Diagnosis of disorders of balance is challenging, as there are broad differentials and patients may present to a variety of healthcare practitioners, ranging from an audiologist to a psychiatrist. In addition, investigations, both at the bedside and laboratory, are often non-contributory, expensive and unpleasant. The adult dizzy patient is regarded with dread by many in the healthcare community: the patient is difficult to diagnose and challenging to treat, and the situation is frequently complicated by the presence of anxiety, panic and depression. When symptoms arise in childhood they cause alarm in the parents and the treating healthcare professional. Diagnosis and management of balance disorders in childhood, is even more demanding when patients are frequently unable to communicate the nature of the complaint. Furthermore, the aetiology and presentation of vestibular disturbance is markedly different between adults and children. Symptoms of vestibular disorders in children may easily be mistaken for behavioural or other medical problems, leading to underdiagnosis and inappropriate investigations and treatment. Detrimental effects of childhood vestibular disorders may include delayed gross motor development, learning and spatial problems, and time off school. This review summarises the most common causes of childhood vestibular disorders and suggests the need for a multidisciplinary approach to assessment.


Reversible protein ubiquitination is emerging as a key process for maintaining cell homeostasis, and the enzymes that participate in this process, in particular E3 ubiquitin ligases and deubiquitinases (DUBs), are increasingly being regarded as candidates for drug discovery. Human DUBs are a group of approximately 100 proteins, whose cellular functions and regulatory mechanisms remain, with some exceptions, poorly characterized. One of the bestcharacterized human DUBs is ubiquitin-specific protease 1 (USP1), which plays an important role in the cellular response to DNA damage. USP1 levels, localization and activity are modulated through several mechanisms, including protein-protein interactions, autocleavage/degradation and phosphorylation, ensuring that USP1 function is carried out in a properly regulated spatio-temporal manner. Importantly, USP1 expression is deregulated in certain types of human cancer, suggesting that USP1 could represent a valid target in cancer therapy. This view has gained recent support with the finding that USP1 inhibition may contribute to revert cisplatin resistance in an in vitro model of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Here, we describe the current knowledge on the cellular functions and regulatory mechanisms of USP1. We also summarize USP1 alterations found in cancer, combining data from the literature and public databases with our own data. Finally, we discuss the emerging potential of USP1 as a target, integrating published data with our novel findings on the effects of the USP1 inhibitor pimozide in combination with cisplatin in NSCLC cells.


Aim: The overall aim of the present thesis was to describe and evaluate IT support in dementia care from the perspectives of staff and relatives. More specifically, it was to examine staff members' satisfaction with work, life satisfaction and sense of coherence before and after increased IT support, to describe staff members' opinions and perceptions of IT support during the process of implementation, to describe relatives' opinions of IT support and to compare relatives' perceptions of their irritations with care and life satisfaction before and after increased IT support. In addition, three questionnaires were further developed and tested among staff working in elderly care, and then used in the staff evaluation. Methods: A quasi-experimental design with baseline assessments and follow-ups and experimental and control groups was used in two studies to investigate the outcomes of IT support. A descriptive design was used to study staff views on IT support, and a correlative design was used in the methodological study. Participants were 33 staff members and 22 relatives in the evaluation, 14 staff members in the descriptive study and 299 staff members in the methodological study. Data collection methods were questionnaires and group interviews. The IT support consisted of passive passage alarms, fall detectors, sensor-activated night-time illumination of the lavatory, movement detectors, email communication, an Internet website and additional computers. Findings and conclusions: Staff job satisfaction and perceived quality of care increased in the experimental group. The relatives were generally positive about the IT support, and the experimental group showed a decrease in practical/logistical irritations. Staff described 'moving from fear of losing control to perceived increase in control and security' and 'constant struggling with insufficient/deficient systems'. Conclusions are that IT support can be a resource in dementia care as perceived by caregivers if IT support is incorporated into the care system.


The Organizational Safety Space Model (OSSM) was developed as a tool to investigate the factors which influence the safety of industrial operations. It is applied in this study to investigate the safety of medication administration in adult critical care settings, including Intensive Care Units and High Dependency Units. In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 33 adult critical care nurses. The participants' views on the safety of medication administration were analyzed using OSSM. The data suggested that the safety of medication administration is subject to complex influences of many organizational factors. Socio-cultural factors, including lack of questioning culture, the perceived hierarchy of professions and the nature of nursing education, were identified as influential safety factors. Furthermore, organizational complexity and structures created tension between organizational, ethical and structural priorities on one side, and the requirements of safe management of medication in critical care a setting on the other, inevitably leading to tradeoffs among these organizational priorities. Some organizational factors are difficult to classify according to the OSSM and the model is not fully operational in identifying factors related to the safety of medication administration. While the OSSM' theoretical framework helped to focus on the underpinning safety factors in the organization of medication administration, it remains unproven as an operational tool to understand the full complexities and interplays between the organization structures, professional differences and socio-cultural impacts on the safety of medication administration in adult critical care setting.


In this article I will explore the correlation between the discourse of youths' out-migration and their attitudes toward the infrastructure of Tilichiki, a small town in Kamchatka. I attempt to contest the perspective that out-migration (resulting in town depopulation) is caused by the perception of social infrastructure as insufficient. The analysis of local discourse shows that negative or positive descriptions of infrastructure, social services and life conditions in the town in general depend on whether the person has plans of leaving the town. This correlation is supported by temporal dimension of one's life project: the duration of speakers' residence in the town or the amount of time that they are planning to spend there.


Constructed wetlands are wastewater treatment. The depuration process done
is called phytodepuration, which consists on the reduction or elimination of
contaminants of the waste water, where the plants of the systems participated on it. A
phytodepuration pilot plant has been designed and constructed, and it consists in two
parallel cells of subsurface vertical flow (VSF), and one of horizontal subsurface flow
(HSF), called hybrid system. The water flows horizontally through the porous media
and the plants roots in the HSF, and are permanently flowed. The constant inflow is
done by a Mariotte bottle. In the VSF the water flow is vertical and intermittent. The
system can work with a direct and inverse mode flow, and it is designed to be used
with two different flows, the normal one of 50 l/day and the winter one of 594 l/day. The
plant is designed to treat grey water to reuse it after. Grey water is defined as the urban
wastewater that includes water from bats, showers, hand basins, washing machines.
The hydraulic circuit has been designed and constructed, using plastic pipes,
pumps, plastic barrels, etc. The electrical circuit connects every timer to each pump. To
set the flow the timers have to be programmed. The system has been studied by
hydraulic balances, and a simulation program has been done according to the system
limitations. The timing has been set and the plant has been started up with the direct
mode and the normal operation flow with tap water.
In other studying line, it has been done a literature review of constructed
wetlands plants species to select them for the pilot plant according to the needs of our
system: by their natural habitat, their removing capacity, their shape and measure.
There have been 4 species selected: Phragmites australis, Typha latifolia, Carex elata
and Juncus effusus. It has been done a review of the germination tests processes and
a research of the optimum conditions of germination of the selected plants. Seeds of
Typha latifolia were collected from the nature on November and after germinated.
There have been done 4 germination tests, each one with distillate water and grey
water. The capsules were placed under the fluorescents with constant light and the
room temperature of 14-25oC. The percentage of germinated seeds has been more
with distillate water than in grey water. The conclusion obtained from the tests done, it
is that the best way to germinate is with constant light, with filter paper on a soil pot,
and keeping them watered frequently. The germinated plants are going to be used in
the future in the pilot plant.


We organized a large-scale pilot on gypsum amendment of arable fields in southwest Finland, along the River Savijoki to examine its effects on phosphorus loads and aquatic environment, and to assess its feasibility as a water protection measure. This paper reports findings on the feasibility aspects of gypsum amendment covering logistics and costs of spreading, abatement potential and farmers' experience. We found that farmers perceived gypsum amendment positively and the costs of reducing phosphorus are low relative to other measures available in agriculture. Gypsum amendment suits well to 0.5 million hectares of arable land in southern Finland. Gypsum could potentially contribute considerably to the achievement of phosphorus reduction targets of the Baltic Sea Action Plan if applied in all countries having clay soils.


Previous research has shown cultural differences between Japan and the United States stem from differences in holistic vs. analytic cognition. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the socio-ecological factor relational mobility on social cognition in the form of causal attribution. Study 1 confirms previous research on differences across Western and East Asian causal attribution styles by finding higher perceptions of relational mobility and greater tendency toward dispositional attribution in the American participants, and lower relational mobility perception and more consistent situational attribution in Japanese participants. In Study 2, we prime American participants with high vs. low relational mobility and test for changes in causal attribution. Consistent with the predictions, high relational mobility was related to increased dispositional attribution and low relational mobility was related to increased situational attribution. Collectively, these studies show relational mobility is a socio-ecological factor of culture that correlates with causal attribution and can be manipulated to change perceptions of a social situation. Keywords: Relational Mobility, Causal Attribution CULTURAL VARIATION IN CAUSAL ATTRIBUTION 3


A covalent bond between an individual pentacene molecule and a gold atom was formed by means of single-molecule chemistry inside a scanning tunneling microscope junction. The bond formation is reversible, and different structural isomers can be produced. The single-molecule synthesis was done on ultrathin insulating films that electronically isolated the reactants and products from their environment. Direct imaging of the orbital hybridization upon bond formation provides insight into the energetic shifts and occupation of the molecular resonances.


