined the ONM of GPS time series based on the Akaike information criterion (AIC). Then, the high-precision GPS velocity field is obtained; we used the high-precision GPS velocity field to assess the application of GIA models in Antarctica. The results show that the maximal GPS velocity variation is up to 1.15 mm yr−1, and the mean variation is 0.18 mm yr−1. We find systematic underestimations of all GIA model velocities in the Amundsen Sea area (ASE). In the north Antarctic Peninsula (NAP), the vertical velocities are underestimated by 6 GIA models but not the WANG model. Because the upper mantle viscosities in the NAP are lower than those in the south Antarctic Peninsula (SAP),the GPS vertical velocities in NAP regions are larger than SAP regions. In the Filscher-Ronne Ice Shelves (FRIS), the observed GPS velocity and predicted GIA model velocity are consistent. In East Antarctica (EA), the vertical motion is nonsignificant, and the GIA and ice loading have a small impact in this area.


Abstract Previously described models for predicting the percent of Lake Ontario wetlands that would be occupied by sedge/grass-dominated meadow marsh were used to test four proposed new plans for regulation of lake levels and to make comparisons with the current plan and unregulated conditions. The models for drowned river mouth, barrier beach, open embayment, and protected embayment wetlands assessed responses to lake levels that would be generated by each plan under net total supplies modified from those that occurred from1900 to 2000. In years when reduced supplies would allow meadow marsh regeneration, simulated unregulated lake levels produced the most meadow marsh in all wetland geomorphic types; current Plan 1958DD produced the least. Overall predicted percent meadow marsh under the test plans decreased in the order B+, 2007, D+, and A+, and the latter three plans produced rather similar results in many cases. Lower percentages of meadow marsh under some plans were due to insufficient low lake levels that could allow soils to dry and restrict invasion by cattails, as well as lack of periodic high lake levels that could kill invading upland plants. An assessment of seasonal lake-level characteristics demonstrated that Plan 2007 would reduce mean winter lake levels by 13 cm or more than Plan B+ and springtime lake levels by more than 10 cm. These seasonal differences could result in less winter habitat for muskrats and reduced access to spring spawning habitats for fish such as northern pike. Our model results provide important information for use in the process of selecting a new regulation plan for Lake Ontario.


Partition and sale in lieu of partition are remedies available to a co-owner of land who wishes to end the co-ownership without the consent of other co-owners. In British Columbia these remedies are partly governed by the Partition of Property Act. Much of the Act consists of procedural provisions that are now covered by modern rules of court, and other portions of the Act cannot be applied without referring to the law as it existed before 1868. The reforms recommended in this report would clarify aspects of the law of partition and sale that are now obscure and provide a contemporary legislative framework for these important remedies.


More than ever, scientists are compelled to share relevant scientific knowledge to the public in order to address misinformation, inform decision-making, increase public support for scientific ventures, or promote widespread appreciation for science. Through accessible media production technology and social media, it is now much easier for scientists to be communicators and for the public to be receivers. In this talk, I will elaborate my experiences, strategies, and lessons in video-based science communication as the sole researcher, writer, producer, and creator of two short Physics videos: (1) Feynman's Path Integrals and (2) Relativity and the Equivalence of Reference Frames. The former was awarded the Special Prize during the 2016 Breakthrough Junior Challenge. Meanwhile, the latter video was declared the Winner of the 2017 edition of the same competition, where it bested 11,000 entries from 178 countries. This second video has accumulated over 5,000,000 views across all platforms.The talk will also detail how I created the videos, how the public received and interpreted the videos' information, as well as how scientists can use video for science communication.


Modulations in the charge density provide a clue while adding complexity to the story of high-temperature superconductivity. A quarter century after their initial discovery, copper oxide high-temperature superconductors (HTSs) continue to fascinate and frustrate researchers. One of the big challenges to understanding these materials is that the standard model of electron motion in solids—the same model that had to be developed before Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer could formulate their theory of superconductivity in 1957—does not apply, and no convenient replacement is yet in sight. While theoretical efforts proceed, the focus of research has periodically shifted from one experimental surprise to another. For example, several years ago it was discovered in the superconducting compound YBa2Cu3O6+x that when the superconducting order is suppressed by a very strong magnetic field, various electronic responses oscillate with the field strength in a way that indicates the presence of a new electronic ordering (1, 2). These experiments stimulated a great deal of theoretical excitement, but a compelling explanation has been lacking. On page 821 of this issue, Ghiringhelli et al. (3) report the experimental observation of a specific charge ordering more complicated than generally imagined. Together with an independent study of this order in a magnetic field (4), an explanation for the quantum oscillation experiments appears to be at hand. At the same time, these results yield new puzzles.


Presented on March 31, 2017 at the 2017 Spring Symposium on Architecture, Phantasmagoria, and the Culture of Contemporary Capitalism in the Architecture Library, Architecture West Building, College of Design at Georgia Tech.


Indirect effects of predators on primary producers may arise when predators suppress herbivore abundance and/or alter the behaviour patterns of herbivores in ways that reduce grazing pressure. Most studies highlight the role of predators in reducing herbivore abundance (i.e. density- mediated interactions), while behavioural effects (i.e. trait-mediated interactions) induced by predators are less commonly considered and are often assumed to be of secondary importance. We used a mesocosm experiment to evaluate the consumptive and behavioural effects of 2 species of predatory fishes on amphipod grazers that feed and nest on the giant kelp Macrocystispyrifera. Only one, Noto- labrus celidotus, of the 2 predator species reduced grazer abundance. Although the second predator species, N. fucicola, did not affect grazer abundance directly, it significantly reduced the grazing efficiency of amphipods on blades of M. pyrifera. Our study illustrates how density- and trait-mediated interactions reduce grazer efficiency and provide potential indirect benefits to primary producers. To our knowledge, this is the first experimental evidence of a potential trophic cascade in kelp beds generated by consumptive and nonconsumptive effects. When considered alongside results of other studies that highlight positive effects of macroalgae on reef fish demographic rates, our results provide compelling evidence that mutualistic relationships may exist between kelp and associated predatory fishes. © Inter-Research 2010.


Cougar (Puma concolor) predation has been identified as being one of several factors contributing to the decline of mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) throughout the Western United States. In order to better understand how these elusive felines utilize their surroundings and prey, I examined and analyzed cougar predation behavior in North-Central Utah, using global positioning systems (GPS) data from 2002-2010. Twenty-three cougars were fitted with GPS collars and monitored for prey caching behavior. In total 775 potential cache sites were visited and 546 prey remains found. Mule deer comprised the majority of prey at cougar cache sites, but 11 other species were also found. Collectively, adult female mule deer were killed more than any other demographic class. Proportionally there was no difference in the sex or age class of deer killed by cougars in three different population segments, but seasonal differences were found in the number of kills made between cougar groups. Female cougars with kittens had a higher predation rate than males or solitary females, and seasonally more kills were made in the winter vs. summer. Cougars spent an average of 3.3 days on deer kills, and 6.2 days on elk kills. Habitat analyses suggested that cougars preferentially used Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii) over other land cover types when caching prey, as well as selected unburned over burned areas for caching and foraging on prey. These results suggest that cougars utilize dense stands of vegetation cover when stalking and concealing their prey. Wildlife managers may want to consider the use of prescribed burns in areas of high cougar predation on mule deer. This habitat manipulation tool could simultaneously help mule deer populations by reducing the percent of stalking cover afforded to cougars when attempting to kill prey, along with increasing nutrient levels of newly burned foliage and allow for an increased diversity in forb and shrub species available to mule deer.


