The present work combines time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy on isolated species with high-level data processing to address an issue which usually pertains to materials science: the electronic relaxation dynamics towards the formation of a self-trapped exciton (STE). Such excitons are common excited states in ionic crystals, silica and rare gas matrices. They are associated with a strong local deformation of the matrix. Argon clusters were taken as a model. They are excited initially to a Wannier exciton at 14 eV and their evolution towards the formation of an STE has showed an unusual type of vibronic relaxation where the electronic excitation of the cluster decreases linearly as a function of time with a 0.59 ± 0.06 eV ps-1 rate. The decay was followed for 3.0 ps, and the STE formation occurred in ∼5.1 ± 0.7 ps.

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Abstract Atmospheric temperature profiles, obtained from spectral radiances of the earth between 2160 and 2360 cm−1 measured by a balloonborne, multi-detector, grating spectrometer at 3.5 mb during a 6-hr flight, are described. Representative profiles obtained both before and after sunrise and for clear and cloudy skies show that atmospheric temperatures accurate to ∼2K can be inferred. The variations of surface temperature during the flight are discussed.


The focus of this article is the theoretical understanding behind, and the clinical application of, a newly developed music-therapy assessment tool, Assessment of Parenting Competencies (APC). While the psychometric properties have been analyzed successfully in prior publications, the advantages and challenges of a nonverbal and emotional interactional medium such as music in assessing parent–child interaction and parental capacity are presented and discussed. The assessment model relates to theories of attunement, autonomy, and attachment, and clinical relevance for practice within the field of child protection is addressed according to clinical application of the tool. How can the scores of APC be interpreted and how are they clinically relevant? With the combination of a playful and rigorous approach, APC can provide useful information to families, family therapists, and other social-service professions within the field of child protection, including level of mutual attunement, nonverbal communication skills, emotional parental response, and possibly indications of attachment behavior in the child. APC can thereby help indicate the severity of the situation and the possible therapeutic direction for the family in question.


In its draft Data Protection Regulation, the European Union has announced a major new economic and human right – the right to data portability ('RDP'). The basic idea of the RDP is that an individual would be able to transfer his or her material from one information service to another, without hindrance. For instance, consumers would have a legal right to get an immediate and full download of their data held by a social network such as Facebook, a cloud provider, or a smartphone app.Although the idea of data portability is appealing, the RDP as defined in Article 18 of the draft Regulation is unprecedented and problematic. Part I explains Article 18, whose text appears to require software and online service providers to create what we call an 'Export-Import Module,' or software code that exports data seamlessly from the first service to the second service. The requirements would apply globally, for any entity that sells to an E.U. resident.Part II critiques the RDP in light of the teachings of E.U. competition and U.S. antitrust law. Competition law has long addressed the problems of lock-in and high switching costs that form a chief justification for the RDP. The RDP, however, applies to small enterprises, where there is essentially no risk of lock-in. In contrast to competition law, the RDP applies to all online services even where there is no market power and no barrier to entry. Article 18 more generally is in conflict with the rules in competition law about exclusionary conduct – it creates a per se prohibition where competition law would apply a rule of reason approach. Competition law would consider the many efficiencies that result from a service provider deciding which functions and formats to include in its products, which undergo rapid innovation.Part III shows that Article 18 also suffers serious difficulties as a matter of privacy or data protection law. Proponents have claimed the RDP is a new fundamental human right, aiding the individual's autonomy for online activities. No jurisdiction has experimented with anything resembling the proposed Article 18, however, casting serious doubt on its status as a new human right. Among other difficulties, Article 18 poses serious risks to a long-established E.U. fundamental right of data protection, the right to security of a person's data. Previous access requests by individuals were limited in scope and format. By contrast, when an individual's lifetime of data must be exported 'without hindrance,' then one moment of identity fraud can turn into a lifetime breach of personal data. Part IV shows that Article 18 goes far beyond previous legal rules that specifically address interoperability.In conclusion, the novel RDP is justified by the supposed benefits to consumers. As drafted, however, the RDP likely reduces consumer welfare, as articulated after long experience in competition law. It also creates risks to privacy that are not addressed in the current text. The RDP deserves far more scrutiny before becoming a mandate that applies globally to software and online services.


As little is known about the effectiveness of different types of implementation intentions on the regulation of emotions, the present experiments focused on the differential effectiveness of various implementation intentions on the down-regulation of disgust responses. In Experiment 1, an antecedent-focused implementation intention based on cognitive reappraisal allowed participants to rate disgusting pictures as being less unpleasant than participants in the control condition or the goal intention condition, while the reported intensity (arousal) ratings stayed unaffected. In Experiment 2, participants with a response-focused implementation intention, devised to regulate the intensity of the emotional experience, reported a lower evoked arousal after seeing the disgusting slides, while the valence ratings remained unchanged. Thus, implementation intentions were shown to exert differential effects depending on whether they targeted one or another emotional dimension (i.e., valence vs. arousal).