Gossip-based information dissemination protocols are considered easy to deploy, scalable and resilient to network dynamics. They are also considered highly flexible, namely tunable at will to increase their robustness and adapt to churn. So far however, they have mainly been evaluated through simulation, very often assuming ideal settings. Instead, in this paper, we report on an extensive study of gossip protocols, deployed on a 230 Planetlab node testbed, in the context of a challenging video streaming application in environments with constrained bandwidths. More precisely, we assess the impact of varying the well known knobs of gossip, fanout and refresh rate, in various upload-bandwidth distributions and churn. Our results show that in such challenging contexts, the performance of gossip protocols may be hampered by high fanout values. We also show that the more proactive a gossip protocol, the better it copes with churn. For instance, when 20% of the nodes simultaneously crash, 70% of the remaining nodes do not suffer any loss in stream quality, while the others only experience a performance decrease for an average of 5 seconds around the churn event.


Oxalyl chloride and phosgene are highly toxic chemicals but are widely used in industrial processes, which have been regarded as a serious threat to our health and public security. Thus, it is imperative to develop a convenient and reliable detection method for these noxious agents. In this research, we report the rational design of a fluorescent sensor (denoted as BTA) for simultaneously detecting oxalyl chloride and phosgene, in which o-phenylenediamine (OPD) as the reactive recognition site and benzothiadiazole (BTD) as the fluorophore moiety are coupled into one single benzo-fused motif. The probe works in a "turn-on" fluorescence mode due to the formation of piperazine-2,3-dione and 2-imidazolidinone rings by intramolecular cyclization reactions between the OPD part with oxalyl chloride and phosgene, respectively, which greatly inhibits the intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) process from two amines to the BTD core in the sensor BTA. The detection limit of oxalyl chloride and phosgene is as low as 3 nM and 20 nM in solutions, respectively. Moreover, the sensor exhibits outstanding selectivity toward oxalyl chloride and phosgene over the nerve-agent mimic diethyl chlorophosphate and various acyl chlorides. Furthermore, a portable test paper with BTA has been facilely fabricated for visual on-site detection of the two toxic chemicals in the gas phase.


Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies promise a revolution in genetic research. Generating enormous amounts of data, they bring both new opportunities and new challenges to researchers. SEQscoring was designed to facilitate analysis and enable extraction of the most essential information from data produced in NGS resequencing projects. Its main functionality is to help researchers locate the most likely causative mutations for a specific trait or disease, but it can advantageously be used whenever the goal is to compare and explore haplotype patterns and to locate variations positioned in evolutionary conserved genomic elements. SEQscoring uses input data containing information about coverage and variations produced by other programs, like MAQ and SAMtools, and put the emphasis on methods for data visualisation and interpretation. We compare cases and controls in several ways and also utilise the power of comparative genomics, by scoring all variations according to their degree of conservation. The SEQscoring tool is publicly accessible via the Web. It has an intuitive interface and can easily be used by biologists, medical researchers, veterinarians as well as bioinformaticians. We exemplify how SEQscoring was used in a recent study as a subsequent step to a Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) to extract a set of candidate mutations. Availability: http://www.seqscoring.org


A large literature describes the use of robots' physical bodies to support communication with people. Touch is a natural channel for physical interaction, yet it is not understood how principles of interpersonal touch might carry over to human-robot interaction. Ten students participated in an interactive anatomy lesson with a small, humanoid robot. Participants either touched or pointed to an anatomical region of the robot in each of 26 trials while their skin conductance response was measured. Touching less accessible regions of the robot (e.g., buttocks and genitals) was more physiologically arousing than touching more accessible regions (e.g., hands and feet). No differences in physiological arousal were found when just pointing to those same anatomical regions. Social robots can elicit tactile responses in human physiology, a result that signals the power of robots, and should caution mechanical and interaction designers about positive and negative effects of human-robot interactions.


The current study is the first detailed report on a savant case in Turkey. We collected data from a 25-year-old-male savant on attention span, short-term memory, working memory, autobiographical memory, overall intelligence, reading speed, text interpretation, and advanced calendar calculation. Data collection tools included the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (4th edition), Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised, Stanford-Binet 5 Working Memory Test and Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices for assessing general intellectual functioning; the Verbal Short-Term Memory Test for assessing memory assessment; d2 for assessing attention; a structured reading text; family interview protocols; and an individual interview protocol. The savant has a composite intellectual level of 85 and was recently diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder when he was 25 years old. He evidenced limited attention span but excellent short-term memory, working memory, autobiographical memory and calendar calculation. of Stanford-Binet Intelligence


This note assesses the controversial case of Evans v UK by attempting to make sense of the sympathy that Ms Evans attracted when her plight became publicly known. It analyses the decision with the view to finding a way in which law might have responded more positively to that sympathy. The analysis questions the profound level of control over their reproductive capacity that the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act 1990 attempts to give people. It considers the context in which that control is given – considering the parallel control that is available to people who procreate beyond the scope of the Act – and reflects on the consequences of that level of control when difficult ethical dilemmas arise. It then goes on to analyze the way in which the human rights norms (inherent in, or peripheral to law) might have been engaged to improve Ms Evans's chances of succeeding in her application. It concludes that the courts should have – and could have – used the human rights norms in the European Convention (incorporated into domestic law in the Human Rights Act 1998) and made a different decision from the one which they reached in this case.


Extending marriage to same-sex couples in Oregon would generate nearly $50 million in spending to the state economy. According to 2010 U.S. Census, the most recent data available, 11,773 same-sex couples live in Oregon. Of those couples, the report estimates that 50 percent (5,887 couples) would choose to marry in the first three years, a pattern that has been observed in Massachusetts and elsewhere. Nearly 4,000 marriages would occur in the first year alone, and bring over $30 million in revenue to the state of Oregon that year. Direct spending by resident same-sex couples on their weddings would add an estimated $37.7 million to the state and local economy over the first three years, with $24.1 million in the first year alone. Wedding-related spending and tourism would also generate approximately 468 new jobs in Oregon over the first three years. Estimates do not take into account the impact of same-sex couples from other states who travel to Oregon to marry, or the impact of existing marriages and domestic partnerships among Oregon's same-sex couples.


[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] One of the national goals in science education is to teach science in a way that mirrors the process of science as inquiry, described by the National Science Education Standards (NSES) Science Teaching Standard B and Content Standard A (NRC, 1996). Inquiry-based learning, including the use of case studies, is one of several types of active learning that allows students to experience critical thinking skills inherent in the science process (Handelsman et al., 2007). Using case studies also develops skills in group learning and personalizes and humanizes science, making it more relevant to students (National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, 2008). Case studies involving inherited conditions can be used to learn Medelian genetics in freshman or honors biology classes. Case studies can also serve as formative assessments to see how well students have learned and can apply genetic principles to real-world situations. * Building a Case The learning goals and the needs of the class should be taken into consideration when planning cases. For my lower level high school classes, cases are diagnostic and have one correct answer. The goal is for students to form hypotheses, apply their prior knowledge of Medelian genetics to analyze the information, and support their conclusions based on the data (Table 1). Figure 1. An example of a case study in genetics with student prompts. A 27-year-old investment banker called his doctor concerned about malodorous urine. When the patient urinated first thing that morning, he had noticed that his urine had a terrible sulfurous smell. It was now 10:00 am and his most recent urine still smelled. The patient was concerned that he might have food poisoning. The patient felt physically fine but was mentally distraught. He had gone out to eat with his girlfriend the evening before to celebrate her promotion. They drank a celebratory bottle of a new variety of red wine that, in retrospect, seemed to have an off-taste. In addition, the patient mentioned eating some foods for the first time, such as artisanal cheeses made with raw milk, guava, star fruit, asparagus, and parsnips. He had called his girlfriend but she reported no change in the smell of her urine. Working with your group, think of three possible reasons (hypotheses) why this patient could be exhibiting these symptoms. Describe how you would test each of the three hypotheses, including any further information you would need. [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] A case opens with a scenario presenting information about an individual who is displaying unusual symptoms, along with prompts for student discussion (Figure 1). To promote thinking skills in students, I initially do not give them enough information to conclude whether the symptoms are from an inherited condition or due to other causes. Students propose hypotheses for the symptoms and how these could be tested. Next, students are given a pedigree that shows the prevalence of the symptoms in the family of the individual (Figure 2). Students examine the pedigree and use the prompts to discuss their reasoning and conclusion about the type of inheritance depicted. Students often need to be reminded that even if the pedigree could support several modes of inheritance, they need to look at the prevalence of the trait in each generation. Students want to know if the condition described in their case study is real or not. I either reveal the information or ask students to do some sleuthing for homework and report back to the class on their findings. I use genetic conditions not usually found in biology textbooks that follow a single gene inheritance pattern. These conditions are not usually life-threatening and some may manifest later in life (Table 2), making for interesting cases. The National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science has many resources and links for designing or using existing case studies in all areas of science. …


Adversarial representation learning is a promising paradigm for obtaining data representations that are invariant to certain sensitive attributes while retaining the information necessary for predicting target attributes. Existing approaches solve this problem through iterative adversarial minimax optimization and lack theoretical guarantees. In this paper, we first study the ``linear" form of this problem i.e., the setting where all the players are linear functions. We show that the resulting optimization problem is both non-convex and non-differentiable. We obtain an exact closed-form expression for its global optima through spectral learning and provide performance guarantees in terms of analytical bounds on the achievable utility and invariance. We then extend this solution and analysis to non-linear functions through kernel representation. Numerical experiments on UCI, Extended Yale B and CIFAR-100 datasets indicate that, (a) practically, our solution is ideal for ``imparting" provable invariance to any biased pre-trained data representation, and (b) the global optima of the ``kernel" form can provide a comparable trade-off between utility and invariance in comparison to iterative minimax optimization of existing deep neural network based approaches, but with provable guarantees.