Abstract This article explores the relationship between three cultural practices which engage with the subterranean limestone landscapes of the Derbyshire White Peak: showcave tourism, sport caving and literary landscape writing. It suggests that modern tourism and caving perform and represent the Peak 'underland' in distinctive but interrelated ways which have deep roots in the tourism of the past, as a landscape which is both wonderful and ordinary, solitary and sociable, ancient and everyday, and examines some contemporary landscape writing which draws on both representational conventions. The article argues that the White Peak landscape should be understood as a 'vertical' geography which is both physically and culturally multilayered, and suggests that this layeredness can become flattened in geographies which focus on the surface landscape and aim to capture a unified sense of place.


It is widely held that moral obligations to non-human beings do not involve considerations of justice. For such a view, nonhuman interests are always prone to be trumped by human interests. Rawlsian contractarianism comprises an example of such a view. Through analysis of such theories, this essay highlights the problem of reconciling the claim that humans have obligations to non-humans with the claim that our treatment of the latter is not a matter of justice. We argue that if it is granted that the basic interests of non-human beings sometimes count for more than the peripheral interests of humans, then our understandings of obligation and of justice must be aligned, so that what we say about obligation is not countered by assumptions about the invariable priority of humans in matters of justice. We further consider whether such a conclusion can be endorsed by those who adopt certain alternative theories to contractarianism. We conclude that adherents of a range of theories including sentientism and biocentrism must accept that human interests can sometimes be superseded by animal interests, and that this applies not least in matters of justice.


The GGH15 multilinear maps have served as the foundation for a number of cutting-edge cryptographic proposals. Unfortunately, many schemes built on GGH15 have been explicitly broken by so-called "zeroizing attacks," which exploit leakage from honest zero-test queries. The precise settings in which zeroizing attacks are possible have remained unclear. Most notably, none of the current indistinguishability obfuscation (iO) candidates from GGH15 have any formal security guarantees against zeroizing attacks. In this work, we demonstrate that all known zeroizing attacks on GGH15 implicitly construct algebraic relations between the results of zero-testing and the encoded plaintext elements. We then propose a "GGH15 zeroizing model" as a new general framework which greatly generalizes known attacks. Our second contribution is to describe a new GGH15 variant, which we formally analyze in our GGH15 zeroizing model. We then construct a new iO candidate using our multilinear map, which we prove secure in the GGH15 zeroizing model. This implies resistance to all known zeroizing strategies. The proof relies on the Branching Program Un-Annihilatability (BPUA) Assumption of Garg et al. [TCC 16-B] (which is implied by PRFs in NC secure against P/poly) and the complexity-theoretic p-Bounded Speedup Hypothesis of Miles et al. [ePrint 14] (a strengthening of the Exponential Time Hypothesis).


BACKGROUND
Inner (area adjacent to the fovea) and outer regions of the macula differ with respect to relative thicknesses of the ganglion cell layer (neurons) vs retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL; axons).

OBJECTIVE
To determine how inner vs outer macular volumes relate to peripapillary RNFL thickness and visual function in multiple sclerosis (MS) and to examine how these patterns differ among eyes with vs without a history of acute optic neuritis (ON).

DESIGN
Study using cross-sectional optical coherence tomography.

SETTING
Three academic tertiary care MS centers.

PARTICIPANTS
Patients with MS, diagnosed by standard criteria, and disease-free control participants.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Optical coherence tomography was used to measure macular volumes and RNFL thickness. Visual function was assessed using low-contrast letter acuity and high-contrast visual acuity (Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study charts).

RESULTS
Among eyes of patients with MS (n = 1058 eyes of 530 patients), reduced macular volumes were associated with peripapillary RNFL thinning; 10-microm differences in RNFL thickness (9.6% of thickness in control participants without disease) corresponded to 0.20-mm(3) reductions in total macular volume (2.9% of volume in control participants without disease, P < .001). This relation was similar for eyes of MS patients with and without a history of ON. Although peripapillary RNFL thinning was more strongly associated with decrements in outer compared with inner macular volumes, correlations with inner macular volume were significant (r = 0.58, P < .001) and of slightly greater magnitude for eyes of MS patients with a history of ON vs eyes of MS patients without a history of ON (r = 0.61 vs r = 0.50). Lower (worse) visual function scores were associated with reduced total, inner, and outer macular volumes. However, accounting for peripapillary RNFL thickness, the relation between vision and inner macular volume remained significant and unchanged in magnitude, suggesting that this region contains retinal structures separate from RNFL axons that are important to vision.

CONCLUSIONS
Analogous to studies of gray matter in MS, these data provide evidence that reductions of volume in the macula (approximately 34% neuronal cells by average thickness) accompany RNFL axonal loss. Peripapillary RNFL thinning and inner macular volume loss are less strongly linked in eyes of MS patients without a history of ON than in eyes of MS patients with a history of ON, suggesting alternative mechanisms for neuronal cell loss. Longitudinal studies with segmentation of retinal layers will further explore the relation and timing of ganglion cell degeneration and RNFL thinning in MS.


Flowers and Bees Have "Sparks" Plants and their pollinators have very intimate interactions, as emphasized by the many classic cases of coevolution among species of each. Such close relationships require signaling between plant and pollinator. Coordination between plant signals and pollinator perception has been shown to exist in flower color, shape, and odor. Clarke et al. (p. 66, published online 21 February) report the potential for a distinct mode of plant–pollinator communication, electric fields. Natural floral electric fields, which are impacted by visits from naturally charged bees, were easily discriminated by bees, based on their level, pattern, and structure, and improved the rate at which bees remembered the location of a nectar reward. Flower-specific electric fields are used by bumblebees to enhance discrimination and memory of floral rewards. Insects use several senses to forage, detecting floral cues such as color, shape, pattern, and volatiles. We report a formerly unappreciated sensory modality in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris), detection of floral electric fields. These fields act as floral cues, which are affected by the visit of naturally charged bees. Like visual cues, floral electric fields exhibit variations in pattern and structure, which can be discriminated by bumblebees. We also show that such electric field information contributes to the complex array of floral cues that together improve a pollinator's memory of floral rewards. Because floral electric fields can change within seconds, this sensory modality may facilitate rapid and dynamic communication between flowers and their pollinators.


Although in recent years many leading international actors, including the UN and European Union, have endorsed the idea that "LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] rights are human rights and human rights are LGBT rights" (Clinton, 2011), at the regional and national levels support is still far from guaranteed. The result is that while globally there has been significant progress in recognising the rights of LGBT people, at times assisted by and resulting in cultural transformation, there has also been an accompanying rise in both popular, religious and political homophobia in many states. These conflicting and frequently highly contradictory dynamics are particularly evident in Southeast Asia, where some great leaps forward in protecting the rights of LGBT people have occurred in parallel with substantial setbacks. For example, in late 2014, a Malaysian Appeals Court ruled that a ban on cross-dressing was unconstitutional, while a Singapore Court held that a law criminalising consensual same-sex conduct between men was constitutional. This paper explores the debates and trajectories of LGBT rights in Southeast Asia from four different perspectives in order to assess not only the overall state of LGBT rights in the region, but also to consider how further progress towards meaningful protection of LGBT rights can be achieved.