Last term, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act in a landmark decision. It is a forceful reminder that America's oldest question — how power should be shared between federal and state sovereigns — retains powerful political salience. Critics have reflexively attacked the decision as an assault on states' rights, while supporters have celebrated the result. Regrettably, insufficient attention has been paid to how, in actuality, health care regulatory authority has been and will be divided between federal and state governments. In this Article, we fill that gap. To do so, we apply "federalism-in-fact," a theory that seeks to measure the real-world, as opposed to theoretical, apportionment of power between sovereigns. We conclude that the Affordable Care Act has in important ways increased states' power to regulate private health insurance when viewed in proper contrast to the previously exclusive ERISA regulatory regime. In addition, we offer recommendations on how states can use their freedom under the Affordable Care Act to grow their regulatory markets, and we explain why collateral forces are likely to increase state regulatory power even if states do nothing.


. Bacteriophages against methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains. Poniatovskyi V.A., Bondarchuk O.L., Prystupiuk M.O., Smikodub O.O., Shyrobokov V.P. Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most common opportunistic pathogens that causes a variety of diseases, from minor skin infections to life-threatening sepsis, meningitis, pneumonia and a number of other diseases. Particular attention was paid to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains with multiple drug resistance. The purpose of this study is investigation of the sensitivity of clinical isolates of Staphylococcus aureus, including methicillin-resistant strains, to bacteriophage drugs and determination of possibility of using this agent for the treatment of staphylococcal infections. A number of classical and modern microbiological methods for the isolation and identification of Staphylococcus aureus: an indication of genes, responsible for antibiotic resistance (PCR analysis), determination of sensitivity to antibiotics (disc diffusion method) and bacteriophages (spot test, Gracia method, Appelman method) were used in the study. The susceptibility analysis of Staphylococcus aureus with presence and absence of mecA gene to the commercial bacteriophage product – "PYOFAG ® BACTERIOPHAGE POLYVALENT" was performed. The results of the study showed that the total number of susceptible strains of bacteria was 95±0,2%. The use of investigational Bacteriophage drug for the treatment of furunculosis caused by MRSA has shown positive results. After one week of using the bacteriophage as monotherapy, the patient experienced regression of the clinical symptoms. For the period of use no adverse effects have been detected. Thus, the phage drugs using can become an important tool in the control of antibiotic-resistant strains, which cause a variety of infections in humans.


A membrane electrode assembly (MEA) for hydrogen fuel cells has been fabricated using single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) support and platinum catalyst. Films of SWCNTs and commercial platinum (Pt) black were sequentially cast on a carbon fiber electrode (CFE) using a simple electrophoretic deposition procedure. Scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy showed that the nanotubes and the platinum retained their nanostructure morphology on the carbon fiber surface. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) revealed that the carbon nanotube-based electrodes exhibited an order of magnitude lower charge-transfer reaction resistance (R(ct)) for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) than did the commercial carbon black (CB)-based electrodes. The proton exchange membrane (PEM) assembly fabricated using the CFE/SWCNT/Pt electrodes was evaluated using a fuel cell testing unit operating with H(2) and O(2) as input fuels at 25 and 60 degrees C. The maximum power density obtained using CFE/SWCNT/Pt electrodes as both the anode and the cathode was approximately 20% better than that using the CFE/CB/Pt electrodes.


Objective: The present study aimed to investigate the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Cohen–Hoberman inventory of physical symptoms (CHIPS). Construct and discriminant validity were examined by assessing associations between factors and subjective health complaints (SHC) inventory subscales in addition to measures of pain sensitivity, perceived stress and psychological distress. Design: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted with 535 healthy individuals from the general population (80.6% female, mean age = 29.80). Main outcome measures: Participants completed CHIPS, SHC, perceived stress scale, pain sensitivity questionnaire, and hospital anxiety and depression scale. Results: Principal components analysis demonstrated that CHIPS comprised 8 'symptoms' factors as follows; 'sympathetic/cardiac' (7 items; α = .827), 'muscular' (6 items; α = .752), 'metabolic' (5 items; α = .736), 'gastrointestinal' (5 items; α = .714), 'vasovagal' (4 items; α = .743), 'cold/flu' (2 items; α = .837), 'headache' (2 items; α = .690) and 'minor haemorrhagic' (2 items; α = .309). Significant correlations were observed between factors and SHC subscales (moderate-high), pain sensitivity (negligible-low) and levels of perceived stress and anxiety (low-moderate) indicating good construct, and discriminant validity, respectively. Conclusions: CHIPS is a multidimensional and internally consistent measurement of physical symptoms. The postulated factor structure may be used for research purposes particularly in health psychology, to consistently differentiate between clusters of self-reported symptoms.