This study assessed probable water that could be harvested during rainy seasons over Embu County of Kenya. Monthly rainfall data was obtained from Kenya Meteorological Department while percentage distribution of household by household size, main roofing material, number of rooms in the main dwelling and per capita volume of water required was sourced from Kenya Integrated Household Budget of Survey (KIHBS). Minimum water demand per household was computed based on KIHBS. Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) 2009 population census was used to determine population and number of occupants in the main dwelling. Embu County receives bimodal rainfall during March-April-May (MAM) and October-November-December (OND). Rainfall is highly variable with 8190 and 7490 litres of harvested water during MAM and OND season respectively expected to last for approximately 43 days (MAM) while 39 days (OND) and thus not sufficient to satisfy minimum water demand levels for Embu population. The total potential harvestable water during MAM and OND accounted for 45.4 % and would go a long way in meeting water demands in the region. Notably, harvestable water was being used to supplement natural sources of water. Therefore, enhanced water harvesting during rainy season could provide an alternate source of domestic water.


A program to study the engineering geology of most larger Alaska coastal communities and to evaluate their earthquake and other geologic hazards was started following the 1964 Alaska earthquake; this report about the Petersburg area is a product of that program. Field-study methods were of a reconnaissance nature, and thus, interpretations in the report are tentative, Landscape of the northern end of Mitkof Island on which Petersburg is situated is characterized by a gently sloping, muskeg-covered terrain, with altitudes mostly less than 30 m. In contrast, much of the rest of the island is composed of mountainous terrain with many steep valleys. During the Pleistocene Epoch, the Petersburg area presumably was covered by ice several times; glaciers deeply eroded many valleys on Mitkof Island and adjacent areas. The last major deglaciation probably was largely completed by 12,000 years ago. Delayed rebound of the earth's crust, after the melting of large amounts of ice, permitted extensive inundation of land in the Petersburg area. Subsequently, emergence has elevated marine deposits to a presentday altitude of at least 65 m and probably to 75 m. Bedrock in the Petersburg map area is composed of relatively hard metamorphic rocks, chiefly phyllite and probably some graywacke. Rocks are of Middle(?) Jurassic to Early Cretaceous age. Five types of surficial geologic material of Quaternary age were recognized: (1) mixed deposits consisting of diamicton, silt-clay, and sand or sandy pebble gravel, (2) alluvial deposits, (3) shore and delta deposits, (4) organic deposits, and (5) artificial fill. Geologic structure in southeastern Alaska is complex because several cycles of tectonic deformation since at least early Paelozoic time have affected different parts of the region. The latest of the major tectonic events in southeastern Alaska occurred in Tertiary time, with some minor activity continuing into the Quaternary Period. Along the outer coast of southeastern Alaska, active strike-slip movement is occurring along the Chichagof-Baranof and Queen Charlotte faults. A segment of the prominent Coast Range lineament, part of which may be a fault, lies 18 km northeast of Petersburg. Many earthquakes occur along the outer coast of southeastern Alaska. Most of these shocks are associated with movements along the ChichagofBaranof, Queen Charlotte, and Transition faults. A few small earthquakes occur in the region between the outer coast and the southern part of the Coast Mountains. Only a few earthquakes have been recorded as felt at Petersburg; these shocks and others possibly felt in the Petersburg region are tabulated. Among the recorded earthquakes the highest intensity (about VVI) was the magnitude 7.1 earthquake of October 24, 1927, that occurred probably along the Chichagof-Baranof fault, and about 225 km northwest of Petersburg; damage was reported as minor. Other large earthquakes along the Chichagof-Baranof fault that affected or probably affected the Petersburg area in a minor way occurred on August 22, 1949 (magnitude 8.1) and on July 30, 1972 (magnitude 7.25). From a consideration of the tectonics and earthquake history of the region, earthquakes similar to the 1927, 1949, and 1972 shocks are expected to recur on segments of the Chichagof-Baranof or Queen Charlotte faults. The closest of these fault segments is about 170 km southwest from Petersburg. The likelihood of.destructive earthquakes being generated along faults closer to Petersburg is unknown. A very generalized discussion of possible geologic effects that could occur in the area during a postulated, theoretically reasonable worst case earthquake of magnitude 8 occurring along the outer coast about 170 km southwest from Petersburg notes that ground shaking probably would be strongest on organic deposits and least on bedrock and on firm, compact diamicton. Among other effects that could happen are: (1) liquefaction of some of the few delta and alluvial deposits, (2) ejection of water and sediment from some of the few alluvial and delta deposits, (3) compaction and differential subsidence of some of the few alluvial and delta deposits, (4) local landslides, (5) perhaps, minor alterations in the movement of ground water within alluvial and delta deposits, and (6) earthquakeinduced water waves including tsunamis, seiches, and local waves generated by landslides; waves could develop to* heights possibly 1-2 m above normal tide level. Earthquakes of lesser magnitude and/or at greater distance along the same fault structure would, of course, affect the area less strongly. Geologic hazards not necessarily related to earthquakes include: (1) high water waves, (2) landslides in areas of steep slopes, (3) drifting icebergs, and (4) stream floods and erosion of deposits by running water and sheet floods. .Recommended additional investigations in the Petersburg area and region


Thymosin α1 (Tα1) and Bursopentin (BP5) are both immunopotentiators. To explore whether the thymosin α1-Bursopentin (rTα1-BP5) is an adjuvant or not, we cloned the gene of Tα1-BP5 and provided evidence that the gene of Tα1-BP5 in a recombinant prokaryotic expression plasmid was successfully expressed in Escherichia coli BL21. To evaluate the immune adjuvant properties of rTα1-BP5, chickens were immunized with rTα1-BP5 combined with H9N2 avian influenza whole-inactivated virus (WIV). The titers of HI antibody, antigen-specific antibodies, Avian influenza virus (AIV)-neutralizing antibodies, levels of Th1-type cytokines (gamma interferon (IFN-γ)) and Th2-type cytokines (interleukin 4 (IL-4)), and lymphocyte proliferation responses were determined. We found that rTα1-BP5 enhanced HI antibody and antigen-specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies titers, increased the level of AIV-neutralizing antibodies, induced the secretion of Th1and Th2-type cytokines, and promoted the proliferation of T and B lymphocyte. Furthermore, virus challenge experiments confirmed that rTα1-BP5 contributed to the inhibition replication of the virus (H9N2 AIV (A/chicken/ Jiangsu/NJ07/05) from chicken lungs. Altogether, these findings suggest that rTα1-BP5 is a novel adjuvant suitable for H9N2 avian influenza vaccine.


The plays of Menander have been largely absent from the recent critical attention given the metatheatrical aspects of ancient comedy because they avoid direct reference to performance and maintain dramatic illusion. But as readings of tragic self-reflexivity have shown, even consistently illusionistic drama can make reference to itself as drama so that the audience is encouraged to view the play in double focus, as both a pretense of reality and as an evident dramatic artifice. Metatheatricality in Menander has its basis in the recurring view of the characters that life is like a tragedy. A number of characters state that the events at hand resemble a tragic situation, comment on events by quoting from a tragedy, or ask other characters to view the current situation through the lens of a particular tragic drama. In other instances, reference is made to aspects of dramatic staging or to the constitutive parts of plays. Such comments are realistic, or probable, because it is likely that Greeks of the fourth century regularly interpreted their own lives through the paradigm of myth, best known in dramatized form, and used theatrical metaphors to refer to everyday events. At the same time, however, audience members may experience a character9s comparison of the dramatic situation to tragedy as humorously ironic because they know that the plot is destined to fulfill itself in a comic mode. Tragedy is in fact a mask worn by Menander9s comedy, and the audience has a metadramatic experience whenever it focuses on the fact of masking. Analysis of passages from the Dyscolos, Epitrepontes, Perikeiromene, and Samia, as well as fuller discussion of the Aspis, demonstrates that Menader9s plays invite metadramatic readings in which the plot develops through the struggles of characters to impose on themselves and others tragic readings of their comic situation.


Summary This is Part I of a three-part series on community empowerment as a route to greater health equity. We argue that community 'empowerment' approaches in the health field are increasingly restricted to an inward gaze on community psycho-social capacities and proximal neighbourhood conditions, neglecting the outward gaze on political and social transformation for greater equity embedded in foundational statements on health promotion. We suggest there are three imperatives if these approaches are to contribute to increased equity. First, to understand pathways from empowerment to health equity and drivers of the depoliticisation of contemporary empowerment practices. Second, to return to the original concept of empowerment processes that support communities of place/interest to develop capabilities needed to exercise collective control over decisions and actions in the pursuit of social justice. Third, to understand, and engage with, power dynamics in community settings. Based on our longitudinal evaluation of a major English community empowerment initiative and research on neighbourhood resilience, we propose two complementary frameworks to support these shifts. The Emancipatory Power Framework presents collective control capabilities as forms of positive power. The Limiting Power Framework elaborates negative forms of power that restrict the development and exercise of a community's capabilities for collective control. Parts II and III of this series present empirical findings on the operationalization of these frameworks. Part II focuses on qualitative markers of shifts in emancipatory power in BL communities and Part III explores how power dynamics unfolded in these neighbourhoods.