Background: Quantitative evaluation of the functional results of surgically managed tibial tubercle fractures in adolescents is unreported in the orthopaedic literature. Methods: All patients treated surgically for unilateral tibial tubercle fractures at a single institution from 2007 to 2011 were invited to return for functional evaluation. Fractures were classified using the Ogden classification system. Clinical examination at follow-up included passive knee range of motion and thigh circumference. Side-to-side knee extension strength deficits were evaluated using a Biodex dynamometer. Patient-reported outcomes were assessed using the Pediatric-International Knee Documentation Committee Subjective Knee Form (Pedi-IKDC), Tegner-Lysholm Knee Scoring Scale, and Visual Analog Pain Scale. Chart review was performed to determine postoperative protocols including the use of physical therapy and protected weight bearing. Functional parameters were compared between the involved and uninvolved extremities using the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test and the Spearman correlations were performed to identify any relationships between perioperative factors, functional parameters, and subjective outcomes. Results: In total, 19 of 42 patients completed clinical and functional testing and 18 of 19 completed all outcome surveys. Average age at injury was 13.9 years and average follow-up was 3.0 years. There was no statistical difference in knee range of motion between sides, however, thigh circumference was slightly smaller in the injured extremity (median difference, 1.7 cm at 15 cm above the patella and 4.0 cm at 50% of the length of the thigh). In total 5/19 subjects (26%) had a significant quadriceps extension strength deficit on the involved leg compared with the contralateral side. The median Visual Analog Pain Scale for affected limbs was 8/100 and for unaffected limbs was 6/100 (P=0.017). The Tegner-Lysholm Scale revealed 9 excellent results, 5 good, 4 fair, and 1 poor (median, 90/100). Results of the Pedi-IKDC were 11 excellent, 3 good, 2 fair, and 3 poor results (median, 91/100). Outcome scores did not correlate to diminished strength or thigh circumference. No difference in outcome based upon body mass index, postoperative weight-bearing status, Ogden classification, or postoperative physical therapy was noted using regression analysis. Conclusions: Despite promising objective results, clinical outcomes measured by subjective validated surveys are not all excellent. Level of Evidence: Level III.


Technology and law are increasingly used to undermine processes of abundance intrinsic to nature, agriculture and the information sector. A number of examples are reviewed here. Such counter-productive use of technology and law is traced to corporate profit-seeking. The relationships between the phenomenon of abundance and the related concepts of scarcity and commons are explored. Finally, approaches are proposed that harness abundance for the human good.


In recent years the power systems research community has seen an explosion of work applying operations research techniques to challenging power network optimization problems. Regardless of the application under consideration, all of these works rely on power system test cases for evaluation and validation. However, many of the well established power system test cases were developed as far back as the 1960s with the aim of testing AC power flow algorithms. It is unclear if these power flow test cases are suitable for power system optimization studies. This report surveys all of the publicly available AC transmission system test cases, to the best of our knowledge, and assess their suitability for optimization tasks. It finds that many of the traditional test cases are missing key network operation constraints, such as line thermal limits and generator capability curves. To incorporate these missing constraints, data driven models are developed from a variety of publicly available data sources. The resulting extended test cases form a compressive archive, NESTA, for the evaluation and validation of power system optimization algorithms.


This article contends that there is a pressing need to rethink the characterisation of issues relating to securities, both complex and plain vanilla. It will demonstrate that the less than coherent choice-of-law process that exists for securities today is a consequence of courts utilising characterisation categories and rules that had not been designed with securities in mind and applying them in disregard of the new dimensions that securities and their transactions bring to characterisation. These have resulted in rules that do not provide certainty and predictability to participants in the securities and financial markets. The thesis that this article seeks to make is that a new characterisation category is required that is specific to securities which will encompass both directly held and intermediated securities (possibly also crypto-securities), and address issues of property, contract and corporations together. This will have its own choice-of-law rules which will be manifestations of the lex creationis, the law that created the relevant res or thing that is the subject-matter of the dispute. The convergence of issues traditionally dealt with by separate categories and rules will simplify and make for more coherent choice-of-law for securities.


Making Girls into Women offers an account of the historical emergence of "the lesbian" by looking at late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century women's writing. Kathryn R. Kent proposes that modern lesbian identity in the United States has its roots not just, or even primarily, in sexology and medical literature, but in white, middle-class women's culture. Kent demonstrates how, as white women's culture shifted more and more from the home to the school, workplace, and boarding house, the boundaries between the public and private spheres began to dissolve. She shows how, within such spaces, women's culture, in attempting to mold girls into proper female citizens, ended up inciting in them other, less normative, desires and identifications, including ones Kent calls "protolesbian" or queer.

Kent not only analyzes how texts represent queer erotics, but also theorizes how texts might produce them in readers. She describes the ways postbellum sentimental literature such as that written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, and Emma D. Kelley eroticizes, reacts against, and even, in its own efforts to shape girls' selves, contributes to the production of queer female identifications and identities. Tracing how these identifications are engaged and critiqued in the early twentieth century, she considers works by Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop, as well as in the queer subject-forming effects of another modern invention, the Girl Scouts. Making Girls into Women ultimately reveals that modern lesbian identity marks an extension of, rather than a break from, nineteenth-century women's culture.


Traditional networking architectures have many limitations that need to be overcome to meet modern IT requirements. To overcome these limitations; Software Defined Networking (SDN) is taking place as the new networking approach. As traditional networking uses static switches, resource utilization is poor. There are packet loss and delay during switch breakdown. This paper proposes an implementation of a load balancing algorithm for an SDN based network to overcome the stated issues. To test the algorithm, a network is emulated using the Mininet and OpenDaylight platform (ODL) is used as an SDN controller. Python coding language is used to create fat-tree network topology and to write a load balancing algorithm. Finally, iPerf and Wireshark is used to test network performance. The network was tested before and after running the load balancing algorithm. The testing focused on some of the Quality of Service (QoS) parameters such as bandwidth and transfer rate in the fat-tree network. The algorithm increased bandwidth with at least more than 50\%, and improved network utilization


In this study, we evaluated the antioxidant potential of aqueous fruit extract of Coccinia indica (AFCI) using different in vitro assays including the scavenging activities of super oxide radical, hydroxyl radical, hydrogen peroxide, DPPH radical, Nitric oxide radical, Fe +3 radical scavenging activity. The extract was evaluated for antioxidant potential by the phosphomolybdenum method, Fe +2 chelating activity, ferric reducing ability power (FRAP) and ABTS + radical scavenging assay. The activity of AFCI was compared with standard antioxidant ascorbic acid. The results indicated that the AFCI possesses the highest antioxidant activity. The antioxidant activity of AFCI is due to its rich source of βcarotene, lycopene, taraxerone, taraxerol and β-sitosterol. The results obtained in the present study indicate that the fruit of Coccinia indica are a potential source of antioxidants.