The iron and steel industry has been growing increasingly in Turkey in the last decade. Today, its electricity demand is nearly one tenth of the installed generation capability of 40 GW in the country. In this paper, power quality (PQ) investigations based on the arc furnace installations of the iron and steel plants using field measurements according to the international standard IEC 61000-4-30 are documented. Interharmonics and voltage flicker problems occurring both at the common-coupling points of those plants and at the arc furnace and static VAr compensator (SVC) systems of the plants themselves are determined with the use of GPS receiver synchronization modules attached to the mobile PQ measurement systems. It has been observed that flicker and interharmonic problems are dominant at the points of common couplings where arc furnace installations are supplied. Based on the field measurements obtained with collaborative work of five arc furnace plants, it is possible to say that contemporary SVC systems cause interharmonic amplification problems around the second harmonic, and novel methods are required to solve this problem.


OBJECTIVE
To develop a formula for correcting slope-intercept plasma iohexol clearance in cats and to compare clearance of total iohexol (TIox), endo-iohexol (EnIox), and exo-iohexol (ExIox).

ANIMALS
20 client-owned, healthy adult and geriatric cats.

PROCEDURES
Plasma clearance of TIox was determined via multisample and slope-intercept methods. A multisample method was used to determine clearance for EnIox and ExIox. A second-order polynomial correction factor was derived by performing regression analysis of the multisample data with the slope-intercept data and forcing the regression line though the origin. Clearance corrected by use of the derived formula was compared with clearance corrected by use of Brochner-Mortensen human and Heiene canine formulae. Statistical testing was applied, and Bland-Altman plots were created to assess the degree of agreement between TIox, EnIox, and ExIox clearance.

RESULTS
Mean ± SD iohexol clearance estimated via multisample and corrected slope-intercept methods was 2.16 ± 0.35 mL/min/kg and 2.14 ± 0.34 mL/min/kg, respectively. The derived feline correction formula was Cl(corrected) = (1.036 × Cl(uncorrected)) - (0.062 × Cl(uncorrected)(2)), in which Cl represents clearance. Results obtained by use of the 2 methods were in excellent agreement. Clearance corrected by use of the Heiene formula had a linear relationship with clearance corrected by use of the feline formula; however, the relationship of the feline formula with the Brochner-Mortensen formula was nonlinear. Agreement between TIox, EnIox, and ExIox clearance was excellent.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
The derived feline correction formula applied to slope-intercept plasma iohexol clearance accurately predicted multisample clearance in cats. Use of this technique offers an important advantage by reducing stress to cats associated with repeated blood sample collection and decreasing the costs of analysis.


Immunoendocrinology is an important field that studies the connection between the immune and endocrine systems. Hormones, including molecules like vitamin D and metabolic components, and neurotransmitters are compounds produced by different cell types that are capable of regulating the cross talk among cells from different tissues. During the last years, it became evident that hormones and neurotransmitters are specific modulators of cells of the immune system by fine-tuning their activation and key functions.

This special issue covers the most recent research elucidating how hormones are able to regulate the recruitment of immune cells to an inflammatory site as well as to explain the hormonal impact on the intracellular signaling cascades that follow after tissue injury. It will cover the mechanisms by which hormones can influence inflammatory process.

Diabetes mellitus is the most common cause of end-stage renal disease and chronic low-grade inflammation is an important factor in the pathogenesis of diabetic complication. Mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) has an anti-inflammatory effect, inhibiting lymphocyte proliferation. J.-W. Seo et al. study the effect of MMF on diabetic nephropathy and investigate its action mechanisms in type 2 diabetic mouse models. They demonstrated that MMF treatment attenuates diabetic nephropathy by decreasing CD4+ T cell infiltration and its related cytokines and chemokines. This anti-inflammatory effect of MMF attenuates podocyte apoptosis independent of glucose control.

MicroRNAs are small noncoding RNA molecules that regulate gene expression in all cell types, which are involved in a wide range of biological processes, exerting functional effects at cell, tissue, and organ levels. G. Ventriglia et al. summarize the most recent data on the potential involvement of microRNAs in autoimmune diabetes and indicate that miRNAs represent major players in the dialogue between beta cells and immune system, regulating several aspects of their function and survival.

Infection with the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi induces a hormonal systemic deregulation. A. F. Nardy et al. illustrated how the sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) system regulates both thymic and lymph node T cell egress which is essential for producing and maintaining the recycling T cell repertoire. The presence of this T cell receptor (TCR) bearing cells in the periphery may have potential implications for disease outcome. The authors discuss the possibility that the early egress of undifferentiated CD4−CD8− T cells plays a role in the immunopathologic events in Chagas disease by altering adaptive immune responses.

The current evidence of the role of liver dendritic cells (DC) in the progression from nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) to fibrosis is reviewed by P. Almeda-Valdes et al. Link between lipid metabolism and DC function suggests that immunogenic DC are associated with liver lipid storage, which might represent a possible pathophysiological mechanism in NAFLD.

Interactions between the pineal gland and the immune system have been studied ex vivo. A. P. Herman et al. provide evidence on how interleukin- (IL-) 1β suppresses melatonin secretion and its action seems to be targeted on the reduction of pineal gland arylalkylamine-N-acetyltransferase (AA-NAT) protein expression.

