The aim of this study was to investigate the composition of an acoustic scattering layer in the North Sea that is particularly strong at 38 kHz. A full definition of the biological composition of the layer, along with its acoustic properties, would allow for it to be confidently removed from data collected during acoustic fish surveys, where it presents a potential source of bias. The layer, traditionally and informally referred to as consisting of zooplankton, appears similar to others observed internationally. The methodology utilised in this study consisted of biological and acoustic sampling, followed by application of forward and inverse acoustic modelling techniques. Acoustic data was collected at 38, 120 and 200 kHz in July 2003, with the addition of 18 kHz in July 2004. Net samples were collected in layers of relatively strong 38 kHz acoustic scattering using a U-tow vehicle (2003) and a MIKT net (2004). Acoustic data were scrutinised to determine actual backscattering, expressed as mean volume backscattering strength (MVBS) (dB). This observed MVBS (MVBSobs) was compared with backscattering predicted by applying the forward problem solution (MVBSpred) to sampled animal densities in order to determine whether those animals were responsible for the enhanced 38 kHz scattering. In most instances, MVBSobs > MVBSpred, more pronounced at 38 kHz. It was found that MVBSpred approached MVBSobs more closely with MIKT than with U-tow samples, but that the 38 kHz mismatch was present in both. Inversion of candidate acoustic models predicted gas-bearing scatterers, which are strong at 38 kHz, as most likely to be responsible for this. Potential sources of inconsistencies between MVBS pred and MVBSobs were identified. The presented forward and inverse solutions infer that although the layer often contains large numbers of common zooplankton types, such as copepods and euphausiids, these are not the dominant acoustic scatterer at 38 kHz. Rather, there remains an unidentified, probably gas-bearing scatterer that contributes significantly to observed scattering levels at this frequency. This study identifies and considerably narrows the list of candidates that are most likely to be responsible for enhanced 38 kHz scattering in the North Sea layer, and recommendations are made for potential future studies.


SUMMARY Most influenza virus infections are associated with mild disease. One approach to estimate the occurrence of influenza virus infections in individuals is via repeated measurement of humoral antibody titres. We used baseline and convalescent antibody titres measured by haemagglutination inhibition (HI) and viral neutralization (VN) assays against influenza A(H1N1), A(H3N2) and B viruses to investigate the characteristics of antibody rises following virologically confirmed influenza virus infections in participants in a community-based study. Multivariate models were fitted in a Bayesian framework to characterize the distribution of changes in antibody titres following influenza A virus infections. In 122 participants with PCR-confirmed influenza A virus infection, homologous antibody titres rose by geometric means of 1·2- to 10·2-fold after infection with A(H1N1), A(H3N2) and A(H1N1)pdm09. Significant cross-reactions were observed between A(H1N1)pdm09 and seasonal A(H1N1). Antibody titre rises for some subtypes and assays varied by age, receipt of oseltamivir treatment, and recent receipt of influenza vaccination. In conclusion, we provided a quantitative description of the mean and variation in rises in influenza virus antibody titres following influenza virus infection. The multivariate patterns in boosting of antibody titres following influenza virus infection could be taken into account to improve estimates of cumulative incidence of infection in seroepidemiological studies.


The IETF's Next Steps in Signaling (NSIS) framework provides an up-to-date signaling protocol suite that can be used to dynamically install, maintain, and manipulate state in network nodes. In its two-layered architecture, the General Internet Signaling Transport (GIST) protocol is responsible for the transport and routing of signaling messages. The strong presence of Network Address Translation (NAT) gateways in today's Internet infrastructure causes some major challenges to network signaling protocols like NSIS. The address translation mechanisms performed by common NAT gateways are primarily concerned with address information contained in the IP and transport layer headers. Signaling sessions between two signaling peers do, however, rely on address information contained in GIST data units. If a non GIST-aware NAT gateway merely adapts addresses in the IP and transport headers only, inconsistent state will finally be installed at the signaling nodes. In this paper we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of an application level gateway for the GIST protocol, that translates GIST messages in a way that allows to establish signaling sessions between any two GIST nodes across a NAT gateway.


A gravitational-wave (GW) transient was identified in data recorded by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors on 2015 September 14. The event, initially designated G184098 and later given the name GW150914, is described in detail elsewhere. By prior arrangement, preliminary estimates of the time, significance, and sky location of the event were shared with 63 teams of observers covering radio, optical, near-infrared, X-ray, and gamma-ray wavelengths with groundand space-based facilities. In this Letter we describe the low-latency analysis of the GW data and present the sky localization of the first observed compact binary merger. We summarize the follow-up observations reported by 25 teams via private Gamma-ray Coordinates Network circulars, giving an overview of the participating facilities, the GW sky localization coverage, the timeline and depth of the observations. As this event turned out to be a binary black hole merger, there is little expectation of a detectable electromagnetic (EM) signature. Nevertheless, this first broadband campaign to search for a counterpart of an Advanced LIGO source represents a milestone and highlights the broad capabilities of the transient astronomy community and the observing strategies that have been developed to pursue neutron star binary merger events. Detailed investigations of the EM data and results of the EM follow-up campaign are being disseminated in papers by the individual teams.


Objectives To simultaneously examine contextual and individual-level predictors of help-seeking behaviour among women exposed to physical and sexual violence in Nigeria. Design A multi-level cross-sectional study. We fit three 3-level random intercepts models to examine contextual and individual-level characteristics associated with help seeking, simultaneously. Setting Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey for 2008. Participants 5553 women (15–49 years) who reported physical or sexual violence, drawn from 23 715 women in the Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey that responded to questions on violence exposure. Main outcome measures Help seeking to prevent future victimisation was based on self-report. Results In our sample of women exposed to physical and sexual violence, 39.7% reported that they sought help to stop the perpetrator from hurting them again. Rates of help seeking were geographically patterned by state (range: 12% to 65%). State-level development, measured by the Human Development Index (z-score), was positively associated with help seeking (OR=1.30, 95% CI 1.05 to 1.61), after adjusting for individual-level characteristics. State-level prevalence of violence against women (z-score) was negatively associated with help-seeking (OR=0.68, 95% CI 0.55 to 0.84), suggesting that service providers who may target their programmes to areas with high prevalence of violence, may need to simultaneously address barriers to help seeking. Few individual-level characteristics were associated with help seeking, including wealth, marital status, employment status, ethnicity, history of witnessing domestic violence and relationship to perpetrator. Conclusions Efforts to support female survivors of violence should consider broader social and contextual determinants that are associated with help-seeking behaviours.


The earth s oceans hold many wondrous surprisesbe they the small, colorful critters off the coast of Papua New Guinea, opportunistic red demon squids in the Sea of Cortes, or naval wrecks in the lagoon of Bikini Atoll. In "Fifty Places to Dive Before You Die" Chris Santella has invited diving experts from around the world to share some of their favorite destinations, so ardent divers can experience these underwater wonders for themselveseither on location in their SCUBA gear, or at home in their armchair.The fifth in Santella s bestselling " Fifty Places " series, the book takes divers from hot-spot destinations like Raja Ampat (off the coast of West Guinea) to old Caribbean favorites like Grand Cayman Isles. Readers will swim among whale sharks off Myanmar, befriend wolf eels off the coast of Maine, and marvel at the giant mola mola of Lembognan, Indonesia. These wonderful creaturesplus the brilliant coral reefs that often provide their backdropare captured in 40 gorgeous color photos from the world s greatest underwater photographers. And for readers who want to travel to these breathtaking locales, Santella provides complete If You Go suggestions to help you plan your trip."


Myogenin gene encodes for skeletal muscle-specific transcription factors with highly conserved basic helix-loop-helix domain and play key role in growth and muscle development. In this study, the polymorphisms of myogenin gene were investigated to check whether they are associated with growth traits in Chinese-Tibetan sheep. In three sheep breeds with a total number of 632 individuals, three SNPs, including two in exon 1 (C109A and C183T) and one in intron 2 (A1403C) were found by DNA sequencing. Among those, C109A is a missense mutation (Gly37Arg). The single marker association analysis showed that the three mutations were significantly associated with growth traits (at P<0.01 or P<0.05). In conclusion, our results suggest that myogenin gene variation may be considered molecular markers for growth traits in Chinese-Tibetansheep.


This paper examines Brazilian economic growth as part of the project "Explaining Economic Growth Performance" launched by the Global Development Network (GDN), the purpose of which is to explain economic growth performances across seven regions of the world. According to the author of this study, a better understanding of Brazil's paradoxical growth pattern during the 20th century may not only improve policy formulation but also help generate political support for its implementation. Any proposal for deepening the reform process in Brazil will not win wide acceptance if it is not perceived to respond to a credible account of how policies that are "wrong" in 2001 appeared "right," for half of the last century. With this context in mind, this paper addresses three overarching questions. First, how did Brazil manage to grow so rapidly from 1930 to 1980 while following so many "wrong" policies? Second, why did Brazil then perform so poorly in the final two decades of the century? And third, considering developments in both the domestic and international arenas, how should current public policy priorities be set to maximize Brazil's potential sustainable growth rate? Analysis will look at the aggregate performance of the Brazilian economy in 1930-2000, it will examine micro evidence from firms and households, respectively, and determine whether these patterns are consistent with the macroeconomic observations noted in our initial analysis. The study also provides an evaluation on how should current public policy priorities be set to maximize Brazil's potential sustainable growth rate.