Running economy is defined as the energy cost of running at a submaximal velocity, and may be determined by measuring steady-state oxygen consumption during submaximal running. Running economy is an important marker of endurance running performance. In a homogeneous group of runners, running economy is strongly related to distance running performance, with better runners having lower oxygen consumption at submaximal running speeds. Training-induced adaptations associated with endurance training, including improved cardiorespiratory function, skeletal muscle oxidative capacity, and running biomechanics, and the optimisation of motor unit recruitment patterns may all be related to improvements in running economy. However, there is equivocal evidence regarding the effects of exercise-induced muscle damage and fatigue on running economy. Reductions in running economy have been reported after downhill runs, short duration runs, and marathon runs. In contrast, other studies have reported no change in running economy after running or various eccentric exercise protocols. The complex relationship between endurance training, exercise-induced muscle damage and fatigue associated with distance running, and running economy is not well understood. In addition, the cumulative effects of prolonged periods of vigorous training and frequent competitive distance racing on running economy are not well understood. Further studies are required to determine both acute and long-term effects of exercise-induced muscle damage and fatigue on the time course of recovery of running economy in athletes subjected to regular and intense training and competition.


Abstract Weight gain is common during and following cancer treatment and contributes to many adverse health consequences and increased risk of recurrence for cancer survivors. The purpose of this longitudinal randomized controlled trial was to compare differences in weight change and body composition among newly diagnosed cancer survivors receiving chemotherapy who were randomly assigned to usual care control, aerobic exercise, or resistance exercise interventions. It was hypothesized that cancer survivors become more sedentary during treatment, leading to positive energy balance that in turn worsens body composition. One hundred one subjects completed the 12-month study. Data collected included body composition (body weight and dual energy x-ray absorptiometry scan), aerobic capacity (12-minute walk), and muscle strength (1 repetition maximum). Aerobic exercisers were found to have significant improvements in body composition, aerobic capacity, and muscle strength. Resistance exercisers also benefitted, but were less compliant with the intervention over time. Thus, exercise during and following cancer treatment is an important intervention to maintain and perhaps improve body composition of cancer survivors, which may improve survival, reduce comorbidities, and improve quality of life.


Objectives This study aimed to understand the influences and decisions of households with children with asthma regarding keeping warm and well at home in winter. Setting Community settings in Rotherham and Doncaster, South Yorkshire, UK. Participants Individuals from 35 families and 25 health, education and social care staff underwent interview. 5 group interviews were held, 1 with parents (n=20) and 4 with staff (n=25). Outcome measures This qualitative study incorporated in-depth, semistructured individual and group interviews, framework analysis and social marketing segmentation techniques. Results The research identifies a range of psychological and contextual influences on parents that may inadvertently place a child with asthma at risk of cold, damp and worsening health in a home. Parents have to balance a range of factors to manage fluctuating temperatures, damp conditions and mould. Participants were constantly assessing their family's needs against the resources available to them. Influences, barriers and needs interacted in ways that meant they made 'trade-offs' that drove their behaviour regarding the temperature and humidity of the home, including partial self-disconnection from their energy supply. Evidence was also seen of parents lacking knowledge and understanding while working their way through conflicting and confusing information or advice from a range of professionals including health, social care and housing. Pressure on parents was increased when they had to provide help and support for extended family and friends. Conclusions The findings illustrate how and why a child with asthma may be at risk of a cold home. A 'trade-off model' has been developed as an output of the research to explain the competing demands on families. Messages emerge about the importance of tailored advice and information to families vulnerable to cold-related harm.


Fibrosis is strongly linked with the mechanisms of atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common arrhythmia. Direct electrotonic coupling between atrial myocytes and fibroblast has been suggested to contribute to these mechanisms. We use a 3D biophysical model of the atria to study the effects of fibrosis on atrial electrophysiology. Realistic tissue geometry, regional heterogeneity and myofiber anisotropy are integrated in the model. The model also accounts for the effects AF induced ionic remodeling, which has been shown to promote AF. The model simulations demonstrated that fibrosis significantly reduced both the atrial conduction velocity and action potential duration. Both these factors contributed to a large (45%) reduction of the atrial activation wavelength. This is comparable with the wavelength reduction (65%) due to ionic remodeling. As a result, the sustenance of reentrant waves in the 3D atria was substantially increased with both fibrosis and remodeling. Hence, the elecrotonic changes induced by fibrosis can be comparable to those due to ionic remodeling, and both factors can provide substrate for re-entry in the 3D atria model.


This collection offers new and challenging scholarly interpretations of six major 'Chaucerian' love poems from Clanvowe's Cuckoo and the Nightingale (1385) to the early Renaissance Court of Love (c. 1530). This study reveals previously overlooked subtlety and irony of these works, including an original, in-depth look at the neglected icon of this erotic poetry, the hawthorn tree. The contributors' critical approach emphasizes the texts themselves, their cultural context, and the literary tradition of the genre. The focus is decidedly on the poems' likely meaning to their original audiences; Chamberlain sketches fifteenth century literary taste in his introduction. This book contributes to the ongoing debate about the meaning of love in Middle English, and medieval, poetry. Contents: 'Under the Schaddow of the Hawthorne Greene': The Hawthorn in Medieval Love Poetry, Susan Schoon Everly and David Chamberlain; Clanvowe's Cuckoo, David Chamberlain; Venus Unveiled: Lydgate's 'Temple of Glas' and the Religion of Love, Bryan Crockett; 'The air': The Plight of the Courtly Lover, Clair F. James; The Hope for 'Pleasaunce': Richard Roos' Translation of Alain Chartier's 'La Belle Dame Sans Mercy', Melissa Brown Tomus; 'The Floure and the Leafe': An Alternative Approach, Cynthia Lockard Snyder; In Love's Thrall: 'The Court of Love' and its Captives, Bonita Friedman.


The actions that individuals take to proactively craft their jobs are important to help create more meaningful and personally enriching work experiences. But do these proactive behaviors have implications beyond working life? Inspired by the suggestion that individuals aim for a meaningful life we examine whether on days when individuals craft their jobs, they are more likely to craft non-work activities. It also seems likely that characteristics of the home environment moderate these cross-domain relationships. We suggest that crafting crosses domains particularly when individuals gain resources through high autonomy and high workload at home. We partly supported our model through a daily diary study, in which 139 service sector employees from six European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, UK) reported their experiences twice a day for five consecutive workdays. Home autonomy and home workload strengthened the positive relationship between seeking resources at work and at home. Moreover, home autonomy strengthened the positive association between seeking challenges at work and at home, and the negative relation between reducing demands at work and at home. These findings suggest that the beneficial implications of job crafting transcend life boundaries thereby providing advice for how individuals can experience greater meaning in their lives.


Audio productions are made or broken by the quality of the recording engineer's ears. The ability to properly discern sounds, identify subtle problems, and act accordingly to apply the necessary fix makes all the difference in the quality of the final tracks and master. The good news is that these crucial skills can be learned. The ability to instantly identify frequencies, hear hidden distortions, and instinctively reconcile conflicts in the EQ of instruments, audio elements, vocals and more are traits of those who have mastered the art of audio production. The best engineers have trained their ears to immediately recognize audio problems that the consumer and those new to recording arts would likely not hear, but that, if left unresolved, would result in an amateurish final product. For more than two decades, students of F. Alton Everest's Critical Listening and Auditory Perception courses have rapidly developed these skills by using the intense lessons found in this book and on the CD. Unfortunately the books and CDs included with the course were usually too expensive for aspiring engineers to purchase and were often available only in colleges, universities, or school libraries. Now for the first time these indispensable training sessions are available with this release of Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals. Through hundreds of illustrations and an accompanying disc containing high-resolution MP3 files with nearly five hours of narration of the entire course, you can acquire the audio discernment skills of a seasoned recording engineer by studying this course at your own pace, in your own home.