Varicocele is the most common cause of infertility in men and the development of varicocele-related testis damage may be caused by disruption of homeostasis between cell proliferation and cell death. In addition, apoptosis is a physiological process by which a sequence of intracellular events results in the programmed elimination of a cell from its environment. Specifically, alterations in the apoptosis of germ cells may be crucial in varicocele-related human infertility and, as a direct consequence, targeting apoptosis may represent an alternative and rational therapeutic strategy in the treatment of varicocele complications. L. Minutoli et al. studied the effect of Polydeoxyribonucleotide (PDRN), an agonist of adenosine A2A receptor, on testicular Neuronal Apoptosis Inhibitory Protein (NAIP) and survivin expression in an experimental model of varicocele. They found that PDRN may represent a rational therapeutic option for accelerating recovery from depressed testicular function through a strategic modulation of apoptosis in experimental varicocele.


To evaluate the relative contribution of insulin binding and postbinding defects of glucose utilization in peripheral tissue during normal and diabetic pregnancy, we have studied the in vitro insulin action of isolated adipocytes from eight nondiabetic pregnant women and nine pregnant women with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus who were undergoing cesarian section. The pregnant women were compared with a matched group of normal nonpregnant women undergoing gynecologic surgery. Insulin binding to adipocytes measured at tracer insulin concentration was reduced by 45% (P < 0.01) in normal pregnant women and by 30% (P < 0.02) in pregnant women with diabetes. In contrast, no changes were found between the three groups in insulin binding to pure monocytes and erythrocytes. The glucose transport system in fat cells from both groups of pregnant women was characterized by impaired maximal (P < 0.05) and half-maximal (P < 0.05) response to insulin. When fat cell glucose metabolism was studied, pregnant diabetic women exhibited decreased basal lipogenesis (P < 0.05) and decreased maximal responses of lipogenesis and glucose oxidation to insulin stimulation (P < 0.05). Similar but less pronounced abnormalities were seen in glucose metabolism of adipocytes from nondiabetic pregnant women. In conclusion, both in late normal and diabetic pregnancy, insulin binding to adipocytes is significantly reduced and accompanied by decreased insulin sensitivity and reduced maximal insulin responsiveness of glucose transport and by impaired basal and maximally insulin-stimulated glucose metabolism.


Goal: To develop and validate a field-based data collection and assessment method for human activity recognition in the mountains with variations in terrain and fatigue using a single accelerometer and a deep learning model. Methods: The protocol generated an unsupervised labelled dataset of various long-term field-based activities including run, walk, stand, lay and obstacle climb. Activity was voluntary so transitions could not be determined a priori. Terrain variations included slope, crossing rivers, obstacles and surfaces including road, gravel, clay, mud, long grass and rough track. Fatigue levels were modulated between rested to physical exhaustion. The dataset was used to train a deep learning convolutional neural network (CNN) capable of being deployed on battery powered devices. The human activity recognition results were compared to a lab-based dataset with 1,098,204 samples and six features, uniform smooth surfaces, non-fatigued supervised participants and activity labelling defined by the protocol. Results: The trail run dataset had 3,829,759 samples with five features. The repetitive activities and single instance activities required hyper parameter tuning to reach an overall accuracy 0.978 with a minimum class precision for the one-off activity (climbing gate) of 0.802. Conclusion: The experimental results showed that the CNN deep learning model performed well with terrain and fatigue variations compared to the lab equivalents (accuracy 97.8% vs. 97.7% for trail vs. lab). Significance: To the authors knowledge this study demonstrated the first successful human activity recognition (HAR) in a mountain environment. A robust and repeatable protocol was developed to generate a validated trail running dataset when there were no observers present and activity types changed on a voluntary basis across variations in terrain surface and both cognitive and physical fatigue levels.


Analysis of micro-level data confirms the effects of differential technical change on both the demand and the supply side of rural labor markets. Technical change affects to a certain extent rural migration. However, due to the inability of nonagricultural sector to absorb the increasing labor force, agriculture sector will continue to provide employment opportunities.