Alpha-tocopherol and fish oil have been reported to modulate the progression of IgA nephropathy in animals and humans. Because fish oil has been reported to exacerbate renal disease in subtotal nephrectomized rats, we investigated the effects of fish oil, with and without alpha-tocopherol, on the course of IgA nephropathy. Experimental IgA nephropathy was induced in male Sprague-Dawley rats, weighing 170-200 g, by oral and i.v. immunization with bovine gamma-globulin for 8 wk. IgA nephropathy was evidenced by hematuria, proteinuria, and IgA deposition in the mesangium. Standard rodent chow, containing 30 IU of alpha-tocopherol/kg of diet, was given to the control and IgA nephropathy rats. Fish oil (20% wt/wt), stripped of alpha-tocopherol preservative, was given to control and a second group of IgA nephropathy rats. Alternatively, corn oil or fish oil was supplemented with alpha-tocopherol at 100 IU/kg of diet and given to the third and fourth groups of IgA nephropathy rats. All animals were killed at 8 wk. Urinary protein excretion, plasma and kidney alpha-tocopherol concentrations, as well as glomerular planar area, and kidney transforming growth factor-beta1 mRNA were analyzed. As determined by reductions in proteinuria, glomerular planar area, and TGF-beta1 mRNA, fish oil with alpha-tocopherol ameliorated the renal injury induced by bovine gamma-globulin, whereas fish oil without alpha-tocopherol did not. Our findings support the importance of alpha-tocopherol, more so than fish oil, in mitigating the injury and promoting repair in experimental IgA nephropathy.


SummaryParkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder. Patients with PD display a combination of motor symptoms including resting tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia, and postural instability that worsen over time. These motor symptoms are related to the progressive loss of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta. PD patients also suffer from nonmotor symptoms that may precede the cardinal motor symptoms and that are likely related to pathology in other brain regions. Traditional toxin models of PD have focused on the nigrostriatal pathway and the loss of dopamine neurons in this region, and these models have been important in our understanding of PD and in the development of symptomatic treatments for the disease. However, they are limited in that they do not reproduce the full pathology and progression seen in PD, thus creating a need for better models. The recent discovery of specific genes causing familial forms of PD has contributed to the development of novel genetic mouse models of PD. This review discusses the validity, benefits, and limitations of these new models.


Abstract The Moynihan Report of 1965 will soon be fifty years old, and some social scientists now venerate it as a sterling application of social science data and analysis by the federal government. This author, who was directly involved in events connected with the release of the Report, does not agree; this article examines the shortcomings of the Report. I argue that Moynihan's analysis, which intended to investigate the ties between Black male unemployment and the Black family, actually devoted most of its attention to the high proportion of single-parent families in the poor Black population, treating it as one symptom of a "tangle of pathology" that stood in the way of this population's escape from joblessness and poverty. Today, the Report is being hailed as having predicted the current and still worsening state of the poor Black family. Moynihan's work is also being reinterpreted as an early application of cultural analysis, thereby further drawing attention away from the job-related issues which led Moynihan to undertake his study. Moynihan himself made significant contributions to antipoverty policy later in his career, but his Report does not deserve the worship it continues to receive.


This historical episode is one of a profound transformation of this trade sector that between the end of the 17th century and the middle of the following one, namely the emergence and strengthening of the position of the British merchants in detriment to the competitive position of the merchants of other nationalities, including the Portuguese. During this period, England, the first import market for wine, a market undergoing substantial changes, dissociating itself from the traditional European wine of the previous century: the German and Italian wine, and associating itself with the Iberian Peninsular wines such as the Sherry (Jerez) and Port (vinho do Porto). Of course, the French wines retain a central place in the present story but this will not be our focus here. If the gravity center of consumption is dislocated to England, the production regions are also reorganized. The Iberian Peninsula is the rising side of the trade, directly competing with the French wines. Behind this change, there lies the emergence of a new population of wine merchants, especially in the case of the Port wine that I study in the present research. If the overall transformation of the sector, on an aggregated level has already been done, there is still a need of a research based on more detailed information. In this respect, I will insist above all on the transformation and evolution of the population of Port shipper from 1700 to 1833, basing my argument on historical documents from the Portuguese and English customs and other regulatory entities in Portugal. I will present the evolution of the population of wine merchants based on quantitative data (quantities exported) and qualitative data on Port shippers. I will focus the constitution and evolution of the core British merchants that will obtain and maintain the dominance on the sector. The second point of my research is the mechanism of transformation and renewal of the population of Port merchants of either group: British and non-British (as it is often referred to in the historical records). The perspective I will adopt is straightforwardly evolutionary. In the first section I present the issue I will tackle: the evolution of trade and the population of Port shippers from roughly 1700 to 1833. In the second section, I will develop some basic theoretical concepts from evolutionary theory in order to adapt them to the present study. In the third part, I analyze the evolution of the population of wine merchants on quantitative data of exports, other economic and institutional indicators (market trends, regulation policy, market structure, etc.). I will finish with the presentation of a summary table that will compare the situation at the beginning of the period and the outcome of the evolutionary transformation of the sector at the end of the 1830s.


Two studies were conducted utilizing undergraduate psychology student samples in order to (1) develop a valid and reliable attitude scale regarding transsexuality, and (2) implement the resulting scale (Attitudes towards Transsexuality Scale). In Study One, 206 students completed surveys requesting the definition of transsexuality and opinion statements about transsexuality in order to derive statements for the initial pool of items. This was followed by an assessment for readability by five independent students. Once the preliminary item pool was generated, four experts assessed content and face validity as well as attitude valence of the items. The resulting initial questionnaire of 108 attitude statements was administered to a new sample of 143 students. Following an item analysis to identify the most discriminating items, the item pool was narrowed down to the final 47 items that make up the Attitudes towards Transsexuality Scale (ATS). In Study Two the ATS, as well as Herek's Attitudes Towards Lesbians and Gay men scale (ATLG; 1984) was administered to 382 students. In order to assess test-retest reliability, the ATS was re-administered to 107 of these students. Women did tend to have more favorable attitudes towards both transsexuals and homosexuals in the preliminary data analysis; however, once the data from participants who were not able to correctly identify the definition of the term "transsexuality" were removed from the analysis, gender differences were no longer present. There were significant differences in attitudes between the lower and upper-level student participants. An exploratory factor analysis resulted in four main factors in characterizing attitudes towards transsexuality (Acceptance, Emotional Reaction, Rights, and Parenting). Among the introductory-level psychology students, an additional factor was discovered (Relationships). In the total sample and among psychology majors, participants who tended to have more favorable attitudes on the ATS also tended to have similar attitudes on the ATLG; they also seemed to reflect more openness to new experiences although lower levels of extroversion and conscientiousness. However, among the introductory-level students, there was no relationship found between the ATS and extroversion and conscientiousness. In conclusion, the ATS is a valid and reliable attitude scale to assess attitudes towards transsexuality. Furthermore it has the potential to be useful in a variety of clinical and educational settings.


Bioaugmentation and biostimulation studies were carried out on crude oil contaminated GCC soils using a series of engineered biopile systems. The preliminary soil studies clearly showed the poor level of nutrients and low count of indigenous soil bacteria, thus justifying the addition of bacteria and soil nutrients The success towards design of bioremediation systems to treat crude oil contaminated soils crucially depends on the outcome of a series of staged experiments involving soil characterization, oil evaporation and effects of biological and chemical additives to the contaminated soils. The texture, chemical analysis and microbiological character of soils will dictate the level of humidification, biostimulation and bioaugmentation required. Biopile systems have been proved to be effective, controllable and environmentally friendly techniques to treat contaminated soils. Extensive laboratory tests have shown that such systems can be optimized for treatment efficiency and design cost. Ultimately, it is expected that the current landfarming practices would be phased out because of their poor treatment efficiency and displacement of part of the problem from soil to atmosphere. . The performance evaluation of the bioremediation biopile systems which included control systems with no bacteria and indigenous microorganisms, was based on CO2 evolution. The biopile systems bioaugmented and biostimulated showed superior bioremediation activity according to such performance criteria. This investigation has clearly shown the benefits of bioaugmentation and biostimulation in the bioremediation of crude oil contaminated desert soils. The addition of an anionic surfactant enhanced the bioavailability of nutrients and resulted in a faster response to the biological treatment of crude oil contaminated desert soil.


This paper presents a novel technique to align partial 3D reconstructions of the seabed acquired by a stereo camera mounted on an autonomous underwater vehicle. Vehicle localization and seabed mapping is performed simultaneously by means of an Extended Kalman Filter. Passive landmarks are detected on the images and characterized considering 2D and 3D features. Landmarks are re-observed while the robot is navigating and data association becomes easier but robust. Once the survey is completed, vehicle trajectory is smoothed by a Rauch-Tung-Striebel filter obtaining an even better alignment of the 3D views and yet a large-scale acquisition of the seabed.