Finite element simulations of bonded repair technology can greatly reduce the cost of repairing ageing and damaged aircraft structures. In this study, finite element simulation and analysis are performed for several bonded repair techniques of damaged aircraft structures with cracks. The simulations start from fatigue damage accumulation, crack initiation, crack repair, to fatigue crack re-initiation until structural failure. The effectiveness of bonded repair techniques is assessed by comparing the service lives of no repair, patch-bonded repair (live repair), stop-drill repair, and damage removal repair. It is found that the load attraction by repair patch can greatly sustain fatigue crack growth, leading to more than at least 2 times longer service life before the skin structure needs to be replaced. Damage removal bonded repair can further extend service life by more than 20 times comparing to no repair, benefiting from the fatigue damage tolerant service life extension. Along with the service life comparison, we also established a simulation framework that lays out the groundwork to perform aerostructure bonded repair effectiveness evaluation. The results demonstrate that finite element analysis can be efficiently used to simulate the various forms of bonded repairs and effectively evaluate fatigue crack growth and service life with structural damage. Such a rigorous simulation framework enables the future design of new repair techniques for aircraft structures.


Graphite extracted from a used primary cell was converted into reduced graphene oxide (rGO) using calcium carbonate together with rapid and local Joule heating by microwave irradiation. Electrodes were prepared by ultrasonically dispersing rGO in biodegradable poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) binder and coating this on recyclable poly(ethyleneterephthalate) (PET) sheet using a low cost screen printing technique. The use of the same polymer (PVP) as a binder, in addition to as the solid polymer electrolyte (SPE), enhances the compatibility and ionic conductivity of the hydrophobic rGO electrode in the supercapacitor system. Further, the phosphoric acid (H3PO4)-doped biodegradable SPE was screen printed for the first time on the rGO electrodes. Ionic conductivity and dielectric studies of the SPE were carried out at different temperatures and different dopant acid concentrations. The morphology, composition and structure of the graphene electrode components were characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) methods. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images showed a single layer or a few layers of rGO sheets and selected area electron diffraction showed the presence of slight defects. The fabricated environmentally friendly, industrially favorable and green supercapacitor showed a specific capacitance of 201 F g−1 and cyclic stability with 97% retention of the initial capacitance over 2000 cycles. Furthermore, the performance of this green supercapacitor is comparable to that of those fabricated using rGO synthesized from commercial graphite and in other literature reports.


Recently, indoor air quality monitoring (AQM) has become an important research area for the concern of human health and lifestyle. The AQM is usually based on the deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSN) within the building. Bridging the gap between gas sensors, deployed at different locations of the WSN, and the Internet becomes a challenging task in terms of link reliability and data integrity. Recent advances in the design of Internet-of-Things (IoT)-enabling solutions are spurring the advent of novel and fascinating bridging. In the wake of this tendency, this paper proposes a novel, IoT Smart architecture for air quality monitoring. With the IoT vision, we propose a Smart global AQM system, which employs different, yet complementary, technologies, such as gas sensing, WSN and Smart mobile. Our proposed system, is able to collect, in real time and from different cities, data related to the concentrations of critical gases, humidity, and temperatures. Collected data are delivered to a local gateway where an advanced processing makes them easy and accessible by both, local and remote users via a remote web server. Key–Words: WSN, Internet-of-Things, Carbon dioxide, Carbon monoxide, Carbonyls, Indoor air quality monitoring, Nitrogen dioxide, Volatile organic compounds.


The inflationary stabilization recently observed in Brazil brings a lot of changes in all aspects of the country's economic life. In this work we look at the impacts on the stock market, specifically at Bovespa - the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange. We analyze the leading variables and statistics that describe Bovespa's behavior, such as volatility and systematic risk, comparing the four years preceding and the four years after 1994, when the Real Plan was implemented. In order to eliminate exogenous influences, we use control series made with international Stock Exchanges Indexes. The results show that after 1994 there was reduced volatility, increased trade volume, reduced efficiency of the Bovespa Index and no changes in systematic risk.


The groundwater flow pathway in the Culebra Dolomite aquifer at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has been identified as a potentially important pathway for radionuclide migration to the accessible environment. Consequently, uncertainties in the models used to describe flow and transport in the Culebra and to be addressed. A 'Geostatistics Test Problem' is being developed to evaluate a number of inverse techniques that may be used for flow calculations in the WIPP performance assessment (PA). The Test Problem is actually a series of test cases, each being developed as a highly complex synthetic data set; the intent is for the ensemble of these data sets span the range of possible conceptual models of groundwater flow at the WIPP site. The Test Program analysis approach is to use a comparison of the probabilistic groundwater travel time (GWTT) estimates produced by each technique as the basis for the evaluation. Participants are given observations of head and transmmissivity (possibly including measurement error) or other information such as drawdowns from pumpings wells, and are asked to develop stochastic models of groundwater flow for the synthetic system. Cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) of groundwater flow (computed via particle tracking) are constructed using the head and transmissivity data generated through the application of each technique; one semi-analytical method generates the CDFs of groundwater flow directly. This paper describes the results from Test Case No 1. Of the five techniques compared, those based on the linearized form of the groundwater flow equation exhibited less bias and less spread in their GWTT distribution functions; the semi-analytical method had the least bias. While the results are not sufficient to make generalizations about which techniques may be better suited for the WIPP PA (only one test case has been exercised), analyses of the data from this test case provides some indication about the relative importance of other aspects of the flow modeling (besides inverse method or geostatistical approach) in PA. These ancillary analyses examine the effect of gridding an the effect of boundary conditions on the groundwater travel time estimates.


Purpose of the study: This article reports the development and Italian validation of a new self-report instrument(The Engagement in Healthy Ageing Promotion Scale) that assesses older people engagement in healthyageing promotion and is grounded on an ecological operational definition of this phenomenon.Methods: 14 items were developed basing on a previously conducted qualitative study exploring older adults'experiences and meanings of engagement in health promotion. Analyses were conducted on an Italian sampleof 540 adults aged 60 years and older, randomly split into an exploratory (n = 308) and a confirmatory (n =232) group. A final scale of 8 items was validated with confirmatory factor analyses. Concurrent and criterionvalidity of the final items were evaluated with measures of patient activation, readiness to change lifestyle andwellbeing.Results: Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the one-factor structure of the eightitemsscale, with a variance explained of 44% and an eigenvalue equal to 3.5. The fit values of the final modelindicated a good model fit. Internal consistency of the scale was good, with a Cronbach's Alpha equal to 0.81.Finally, concurrent and criterion validity revealed significant relationships with the patient activation construct(r = .401; p = .000), with the readiness to change lifestyle (r = .211; p = .000), and with older people's wellbeing(r = .205; p = .000).Implications: The developed instrument can represent a useful tool to estimate the extent to which oldercitizens are engaged in health promotion activities, as well as to develop and evaluate interventions aimed toimprove wellbeing and preventive behaviours of older citizens.


In the neural-network parameter space, an attractive field is likely to be induced by singularities. In such a singularity region, first-order gradient learning typically causes a long plateau with very little change in the objective function value E (hence, a flat region). Therefore, it may be confused with "attractive" local minima. Our analysis shows that the Hessian matrix of E tends to be indefinite in the vicinity of (perturbed) singular points, suggesting a promising strategy that exploits negative curvature so as to escape from the singularity plateaus. For numerical evidence, we limit the scope to small examples (some of which are found in journal papers) that allow us to confirm singularities and the eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix, and for which computation using a descent direction of negative curvature encounters no plateau. Even for those small problems, no efficient methods have been previously developed that avoided plateaus.


We are solving the classical Riemann-Hilbert problem of rank N>1 on the extended complex plane punctured in 2m+2 points, for
NxN quasi-permutation monodromy matrices. Following Korotkin we solve the Riemann-Hilbert problem in terms of the Szego kernel of certain Riemann surfaces branched over the given 2m+2 points. These Riemann surfaces are constructed from a permutation representation of the symmetric group S_N to which the quasi-permutation monodromy representation has been reduced. The permutation representation of our problem generates the cyclic subgroup Z_N. For this reason the corresponding Riemann surfaces of genus N(m-1) have Z_N symmetry. This fact enables us to write the matrix entries of the solution of the NxN Riemann-Hilbert problem as a product of an algebraic function and theta-function quotients. The algebraic function turns out to be related to the Szego kernel with zero characteristics. From the solution of the Riemann- Hilbert problem we automatically obtain a particular solution of the Schlesinger system. The tau-function of the Schlesinger system is computed explicitly. The rank 3 problem with four singular points (0,t,1,\infty) is studied in detail. The corresponding solution of the Riemann-Hilbert problem and the Schlesinger system is given in terms of Jacobi's theta-function with modulus T=T(t), Im(T)>0. The function T=T(t) is invertible if it belongs to the Siegel upper half space modulo the subgroup \Gamma_0(3) of the modular group. The inverse function t=t(T) generates a solution of a general Halphen system.