Introduction:
Fluid therapy is one of the cornerstones of resuscitation, although only 50% of critically ill patients are fluid responders. In recent years, the most traditionally used techniques to understand patient's fluid status, such as central venous pressure (CVP) or mean arterial pressure (MAP), have shown to be unreliable in predicting fluid responsiveness. Consequently, new techniques have been developed as improved predictors, such as, stroke volume variation (SVV) or continuous cardiac output (CO) monitoring systems.
FloTrac/Vigileo system calculates continuous CO and SVV by analyzing the arterial pulse waveform though semi-invasive arterial catheterization.
Passive leg raising (PLR) test is an alternative preload-modifying maneuver: when inferior limbs are raised an amount of blood is autotransfused to the central circulation. PLR has been included in several guidelines in critically ill patient's resuscitation. Combined with a SVV and CO monitoring system, PLR may help predict fluid responsiveness in critically ill patients.
However, none of these techniques have been proved to predict several degrees of fluid responsiveness, which could lead to a better and more individualized fluid therapy, where patients would receive the amount of fluid that their heart can manage.
Objectives:
The aim of this study is to evaluate if Staggered Passive Leg Raising (SPLR) test can trigger significant changes on SVV, CO and MAP assessed by Vigileo/FloTrac device in mechanical ventilated patients in order to establish several degrees of fluid responsiveness.
Design:
This is an observational, cross-sectional study performed in The department of Anesthesiology in a third level teaching facility, Hospital Universitari Josep Trueta. The study will be performed in 2017.
Participants and methods:
Patients (n=32) attending the operating room between April and May 2017 for a major surgery who will need monitoring with Vigileo/FloTrac device, CVP and mechanical ventilation.
Measurements of SVV, CO and MAP will be obtained with Vigileo/FloTrac in baseline status, during SPLR test and after a fluid bolus. ANOVA analysis for repeated measures will be used for analyzing mean SVV, CO and MAP


Humans can covertly track the position of an object, even if the object is temporarily occluded. What are the neural mechanisms underlying our capacity to track moving objects when there is no physical stimulus for the brain to track? One possibility is that the brain "fills-in" information about imagined objects using internally generated representations similar to those generated by feed-forward perceptual mechanisms. Alternatively, the brain might deploy a higher order mechanism, for example using an object tracking model that integrates visual signals and motion dynamics (Kwon et al., 2015). In the present study, we used electroencephalography (EEG) and time-resolved multivariate pattern analyses to investigate the spatial processing of visible and imagined objects. Participants tracked an object that moved in discrete steps around fixation, occupying six consecutive locations. They were asked to imagine that the object continued on the same trajectory after it disappeared and move their attention to the corresponding positions. Time-resolved decoding of EEG data revealed that the location of the visible stimuli could be decoded shortly after image onset, consistent with early retinotopic visual processes. For processing of unseen/imagined positions, the patterns of neural activity resembled stimulus-driven mid-level visual processes, but were detected earlier than perceptual mechanisms, implicating an anticipatory and more variable tracking mechanism. Encoding models revealed that spatial representations were much less precise for imagined than visible stimuli. Monitoring the position of imagined objects thus utilises similar perceptual processes as processing objects that are actually present, but with different temporal dynamics. These results indicate that internally generated representations rely on top-down processes, and their timing is influenced by the predictability of the stimulus. All data and analysis code for this study are available at https://osf.io/8v47t/.


Fragmentation is widely recognised as one of the defining characteristics of global migration governance However, there has been little academic analysis of fragmentation, either as a dependent or independent variable in the international politics of migration We aim to explain why it is that global migration governance has historically emerged as a patchwork of international institutions In order to do so, we outline an original theoretical framework based on the proposition that power asymmetries between predominantly 'sending' and 'receiving' countries create a dynamic in which relatively weak states seek multilateralism and relatively strong states veto multilateralism, leading to institutional proliferation as a means to address immediate functional challenges We apply this framework to four key historical turning points in the recent history of global migration governance: first, the impasse at the United Nations and the expansion of Regional Consultative Processes (1985–2001);second, the surge of new mandate creations and the first High-Level Dialogue on Migration and Development (1999–2006);third, the establishment of the Global Forum on Migration and Development and the Global Migration Group (2006–8);and finally, the New York Declaration and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (2016–18)


Shell-tempered ware identified at Gârcina–Slatina Cozla II-III (Neamț County) was analysed in terms of microscopic, mineralogical and chemical characteristics for revealing its technological parameters. The site located near Piatra Neamț, on the Cozla hillside was used for the exploitation of salt-water resources by the Cucuteni communities and, later on, during the Early Bronze Age. Selected pottery samples were examined using optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Results show that the studied pottery samples although similar in the added temper have distinctive features in terms of raw material quality, processing and firing regime.


This Article contends that implicit bias theory has improved contemporary understanding of the dynamics of individual bias. Implicit bias research has also helped to explain the persistent racial disparities in many areas of public policy, including criminal law and enforcement. Implicit bias theory, however, does not provide the foundation for a comprehensive analysis of racial inequality. Even if implicit racial biases exist pervasively, these biases alone do not explain broad societal tolerance of vast racial inequality. Instead, as social dominance theorists have found, a strong desire among powerful classes to preserve the benefits they receive from stratification leads to collective acceptance of group-based inequality. Because racial inequality within criminal law and enforcement reinforces the vulnerability of persons of color and replicates historical injuries caused by explicitly racist practices, legal theorists whose work analyzes the intersection of criminality and racial subordination could find that social dominance theory allows for a rich discussion of these issues.