This study details the biostratigraphy and palaeobathymetry of Palaeogene bathyal and Neogene neritic strata in the North Sea and on Haltenbanken, using the 'tops' or last common presence of 190 benthic and planktonic foraminifers, dinoftagellates, and miscellaneous microfossils in 26 wells. Mathematical and graphical sequencing methods assisted with definition of the zones, and with the most likely order of the microfossil events within each zone. The interval zones are: Zone NSR 13 - Cassidulina teretis, Pleistocene; Zone NSRI2B - Cibicidoides grossa, late Pliocene; Zone NSRI2A -Monspeliensis pseudotepida, early (part of) Late Pliocene; Zone NSRII -Neogloboquadrina atlantica, Early Pliocene; Zone NSRIO -Bo/boforma metzmacheri, Late Miocene; Zone NSR9B -Martinotiel/a cylindrica, late Middle to early Late Miocene; Zone NSR9A -G/oborotalia praescitula gr., late Early to early Middle Miocene; Zone NSR8B - unnamed, Early Miocene; Zone NSR8A -Globigerina ex. gr. officinalis, Late Oligocene (Chattian); Zone NSR7B - Turrilina alsatica, Early Oligocene to early Late Oligocene; Zone NSR7A - Adercotryma agterbergi, Early Oligocene (Rupelian); Zone NSR6B -G/oborota/ia cerroazu/ensis, Late Eocene (Priabonian); Zone NSR6A - Reticulophragmium amp/ectens, late Middle Eocene (Bartonian); Zone NSRSB -Ammomarginu/ina aubertae, early Middle Eocene (Lutetian); Zone NSRSA - Reticulophragmium intermedia, late Early to early Middle Eocene; Zone NSR4 -Subbotina patagonica, Early Eocene (Ypresian); Zone NSR3 - Coscinodiscus spp., earliest Eocene; Zone NSR2B -Reticulophragmiu m paupera, Late Palaeocene (Selandian); Zone NSR2A - Trochammina ruthvenmurrayi, early Late Palaeocene; Zone NSRI - Subbotina pseudobulloides, Early Palaeocene (Danian). Range charts give details of the stratigraphic extent of 140 foraminifers and other shelly microfossil taxa. The zonation is correlated to a seismic sequence stratigraphy with 14 depositional units. Palaeoecological analysis reveals five foraminiferal assemblages, which characterize inner shelf through middle slope (bathyal) depth regimes. The upper Oligocene-lower Miocene siliceous biofacies on Tampen Spur is thought to reftect slope upwelling. Upper Eocene strata appear to be largely missing in the central North Sea, as is part or all of the Upper Miocene.


Abstract Background The inability to achieve full compliance with drug treatment during the post-discharge period with exacerbations in the illness in patients with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders is a major problem for the patients themselves, their families, and the healthcare staff in psychiatry. Methods In this prospective study, it was aimed to evaluate whether the written and verbal drug education (drug color and shape, interactions, side effects, etc.) given by the clinical pharmacist during the discharge period had an effect on drug compliance. Between 1st September 2016 and 12th June 2017, 40 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, schizotypal personality disorder or acute schizophrenia-like psychotic disorder according to ICD-10 diagnostic criteria who were admitted to Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry Inpatient Service, were involved in this study. A number of scales were used to evaluate the severity of illness, drug side effects and drug compliance respectively; PANSS; UKU, SAS, BARS, AIMS; MARS and ROMI. It has been emphasized during discharge to the patients by the clinical pharmacist that how important administering the prescribed medicines regularly and as directed. Six to 8 weeks after discharge, the patients were invited to be reevaluated using the scales applied during admission. Results There was a statistically significant increase in compliance with treatment as quantitatively assessed by the MARS after drug education (p<0.001). There was no significant correlation between compliance and gender, age, tobacco/alcohol use or marital status. At the same time, a significant correlation between severity of akathisia obtained through BARS and a decrease in MARS scores representing the level of compliance was observed (r: -0.367; p<0.05). A decrease in the baseline MARS score was related to an increase in the total number of hospitalizations (r: -0.325; p<0.05) and the number of psychotropic drugs used (r: -0.316; p<0.05). When the factors that may affect compliance were examined by multiple regression analysis, akathisia was found to have the highest impact on compliance (ß: -0.389, r2: -0.002, F: 0.750). Discussion These results support the literature in terms of the importance of the impact of side effects on compliance. As a result of the study, it was seen that drug counseling services given by clinical pharmacists can effectively be employed in psychiatric care, for the rational use of medicines. It appears that it is necessary to take advantage of drug counseling on drug use and to develop strategies to improve drug compliance in psychiatry.


Limited water resources in arid and semi-arid regions are one of the major limiting factors in agricultural production. Thus, unconventional water resources, such as urban and industrial treated wastewater, may be used for irrigation. Application of wastewater to soil may cause accumulation of heavy metals (HMs). Soil pollution causes uptake of these metals by plants and their entrance to food chain. In the present greenhouse research, concentration variations of HMs (zinc, copper, cadmium, nickel, iron and manganese) in soil and radish plant were investigated. The experiment was conducted as a completely randomized design with three replications and irrigation with different percentages of treated wastewater (0, 25, 50, 75 and 100%). Results of soil chemical analysis showed that irrigation with treated wastewater significantly increased sodium adsorption ratio, salinity level and chloride content of soil. While, using different percentages of treated wastewater decreased significantly (P≤0.01) soil pH. Results revealed that total and available concentrations of HMs in soil irrigated with wastewater were higher than the those in soil irrigated with tap water. However, metal concentrations were much lower than the critical limits in soil. Therefore, had no adverse effects on soil quality. The results also showed that HM concentration in roots and aerial parts of radish plant was not increased significantly as a result of wastwater irrigation.


Religious persecution manifests itself in various harmful ways. Traditional intervention strategies are useful but limited. The article explores the need to reinforce the combating of religious persecution with the increased use of international justice mechanisms. In particular, the article studies how the crime against humanity of persecution can be used to hold religious persecutors accountable under international criminal law.


Despite the recent growth resurgence, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains the poorest region in the world. At the same time, it is a region that heavily relies on natural resources. In this paper we investigate the extent to which the second fact helps explain the first one. The distinctive feature of our study is that we take a geographical perspective and allow the effect of natural resources to differ across regions of the world. Our findings suggest that (i) the effect of natural resource intensity on per-capita income is positive and significant in general, but almost negligible and possibly negative in SSA, (ii) natural resources have a negative effect on institutional quality in SSA only, (iii) natural resources hinder human capital accumulation in SSA much more than anywhere else, and (iv) the combination of bad disease environments and large resource endowments accounts for most of the observed cross-regional differences in the effect of natural resources.


With rapid developments of nano-engineering in the recent years, high-performance and multi-functional nano-materials, exhibiting new and enhanced physical and chemical properties, are introduced with innumerable conceivable applications. The recent advances in design, synthesis and characterization techniques of nano-materials have enabled the fabrication of modern nano-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS). Research breakthroughs in NEMS technology over the past decade have caused an increased interest in the analysis of structures at nano-scale, stimulated by the fact that control over these exclusive properties leads to development of concepts potentially resulting in new engineering applications......


We demonstrate that the Re-Os system can be used to understand the temporal evolution of a petroleum system as well as aid in the identification of source units. Traditional geochemical methods (high-performance liquid chromatography, carbon isotope, gas chromatography, and biomarker analysis) indicate that the main source of 18 oils analyzed for Re-Os geochronology from the United Kingdom Atlantic margin (Clair, Schiehallion, Cuillin, and Foinaven fields) is Late Jurassic marine shales. This is supported by the Os isotopic composition ( 187 Os/ 188 Os) of the Late Jurassic source (∼0.9–2.4) at the timing of oil generation being similar to that of the oil (68 Ma; 0.92–1.12), indicating that the Re-Os system can potentially be used to fingerprint the source of an oil. The Re-Os data for the 18 oils yield an age (68 ± 13 Ma) that agrees with both the relative (basin models) and absolute (Ar-Ar geochronology) timing of oil generation, indicating that that Re-Os oil geochronology records oil generation events.


The Scottish Enlightenment is one of the great achievements of European culture. In philosophy, law, economics, politics, linguistics and the physical sciences, Scots were key players in changing the way the world was viewed. And this explosion of activity still reverberates. It was the age of David Hume, Thomas Reid and Adam Smith, of Adam Ferguson, James Hutton and Sir John Sinclair. In his authoritative introduction, Alexander Broadie emphasises not only the diversity of intellectual discussion taking place in this small country located on the outer edge of Europe, but also the European dimension of this Scottish movement. After the general introduction, the anthology is arranged thematically - Human Nature, Ethics, Aesthetics, Religion, Economics, Social Theory and Politics, Law, Historiography, Language and Science. These sections gather together well-known and lesser-known writings of the time. Much of the material has not been reprinted since the 18th century. Those with an interest in the Scottish cultural tradition will find many things to hold their attention in this unique book.


Abstract: Zorocrates guerrerensis Gertsch & Davis, 1940 is a Mexican cribellate spider with almost no information about its biology. As the species could potentially be of medical interest, it was decided to study basic aspects of its life history under laboratory conditions. The life cycle lasts a year, with spiders undergoing up to 12 instars to reach maturity. The courtship behaviour includes tactile communication. Copulation consists of two palpal insertions, each with a single haematodochal expansion. Both males and females can mate more than once; components of the first and second copulation do not differ. On average, the total copulation duration lasts for more than five minutes. Some details of the copulation process are discussed and compared with those of other lycosoids.