In black-box testing, one is interested in creating a suite of tests from requirements that adequately exercise the behavior of a software system without regard to the internal structure of the implementation. In current practice, the adequacy of black-box test suites is inferred by examining coverage on an executable artifact, either source code or a software model. We propose the notion of defining structural coverage metrics directly on high-level formal software requirements. These metrics provide objective, implementation-independent measures of how well a black-box test suite exercises a set of requirements. We focus on structural coverage criteria on requirements formalized as linear temporal logic (LTL) properties and explore how they can be adapted to measure finite test cases. These criteria can also be used to automatically generate a requirements-based test suite. Unlike model or code-derived test cases, these tests are immediately traceable to high-level requirements


Design decisions and constraints of a software system can be specified precisely using a formal notation such as the Object Constraint Language (OCL). However, they are not executable, and assuring the conformance of an implementation to its design is hard. The inability of expressing design constraints in an implementation and checking them at runtime invites, among others, the problem of design drift and corrosion. We propose runtime checks as a solution to mitigate this problem. The key idea of our approach is to translate design constraints written in a formal notation such as OCL into aspects that, when applied to a particular implementation, check the constraints at run-time. Our approach enables runtime verification of designimplementation conformance and detects design corrosion. The approach is modular and plug-and-playable; the constraint checking logic is completely separated from the implementation modules which are oblivious of the former. We believe that a significant portion of constraints translation can be automated.


The goal of this project is to decipher the quorum sensing (cell-to-cell signaling) abilities of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, a Gram-negative bacterium well known for its ability to use geologic substrates, such as Fe and Mn oxides, for respiratory purposes. Overall our results show that S. oneidensis cannot utilize either an acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL) or AI-2 quorum sensing signal, despite previous work that indicated that it produced an AHL that would enhance it ability to growth in certain anaerobic environments. Using a variety of quorum sensing signal sensors, no evidence could be found that S. oneidensis has a typical AHL signal. An in silco analysis of the genome also produced little evidence that S. oneidensis has the genes to accept or relay an AHL signal. S. oneidensis can produce a luminescence response in the AI-2 reporter strain, Vibrio harveyi MM32. This luminescence response is abolished upon deletion of luxS, the gene responsible for catalyzing AI-2. Deletion of luxS also affected biofilm formation. Within 16 hours of growth in a biofilm flow-through reactor, the luxS mutant had an inhibited ability to initiate biofilm formation. After 48 hours of growth, the mutant's biofilm had developed similarly to wild-type. The addition of synthetic AI-2 did not restore the mutant's ability to initiation biofilm formation, which led to the conclusion that AI-2 is not likely used as a quorum sensing signal in S. oneidensis for this phenotype. Because of the involvement of LuxS in the activated methyl cycle (AMC) in other organisms, growth on various sulfur sources was examined. A mutation in luxS produced a reduced ability to growth with methionine as the sole sulfur source. Methionine is a key metabolite used in the AMC to produce a methyl source in the cell and homocysteine. This data suggests that LuxS is important in metabolizing methionine and the AMC in S. oneidensis.


Medical Law: Text, Cases, and Materials offers exactly what the title says - all of the explanation, commentary, and extracts from cases and key materials that students need to gain a thorough understanding of this complex topic. Key case extracts provide the legal context, facts, and background; extracts from materials, including from the most ground-breaking writers of today, provide differing ethical perspectives and outline current debates; and the author's insightful commentary ensures that readers understand the facts of the cases and can navigate the ethical landscape to form their own understanding of medical law. Chapters cover all of the topics commonly found on medical law courses, including a separate chapter on mental health law. This new edition, thoroughly updated, includes: * Coverage of important new cases in all chapters, including Rabone v Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust and Purdy v DPP. * Coverage of the reorganisation of commissioning in the NHS as a result of the Health and Social Care Act


The ability to regulate specific genes of energy metabolism in response to fasting and feeding is an important adaptation allowing survival of intermittent food supplies. However, little is known about transcription factors involved in such responses in higher organisms. We show here that gene expression in adipose tissue for adipocyte determination differentiation dependent factor (ADD) 1/sterol regulatory element binding protein (SREBP) 1, a basic-helix-loop-helix protein that has a dual DNA-binding specificity, is reduced dramatically upon fasting and elevated upon refeeding; this parallels closely the regulation of two adipose cell genes that are crucial in energy homeostasis, fatty acid synthetase (FAS) and leptin. This elevation of ADD1/SREBP1, leptin, and FAS that is induced by feeding in vivo is mimicked by exposure of cultured adipocytes to insulin, the classic hormone of the fed state. We also show that the promoters for both leptin and FAS are transactivated by ADD1/SREBP1. A mutation in the basic domain of ADD1/SREBP1 that allows E-box binding but destroys sterol regulatory element-1 binding prevents leptin gene transactivation but has no effect on the increase in FAS promoter function. Molecular dissection of the FAS promoter shows that most if not all of this action of ADD1/SREBP1 is through an E-box motif at 2 64 to 2 59, contained with a sequence identified previously as the major insulin response element of this gene. These results indicate that ADD1/SREBP1 is a key transcription factor linking changes in nutritional status and insulin levels to the expression of certain genes that regulate systemic energy metabolism. ( J. Clin. Invest. 1998. 101:1–9.)


People ' s Republic of China is the largest, Slovenia is the 64th and Montenegro is the 162nd largest export economy in the world. Methods of analysis, deduction and induc-tion and comparative method were used in this paper. The paper reviews and analyzes statistical data of international trade with China as well as of Chinese outbound tourism and provides an estimate of what share Slovenia and Montenegro received. Starting off with the research question ' Are the revenue from the export of China and revenue from Chinese inbound tourism ( ' invisible export ' ) in gross domestic product (GDP) grow- ing? ' we have concluded that China is becoming a more important partner for both countries. There is a strong positive correlation between exports in China and the number of overnights of Chinese tourists both in Slovenia and Montenegro and that expenditure of Chinese tourists visiting these two countries increases every year as well. Expenditure and share of expenditure of Chinese tourists visiting Slovenia and Montenegro in Chinese exports increase every year. Share of expenditure of Chinese tourists and export in Chinese GDP increase every year.


An appropriate basis for denying the recovery of damages in tort on the ground that the plaintiff has been guilty of illegal wrongdoing has for long been a matter of debate in the common law courts. We can find a number of different justifications in the cases, with significant contributions being made by the House of Lords and the UK Supreme Court, the High Court of Australia, and the Supreme Court of Canada. The article examines the various arguments, makes suggestions as to what is helpful and what is not, and concludes by identifying the key questions to ask in any case where the illegality issue is raised.