The ability to germinate, tolerate desiccation and survive in air-dry storage was investigated during early seed development in planta and subsequent ex planta maturation of sumauma (Ceiba pentandra). Immature fruits were collected on three different dates (i.e. from about 5 days before until 7 days after mass maturity). Immature fresh seeds were not able to germinate. Fruits or seeds were subjected immediately after each collection to three different drying treatments with progressively slower rates of dessication: (i) seeds were extracted from the fruits and dried immediately; (ii) fruits were dried in a thin layer; (iii) fruits were dried in a tied polyethylene bag (with 10 holes of 1cm diameter). Drying was in a room maintained at 25 degrees C +/- 3 degrees C and 65%+/- 5% r.h. For treatment (i) the seeds were dried for 6 days in order to reduce moisture content to around 13% ( +/- 2%) moisture content. For treatments (ii) and (iii) the fruits were subjected to different periods of drying depending upon collection date. The results of these post-collection treatments showed generally that the more immature the seeds the slower the rate of drying that is required to improve ability to germinate, ability to tolerate desiccation and potential longevity, but at the third harvest, 7 days after mass maturity, the intermediate drying rate treatment was the most beneficial. Thus post fruit collection treatments can be modified depending upon the stage of seed development in order to provide good to high quality seeds of sumauma when collection has to be made at a site with difficult access at less than ideal times. The results are relevant to seed collection practices for both forestry and ex situ plant biodiversity conservation.


Author(s): Duflo, Esther; Dupas, Pascaline; Kremer, Michael | Abstract: Following the widespread adoption of free primary education, African policymakers are now considering making secondary school free, but little is known about the private and social benefits of free secondary education. We exploit randomized assignment to secondary school scholarships among 2,064 youths in Ghana, combined with 12 years of data, to establish that scholarships increase educational attainment, knowledge, skills, and preventative health behaviors, while reducing female fertility. Eleven years after receipt of the scholarship, only female winners show private labor market gains, but those come primarily in the form of better access to jobs with rents (in particular rationed jobs in the public sector). We develop a simple model to interpret the labor market results and help think through the welfare impact of free secondary education.


A circular economy refers to an industrial economy with a cradle to cradle vision, shifting from the use of fossil fuels towards renewable energy, minimizing the use of toxic chemicals and reducing waste by recycling through careful system design. The concept of a circular economy is based on the study of non-linear, in particular living systems, with a major outcome being the optimisation of systems rather than of the individual components which make up each system. Industrial symbiosis (IS) is the exchange of energy, waste and by-products among industries in order to add value, while reducing costs and environmental impacts. This is consistent with the principles of a circular economy, and is a stepping stone towards the design of sustainable economies and policies. In the scope of this study, the use of local and renewable resources and the development of industrial ecology can contribute to the decrease of environmental impacts of a living, interactive system, on a given territory. A process system design framework is developped to model a superstructure that contains the list of possible options for the system. The LCA is used to calculate the environmental impacts of a product or a service. The method requires certain adjustments in order to assess the impacts of a spatially delimited system. The design of such system can be done by combining Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that can provide a clear and structured framework to assess the environmental impacts of the system and process system design methods that applies mathematical programing techniques to systematically design territorial configurations using costs and thermo-chemical or physical models. The new method allows to generate the most attractive scenarios for the systems using a systematic modeling framework and using an optimisation approach that allows to generate a limited set of pareto optimal configurations that can then be evaluated to identify the most attractive solution. The method has been successsfully applied on a case study of a city with 100,000 inhabitants.