By building on foundations from psychology, we aim to enhance academic understanding of the advising process in family businesses. We find evidence, based on rich qualitative data, suggesting that trust serves as a key construct in the relationship between family businesses and their advisors. In particular, we empirically show and theorize that trusting relationships evolve via a nonlinear process characterized by a constant interplay between cognitive and— increasingly important—affective assessments of family business trustors. The following types of trust emerge from these internal assessments: an intention to trust, which develops into perceived trust and finally results in behavioral trust.


Rapid categorization paradigms have a long history in experimental psychology: Characterized by short presentation times and speedy behavioral responses, these tasks highlight the efficiency with which our visual system processes natural object categories. Previous studies have shown that feed-forward hierarchical models of the visual cortex provide a good fit to human visual decisions. At the same time, recent work in computer vision has demonstrated significant gains in object recognition accuracy with increasingly deep hierarchical architectures. But it is unclear how well these models account for human visual decisions and what they may reveal about the underlying brain processes.
We have conducted a large-scale psychophysics study to assess the correlation between computational models and human participants on a rapid animal vs. non-animal categorization task. We considered visual representations of varying complexity by analyzing the output of different stages of processing in three state-of-the-art deep networks. We found that recognition accuracy increases with higher stages of visual processing (higher level stages indeed outperforming human participants on the same task) but that human decisions agree best with predictions from intermediate stages.
Overall, these results suggest that human participants may rely on visual features of intermediate complexity and that the complexity of visual representations afforded by modern deep network models may exceed those used by human participants during rapid categorization.


Amphistomosis is a snail borne trematode disease in ruminants causing high morbidity and mortality in tropical and subtropical areas causing great economic losses. The disease is caused mainly by immature flukes and seasonally egg producing trematodes which makes conventional ova detection inefficient. Early diagnosis using coproantigens is a novel method showing good promise. The present study was carried out to standardise a rapid field level diagnostic test for early detection of coproantigens in amphistomosis. Hyper immune polyclonal antisera raised in rabbits against excretory secretory antigens of amphistomes were used in the study for coproantigen detection. Out of the fifty known amphistome ova positive samples, 38 gave positive brown dots indicating 76 per cent infection. Twelve positive samples turned negative in Dot ELISA which may be due to the low fluke burden in these animals thus excreting undetectable coproantigens in faeces. Immunodot did not give any false positive reaction and had 100 percent specificity, 76 per cent sensitivity, 100 per cent positive predictive value (PPV) and 62.5 per cent negative predictive value (NPV) with a accuracy of 83 per cent. Use of monoclonal antibodies and more purified antigens can increase the sensitivity of the present test and can be developed to a commercial rapid dipstick ELISA for early diagnosis of amphistomosis.


A critical component of the solution to online masquerade attacks, in which criminals create false web pages to obtain financial information, is the hierarchy of public key certificates. Masquerade attacks include phishing, pharming, and man-in-the-middle attacks. Public key certificates ideally authenticate the website to the person, before the person authenticates to the website. Public key certificates are typically issued by certificate authorities (CAs).Banks are the most common target of phishing attacks, so we implemented an empirical study of certificates for depository institutions insured by the Federal Depository Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and compared them to general purpose, non-banking certificates. Our study of websites of FDIC-insured banks found that the current configuration fails to support website authentication. The most common failure is an absence of certificates, meaning that a false certificate would be the only valid-named certificate for that institution. Certificates with incorrect names, incorrectly structured certificates, and shared certificates all plague online banking. The vast majority of banks, especially smaller banks, apparently lack the expertise, support, or incentive to implement certificates correctly.We document the current state of bank certificates. We compare these with general-purpose certificates (e.g., the top one million websites). We survey the various proposals for the certificate market writ large, including pinning and notaries. We identify how those fit and fail to fit the unique problem of banking certificates. We close with policy and technical recommendations to alter the use of certificates so that these can be a valid basis for consumer trust.


We consider a model of computation motivated by possible limitations on quantum computers. We have a linear array of n wires, and we may perform operations only on pairs of adjacent wires. Our goal is to build a circuits that perform specified operations spanning all n wires. We show that the natural lower bound of n− 1 on circuit depth is nearly tight for a variety of problems, and we prove linear upper bounds for additional problems. In particular, using only gates adding a wire (mod 2) into an adjacent wire, we can realize any linear operation in GLn(2) as a circuit of depth 5n. We show that some linear operations require depth at least 2n+ 1.


We exploit the exogenous change in marginal tax rates created by the Russian flat tax reform of 2001 to identify the effect of taxes on labor supply of males and females. We apply the weighted difference-in-difference regression approach and instrumental variables to the labor supply function estimated on individual panel data. The mean regression results indicate that the tax reform led to a statistically significant increase in male hours of work but had no effect on that of females. However, we find a positive response to tax changes at both tails of the female hour distribution. We also find that the reform increased the probability of finding a job among both males and females. Despite significant variation in individual responses, the aggregate labor supply elasticities are trivial and suggest that reform-induced changes in labor supply were an unlikely explanation for the amplified personal income tax revenues that followed the reform.


We propose a generative model that can infer a distribution for the underlying spatial signal conditioned on sparse samples e.g. plausible images given a few observed pixels. In contrast to sequential autoregressive generative models, our model allows conditioning on arbitrary samples and can answer distributional queries for any location. We empirically validate our approach across three image datasets and show that we learn to generate diverse and meaningful samples, with the distribution variance reducing given more observed pixels. We also show that our approach is applicable beyond images and can allow generating other types of spatial outputs e.g. polynomials, 3D shapes, and videos.


A tectonic earthquake in Bantul Regency, Yogyakarta occurred at the magnitude of 5.9 Richter Scale just before 05.54 p.m. The earthquake duartion was only about one minute but killed thousands of inhabitants, destroyed uncountable number of settlement buildings and damaged other buildings of about billions rupiahs. This fact showed that disaster mitigation system has nott been effective to minimize disaster impact. To absolutely prevent the earthquake disaster to happen is indeed very impossible to do. But humans can seek efforts to take preventive measures to reduce the adverse impact of the earthquake before it occurs again. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out the system of disaster mitigation so that victims and material losses resulted from the earthquake disaster can be minimized. The research objective is to obtain the physical conditions and problems faced by Bantul Regency after the earthquake disaster, to evaluate the exercise of earthquake management, and finally to search solutions in anticipating the occurrence of the earthquake disaster. It is expected that in the future, the response and the willingness of dealing similar disaster can be prepared. A field research is conducted by using three techniques including observation, interview, and questionnaire given to village apparatuses and local society. A bottomup approach is used to ensure that the system to be developed can actually reflect the emergent needs of the community. The result of the research indicates that it is necessary to carry out several alternatives for immediate prevention and comprehensive handling of earthquake disaster by meeting objectives in appropriate strategy of mitigating measure priorities. The first priorities are given to constructing measures or structuring enduring-to-earthquake houses with priorities rank given to forming elements of enduring-to-earthquake building. The first is the frame structures (sloof, column, and block), the roof elements, and the foundation elements, the second is the measures of social aids giving, and the third is the measures of community development with education and training. The fourth is measures of economic development, and, finally, the fifth is the measures of instance and managerial development (early warning system). It is expected that the objectives of the priority strategy can help society to take any appropriate measures in anticipating the risks of earthquake disaster.


Background: Argyreia nervosa (Convolvulaceae) plant is an example of hallucinogenic plant. The antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, anticonvulsant, nootropic, antifertility and aphrodisiac properties have already been reported for this plant. Aim: The aim of present work was to evaluate the wound healing property in normal and diabetic animals by oral and topical administration of ethanolic extract of leaves. Materials and Methods: Phytochemical investigations showed the presence of various biochemicals (alkaloids, flavonoids, carbohydrates, triterpenoids, proteins, saponins, steroids, tannins). A single injection of alloxan monohydrate (120 mg/kg, i.p.) prepared in citrate buffer (0.1 M, pH 4.5) was administered to produce diabetes in rats and mice, after overnight fasting. Excision wounds (sized 300 mm2 and of 2 mm depth) were used for the study of rate of contraction of wound and epithelization. The means of wound area measurement between groups at different time intervalswere compared using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), followed by Dunnet's test. Results: Extracts of A. nervosa showed significant wound healing effect in normal (topically treated) and diabetic (both topically and orally treated) rats. In diabetic rats, the topically treated group showed more significant effect than the orally treated groups. Conclusion: The present study demonstrates that A. nervosa leaves extract applied topically promotes healing of wounds more significantly as compared to oral application, in both normal rats and alloxan induced diabetic rats, where healing is otherwise delayed.


There is described a simple photoelectric spectrophotometer, developed to determine the precipitable water in a vertical column of the atmosphere. A transmission replica grating is used as the dispersing element and an infra-red-sensitive photo-tube as the energy receiver. The photo-tube current is amplified by a negative feed-back d.c. amplifier and is read either by means of a 500 microampere ammeter or recorded by a high speed potentiometer recorder. Measurements are obtained by comparing the radiant flux in the 0.94μ water vapor absorption band with that at 1.01μ where no absorption occurs. A single-mirror heliostat is utilized to keep the spectrophotometer focused on the sun. An approximate calibration was obtained by plotting the spectrophotometer ratios against the total precipitable water values in a vertical column of the atmosphere as calculated from radiosonde moisture data.