Leadership and teamwork are the key factors contributing to organizational effectiveness if their attributes fit to the socio-cultural context. In this reading, the leadership and teamwork process are described in Developing countries (DCs). Developing countries, which comprise of 80 % of the world's population, are diverse in many ways. However, there are some common socio-economic, institutional, and political characteristics as well as shared cultural attributes. The first section addresses the difficulty of finding a definition of developing countries and lays out some common features. Next comes the presentation of six key sociocultural characteristics that have implications for leadership and teamwork. The following two sections describe challenges and opportunities in leading and teaming in DCs. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. This article is available in Online Readings in Psychology and Culture: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol7/iss2/1


A steady state security margin for a particular operational point can be defined as the distance from this initial point to the secure operational limits of the system. Four of the most used steady state security margins are the power flow feasibility margin, the contingency feasibility margin, the load margin to voltage collapse, and the total transfer capability between system areas. A comprehensive literature survey has shown that these security margins have been studied separately. This fact has suggested to the authors the possibility of researching a common analysis framework valid for all of them. This is the first part of a two-part paper. In part I, a novel mathematical formulation valid to address the study of any steady state security margin is proposed. The developed general approach is presented in three steps: (a) formulation, (b) computation, and (c) improvement of security margins. In part II, the performance of the proposed approach when used to compute and improve the aforementioned steady security margins is illustrated through its application to the Spanish power system. Results denote that this approach can be a useful tool to solve a variety of practical situations in modern real power systems. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


Linked entity data in metadata records builds a foundation for the Semantic Web. Even though metadata records contain rich entity data, there is no linking between associated entities such as persons, datasets, projects, publications, or organizations. We conducted a small experiment using the dataset collection from the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study (HBES), in which we converted the entities and their relationships into RDF triples and linked the URIs contained in RDF triples to the corresponding entities in the Ecological Metadata Language (EML) records. Through the transformation program written in XML Stylesheet Language (XSL), we turned a plain EML record display into an interlinked semantic web of ecological datasets. The experiment suggests a methodological feasibility in incorporating linked entity data into metadata records. The paper also argues for the need for change in the scientific as well as the general metadata paradigm.


The Niger Delta region in Nigeria is a well resourced region and accounts for most of Nigeria's foreign exchange earnings through the supply of petroleum oil to the international market. While it has been a source of economic benefit for the nation state - Nigeria, it has also become a source of poverty for the millions of local residents in the areas where crude oil has been discovered. Ogba community which provides the site of this investigation is no different. This is primarily because of the loss of local and economically productive livelihood through the continuous devastation of the environment as a result of the oil exploration activities and limited employment opportunities in this area.
The communities of the Niger Delta and Ogba community specifically and prior to oil exploration were self sufficient. Most were farmers, hunters and fishermen but these activities have been affected due to a range of environmental occurrences that have devastated forests, farmlands and rivers. With economic stagnation and increasing levels of poverty, this paper analyses the efforts of stakeholders particularly government in promoting local economic development through various approaches including the efficacy of public participation in both formal and informal networks with a view to improving the current practices, reflecting on its impact and make recommendations that could assist policy makers re-energise inclusive local economic developmental activities.


The American Academy of Pediatrics concurs with the recent statement of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists affirming that hospitals and birthing centers are the safest settings for birth in the United States while respecting the right of women to make a medically informed decision about delivery. This statement is intended to help pediatricians provide supportive, informed counsel to women considering home birth while retaining their role as child advocates and to summarize the standards of care for newborn infants born at home, which are consistent with standards for infants born in a medical care facility. Regardless of the circumstances of his or her birth, including location, every newborn infant deserves health care that adheres to the standards highlighted in this statement, more completely described in other publications from the American Academy of Pediatrics, including Guidelines for Perinatal Care. The goal of providing high-quality care to all newborn infants can best be achieved through continuing efforts by all participating health care providers and institutions to develop and sustain communications and understanding on the basis of professional interaction and mutual respect throughout the health care system.


This Practice as Research thesis is a contribution to and intervention in the fields of intermedial performance studies and live media practice. Its arguments are formulated through live intermediality, a mode of practice whereby the solo performer activates image, sound, object and body in the presence of and sometimes with the 'experiencers' (Nelson 2010), in order to compose a series of shifting intermedial combinations.

The thesis interrogates current discourses around intermediality in performance, the role and actions of the live media performer and the generation of events in intermedial and live media practice, arguing that each can be productively re--viewed through live intermedial practice. In positioning the practice clearly within the various lineages from which it draws and positing the particular 'knowings' it produces, live intermediality is formulated as distinctive 'praxis' or 'doing-thinking' (Nelson 2013). In addition, the specific characteristics of live intermediality – the dualities, discourses and collisions it generates - are presented both as form of new knowledge through practice and employed as the tools to pierce existing thinking from an 'insider' perspective.

Working from a Practice as Research methodology, live intermediality is placed in dialogue with resonant conceptual frameworks, such as the work of intermedial theorists, Kattenbelt (2008) and Lavender (2006), new media theorists, Bolter and Grusin (2000), as well as broader paradigms of presence (Power 2008), autopoiesis (Fischer--Lichte 2008, Maturana and Varela 1987) and event (Derrida 1978, Deleuze 2006). The praxis, through its dialogue with such frame works, reconfigures current theories around the activation, operation and experience of intermediality in live media forms. In addition, through its distinctive features and the 'knowings' they generate, live intermediality is proposed as new mode of praxis within these fields.


Social media has quickly risen to prominence as a news source, yet lingering doubts remain about its ability to spread rumor and misinformation. Systematically studying this phenomenon, however, has been difficult due to the need to collect large-scale, unbiased data along with in-situ judgements of its accuracy. In this paper we present CREDBANK, a corpus designed to bridge this gap by systematically combining machine and human computation. Specifically, CREDBANK is a corpus of tweets, topics, events and associated human credibility judgements. It is based on the real-time tracking of more than 1 billion streaming tweets over a period of more than three months, computational summarizations of those tweets, and intelligent routings of the tweet streams to human annotators — within a few hours of those events unfolding on Twitter. In total CREDBANK comprises more than 60 million tweets grouped into 1049 real-world events, each annotated by 30 human annotators. As an example, with CREDBANK one can quickly calculate that roughly 24% of the events in the global tweet stream are not perceived as credible. We have made CREDBANK publicly available, and hope it will enable new research questions related to online information credibility in fields such as social science, data mining and health.


We present an elemental abundance analysis of high-resolution spectra for five giant stars spatially located within the innermost regions of the bulge globular cluster NGC 6522 and derive Fe, Mg, Al, C, N, O, Si, and Ce abundances based on H-band spectra taken with the multi-object APOGEE-north spectrograph from the SDSS-IV Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) survey. Of the five cluster candidates, two previously unremarked stars are confirmed to have second-generation (SG) abundance patterns, with the basic pattern of depletion in C and Mg simultaneous with enrichment in N and Al as seen in other SG globular cluster populations at similar metallicity. In agreement with the most recent optical studies, the NGC 6522 stars analyzed exhibit (when available) only mild overabundances of the s-process element Ce, contradicting the idea that NGC 6522 stars are formed from gas enriched by spinstars and indicating that other stellar sources such as massive AGB stars could be the primary polluters of intra-cluster medium. The peculiar abundance signatures of SG stars have been observed in our data, confirming the presence of multiple generations of stars in NGC 6522.