Of the many possible functions of the macaque monkey primary visual cortex (striate cortex, area 17) two are now fairly well understood. First, the incoming information from the lateral geniculate bodies is rearranged so that most cells in the striate cortex respond to specifically oriented line segments, and, second, information originating from the two eyes converges upon single cells. The rearrangement and convergence do not take place immediately, however: in layer IVc, where the bulk of the afferents terminate, virtually all cells have fields with circular symmetry and are strictly monocular, driven from the left eye or from the right, but not both; at subsequent stages, in layers above and below IVc, most cells show orientation specificity, and about half are binocular. In a binocular cell the receptive fields in the two eyes are on corresponding regions in the two retinas and are identical in structure, but one eye is usually more effective than the other in influencing the cell; all shades of ocular dominance are seen. These two functions are strongly reflected in the architecture of the cortex, in that cells with common physiological properties are grouped together in vertically organized systems of columns. In an ocular dominance column all cells respond preferentially to the same eye. By four independent anatomical methods it has been shown that these columns have the form of vertically disposed alternating left-eye and right-eye slabs, which in horizontal section form alternating stripes about 400 μm thick, with occasional bifurcations and blind endings. Cells of like orientation specificity are known from physiological recordings to be similarly grouped in much narrower vertical sheeet-like aggregations, stacked in orderly sequences so that on traversing the cortex tangentially one normally encounters a succession of small shifts in orientation, clockwise or counterclockwise; a 1 mm traverse is usually accompanied by one or several full rotations through 180°, broken at times by reversals in direction of rotation and occasionally by large abrupt shifts. A full complement of columns, of either type, left-plus-right eye or a complete 180° sequence, is termed a hypercolumn. Columns (and hence hypercolumns) have roughly the same width throughout the binocular part of the cortex. The two independent systems of hypercolumns are engrafted upon the well known topographic representation of the visual field. The receptive fields mapped in a vertical penetration through cortex show a scatter in position roughly equal to the average size of the fields themselves, and the area thus covered, the aggregate receptive field, increases with distance from the fovea. A parallel increase is seen in reciprocal magnification (the number of degrees of visual field corresponding to 1 mm of cortex). Over most or all of the striate cortex a movement of 1-2 mm, traversing several hypercolumns, is accompanied by a movement through the visual field about equal in size to the local aggregate receptive field. Thus any 1-2 mm block of cortex contains roughly the machinery needed to subserve an aggregate receptive field. In the cortex the fall-off in detail with which the visual field is analysed, as one moves out from the foveal area, is accompanied not by a reduction in thickness of layers, as is found in the retina, but by a reduction in the area of cortex (and hence the number of columnar units) devoted to a given amount of visual field: unlike the retina, the striate cortex is virtually uniform morphologically but varies in magnification. In most respects the above description fits the newborn monkey just as well as the adult, suggesting that area 17 is largely genetically programmed. The ocular dominance columns, however, are not fully developed at birth, since the geniculate terminals belonging to one eye occupy layer IVc throughout its length, segregating out into separate columns only after about the first 6 weeks, whether or not the animal has visual experience. If one eye is sutured closed during this early period the columns belonging to that eye become shrunken and their companions correspondingly expanded. This would seem to be at least in part the result of interference with normal maturation, though sprouting and retraction of axon terminals are not excluded.


The Internal Model Control (IMC) structure has been widely recognized as very useful in clarifying the issues related to the mismatch between the model used for controller design and the actual process. The structure also gives rise to a two step controller synthesis procedure, of which the second step deals with the design of a low pass filter such that robustness with respect to model-plant mismatch is guaranteed. The Structured Singular Value (SSV) was introduced recently and it allowed the non-conservative quantification of the concept of robust performance. This paper deals with the design of the IMC filter by using the SSV and it demonstrates how this approach can be used with either an H2 - or an H¿-optimal controller.


Chemical properties of the California Undercurrent (CU) have been changing over the past several decades, yet the mechanisms responsible for the trend are still not fully understood. We present a survey of temperature, salinity, O2, pH, and currents at intermediate depths (defined here as 50–500 m) in the summer (30 June to 10 July) and winter (8–15 December) of 2012 in the southern region of the Southern California Bight. Observations of temperature, salinity, and currents reveal that local bathymetry and small gyres play an important role in the flow path of the California Undercurrent (CU). Using spiciness (π) as a tracer, we observe a 10% increase of Pacific Equatorial Water (PEW) in the core of the CU during the summer versus the winter. This is associated with an increase in π of 0.2, and a decrease in O2 and pH of 30 μmol kg−1 and 0.022, respectively; the change in pH is driven by increased CO2, while total alkalinity remains unchanged. The high-π, low-O2, and low-pH waters during the summer are not distributed uniformly in the study region. Moreover, mooring observations at the edge of the continental shelf reveal intermittent intrusions of PEW onto the shelf with concomitant decreases in O2 and pH. We estimate that increased advection of PEW in the CU could account for approximately 50% of the observed decrease in O2, and between 49 and 73% of the decrease in pH, over the past three decades.


Internal thought refers to the process of directing attention away from a primary visual task to internal cognitive processing. Internal thought is a pervasive mental activity and closely related to primary task performance. As such, automatic detection of internal thought has significant potential for user modelling in intelligent interfaces, particularly for e-learning applications. Despite the close link between the eyes and the human mind, only a few studies have investigated vergence behaviour during internal thought and none has studied moment-to-moment detection of internal thought from gaze. While prior studies relied on long-term data analysis and required a large number of gaze characteristics, we describe a novel method that is computationally light-weight and that only requires eye vergence information that is readily available from binocular eye trackers. We further propose a novel paradigm to obtain ground truth internal thought annotations that exploits human blur perception. We evaluate our method for three increasingly challenging detection tasks: (1) during a controlled math-solving task, (2) during natural viewing of lecture videos, and (3) during daily activities, such as coding, browsing, and reading. Results from these evaluations demonstrate the performance and robustness of vergence-based detection of internal thought and, as such, open up new directions for research on interfaces that adapt to shifts of mental attention.