In 2016, the California Department of Transportation ("Caltrans") revised its policy standards with respect to the intellectual property rights of artists who create works of public art installed within the state highway system.  While Caltrans had previously allowed artists to keep their copyrights subject to a nonexclusive license of certain reproduction rights to the state, the 2016 policy (the "Transportation Art Policy") requires artists to assign their "entire rights, title and interest in" such works of art to Caltrans, including their "common law and federal copyright ownership rights."  The artist must execute a copyright assignment and transfer agreement, which Caltrans must approve, before the art is installed.  This requirement exists even though the policy assumes that certain local "public agencies," not the state of California itself, will be responsible for commissioning works of art; the policy directs the commissioning agency for a given work of art to also sign onto the assignment and transfer agreement.This Note argues that state policies that, like Caltrans', require a transfer of copyright in works of public art are ill-fitted to their purposes, and that the goals of copyright law are better served by alternative contractual arrangements.  In Part I, I provide an overview of the legal landscape in the United States with respect to transfers of copyright ownership, visual artists' moral rights, and public art commissions.  In Part II, I outline the substance of Caltrans' Transportation Art Policy and the possible justifications for its 2016 revision, and then show why the policy is both a poor fit for those presumptive objectives and an unwarranted burden on stakeholders.  Finally, in Part III, I discuss alternatives to public art policies that require copyright transfer.  I argue that states or state agencies seeking to own public artwork should, as Caltrans once did, allow artists to retain copyright provided that they grant the state a nonexclusive license for reasonable public uses.  The advantage of such an approach—which many other states already employ—is that it offers reasonable protection for the state's legitimate interests in avoiding liability and enforcing the copyright, without the attendant harms to artistic creativity and to the public.


We show that training of generative adversarial network (GAN) may not have good generalization properties; e.g., training may appear successful but the trained distribution may be far from target distribution in standard metrics. However, generalization does occur for a weaker metric called neural net distance. It is also shown that an approximate pure equilibrium exists in the discriminator/generator game for a special class of generators with natural training objectives when generator capacity and training set sizes are moderate.
This existence of equilibrium inspires MIX+GAN protocol, which can be combined with any existing GAN training, and empirically shown to improve some of them.


This chapter questions the properties usually associated to grassroots and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in a comparative perspective, both historically and internationally. It addresses different forms of environmentalism in order to assess the transformative capacity of mobilisations involved in land use conflicts. Drawing from various works in sociology, geography and legal studies is useful to underscore continuities and change in this regard, while the ongoing and alarming pressure on the environment has reactivated a debate on the failure of environmentalism to prevent irreversible changes. This chapter suggests deconstructing categories such as grassroots organisations, local communities and NGOs in order to reveal actual lines of division at the local level. Moreover, the dichotomies associated to these categories of North versus South or local versus national/global also have limitations, sometimes reducing the significance of legal battles or transnational action, both aspects nowadays being targeted by repressive legislation across the globe.


The inheritance from contemporaneity includes, among other characteristics, rationality, normativeness, influence from science, a certain quest for legitimation and the increasing value given to permanence. Current essay questions some of these concepts rooted in Western Civilization, with excerpts from Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho as an example for starting a reflection on a few aspects. The tendency for individual diagnostics and the search for anomalies as an answer to the questioning of a society that shuns accountability for the boundaries it stipulates, show that evil may and must be controlled in order to protect the citizenship of those who are considered normal. Questioning, reflecting and being accountable constitute the beginning for social changes beyond the mere repression of that which is different. The fact that the different exists in each and every one of us is to rethink socially determined roles.


Several in-house developed descriptors and our in-house docking tool ActDock were compared with virtual screening on the data set of useful decoys (DUD). The results were compared with the chemical fingerprint descriptor from ChemAxon and with the docking results of the original DUD publication. The DUD is the first published data set providing active molecules, decoys, and references for crystal structures of ligand-target complexes. The DUD was designed for the purpose of evaluating docking programs. It contains 2950 active compounds against a total of 40 target proteins. Furthermore, for every ligand the data set contains 36 structurally dissimilar decoy compounds with similar physicochemical properties. We extracted the ligands from the target proteins to extend the applicability of the data set to include ligand based virtual screening. From the 40 target proteins, 37 contained ligands that we used as query molecules for virtual screening evaluation. With this data set a large comparison was done between four different chemical fingerprints, a topological pharmacophore descriptor, the Flexophore descriptor, and ActDock. The Actelion docking tool relies on a MM2 forcefield and a pharmacophore point interaction statistic for scoring; the details are described in this publication. In terms of enrichment rates the chemical fingerprint descriptors performed better than the Flexophore and the docking tool. After removing molecules chemically similar to the query molecules the Flexophore descriptor outperformed the chemical descriptors and the topological pharmacophore descriptors. With the similarity matrix calculations used in this study it was shown that the Flexophore is well suited to find new chemical entities via "scaffold hopping". The Flexophore descriptor can be explored with a Java applet at http://www.cheminformatics.ch in the submenu Tools-->Flexophore. Its usage is free of charge and does not require registration.


We classify all functions which, when applied term by term, leave invariant the sequences of moments of positive measures on the real line. Rather unexpectedly, these functions are built of absolutely monotonic components, or reflections of them, with possible discontinuities at the endpoints. Even more surprising is the fact that functions preserving moments of three point masses must preserve moments of all measures. Our proofs exploit the semidefiniteness of the associated Hankel matrices and the complete monotonicity of the Laplace transforms of the underlying measures. We also examine transformers in the multivariable setting, which reveals a new class of piecewise absolutely monotonic functions.


INTRODUCTION: Cross-sectional data note lower levels of testosterone and sex hormone–binding globulin (SHBG) levels in men with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Whether sex hormone levels in young men are predictive of later risk of NAFLD is not known. METHODS: Among men in the prospective population-based multicenter Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study (mean age 50; n = 837), we assessed whether testosterone and SHBG levels measured at study year 10 (median age 35 years) were associated with prevalent NAFLD at study year 25. NAFLD was defined using noncontrast abdominal computed tomography (CT) scan after excluding other causes of hepatic steatosis. The association of testosterone and SHBG with prevalent NAFLD was assessed by logistic regression. RESULTS: Total testosterone levels in young men were inversely associated with subsequent prevalent NAFLD on unadjusted analysis (odds ratio [OR] 0.64, 95% confidence interval 0.53–0.7, P < 0.001), although no longer significant after adjustment for year 10 metabolic covariates as well as change in metabolic covariates from years 10 to 25 (OR 0.99, 95% confidence interval 0.76–1.27). In contrast, there was a significant inverse association of SHBG with prevalent NAFLD, independent of testosterone and metabolic covariates (OR 0.68, OR 0.51–0.92, P = 0.013). On formal mediation testing, visceral adiposity was found to explain ∼41.0% (95% confidence interval 27%–73%) of the association of lower SHBG with prevalent NAFLD. CONCLUSIONS: Lower levels of SHBG in young men are associated with increase in prevalent NAFLD in middle age, independent of comprehensive metabolic risk factors. SHBG may provide a novel marker of NAFLD risk in young men.


We investigate the impact of sickness absenteeism on productivity by using rich longitudinal matched employer-employee data on Belgian private firms. We deal with endogeneity, which arises from unobserved firm heterogeneity and reverse causality, by applying a modified version of the Ackerberg et al's (2015) control function method, which explicitly removes firm fixed effects. Our main finding is that, in general, sickness absenteeism substantially dampens firm productivity. An increase of 1 percentage point in the rate of sickness absenteeism entails a productivity loss of 0.24%. Yet, we find that the impact is much diversified depending on the categories of workers who are absent and across different types of firms. Our results show that sickness absenteeism is detrimental mainly when absent workers are high-tenure or blue-collar workers. Moreover, they show that sickness absenteeism is harmful mostly to industrial firms, high capital-intensive companies, and small- and medium-sized enterprises. This overall picture is coherent with the idea that sickness absenteeism is problematic when absent workers embed high levels of firm/task-specific (tacit) knowledge, when the work of absent employees is highly interconnected with the work of other employees (e.g., along the assembly line), and when firms face more limitations in substituting temporarily absent workers.


Private governance is currently being evoked as a viable solution to many public policy goals, although the current track record of private regulatory schemes is mixed. Policy guidance documents around the world still require that policy-makers give priority to self- and co-regulation, with little or no additional guidance being given to policy-makers to devise when, and under what circumstances, these solutions can prove viable from a public policy perspective. With an array of examples from several policy fields, this paper approaches regulation as a public-private collaborative form and attempts to identify possible policy tools to be applied by public policy-makers to efficiently and effectively approach private governance as a solution, rather than a problem. We propose a six-step theoretical framework and argue that IA (impact assessment) techniques should: i) define an integrated framework including both the possibility that private regulation can be used as an alternative or as a complement to public legislation; ii) involve private parties in public IAs in order to define the best strategy or strategies that would ensure achievement of the regulatory objectives; and iii) contemplate the deployment of indicators related to governance and activities of the regulators and their ability to coordinate and solve disputes with other regulators.