Looking at the trend of the country's development and international concern on biodiversity in Malaysia, the government has developed a policy on conservation, biodiversity and many other policies related to the environment and biodiversity.Despite many policies, laws and regulations and commitment of many agencies on
environmental protection and conservation, issues on biodiversity, conservation and protection are continuously highlighted. The demands for agriculture, industries, urbanisation and road networking have sacrificed the habitats for wildlife. The lack of
expertise and public awareness on wildlife ecology and conservation caused the local authorities and developers to neglect planning for wildlife and habitat protection when designing the developments of the urban, industrial and residential areas. Many examples of habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, migration routes obstruction, poaching and habitat contamination have occurred. Great pressures
can be observed on coastal wildlife. Hazardous chemicals in coastal environment in Malaysia have shown some elevation especially in specific areas. Realising that continuous developments and human activities can cause the elevation of hazardous chemicals in the
coastal environment, a monitoring system is needed. In order to do this, bio-monitoring agents need to be identified and tested. From the long studies that I have conducted, many bio-monitoring agents have been proposed. Many of them are intertidal molluscs. However, more detailed studies on their biology and ecology are
required. From these long term monitoring activities that were carried out, the Department of Biology, UPM has produced the most data with similar sampling methods, analysis and procedures in the literature on level and ecotoxicology of heavy metals in Malaysia.
Perhaps the data produced can become guidelines for heavy metal levels in coastal marine ecosystems in Malaysia. Since heavy metals are important hazardous chemicals that can cause toxic effects, monitoring and research related to establishing bio-indicators,
bio-monitors and testing organisms need to be continuously enhanced. The results of understanding the biology, ecology and ecotoxicology of heavy metals on the potential bio-indicators will enable a specific bio-indicator to be suggested for a specific micro-habitat. Establishing a specific bio-indicator for a specific
micro-habitat could support the idea of conservation of organisms at all levels from chemical contamination. This innovation can later aid hazardous chemical management in coastal environment and help to reduce the conflict between coastal wildlife conservation and pollution.


In this policy brief we provide policy implications and recommendations on how firms' productivity react to spatial economic drivers of growth related to agglomeration economies, clustering of innovation, and localisation of FDI. We observe how these features interact with firm characteristics (specifically size, ownership, and innovation) focusing on three case studies: Turkey, Italy, and Tunisia. Overall, the estimation results suggest significant productivity enhancing agglomeration and innovation effects, in particular spillovers are higher between firms operating in the same sector and region and having small technology divides. In addition, evidence on productivity spillovers from neighbouring foreign firms is less robust. The results of the study confirm the efficiency of clusters of SMEs in South Mediterranean countries and helps identifying key drivers and patterns of localised production providing a benchmark of analysis. The evidence support policies which pay specific effort to enhance the absorptive capacity of less technologically sophisticated firms by supporting R&D investment and human capital qualification allowing firms to compete and benefit of surrounding spillovers in agglomerated areas. Another policy target for the government should be investing in transportation infrastructure, easing access to housing and developing regional complementarities. This would lead to a more sustainable convergence of standards of living among regions in the long-term, and would reduce the exploitation of resources along the coast and the pressure on natural resources.


In this paper, a new topology incorporating double superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) coils is proposed, and control strategies for effectively delivering power to a grid via high-voltage direct current (HVDC) are developed. Power grids have become increasingly complex due to the use of renewable energy and dynamic loads. As such, it is important to design a power transmission system that satisfies power supply and demand requirements. HVDC is especially attractive for particular power transmission technologies, because the fast control characteristics of HVDC contribute to the stabilization of connected power grids. SMES has also received attention as a promising method to overcome the aforementioned issues. In the proposed scheme, one SMES coil in series with the dc line is specifically designed for use as a fault current limiter, while the other coil in parallel with the line is employed for energy storage. This study describes the effectiveness of combining these two schemes to mitigate the dynamic power fluctuation of generator and load, reinforcing controllability, and dependability of the power delivery. Case studies demonstrate the improved performance and robustness of voltage sourced converter-HVDC linked with double SMES coils for dc fault.


Due to the foveated nature of the human vision system, people can focus their visual attention on a small region of their visual field at a time, which usually contains only a single object. Estimating this object of attention in first-person (egocentric) videos is useful for many human-centered real-world applications such as augmented reality applications and driver assistance systems. A straightforward solution for this problem is to pick the object whose bounding box is hit by the gaze, where eye gaze point estimation is obtained from a traditional eye gaze estimator and object candidates are generated from an off-the-shelf object detector. However, such an approach can fail because it addresses the where and the what problems separately, despite that they are highly related, chicken-and-egg problems. In this paper, we propose a novel unified model that incorporates both spatial and temporal evidence in identifying as well as locating the attended object in firstperson videos. It introduces a novel Self Validation Module that enforces and leverages consistency of the where and the what concepts. We evaluate on two public datasets, demonstrating that Self Validation Module significantly benefits both training and testing and that our model outperforms the state-of-the-art.


This paper studies the effects of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on the ability of firms to collect consumer data, identify consumers over time, accrue revenue via online advertising, and predict their behavior. Utilizing a novel dataset by an intermediary that spans much of the online travel industry, we perform a difference-in-differences analysis that exploits the geographic reach of GDPR. We find a 12.5% drop in the intermediary-observed consumers as a result of the new opt-in requirement of GDPR. At the same time, the remaining consumers are observable for a longer period of time. We provide evidence that this pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that privacy-conscious consumers substitute away from less efficient privacy protection (e.g, cookie deletion) to explicit opt out, a process that would reduce the number of artificially short consumer histories. Further in keeping with this hypothesis, we observe that the average value of the remaining consumers to advertisers has increased, offsetting most of the losses from consumers that opt out. Finally, we find that the ability to predict consumer behavior by the intermediary's proprietary machine learning algorithm does not significantly worsen as a result of the changes induced by GDPR. Our results highlight the externalities that consumer privacy decisions have both on other consumers and for firms.


Nowadays, the study of myths is rather neglected as a field of research in sociology. There is a void that this paper would like to contribute to filling. It outlines a theoretical and empirical sociological approach to social myths as a major component of collective imaginaries and a universal sociological mechanism through time and space. The article recalls the major functions performed by myths in every society (modern as well as "primitive"), introduces new concepts, and sets forth an analytical framework designed to account for the emergence, the reproduction, and the decline of myths, as sacralised collective representations.


Sixty-two dogs with problems when travelling in the car took part in a non-blinded study aimed at differentiating groups of dogs on the basis of the pattern of signs shown by individual dogs and their response to treatment with a collar impregnated with dog-appeasing pheromone (dap) for six weeks and general behavioural advice. The dogs were taken out in the owner's car at least twice weekly for nine weeks, and their behaviour was assessed every three weeks to determine the frequency of 21 behavioural signs. On the basis of these signs and by using principal components analysis, the dogs were grouped into five well defined groups, defined as 'excitable', 'nausea', 'tense', 'attention-seeking' and 'elimination'. For the purpose of statistical analysis, the attention-seeking and elimination groups were combined when assessing the effect of the treatment. All the groups showed some statistically significant improvements after treatment, but their responses were not uniform. The greatest perceived improvement was among the nausea group and the least was among the excitable group. In the groups for which there were sufficient data for analysis, there was little evidence of a relapse in most of the signs in the three to five months after the collar had been removed.