: Vascular structure of the earliest shark teeth. Acta Geologica Polonica (3), Here we use synchrotron tomography to characterise dental vasculature in the oldest known tooth-bearing sharks, Leonodus carlsi Mader, 1986 and Celtiberina maderi Wang, 1993. Three dimensional reconstruction of the vascular system and microstructure of both taxa revealed a complex and dense network of canals, including horizontal, ascending and secondary bifurcated canals, as well as histological features consistent with an osteodont histotype. However, L. carlsi and C. maderi also exhibit significant morphological differences, showing Leonodus a typical diplodont tooth morphology with a linguo-labially elongated base, that contrast with Celtiberina 's teeth that show a single conical cusp curved lingually with a week developed flat base me-sio-distally extended, perhaps reflecting distant relationship. These data are compatible with a pre-Devonian diversification of the two main tooth types traditionally recognised in Palaeozoic sharks (i.e., "cladodont" vs "diplodont"). Finally, our data demonstrate that existing dental classification schemes based on styles of vascularisation are over-simplified, especially when Palaeozoic taxa are considered.


Spiritual Intelligence, Withdrawal Behavior, Physical Withdrawal Behavior, Psychological Withdrawal Behavior Spiritual intelligence is the mind's capacity to handle substantial and spiritual aspects of life. According to previous studies, spiritual intelligence can be effective in reducing the withdrawal behavior of employees. This study investigated the effect of spiritual intelligence on employees' withdrawal behavior in Ardabil Physical Education organization. The statistical population of this study included all the employees of Physical Education organization of Ardabil (N=60). Descriptive Statistics, Pearson Correlation, and Linear Regression Analyses were used to assess the association between spiritual intelligence and withdrawal behaviors. The results of the study revealed that spiritual intelligence had positive and significant effect on reducing employees' withdrawal behavior. The findings supported that spiritual intelligence training as a new psychological and religious construction may reduce psychological and physical withdrawal behaviors and improve the employees' perception of themselves. Correspondence:


This paper describes a new approximation method to synthesize open loop control schemes for the control of copolymer composition and molecular weight in batch and semibatch polymerization reactors. The open loop control policies are derived from the transient response of the fictitious feedback control system obtained by numerical model simulations. The applicability of the proposed method is demonstrated through numerical examples.


Importance Sparse data and conflicting evidence exist on the prevalence of pulmonary embolism (PE) in patients with syncope. Objective To estimate the prevalence of PE among patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) for evaluation of syncope. Design, Setting, and Participants This retrospective, observational study analyzed longitudinal administrative data from 5 databases in 4 different countries (Canada, Denmark, Italy, and the United States). Data from all adult patients (aged ≥18 years) who presented to the ED were screened to identify those with syncope codes at discharge. Data were collected from January 1, 2000, through September 30, 2016. Main Outcomes and Measures The prevalence of PE at ED and hospital discharge, identified using codes from the International Classification of Diseases, was considered the primary outcome. Two sensitivity analyses considering prevalence of PE at 90 days of follow-up and prevalence of venous thromboembolism were performed. Results A total of 1 671 944 unselected adults who presented to the ED for syncope were included. The prevalence of PE, according to administrative data, ranged from 0.06% (95% CI, 0.05%-0.06%) to 0.55% (95% CI, 0.50%-0.61%) for all patients and from 0.15% (95% CI, 0.14%-0.16%) to 2.10% (95% CI, 1.84%-2.39%) for hospitalized patients. The prevalence of PE at 90 days of follow-up ranged from 0.14% (95% CI, 0.13%-0.14%) to 0.83% (95% CI, 0.80%-0.86%) for all patients and from 0.35% (95% CI, 0.34%-0.37%) to 2.63% (95% CI, 2.34%-2.95%) for hospitalized patients. Finally, the prevalence of venous thromboembolism at 90 days ranged from 0.30% (95% CI, 0.29%-0.31%) to 1.37% (95% CI, 1.33%-1.41%) for all patients and from 0.75% (95% CI, 0.73%-0.78%) to 3.86% (95% CI, 3.51%-4.24%) for hospitalized patients. Conclusions and Relevance Pulmonary embolism was rarely identified in patients with syncope. Although PE should be considered in every patient, not all patients should undergo evaluation for PE.


Purpose This paper reviews the implementation and impact of an Information Literacy Training course at the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. The purpose of the research which is described was to determine the effectiveness of different methods of assessment for teaching information literacy. Methodology The focus of the paper is an analysis of student learning through quizzes, exercises, reflective discussion and student presentations. The training lasted seven days and involved Masters Students from the Faculty of Education. Data was collected via quizzes, exercises and group reflection and presentations that related to each stage in the course. The data were used to see whether the overall method of training was effective and also to see whether these assessment tools were useful in themselves. The approach was primarily qualitative. Findings The course, judging from the various forms of feedback, was effective. Student feedback enabled us to learn about the ways in which each of our teaching methods contributed to the student learning experience. The integration of knowledge from information behaviour research, educational theory and current Library Science perspectives on information literacy also proved valuable in developing the curriculum. Practical implications The students themselves appear, from the data collected, to have learnt from the course. The librarians who taught the course were able to use the feedback and experience to run subsequent courses. Hence it proved successful in terms of knowledge transfer and enabling the development of information literacy trainers.


We present preliminary experimental data that show that the intrinsic birefringence in a ring erbium fiber laser containing a length of standard communications-grade optical fiber can be used to inhibit longitudinal mode hops. Mode-hop-free operation for periods in excess of several hours is observed with resolution-limited linewidths of 240 kHz.


The in-cylinder convective heat transfer from the combustion gas to the cylinder wall of the combustion chamber has a strong effect on the diesel engine performances. This study contribute to the knowing in this area for the event of the convective heat transfer from fluid to the cylinder wall of a turbocharged diesel engine with six-cylinder direct injection operating under steady-state conditions. An optimized choice of correlation was applied for the evaluation of heat transfer coefficient, which is the Hohenberg's correlation. We developed a computer program for simulating the operation of a six-cylinder direct injection turbocharged diesel engine, and using a commercial GT-Power software to validate the simulation results. The influence of certain engine parameters (thermodynamic and geometric) on the convective heat flux and its maximum value are studied in the present paper. The results show that the convective heat transfer characteristics as a function of crank angle of the six cylinder turbocharged diesel engine strongly depend on the engine injection timing, the cylinder wall temperature and load for the both softwares; FORTRAN and GT-Power. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.mech.23.4.14898


Abstract Educational activities have a special role in the conso-lidation of citizenship as well as in promoting changes in the quality of life and health. This paper presents a report on community-based health agents' experiences of environmental health education directed towards children within a Primary Health Care Center's Family Health Strategy. The objectives of this activity are to: develop a notion of children's rights and duties thus fostering awareness of citizenship; invite children, in a pleasant and playful manner, to reflect upon the need to take care of their bodies and the environment; familiarize them with and help them to visualize some of the agents that frequently cause diseases among children in their community. Description: this proposal is undertaken in three encounters, through the presen-tation of two children's plays, a walk with children and teachers in the community and the improvisation of a laboratory, set up so that the children can visualize small animals. As a result, parents and teachers report modifications in children's behavior concerning perso-nal hygiene and environmental care, and the children start to demand that adults adopt similar attitudes. The walk in the community provides the children with a new perspective on their surroundings and helps new teachers to gain a perspective on the school's community. Recommendation: through educational action based on dialogue, it is possible for children to gain the capacity to modify their environment and become familiar with their rights and duties. Above all, it contributes towards their sense of citizenship. Keywords: Health Education; Environment; Commu-nity Health Aides; Communication; Health Promotion; Primary Health Care.


A survey of the commentary following the conclusion of the Theresa Marie Schiavo matter leaves one with the impression that the case was a victory for the cause of autonomy and the right of self-determination in the end-of-life context. In this essay, I seek to challenge this thesis and demonstrate that, contrary to popular understanding, it is the defenders of autonomy and self-determination who should be most troubled by what transpired in the Schiavo case. In support of this claim, I will first set forth (in cursory fashion) the underlying aim of the defenders of autonomy in this context. Then, I will provide a brief sketch of how the law - both as enacted and interpreted - might ideally serve to promote and defend the goods of autonomy and self-determination. I will thus assess the process and outcome of the Schiavo case by carefully examining the positive law governing the case, as well as the specific evidence relied on by the Florida courts to assess Ms. Schiavo's actual wishes (the touchstone of autonomy). Moreover, I will contrast the manner in which the Florida courts evaluated this evidence with the seemingly consistent and uniform approach taken by courts from other jurisdictions. I will additionally explore the significance of the Florida courts' decision to focus the majority of their resources and time on inquiries not oriented towards Ms. Schiavo's actual wishes, but rather on matters relating to paternalistic considerations, such as her present and future quality of life. In light of the foregoing analysis, I conclude that the Schiavo matter cannot rightly be understood as a victory for self-governance at the end of life. To the contrary, it is instead a cautionary tale of what can happen when the legal preconditions for the exercise of autonomy are absent or ignored.


textabstractAtherosclerotic cardiovascular disease remains one of the most important causes of
morbidity and mortality in the industrialized world. Treatment is basically aimed at
palliation and consists of either pharmacological intervention or revascularization.
The frrst significant advances in the latter were largely surgical [!]. However, the
pressing need for treatment with less invasive and potentially less expensive
techniques, have stimulated the development of non-surgical revascularization
techniques. Percutaneous transluminal coronary balloon angioplasty, which was first
performed by Andreas Gruentzig in 1977, is one of the most successful examples and
provided the stimulus for a rapid technological growth of interventional cardiology
[2]. It is now widely accepted as a safe and effective treatment of obstructive
coronary artery disease. However, the risk of abrupt vessel closure during or
immediately after the intervention and the risk of late luminal renarrowing or
restenosis continue to compromise its overall safety and efficacy [3,4]. To improve
the immediate and long-term results of balloon angioplasty, a number of new
technologies such as intracoronacy stenting, directional or rotational atherectomy and
laser therapy have been developed and represent the leading edge in the battle against
atherosclerosis [5-8]. The intracoronary stent has been shown to be effective in the
treatment of acute or threatened vessel closure due to balloon angioplasty induced
coronary dissection, alleviating the need for emergency bypass surgery [9].
Furthermore, it has been hypothesized that intracoronary stent implantation may
reduce the incidence of restenosis by optimizing the immediate angiographic results
which should lead to improved long-term clinical outcome.