Pathogen-induced infectious diseases pose great threats to public health. Accordingly, many studies have investigated effective strategies targeting pathogenic infections. We previously reported the preventive effects of Lactobacillus plantarum ZS2058 (ZS2058) and L. rhamnosus GG (LGG) against Salmonella spp. in a murine model. Here, we compared the mechanisms underlying the preventive effects of these Lactobacillus strains in vivo. Notably, reduced C-reactive protein levels were observed with both ZS2058 and LGG, which suggests abrogated anti-infection and inflammatory responses. ZS2058 more efficiently reduced the pathogenicity of Salmonella by increasing the level of propionic acid in feces and production of mucin 2 in the mouse colon and activity through the interleukin (IL)-23/IL-22 and IL-23/IL-17 pathways. Meanwhile, LGG more strongly alleviated gut inflammation, as indicated by changes in the levels of tissue necrosis factor (TNF)-α, IL-10 and myeloperoxidase (MPO) in infected mice. Moreover, both ZS2058 and LGG restored the levels of interferon (INF)-γ, a cytokine suppressed by Salmonella, albeit through different pathways. Our results demonstrate that ZS2058 and LGG prevent Salmonella infection via different mechanisms.


There is a tendency for increased hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) activity with age in the rat, and the resulting elevations in circulating glucocorticoid levels have been implicated in the occurrence of hippocampal pathology and memory deficits. In the experiments reported here, we examined whether HPA dysfunction is selectively associated with cognitive impairments in a population of aged rats. Fifty-eight 23-27-month-old male Long-Evans rats were screened for spatial memory impairments using the Morris swim maze, and 2 groups of aged animals were selected; aged, cognitively impaired (AI) animals whose performance was significantly different (greater than 2 SD) from that of 6-month-old controls and aged, cognitively unimpaired (AU) animals whose performance was comparable to that of the young controls (a difference of less than 0.5 SD). Twenty-eight percent of the animals tested were designated as AI and 20% as AU. Histological analysis of a subset of these animals showed that, while both AU and AI animals showed neuron loss in the pyramidal cell fields of the hippocampus, the loss was significantly greater in the AI animals. The AI animals showed clear evidence of increased HPA activity. Thus, basal ACTH and corticosterone levels were significantly higher in the AI animals compared with both AU animals and young controls, especially during the dark phase of the cycle. The AI, AU, and young animals exhibited comparable corticosterone levels during a 20-min immobilization stress; however, following the termination of the stressor, corticosterone levels in AI animals were significantly elevated compared with both AU animals and controls.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Franco-German relations as the 'engine' of European integration are widely perceived to have stalled in recent years. German economic and political strength, coupled with relative French economic and political weakness, help to explain this situation. The re-election of Angela Merkel and the election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017 created a new potential basis for a strong, like-minded Franco-German alliance that would be able to agree on substantial policy issues. It is therefore a good time to assess what the Franco-German relationship can achieve, what its shortcomings are, and what it means for the wider governance of the euro area and the European Union. An examination of some of the past major Franco-German agreements reveals a more complex picture than is usually recorded. The Schuman Plan (1950), the European Monetary System (1979) and the Maastricht Treaty (1992) left their mark as European integration milestones, but were also one-sided or incomplete policy agreements. The future Franco-German relationship faces three issues that European policymakers should bear in mind 2017 - (a) notwithstanding the new dynamics of the twenty-first century, a Franco-German agreement remains a critical and symbolic step necessary for reaching an EU agreement; (b) past Franco-German bargains were often one-sided and incomplete, and could not provide a definitive response to European challenges; (c) most of these agreements also involved critical input from other EU members, and suggest that the Franco-German tandem alone cannot lead the EU27 in the twenty-first century.


Preface 1. History of interventional neurology Adnan I. Qureshi 2. Diagnostic cerebral angiography Adnan I. Qureshi and Ameer E. Hassan 3. Overview of pharmacological agents Ameer E. Hassan, Steve M. Cordina, Haitham H. Hussein, Deepak L. Bhatt and Adnan I. Qureshi 4. Periprocedural care Alexandros L. Georgiadis and Mustapha A. Ezzeddine 5. Acute ischemic stroke Alexandros L. Georgiadis, Georgios Tsivgoulis, Andrei Alexandrov, Adnan I. Qureshi and Jose I. Suarez 6. Extracranial carotid artery disease Adnan I. Qureshi and L. Nelson Hopkins 7. Extracranial vertebral artery disease Robert A. Taylor, Zeeshan M. Memon and Adnan I. Qureshi 8. Intracranial stenosis Farhan Siddiq, Adnan I. Qureshi and Camilo R. Gomez 9. Arterial dissection YihLin Nien, Jose Rafael Romero, Thanh N. Nguyen and Adnan I. Qureshi 10. Traumatic vascular injury Jefferson T. Miley, Qaisar A. Shah and Adnan I. Qureshi 11. Intracranial aneurysms Alexandros L. Georgiadis, Matthew D. Ford, David A. Steinman, Nauman Tariq and Adnan I. Qureshi 12. Cerebral vasospasm Adnan I. Qureshi, Mushtaq Qureshi, Jefferson T. Miley, Nauman Tariq and Giuseppe Lanzino 13. Intracranial arterio-venous malformations Dorothea Strozyk, Carlos E. Baccin, Johnny C. Pryor and Raul G. Nogueira 14. Dural arterio-venous fistulas Thanh N. Nguyen, Jean Raymond, Alexander M. Norbash and Daniel Roy 15. Cerebral venous thrombosis Amit Singla and Randall C. Edgell 16. Intracranial and head and neck tumors: embolization and chemotherapy Adnan I. Qureshi, Nauman Tariq, Rabia Qaiser, Herbert B. Newton and Stephen J. Haines 17. Diagnostic and provocative testing Haralabos Zacharatos, Ameer E. Hassan, M. Fareed K. Suri and Adnan I. Qureshi 18. Spinal vascular and neoplastic lesions Osman Kozak and Edgard Pereira 19. Central retinal artery occlusion Alberto Maud, Zeeshan M. Memon and M. Fareed K. Suri 20. Epistaxis Alexandros L. Georgiadis, Steve Cordina and Adnan I. Qureshi 21. Vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty Stanley H. Kim, Anant I. Patel, Nancy Gruell, Kirk Conrad and Young J. Yu 22. Clinical trials for neuro-endovascular procedures: fundamentals of design and interpretation Haitham H. Hussein and Adnan I. Qureshi 23. Qualification requirements for performing endovascular procedures Adnan I. Qureshi, Alex Abou-Chebl and Tudor G. Jovin Index.


Gale Bernhardt's training plans have helped tens of thousands of self-coached athletes to reach their multisport goals. Every detail of how to train for a triathlon of any distance, an off-road triathlon, or a duathlon is packed into this essential book, including plenty of swim, bike, and run workouts to keep training fresh and breakthrough workouts to make training more rewarding. Bernhardt's unparalleled coaching experience is the basis of her proven training methodology, which she applies to each of the 15 unique training plans, removing the hassle of creating a plan from scratch. "Training Plans for Multisport Athletes" has a challenge to suit everyone, from beginners to accomplished triathletes, for those who are short on training time and those who are training for a faster time.


Two facts that corporations, underwriters and investors have been forced to confront are increased capital market volatility and increased complexity in the design of securities. However, these two facts, increased volatility and increased complexity, are not unrelated. Virtually all of the complexity in securities can be viewed as the inclusion of different options in a straight debt contract. Given the fact that the value of options is driven most significantly by volatility, the advantage of including options, i.e. financial flexibility, in securities has increased with increased market volatility. This would appear to explain why corporate issuers and institutional investors have shown substantial interest in securities which improve their flexibility in volatile markets. Therefore, techniques which can consistently reflect the role of volatility in the value of options or flexibility, should be of interest to issuers, underwriters, and investors.This paper summarizes the results of some research by Jones, Masonand Rosenfeld (MR), (1984), and presents some new results, which test the ability of a CCA model based on Black and Scholes' option pricingprinciples to predict the market price of callable corporate debt, andtherefore, the price of such common debt covenants as call provisions andcall protection, In addition, some numerical CCA results are reportedwhich demonstrate the impact of changing interest rate volatility on the value of call provisions and call protection.


BACKGROUND
Laparoscopically procured live donor kidney grafts are increasingly transplanted into pediatric recipients. The safety and efficacy of this changed surgical practice are unknown.

HYPOTHESIS
Outcomes of laparoscopic vs open donor grafts in recipients 18 years and younger are equivalent.

DESIGN AND SETTING
Retrospective review at an academic tertiary care referral center.

PATIENTS
Eleven consecutive pediatric recipients of laparoscopically procured kidneys between April 1, 1997, and December 31, 2001, were pair matched for age with 11 recipients of openly procured kidneys between December 1, 1991, and March 31, 1997; the 22 adult donors were also studied.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Recipients: surgical complications, graft function and survival. Donors: perioperative morbidity and length of hospital stay.

RESULTS
Twenty (91%) of 22 kidneys were donated by a parent of the recipient. In recipients of laparoscopically procured grafts, we observed significantly lower creatinine clearances and higher creatinine levels on days 1, 4, and 6, but by 1 month, graft function was similar in both groups. No significant differences in surgical complications, delayed function, acute and chronic rejection, and graft survival rates were found. No laparoscopic or open donor required blood transfusion, reoperation, or hospital readmission. One laparoscopic donor (9%) was converted to open nephrectomy. For laparoscopic vs open donors, median operative time was longer (difference, 67 min; P =.08), but median postoperative length of stay was significantly shorter (3 vs 5 days; P =.02).

CONCLUSIONS
Laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy has no adverse impact on pediatric recipient outcomes. For donors, the laparoscopic operation is safe and the hospital stay is shortened. These results support the continued use of laparoscopically procured live donor kidneys in pediatric renal transplantation.