Abstract The Burgess Shale-type Lagerstätten of the Early Cambrian Maotianshan Shale record an apparently sudden conquest of pelagic niches by ten phyla of metazoans. One of these phyla is Chaetognatha, a group of predatory marine worms. Given their role as major predators in modern planktonic ecosystems, the chaetognaths discovered in the Maotianshan Shale (Yunnan Province, South China) suggest that the pelagos at the time was already quite complex. Modern chaetognaths, however, can be divided into benthic and pelagic forms; the pelagic nature of Eognathacantha ercainella should therefore be validated by strong morphological evidence. Knowing that planktonic animals present morphological adaptations that increase their buoyancy, we studied the drag produced during the active phase of chaetognath locomotion for the modern forms Paraspadella gotoi (benthic) and Sagitta elegans (pelagic). By using a motion model developed by Jordan in 1992, we could calculate the resistive force produced by the undulatory movement of chaetognaths' bodies. This mechanistic approach evaluates the effect of three motion parameters (relative speed, total length, and tail ratio) on the drag force produced during locomotion. Our results show that the increase of size contributes to higher drag while the shorter tail of the pelagic form balances this effect by reducing the wetted surface subject to friction. For chaetognaths, therefore, a bigger body (both in length and width) and a shorter tail indicate a pelagic lifestyle, a finding that can be applied to the study of the fossil Eognathacantha ercainella. A discriminant analysis can confirm that the Early Cambrian chaetognath presents a pelagic morphology with similarities to modern bathypelagic and mesopelagic species.


The fruit of extensive research in the historical archives, this work deals with the project to emancipate Madare women, which was undertaken by the civil authorities and missionaries between 1900 and 1960. It deals with women's living conditions in the pre-colonial society, the methods and means used to bring about change, their impact and their limitations.


Within the general notion of biological WMDs is a weapon that has been least discussed - the potential genetic weapon. Technologies that have been evolving from basic research into the molecular biology of genes and DNA/RNA are now providing us with the knowledge necessary to create new kinds of weapons that pose a strategic dilemma for the United States and its allies. This project will investigate the strategic environment of genetic warfare - notably the notion of the human adaptation of natural disease events as applied to state and non-state conduct in the contest for political and economic power and influence. Specifically, we seek to augment the security literature with regard to the conceptualization of the strategy which will hopefully provide deterrence and, if necessary, a successful defense against genetic weapons. To accomplish this task, we must integrate the historical and current strategic doctrine of biological WMDs in American doctrine and thinking, and the evolving literature in genetic science and epidemiology. An important finding in this analysis will be the growing importance of genetic forensic epidemiology is becoming a principle national security tool .
Furthermore, it will be established that the preeminent threat of biological warfare in the future - a more rational and lethal form of disease - one that threatens to nullify our decades old disease therapy model of vaccine development and deployment - is slowly leading futurist thinkers to resurrect Eugenics as a new model of science-based national security. Specifically - the argument will made that human enhancement may be the only path toward a protected human population in a future world of radically new diseases. Genetically enhanced pathogens - once posited - deconstructed - and placed within a genetic and political construct - can be combined with the growing logic of eugenics as suggested by Dr. James Watson, Dr. Francis Crick, and other aggressive utilitarian-oriented scientist/engineers who are leading these fields today. The genetically enhanced pathogen can only be resisted and/or defeated by the genetically enhanced human being. This sentence portrays the logic of a potential eugenics future - one that continues to arise from the combination of advancing genetic science and technology to the task of terrorism, warfare, and weaponology. To this logic - we will seek to establish a formal ethical analysis and conclusion for the policy and scholarly community.
 It is important to note that most of the thinking on biological war in the unclassified literature to date has occurred in the medical community. There is advantage to this in that our medical scientists and physicians are the ones who will provide the basic research needed to generate technological solutions to such weapons. Therefore, the research that we seek to conduct in this project is of clear importance. The task of this research is to integrate the knowledge of how to defend against a range of international and national actors from the security literature with the knowledge from the medical and biological literature of how genetic weapons will work for/against those actors and the United States. In this sense, the outcome of this research will be to establish a dialogue on the strategic environment of genetic warfare informed by the knowledge and corresponding technologies of molecular biology. What is possible regarding the creation and use of genetic weapons will help to determine the corresponding political, economic, and technological strategies for defending against them. Too - the ethical dimension of human genetic enhancement - as the direct operational juxtaposition to the empirical record of scientific work on pathogen genetic enhancement - causes us to write a formal statement about the specter of a renewed call for some form of eugenics - this time as a response to the need for the state to provide for the genetic security of the American population.


To elucidate the molecular mechanisms behind physical inactivity–induced insulin resistance in skeletal muscle, 12 young, healthy male subjects completed 7 days of bed rest with vastus lateralis muscle biopsies obtained before and after. In six of the subjects, muscle biopsies were taken from both legs before and after a 3-h hyperinsulinemic euglycemic clamp performed 3 h after a 45-min, one-legged exercise. Blood samples were obtained from one femoral artery and both femoral veins before and during the clamp. Glucose infusion rate and leg glucose extraction during the clamp were lower after than before bed rest. This bed rest–induced insulin resistance occurred together with reduced muscle GLUT4, hexokinase II, protein kinase B/Akt1, and Akt2 protein level, and a tendency for reduced 3-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase activity. The ability of insulin to phosphorylate Akt and activate glycogen synthase (GS) was reduced with normal GS site 3 but abnormal GS site 2+2a phosphorylation after bed rest. Exercise enhanced insulin-stimulated leg glucose extraction both before and after bed rest, which was accompanied by higher GS activity in the prior-exercised leg than the rested leg. The present findings demonstrate that physical inactivity–induced insulin resistance in muscle is associated with lower content/activity of key proteins in glucose transport/phosphorylation and storage.


The pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp) is a shrubby leguminous plant cropped for green manure and forage; its protein-rich grains are used as animal and human food. The objective of the present experiment was to study the germination behavior during the storage of pigeon pea seeds of two cultivars (one with and the other without hard seeds). The newly harvested seeds were packed in paper bags and stored for six years in a laboratory with natural environment without control of air temperature and relative humidity. Soon after harvest and then yearly, seed moisture was evaluated and the seed germination was tested. Germination dates were submitted to statistical analysis, in a randomized complete design, considering as treatments the seven evaluation times during storage, with four replications. Analysis of variance was performed for each cultivar separately and then analyzed as series of similar experiments. Regression equations were calculated, choosing the ones with better fit and higher coefficient of determination. Seeds of both cultivars maintained germination above 70% during three years of storage, followed by decrease and presented nearly 10% in the sixth year. The presence of hard seeds caused differences in germination between cultivars during the storage period.


We propose an optical amplifier composed of fibers with varying normal group velocity dispersion (GVD) for picosecond pulse amplification. The analytical analysis defines the optimal axial distribution of dispersion that results in shaping of the parabolic pulses with controllable chirp. The proposed cascaded all-fiber pulse amplifier employs fiber gain segments with exponential increase of normal dispersion separated by the passive fiber sections with decreasing normal GVD. The cascaded amplifier allows us to prevent an excessive broadening of the pulse spectrum and, therefore, offers an attractive potential for energy scaling of similariton pulses.