This paper reports the results of over 130 auctions conducted under controlled conditions to examine the robustness of several auction mechanisms to allocate multiple objects. The simultaneous discrete auction process used by the Federal Communications Commission to allocate Personal Communications licenses was contrasted with a sequential auction and a combinatorial auction over a variety of demand conditions. In test environments created to check only the minimum competency of the procedures, the simultaneous discrete auction process produces highly efficient allocations, approaching levels similar to those found with a continuous form of the auction, and it outperforms a sequential auction. However, in environments created to stress test the procedures, a combinatorial auction outperforms the simultaneous discrete auction.


Articulatory speech synthesis has long been based on one-dimensional (1D) approaches. They assume plane wave propagation within the vocal tract and disregard higher order modes that typically appear above 5 kHz. However, such modes may be relevant in obtaining a more natural voice, especially for phonation types with significant high frequency energy (HFE) content. This work studies the contribution of the glottal source at high frequencies in the 3D numerical synthesis of vowels. The spoken vocal range is explored using an LF (Liljencrants–Fant) model enhanced with aspiration noise and controlled by the R d glottal shape parameter. The vowels [ɑ], [i], and [u] are generated with a finite element method (FEM) using realistic 3D vocal tract geometries obtained from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), as well as simplified straight vocal tracts of a circular cross-sectional area. The symmetry of the latter prevents the onset of higher order modes. Thus, the comparison between realistic and simplified geometries enables us to analyse the influence of such modes. The simulations indicate that higher order modes may be perceptually relevant, particularly for tense phonations (lower R d values) and/or high fundamental frequency values, F 0 s. Conversely, vowels with a lax phonation and/or low F0s may result in inaudible HFE levels, especially if aspiration noise is not considered in the glottal source model.


Abstract Bell pepper (Capsicum annuum L. cv. 11B 14) was grown under field conditions. The aim was to investigate the effects of mulch on plant growth, water use efficiency (WUE), fruit yield and quality, leaf relative water content, and macro‐nutrition of bell pepper grown at different water regimes and nitrogen levels. Treatments were (1) bare soil + water stressed (WS); (2) bare soil + well‐watered (C); and (3) black polyethylene mulch + water stressed (BPM + WS). Three different nitrogen (N) levels (70, 140, and 210 kg ha−1) were combined with the above treatments. Water stress was created by irrigating plants once every 5 days at 75% A pan (Epan) evaporation, compared with the control (C) that received 125% every other day. Water stress caused reductions in all parameters measured compared with unstressed (C) treatment. Using BPM covers improved fruit yield, fruit size, plant dry matter, relative water content, and chlorophyll concentrations in leaves in the stressed treatments and this treatment also improved N availability to the plants by keeping soil moisture higher. Black polyethylene mulch increased WUE about 12% more compared to WS treatment. Water stress enhanced electrolyte leakage by impairing membrane permeability compared to control treatment. Mulching substantially decreased electrolyte leakage (EL) in water stressed‐plants. Increased N significantly enhanced leaf N in the unstressed plants and plants with mulch application. However, N concentration did not increase with the same trend as in the water stressed plants with increasing N concentration. Water stress reduced leaf concentrations of all nutrients tested [nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), and magnesium (Mg)]. However, mulching enhanced the concentrations of these nutrients, but their concentrations were still lower than those in the control (C) treatment. These results clearly indicate that mulching mitigates negative effects of water stress on plant growth and fruit yield in field grown pepper plants particularly in semi‐arid conditions and also increases the N availability to the plants.


Abstract We open this Special Feature on stable isotopes in mammalian research with a beginner's guide, an introduction to the novice and a refresher to the well-versed. In this guide we provide the background needed to understand the more advanced papers that follow. We describe the basic principles of isotopic fractionation and discrimination, briefly explain the processes that govern isotopic incorporation into animal tissues, list some innovative studies, and provide cautionary notes and caveats. In addition to discussing the uses of natural abundance we present the concepts and applications of enriched isotopes and the potential combination of these 2 methodologies. We end with descriptions of analytical and conceptual developments that we believe will be cardinal to the future of isotopic analyses in mammalian research.


A small literature has shown that individual wellbeing varies with the price of company stock, but it is unclear whether this is due to wealth effects among those holding stock, or more general effects on sentiment, with individuals taking rising stock prices as an indicator of improvements in the economy. We contribute to this literature by using two data sets to establish the relationship between share prices on the one hand and worker wellbeing on the other. First, we use data on share price movements and employee stock holding in a single corporation and provide suggestive evidence that an increase in the firm's stock price increases the wellbeing of those who belong to its employee share purchase plan (ESPP), and that these effects are greatest among those making the largest monthly contributions to the program who have the most to gain (or lose) from stock price fluctuations. There is also some tentative evidence that the wellbeing effects of a rise in the share price are greatest among those with the largest shareholdings. We then use almost 30 years of British panel data to show that employee job satisfaction moves with share prices among those whose pay is partly determined by company fortunes. Taken together these results suggest that the well-being effects of share prices work at least partly via changes in wealth.


For the econometric analysis of time series data, Microfit 5.0 is an unrivalled package. With its extensive choice of data analysis options, this program is a versatile aid to all those interested in the evaluation and design of advanced univariate and multivariate time series models. Microfit 5.0 is an interactive, menu-driven program with a host of facilities for estimating, hypothesis testing, forecasting, data processing, file management, and graphic display. These features make Microfit 5.0 one of the most powerful menu-driven time-series econometric packages currently available. The strength of the package lies in the fact it can be used at different levels of technical sophistication. For experienced users of econometric programs, it offers a variety of univariate and multivariate estimation methods and provides a large number of diagnostic and non-nested tests not readily available on other packages. The interaction of excellent graphics and estimation capabilities in Microfit allows important econometric research to be carried out in a matter of days rather than weeks.


Locally weighted regression (LWR) was created as a nonparametric method that can approximate a wide range of functions, is computationally efficient, and can learn continually from very large amounts of incrementally collected data. As an interesting feature, LWR can regress on non-stationary functions, a beneficial property, for instance, in control problems. However, it does not provide a proper generative model for function values, and existing algorithms have a variety of manual tuning parameters that strongly influence bias, variance and learning speed of the results. Gaussian (process) regression, on the other hand, does provide a generative model with rather black-box automatic parameter tuning, but it has higher computational cost, especially for big data sets and if a non-stationary model is required. In this paper, we suggest a path from Gaussian (process) regression to locally weighted regression, where we retain the best of both approaches. Using a localizing function basis and approximate inference techniques, we build a Gaussian (process) regression algorithm of increasingly local nature and similar computational complexity to LWR. Empirical evaluations are performed on several synthetic and real robot datasets of increasing complexity and (big) data scale, and demonstrate that we consistently achieve on par or superior performance compared to current state-of-the-art methods while retaining a principled approach to fast incremental regression with minimal manual tuning parameters.


Color transfer methods alter the look of a source image with regards to a reference image. So far, the proposed color transfer methods have been limited to low-dynamic-range (LDR) images. Unlike LDR images, which are display-dependent, high-dynamic-range (HDR) images contain real physical values of the world luminance and are able to capture high luminance variations and finest details of real world scenes. Therefore, there exists a strong discrepancy between the two types of images. In this paper, we bridge the gap between the color transfer domain and the HDR imagery by introducing HDR extensions to LDR color transfer methods. We tackle the main issues of applying a color transfer between two HDR images. First, to address the nature of light and color distributions in the context of HDR imagery, we carry out modifications of traditional color spaces. Furthermore, we ensure high precision in the quantization of the dynamic range for histogram computations. As image clustering (based on light and colors) proved to be an important aspect of color transfer, we analyze it and adapt it to the HDR domain. Our framework has been applied to several state-of-the-art color transfer methods. Qualitative experiments have shown that results obtained with the proposed adaptation approach exhibit less artifacts and are visually more pleasing than results obtained when straightforwardly applying existing color transfer methods to HDR images.