This article deals with the emergence of a group of professional automobile pilots in Europe during the Interwar period. During the time, automobile racing was institutionalised and commercialised to a previously unknown extent, under the supervision of European automobile clubs, industrial groups and journalists. In this context, by following the trajectories of pilots, we study the conditions for exercising this practice – part sport, part social activity. These trajectories are mainly marked by a wide diversity due to the sport's origins, at the crossroads of changes in bourgeois leisure activities and the unprecedented development of the automobile industry. On the roads and race tracks of Europe, racing team pilots came up against wealthy independent racers, forming a stratified population and a wide range of participants with diverse origins, mobility, motivations and compensation. In the representations of the period, the pilots became the icons of the triumph of the automobile, but they nevertheless took second stage to the industrial groups that employed and equipped them. In this European space that was driven across and appropriated, behind the sports competition that acted as a support, this situation gave rise to large-scale industrial competitions and strategies that benefited the sportsmen but also held them captive.


Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) are claimed to bring important productivity improvements to developers, when compared to General-Purpose Languages (GPLs). The increased Usability is regarded as one of the key benefits of DSLs when compared to GPLs, and has an important impact on the achieved productivity of the DSL users. So, it is essential to build in good usability while developing the DSL. The purpose of this proposal is to contribute to the systematic activity of Software Language Engineering by focusing on the issue of the Usability evaluation of DSLs. Usability evaluation is often skipped, relaxed, or at least omitted from papers reporting development of DSLs. We argue that a systematic approach based on User Interface experimental validation techniques should be used to assess the impact of new DSLs. For that purpose, we propose to merge common Usability evaluation processes with the DSL development process. In order to provide reliable metrics and tools we should reuse and identify good practices that exist in Human-Computer Interaction community.


Trackers are music software whose history spans over thirty decades. They are tightly linked to the history of home computers, and they made previously unreachable digital composition tools available to enthusiasts in the 1980s. Over the years trackers have been used both for commercial and non-commercial purposes, for example games and demos, and they have given rise to lively hobbyist communities. In this article, I go through the history of trackers, their characteristics and typical uses. The study is based on the analysis of 60 tracker programs and six interviews of their creators. The findings highlight the tight link between trackers and computer hardware, the reasons why authors wanted to create such software, and the gradual evolution of the paradigm.


A goal of cognitive and educational psychology is to understand how people learn. Much progress has been made in separately identifying the motivations and learning strategies that impact student learning. However, it is unclear how these motivations and strategies relate with each other over time. The goal of this dissertation was to integrate and expand upon these separate lines of prior work in an educational context, the college classroom. In the first part of this dissertation, I examined the types of study strategies students reported prior to three separate exams and their subsequent exam performance. Students spontaneously reported using a variety of study strategies. Only a subset of those strategies was related to exam performance and those relations differed across the exams. In the second part, I examined the relation of these study strategies within a self-regulated learning framework. Specifically, I investigated the relations amongst students' grit, study strategies, exam performances, and self-efficacy for the course. Student's initial grit was positively related to using more constructive strategies, self-efficacy for the course, and exam performance. However, the relation between grit and exam performance was mediated by more proximal factors such as constructive strategy use. This finding suggests that although grit is associated with beneficial learning outcomes, it is mediated by other more proximal factors. In the third part, I evaluated whether these relations held true when a students' ethnic background (minority vs. majority) was entered as a moderator. There was a trend in which some of the relations between grit and performance were not present for students from underrepresented ethnic backgrounds. Taken together, this work suggests that a student does not have to be gritty to be self-regulated as the use of constructive strategies and self-efficacy beliefs can assist students in obtaining those outcomes, especially for students from underrepresented ethnic backgrounds.


Aims
Experimental work shows that inflated responsibility may be causally related with adult obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The inflated responsibility model has been
tested in children, but mixed results have been obtained. The current work aimed to test the role of responsibility in children. However, other cognitions such as uncertainty and
intolerance to it may also be relevant for the emergence of OCD. Research testing the causal role of uncertainty in OCD is very sparse. The current work also aimed to test
causal effects of inflated responsibility and uncertainty on anxiety and compulsive urges in adults.
Study 1 adapted an experimental task for manipulating responsibility in children and a coding system used to assess obsessive-compulsive-like behaviours. This
methodology was used in Study 2, an experiment that aimed to test the effects of inflated responsibility on anxiety, OCD-like behaviours, and experimental task speed in children. Study 3 tested the effect of inflated responsibility and uncertainty on anxiety, compulsive
urges, and task duration in adults. Study 4 examined the effect of inflated responsibility, uncertainty, and checking on the same variables, also in adults.
Method
In study 2, responsibility was manipulated in 68 healthy children ages 9 to 12 using a sweet-sorting task. Children were randomly assigned to one of three groups: high
responsibility, low responsibility, and control. Dependent variables were anxiety (immediately after the sorting, 10 minutes later, and 24 hours later), checking, hesitating,
and time taken to complete the sorting. In experiments 3 and 4 adult participants (N= 64 and 74, respectively; non-clinical samples) completed a pill-sorting task which manipulated responsibility and uncertainty. In Study 3, uncertainty was manipulated via false feedback about accuracy of the sorting. Study 3 was a 2 (high responsibility, no- responsibility) X 2
COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER 3
(high-uncertainty, no-uncertainty) design. In Study 4, all participants had high responsibility. Uncertainty was manipulated via false feedback and by allowing or
forbidding checking during sorting. Study 4 was a 2 (uncertainty, no uncertainty) X 2 (checking, no checking) design.
Results
The responsibility manipulation in Study 2 was not successful. Study hypotheses were not supported. In study 3 the responsibility and uncertainty manipulations were
successful. Responsibility had no effect on anxiety and compulsive urges. However, participants in the high-uncertainty (i.e., negative feedback) condition reported significantly higher anxiety and urge to seek reassurance than participants in the no-uncertainty (i.e., positive feedback) condition. In Study 4 the responsibility manipulation was successful, but the feedback manipulation for uncertainty was not. However, checking behaviour significantly changed uncertainty. Checking had no effect on anxiety and compulsive urges; however, participants who received positive feedback experienced a constant decrease in anxiety over time, while those who received negative feedback experienced an increase. Also, those who received positive feedback reported a significant decrease in urge to see reassurance over time; this was not observed in participants who received negative feedback
Conclusion
Study 2 hypotheses were not supported, and this was due to the responsibility manipulation being unsuccessful. It is possible that the responsibility manipulation was not strong
enough. A lack of current developmental framework for inflated responsibility may limit experimental work on this cognition in children. Study 3 and Study 4 tested the inflated responsibility model of OCD in adults, but also added uncertainty as a possible causal factor for the disorder. Results showed that confidence and uncertainty can be successfully manipulated via feedback and checking, using a pill-sorting paradigm. Surprisingly, results did not provide support for the inflated responsibility model; only feedback
COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER 4
seemed to have an effect on anxiety and urge to seek reassurance. As these were non-clinical samples, these results show a causal relationship between low- confidence/uncertainty and compulsive urges. Overall these findings indicate that responsibility may not be sufficient or even necessary to cause the onset of OCD, and that uncertainty may be important. Future work should further test the effects of confidence/ uncertainty on anxiety and obsessivecompulsive like behaviours and urges in adults.


INTRODUCTION
The herbicide glyphosate is administered aerially by the Program to Eradicate Illicit Crops Program and is undertaken in rigorous compliance with the Environmental Management Plan.

OBJECTIVE
The effects of the glyphosate herbicide and other aerially applied insecticides were measured to determine possible impact on human health.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
In 2006-2006, a survey was taken of 112 individuals living in herbicide-treated areas of the Colombian provinces of Huila, Tolima, Putumayo, Guaviare, Santander, Antioquia, Magdalena and La Guajira. Samples of blood were examined for presence of acetylcholinesterase and organochlorine insecticides; urine was analyzed for glyphosate and its metabolites.

RESULTS
Fifty percent (50%) of the individuals sampled acknowledged the use of control chemicals as part of their work. The mean exposure time to the chemicals was 84.4 months, with a mean daily exposure of 5.6 hours. The most commonly used pesticides were of category I--extremely hazardous. In individuals sampled for glyphosate (39.6% of the total), 64.3% indicated the use of this herbicide at ground level in agricultural work. A statistically significative relationship was found between the use of glyphosate at ground level, and the concentration levels of glyphosate in the urine samples (odds ratio=2.54, 95% CI: 1.08 to 6.8).

CONCLUSION
These data did not show a relationship between the aerial sprayings of glyphosate for illicit crops eradication and an impact on human health, nor with occupational exposure to this and other chemicals (insecticides) with a high levels of toxicity.


Objective: The aims of this study were (a) to determine whether near-miss incidents in financial trading contain information on the operator skills and systems that detect and prevent near misses and the patterns and trends revealed by these data and (b) to explore if particular operator skills and systems are found as important for avoiding particular types of error on the trading floor. Background: In this study, we examine a cohort of near-miss incidents collected from a financial trading organization using the Financial Incident Analysis System and report on the nontechnical skills and systems that are used to detect and prevent error in this domain. Method: One thousand near-miss incidents are analyzed using distribution, mean, chi-square, and associative analysis to describe the data; reliability is provided. Results: Slips/lapses (52%) and human–computer interface problems (21%) often occur alone and are the main contributors to error causation, whereas the prevention of error is largely a result of teamwork (65%) and situation awareness (46%) skills. No matter the cause of error, situation awareness and teamwork skills are used most often to detect and prevent the error. Conclusion: Situation awareness and teamwork skills appear universally important as a "last line" of defense for capturing error, and data from incident-monitoring systems can be analyzed in a fashion more consistent with a "Safety-II" approach. Application: This research provides data for ameliorating risk within financial trading organizations, with implications for future risk management programs and regulation.