A comparison between efforts to detect methane anomalies by a simple band ratio approach from the Airborne Visual Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-Classic (AVIRIS-C) data for the Kern Front oil field, Central California, and the Coal Oil Point marine hydrocarbon seep field, offshore southern California, was conducted. The detection succeeded for the marine source and failed for the terrestrial source, despite these sources being of comparable strength. Scene differences were investigated in higher spectral and spatial resolution collected by the AVIRIS-C successor instrument, AVIRIS Next Generation (AVIRIS-NG), by a sensitivity study. Sensitivity to factors including water vapor, aerosol, planetary boundary layer (PBL) structure, illumination and viewing angle, and surface albedo clutter were explored. The study used the residual radiance method, with sensitivity derived from MODTRAN (MODerate resolution atmospheric correction TRANsmission) simulations of column methane (XCH4). Simulations used the spectral specifications and geometries of AVIRIS-NG and were based on a uniform or an in situ vertical CH4 profile, which was measured concurrent with the AVIRIS-NG data. Small but significant sensitivity was found for PBL structure and water vapor; however, highly non-linear, extremely strong sensitivity was found for surface albedo error. For example, a 10% decrease in the surface albedo corresponded to a 300% XCH4 increase over background XCH4 to compensate for the total signal, less so for stronger plumes. This strong non-linear sensitivity resulted from the high percentage of surface-reflected radiance in the airborne at-sensor total radiance. Coarse spectral resolution and feedback from interferents like water vapor underlay this sensitivity. Imaging spectrometry like AVIRIS and the Hyperspectral InfraRed Imager (HyspIRI) candidate satellite mission, have the advantages of contextual spatial information and greater at-sensor total radiance. However, they also face challenges due to their relatively broad spectral resolution compared to trace gas specific orbital sensors, e.g., the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT), which is especially applicable to trace gas retrievals over scenes with high spectral albedo variability. Results of the sensitivity analysis are applicable for the residual radiance method and CH4 profiles used in the analysis, but they illustrate potential significant challenges in CH4 retrievals using other approaches.


SYNOPSIS: This study investigates the impact of job complexity and firm, as well as CFO-specific performance, on CFO compensation. We find job complexity and overall firm performance affects both CFO salary and bonus, while CFO-specific performance affects CFO bonus. Specifically, we find that CFOs are not only rewarded when their firms meet or beat earnings targets, but they get incremental rewards for managing earnings and/or expectations to allow their firms to meet or just beat those targets.


Ivy and Bean need some money. Ten dollars, to be exact. Never mind what for. Okay, it's for low-fat Bellideloon cheese in a special just-for-you serving size. Don't ask why. How are Ivy and Bean going to make then dollars! Hey, maybe they should write a newspaper about Pancake Court and sell it. Great idea! And easy, too. All they have to do is snoop around the neighbourhood. Wow. It's very interesting what you can find out. It's even more interesting when the neighbours read about it in the newspaper.


Habitat structure is known to influence the abundance of fishes on temperate reefs. Biotic interactions play a major role in determining the distribution and abundance of species. The significance of these forces in affecting the abundance of fishes may hinge on the presence of organisms that either create or alter habitat. On temperate reefs, for example, macroalgae are considered autogenic ecosystem engineers because they control resource availability to other species through their physical structure and provide much of the structure used by fish. On both coral and temperate reefs, small cryptic reef fishes may comprise up to half of the fish numbers and constitute a diverse community containing many specialized species. Small cryptic fishes (<100 mm total length) may be responsible for the passage of 57% of the energy flow and constitute ca. 35% of the overall reef fish biomass on coral reefs. These benthic fish exploit restricted habitats where food and shelter are obtained in, or in relation to, conditions of substrate complexity and/or restricted living space. A range of mechanisms has been proposed to account for the diversity and the abundance of small fishes: (1) lifehistory strategies that promote short generation times, (2) habitat associations and behaviour that reduce predation and (3) resource partitioning that allows small species to coexist with larger competitors. Despite their abundance and potential importance within reef systems, little is known of the community ecology of cryptic fishes. Specifically on habitat associations many theories suggested a not clear direction on this subject. My research contributes to the development of marine fish ecology by addressing the effects of habitat characteristics upon distribution of cryptobenthic fish assemblages. My focus was on the important shallow, coastal ecosystems that often serve as nursery habitat for many fish and where different type of habitat is likely to both play important roles in ii organism distribution and survival. My research included three related studies: (1) identification of structuring forces on cryptic fish assemblages, such as physical and biological forcing; (2) macroalgae as potential tools for cryptic fish and identification of different habitat feature that could explain cryptic fish assemblages distribution; (3) canopy formers loss: consequences on cryptic fish and relationship with benthos modifications. I found that: (1) cryptic fish assemblages differ between landward and seaward sides of coastal breakwaters in Adriatic Sea. These differences are explained by 50% of the habitat characteristics on two sides, mainly due to presence of the Codium fragile, sand and oyster assemblages. Microhabitat structure influence cryptic fish assemblages. (2) Different habitat support different cryptic fish assemblages. High heterogeneity on benthic assemblages reflect different fish assemblages. Biogenic components that explain different and diverse cryptic fish assemblages are: anemonia bed, mussel bed, macroalgal stands and Cystoseira barbata, as canopy formers. (3) Canopy forming loss is not relevant in structuring directly cryptic fish assemblages. A removal of canopy forming algae did not affect the structure of cryptic fish assemblages. Canopy formers algae on Conero cliff, does not seem to act as structuring force, probably due to its regressive status. In conclusion, cryptic fish have been shown to have species-specific associations with habitat features relating to the biological and non biological components afforded by fish. Canopy formers algae do not explain cryptic fish assemblages distribution and the results of this study and information from the literature (both from the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere) show that there are no univocal responses of fish assemblages. Further exanimations on an non regressive status of Cystoseira canopy habitat are needed to define and evaluate the relationship between canopy formers and fish on Mediterranean sea


Children's working memory (WM) skills, which support both academic and social success, continue to improve significantly through the school years. This study leverages the first nationally representative data set with direct assessments of elementary school students' WM skills to examine whether WM grows more during the school year or summer months and whether WM growth rates differ by household income. Results demonstrate that WM skills grow more during the school-year months compared to the summer months, suggesting that school environments provide children with unique opportunities to improve and practice their WM skills. Further, lower-income children have significantly faster WM growth rates in the first 2 years of school and the intervening summer, compared to their peers from higher-income families, leading to an overall narrowing in WM disparities by household income during the early school years. However, there was no evidence that schools equalize or exacerbate differences in WM skills between children from lower-income and higher-income households.


Laser heated diamond-anvil-cell experiments performed on a "tetragonal almandine pyrope phase" (TAPP) bulk composition constrain high-temperature phase relations between 6 and 48 GPa. Phase assemblages determined by synchrotron X-ray diffraction consist of TAPP + garnet ± pseudobrookite ± enstatite from 6 to 10 GPa, garnet from 13 to 22 GPa, Mg-perovskite + garnet from 23 to 30 GPa, and Mg-perovskite above 30 GPa. TAPP has the same structure at 1 atm and at high pressure based on in situ X-ray diffraction data, and is stable at a maximum pressure of 10–13 GPa at 1300–1700 K. These results rule out direct incorporation of TAPP in diamond at transition-zone or lower-mantle pressures. Possible origins of TAPP are (1) entrapment by diamonds in the upper mantle, and (2) retrograde formation from a high-pressure garnet or Mg-perovskite precursor. We suggest that single-phase TAPP inclusions and possibly composite TAPP-bearing inclusions originated as Mg-perovskite in the lower mantle in mafic protoliths, and that TAPP forms upon retrograde conversion at pressures below 13 GPa upon exhumation of the diamonds from the lower mantle to shallower depths of less than 400 km.


ePortfolios are recognized as a pedagogical process that facilitates and benefits the development of professional practice and critical thinking, curriculum, and assessment for Higher Education academic teachers. Effective personalized introductions to ePortfolios engage with the reader by sharing narratives and personal perspectives that demonstrate reflective thinking. This article describes a professional development symposium workshop in which a hybrid process explored the visualizing of professional selves. It built on a previous professional development session in which creators of ePortfolios were asked to find an image used as a metaphor or symbol explaining a philosophy of professional practice. The process described here is an amalgamation of techniques currently used in separate undergraduate degree programs by each author and adapted to demonstrate a way to think about the self as a professional and was planned by the authors after conducting a year-long series of webinars on ePortfolio professional development. The images created by the symposium participants and their supporting statements demonstrate that explanations of a sense of professional self were enhanced by the ePortfolio introduction, narrative writing, and professional philosophy to engage an audience effectively. Application of this process allows visual images, whether literal, metaphoric, or symbolic, to provide a means for academics as well as postand undergraduate students to present and explain their professional selves to an audience.


We derive a full statistical characterization of the noise spectrum of a free running oscillator perturbed by white Gaussian noise sources, including the effect of orbital fluctuations and of their correlation with phase noise, thus extending the previous theory based on the Floquet decomposition of the linearized oscillator equations . This allows to derive explicit relationships for the relevant phase, amplitude and correlation spectra. The examples provide a validation of the theoretical results, and allow to assess the importance of the Floquet exponents and eigenvectors on the magnitude of the orbital noise contribution.


The amount of pain we feel is not always directly related to the amount of damage our body suffers. In fact, research over the last decade has shown that the experience of pain is strongly linked with how we feel about our body, including its shape and how much we like it. Chronic pain is associated with a distorted mental representation of the body, which can have a significant impact on everyday live. Evidence suggests that multisensory illusions can modulate pain and can lead to changes in body perception. However, the factors that may contribute to previously observed analgesic effects remain unclear. This thesis aimed to systematically asses the effects of these illusions on pain and body representation in both healthy individuals and individuals with chronic pain. First, this thesis aimed to investigate the effects of multisensory illusions on body representation, sense of body ownership, and pain in healthy individuals. Chapter 2 found that multisensory illusions can alter perceived body shape, body satisfaction, without losing ownership. Chapter 3 examined whether distorting the size and shape of the virtual hand could modulate pain in healthy participants. No evidence was found for this, which could indicate that pain is not necessarily affected by virtual body ownership over a distorted hand. Having established that multisensory illusions can alter body perception and the affective experience of the body, the second aim of this thesis was to investigate the effect of multisensory illusions on body representation, body ownership, and pain in individuals with hand osteoarthritis (HOA). Chapter 4 investigated whether people with HOA performed differently on a hand laterality motor task to investigate whether people with HOA present with a disruption of the working body schema. Though no evidence was found for a general impairment on this task, the findings suggested that performance on the task was mediated by the presence of pain. Chapter 5 investigated effects of multisensory illusions on pain and pain sensitivity in individuals with HOA. The results demonstrated that viewing the body could modulate pain; and affected body representation, body ownership, and agency. Chapter 6 examined the effects of multisensory illusions on subjective and objective aspects of body perception in people with HOA of the hands, compared to healthy controls. Though no evidence was found for an analgesic effect of the illusion, results showed that participants with HOA have a disturbed experience of the size of their hand compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, the results suggest that individuals with HOA may have an abnormally high body dissatisfaction that cannot readily be altered by multisensory illusions. This thesis found mixed support for the analgesic effects of multisensory illusions on pain in HOA and concludes that the specific context in which pain occurs is important. It also highlights the many perceptual and cognitive factors that may contribute to the modulation of pain. The findings imply that future work should focus on interventions that are more portable and accessible for home use, and focus on developing research around the effects of repeated and prolonged exposure to multisensory illusions on pain, body image disturbances and body dissatisfaction.


Previous work has drawn attention to the relative absence of British Chinese voices in public culture. No one is more aware of this invisibility than British-born Chinese people themselves. Since 2000 the emergence of Internet discussion sites produced by British Chinese young people has provided an important forum for many of them to grapple with questions concerning their identities, experiences and status in Britain. In this paper we explore the ways in which Internet usage by British-born Chinese people has facilitated forms of self-expression, collective identity production and social and political action. This examination of British Chinese websites raises important questions about inclusion and exclusion, citizenship, participation and the development of a sense of belonging in Britain, issues which are usually overlooked in relation to a group which appears to be well integrated and successful in higher education.


The aim of this article is to show how automatic morphological tools originally used to analyze native speaker data can be applied to process data from a learner corpus of Hungarian. We collected written data from 35 students majoring in Hungarian studies at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. The data were analyzed by magyarlanc, a sentence splitter, morphological analyzer, POS-tagger and dependency parser, which found 667 unknown word forms. We investigated the recommendations made by the Hungarian spellchecker hunspell for these unknown words and the correct forms were manually chosen. It was found that if the first suggestion made by hunspell was automatically accepted, an accuracy score of 82% could be attained. We also introduce our automatic error tagger, which makes use of our annotation scheme developed on the basis of the special characteristics of Hungarian morphology and learner language, and which is able to reliably locate and label morphological errors.


The massive amount of trainable parameters in the pre-trained language models (PLMs) makes them hard to be deployed to multiple downstream tasks. To address this issue, parameter-efficient transfer learning methods have been proposed to tune only a few parameters during fine-tuning while freezing the rest. This paper looks at existing methods along this line through the \textit{kernel lens}. Motivated by the connection between self-attention in transformer-based PLMs and kernel learning, we propose \textit{kernel-wise adapters}, namely \textit{Kernel-mix}, that utilize the kernel structure in self-attention to guide the assignment of the tunable parameters. These adapters use guidelines found in classical kernel learning and enable separate parameter tuning for each attention head. Our empirical results, over a diverse set of natural language generation and understanding tasks, show that our proposed adapters can attain or improve the strong performance of existing baselines.


Crystal structure of zinnwaldite 2M(1) was refined in the Cc space group with R equal to 5.8% and R(w) 7.5%. Its octahedral sheet is hetero-octahedral, with octahedra around M1 and M3 having the same mean cation-anion bond length, whereas the third (around M2) has the mean bond significantly shorter. In terms of electrons, the cation ordering between M1 and M3 is less pronounced (16.2 e- vs 17.4 e-) than that between M1 (M3) and M2 (14.3 e-). Li and Fe2+ prefer M1 (M3) to M2, Al does the opposite. Thus, like zinnwaldite 1M (Guggenheim & Bailey, 1977), the 2M(1) polytype is hetero-octahedral. This is the first two-layer hetero-octahedral mica polytype known to date. The degree of tetrahedral cation ordering is very low in both zinnwaldites. Also, distortion characteristics of individual octahedra and tetrahedra in these zinnwaldites are very close to each other.
A comparison of the details of structures of 1M and 2M(1) biotite and 1M and 2M(1) zinnwaldite gave no indication that a geometrical or other advantage is associated with either 2M(1) or 1M stacking in zinnwaldite.


We present a novel optical element - fiber microaxicon (FMA) for laser radiation focusing into a diffraction-limited spot with Bessel-like profile as well as for precision laser nanostructuring of metal film surfaces. Using the developed FMA for single-pulse irradiation of Au/Pd metal films on quartz substrate we have demonstrated the formation of submicron hollow microbumps with a small spike atop as well as hollow spherical nanoparticles. Experimental conditions for controllable and reproducible formation of ordered arrays of such microstructures were defined. The internal structure of the fabricated nanoparticles and nanobumps was experimentally studied using both argon ions polishing and scanning electron microscopy. These methods reveal a porous inner structure of laser-induced nanoparticles and nanobumps, which presumably indicates that a subsurface boiling of the molten metal film is a key mechanism determining the formation process of such structures.


Climate observations are needed to address a large range of important societal issues including sea level rise, droughts, floods, extreme heat events, food security, and freshwater availability in the coming decades. Past, targeted investments in specific climate questions have resulted in tremendous improvements in issues important to human health, security, and infrastructure. However, the current climate observing system was not planned in a comprehensive, focused manner required to adequately address the full range of climate needs. A potential approach to planning the observing system of the future is presented in this article. First, this article proposes that priority be given to the most critical needs as identified within the World Climate Research Program as Grand Challenges. These currently include seven important topics: melting ice and global consequences; clouds, circulation and climate sensitivity; carbon feedbacks in the climate system; understanding and predicting weather and climate extremes; water for the food baskets of the world; regional sea‐level change and coastal impacts; and near‐term climate prediction. For each Grand Challenge, observations are needed for long‐term monitoring, process studies and forecasting capabilities. Second, objective evaluations of proposed observing systems, including satellites, ground‐based and in situ observations as well as potentially new, unidentified observational approaches, can quantify the ability to address these climate priorities. And third, investments in effective climate observations will be economically important as they will offer a magnified return on investment that justifies a far greater development of observations to serve society's needs.


The modern schiefspiegler is an optical system consisting of two prolate spheroid mirrors coupled by conjoining the distal focus of the first spheroid with the proximal focus of the second. A ray through the proximal focus of the first spheroid must, after reflection, pass through the common focus and then, after a second reflection, through the distal focus of the second spheroid. The pseudo axis is such a ray with the property that all other meridional rays are symmetric about it. The entrance and the exit pupils are perpendicular to the pseudo axis and are located, respectively, at the first proximal focus and the second distal focus. Therefore rays through the foci are chief rays. It is shown that all chief rays are symmetric with respect to the pseudo axis and that, therefore, magnification is uniform for all object points. An expression for magnification is obtained that leads to a distortion function that depends only on magnification.


Improved energy efficiency is being considered as one of the significant challenges to mitigating climate change all over the world. While developed countries have already adopted energy management and auditing practices to improve energy efficiency, the developing countries lag far behind. There are a limited number of studies which have been conducted in the context of developing countries, which mostly revolve around highly energy-intensive sectors. This study looks into the existence and importance of the challenges to and motivating forces for the adoption of energy management practices in Bangladesh, a developing country, focusing on the non-energy-intensive manufacturing industries. Conducted as a multiple case study, the results indicate the existence of several barriers towards adopting and implementing the management of energy practices in the non-energy-intensive industries of Bangladesh, where among them, "other preferences for capital venture" and "inadequate capital expenditure" are the most dominant. This study also identified a number of driving forces that can accelerate the acceptance of energy efficiency practices, such as the demands from the owner, loans, subsidies, and a lowered cost–benefit ratio. Findings of this study could assist the concerned stakeholders to develop beneficial policies and a proper regulatory framework for the non-energy-intensive industries of developing countries like Bangladesh.


This paper engages with debates about the increasing use of paid domestic labour in Europe and the USA, contributing with a reflection about the case of Brazil. Relations of gender, class and race are considered in the deployment of maids for housework, the patterns of consumption of household technologies and the moral reasoning of daily living with hierarchical divisions within the home. The paper considers some parallels between the Brazilian context and that of more developed countries and also the specificity of Brazil. Based on participant observation, secondary data and an ethnographic study, rich empirical data is weaved through to discuss material and moral dimensions of domestic labour and care. How does the availability of cheap domestic labour configure relations of inequality? How are social differences in the home lived with and justified? The exploration of the Brazilian case illuminates some of the problems, contradictions and possible consequences of wealthier households benefitting from the displacement of poor women that is currently happening through international migration. The paper argues that in Brazil the deflecting of tensions in gender divisions of labour in households onto a subordinate person has affected relations of equality between women and men and also the patterns of technological innovation to facilitate housework. These are outcomes to be guarded against in Europe and the United States in face of the current trends in 'global woman' relations.