Distributed flood control measures such as land- use changes or differing soil tillage practices which affect the runoff generation process, are hard to simulate physi- cally based due to a high degree of uncertainty with regard to soil parameterisation. In this study the physically based rain- fall runoff model WaSiM-ETH (Version 8.4.2) was used with a multi-layered vegetation and soil parameterisation. The modelling area was the meso-scaled and rurally characterised Windach catchment. In addition, soil measurement datasets were compared to demonstrate the uncertainties in soil pa- rameterisation of physically based models. The datasets were gained from the hillslope scale at the Scheyern research farm with similar soil conditions to the Windach catchment. While parameterising and calibrating the model, seven different pe- dotransfer functions were used with strong influence on the simulated hydrographs. The differing bulk densities of soils depending on land-use and soil tillage must be taken into consideration due to their high impact on modelling results, and they also offer a comprehensive way to model distributed flood control measures. These measures have noticeable ef- fects on flood events under HQ 10, especially if the land-use type which is affected by the distributed flood control mea- sure is the dominating land-use form in the catchment area. To account for the variability of soils in the investigation area of Scheyern, different approaches were applied to estimate soil hydraulic properties and saturated hydraulic conductiv- ity, and were compared to field measurements.


Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (CNS) that afflicts over 2 million people worldwide. On the basis of the temporal course of disease, MS can be subdivided into three clinical groups: relapsing remitting MS (RR-MS), secondary progressive MS and primary progressive MS. There is a high degree of clinical diversity within these subgroups. The pathogenesis of MS in most patients is likely to result from autoreactive, activated CD4(+) T cells moving from the periphery across the blood brain barrier into the CNS. Most therapeutic agents used in MS (e.g. immunosuppressive and immunomodulatory drugs and cell cycle interruption drugs) are only used for RR-MS. These treatments show some efficiency in lessening the relapse rate in RR-MS and time to progression, but cannot cure MS. Thus, there is a need for new efficient treatments for all types of MS. An increasing number of studies indicate that nuclear factor-kappaB plays an important role in controlling expression of genes relevant to the pathogenesis of autoimmunity. Genetic factors related to NF-kappaB may also be determinants of MS susceptibility, as polymorphisms in the molecules involved in regulation of the NF-kappaB signal transduction pathway differ between RR-MS and progressive MS. Herein, the role of NF-kappaB in MS will be reviewed and its potential as a new therapeutic target in MS will be considered and compared with existing treatments.


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This study examined the relationship between transformational leadership behaviours of athletics directors and job satisfaction of coaches at NCAA Division I and III institutions in the United States. In addition, this study also examined whether there are differences between Division I and III institutions with respect to the levels of transformational leadership behaviours of athletics directors and coaches' job satisfaction. Data for this study were collected from 618 coaches. The Transformational Leadership Behaviour Inventory developed by Podsakoff', MacKenzie, Moorman Sc Fetter (1990) was used to measure coaches' perception of the transformational leadership behaviours of their athletics directors. The job satisfaction of coaches was measured by using the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (Weiss, Dawis, England Sc Lofquist 1967). Data were analyzed by using discriminant analysis and logistic regression. It was discovered that Division I coaches evaluated their superiors higher in terms of transformational leadership behaviours than their counterparts in Division III. Division I coaches also reported a higher level of job satisfaction than coaches from Division III. The results also revealed that there was a significant relationship between transformational leadership behaviours of athletics directors and coaches'job satisfaction at both NCAA Division I and Division III institutions.


Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up and overtake Britain in less than 15 years. The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives. So opens Frank Dikotter's astonishing, riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented because access to Communist Party archives has long been restricted to all but the most trusted historians. A new archive law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era. Dikotter makes clear, as nobody has before, that far from being the program that would lift the country among the world's superpowers and prove the power of communism, as Mao imagined, the Great Leap Forward transformed the country in the other direction. It became the site not only of one of the most deadly mass killings of human history, as at least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death, but also the greatest demolition of real estate in human history, as up to a third of all housing was turned into rubble. The experiment was a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. In a powerful meshing of exhaustive research and narrative drive, Dikotter for the first time links up what happened in the corridors of power - the vicious backstabbing and bullying tactics that took place among party leaders - with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. His magisterial account recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.


More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction is one of the most extraordinary books on music ever written. Part manifesto for a militant posthumanism, part journey through the unacknowledged traditions of diasporic science fiction, this book finds the future shock in Afrofuturist sounds from jazz, dub and techno to funk, hip hop and jungle. By exploring the music of such musical luminaries as Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, Lee Perry, Dr Octagon, Parliament and Underground Resistance, theorist and artist Kodwo Eshun mobilises their concepts in order to open the possibilities of sonic fiction: the hitherto unexplored intersections between science fiction and organised sound. Situated between electronic music history, media theory, science fiction and Afrodiasporic studies, More Brilliant than the Sun is one of the key works to stake a claim for the generative possibilities of Afrofuturism. Much referenced since its original publication in 1998, but long unavailable, this new edition includes an introduction by Kodwo Eshun as well as texts by filmmaker John Akomfrah and producer Steve Goodman aka kode9.


While criteria or principles for conducting positivist and interpretive research have been widely discussed in the IS research literature, criteria or principles for critical research are lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose a set of principles for the conduct of critical research in information systems. We examine the nature of the critical research perspective, clarify its significance, and review its major discourses, recognizing that its mission and methods cannot be captured by a fixed set of criteria once and for all, particularly as multiple approaches are still in the process of defining their identity. However, we suggest it is possible to formulate a set of principles capturing some of the commonalities of those approaches that have so far become most visible in the IS research literature. The usefulness of the principles is illustrated by analyzing three critical field studies in information systems. We hope that this paper will further reflection and debate on the important subject of grounding critical research methodology.


Modeling vague objects with indeterminate boundaries has drawn much attention in geographic information science. Because fields and objects are two perspectives in modeling geographic phenomena, this paper investigates the characteristics of vague regions from the perspective of the field/object dichotomy. Based on the assumption that a vague object can be viewed as the conceptualization of a field, we defined five categories of vague objects: direct field-cutting objects, focal operation-based field-cutting objects, element-clustering objects, object-referenced objects, and dynamic boundary objects. We then established a categorization system to formalize the semantic differences between vague objects using the fuzzy set theory. The proposed framework provides valuable input for the conceptualization, interpretation, and modeling of vague geographical objects.


Islamic finance industry mostly uses LIBOR linked financial contracts which are akin to debt financing than the more preferable participatory modes of Mudarabah and Musharakah. As per the current orthodox understanding and practice of Islamic finance, the often cited preferable modes like Mudarabah and Musharakah are incapable even in a simple model economy with them as the only mode of financing. Hence, they are rarely used. The prevalent Islamic products which are linked with LIBOR are and will predominantly be used and practiced Islamic finance may remain incapable of providing egalitarian benefits it once promised. Ironically, Islamic values like justice, equality, truth, trust, kindness, honesty and responsibility are often discussed in literature and seminars on Islamic Economics; whereas, in reality, the lack of these values in practice is the major reason why preferable participatory modes remain unusable! As discussed, the current orthodox understanding of Islamic fiscal redistribution mechanisms like Zakat and Inheritance also make them incapable of contributing towards the establishment of an egalitarian economic framework. This paper proposes an alternate approach to practiced Islamic finance and orthodox understanding of Zakat and inheritance laws and shows that the alternate approach could still be sufficient to contribute towards egalitarian objectives effectively.


Grounded in Freire's critical pedagogy, this article highlights the journey of Afro-Brazilian teachers who teach marginalized populations by examining how their process of self-identity and efficacy informed their literacy practices and instructional decision-making. Using case study research methodology, this article examines how Afro-Brazilian teachers convey and enact their educational, social, and cultural experiences to develop selfidentity and self-efficacy as educators. This paper draws heavily on the social and historical perspectives that contribute to the realities of the Afro-Brazilian teacher and their often-marginalized populations they teach. Hence, the phenomenological nature of the study suggests diverse implications for not only Afro-Brazilian teachers, but also Brazilian schools and society.


Differences between languages in the syntactic categories they instantiate may lead to parametric variation, as syntactic categories constrain possible argument structures. The Dravidian language Kannada is argued to be typical of overt case-SOV languages in having only the categories N and V: P and A (argued to be N plus case) develop only as case weakens; as does the verb have (i.e. be plus case). We seek to explain thus the ubiquity of the dative experiencer in Kannada, and its vestigial presence in English; and the absence of have in Kannada. We also explain an observation that languages which have serial verb constructions lack PP structures, showing that English has serial verb constructions with imperfect and negative participles but not with perfect participles. This gap arises from the way case is incorporated into participles in English to form adjectives (and currently explained in terms of the category of these participles); in Kannada, verbal participles uniformly retain their case.