In-network caching is an appealing solution to cope with the increasing bandwidth demand of video, audio and data transfer over the Internet. Nonetheless, an increasing share of content delivery services adopt encryption through HTTPS, which is not compatible with traditional ISP-managed approaches like transparent and proxy caching. This raises the need for solutions involving both Internet Service Providers (ISP) and Content Providers (CP): by design, the solution should preserve business-critical CP information (e.g., content popularity, user preferences) on the one hand, while allowing for a deeper integration of caches in the ISP architecture (e.g., in 5G femto-cells) on the other hand. In this paper we address this issue by considering a content-oblivious ISP-operated cache. The ISP allocates the cache storage to various content providers so as to maximize the bandwidth savings provided by the cache: the main novelty lies in the fact that, to protect business-critical information, ISPs only need to measure the aggregated miss rates of the individual CPs and do not need to be aware of the objects that are requested, as in classic caching. We propose a cache allocation algorithm based on a perturbed stochastic subgradient method, and prove that the algorithm converges close to the allocation that maximizes the overall cache hit rate. We use extensive simulations to validate the algorithm and to assess its convergence rate under stationary and non-stationary content popularity. Our results (i) testify the feasibility of content-oblivious caches and (ii) show that the proposed algorithm can achieve within 10% from the global optimum in our evaluation.


Background: The unusual fertility increase experienced by several Arab countries in the recent years is particularly visible in Egypt, where fertility declined very slowly after 2000 and started to increase again between 2008 and 2014.

Objective: We first check the quality and measurement accuracy of Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). The analysis confirms the trend since 2000. We descriptively look for possible underlying causes.

Methods: We use quality criteria to check DHS data and control for tempo effect. We also perform a proximate determinants analysis to study the mechanisms affecting fertility, particularly marriage and contraceptive use patterns.

Results: The trend in fertility, which has been at a level slightly below 3.5 children per woman since 2000, is due to an increase in parity one-to-three children and a steady decline in parity four-and-more children. While changes in contraception use had the largest and a growing suppressing effect before 2000, after the turn of the century there was no change in the impact of either marriage or contraception on fertility.

Conclusions: We find that well-educated women between 20 and 29 years lack labour market opportunities. They may have preponed their fertility. Fertility could start declining again once the labour market situation for women has improved. On the other hand, the family model of three children is still widespread in the country.

Contribution: The article studies the fertility increase in Egypt. It contributes to the literature on exceptions to the demographic transition, such as stalls in fertility decline, particularly in the context of Arab countries.


This thesis explores the relationship between parents and schools in the context of reformed public policy. Following a loss of public confidence in the state system of schooling, reformed systems of school governance and arrangements for the involvement of parents in their children's schools have been introduced which champion the consumers of education rather than the producers. In order to understand the present relationship, the thesis argues that we need to understand its origins and how it has evolved over time. It is argued that current relations are shaped by a dominant tradition based on an alliance between the state and professional groups which kept parents at arm's length. The thesis uses structuration theory to explain how practices and beliefs inherent in the tradition continue to reproduce that tradition unless beliefs are challenged and new practices introduced into institutional structures which support parental agency. The thesis draws upon quantitative survey data and qualitative case-study data to investigate the parent as consumer, co-educator and citizen in comparison with the dominant tradition and draws the conclusion that there is evidence of practices and beliefs which support all of these but that the repositioning of the parent as 'active-consumer' provides evidence for a new emergent tradition.


In an important collaborative partnership, the Workplace Research Centre has worked closely with Aboriginal Employment Strategy Ltd, Generation One and Mission Australia to undertake a review of the current data challenges in the realm of Indigenous labour market analysis. The study emerged from a recognition, across all of the research partners, that current data collection methods surrounding Indigenous employment experience require significant revision. The report scopes the potential for improvements to data collection methods, and considers alternative options for future data collection. Particular focus is placed on the issue of career formation and development, and how the experience of Indigenous workers might be statistically better captured. The controversial issue of ???best practice??? is also considered by the report. The report is divided into four core areas of analysis: (1) conceptual critique; (2) quantitative critique; (3) qualitative review of the best practice concept; and (4) final recommendations going forward. The final report emerging from this research collaboration has been released by Generation One. It is hoped that this research will prompt some lively discussion in realm of Indigenous labour market policy.


"Cascade testing" refers to the performance of genetic counseling and testing in blood relatives of individuals who have been identified with specific genetic mutations. Testing protocols and other interventions may save lives and improve health and quality of life for these family members. Obstetrician-gynecologists should know who is eligible for cascade testing and should use all available resources to ensure that cascade testing is offered and occurs in a timely manner. Despite the clear health benefits for specific populations and individuals, obstetrician-gynecologists should be aware of the potential barriers to cascade testing and should know which options can help patients overcome those barriers. Such barriers, however, may be overcome with health care provider awareness and participation in local and state initiatives to improve implementation of cascade testing. Resources (available within federal and state agencies, professional societies, and in advocacy and community groups) are critical to the successful implementation of cascade testing. This Committee Opinion focuses specifically on cascade testing and the role of the obstetrician-gynecologist in clinical and public health efforts to increase identification of women with hereditary cancer syndromes.


Background: Traumatic dental injuries (TDIs) are one of the most common body injuries and constitute an important public health problem. These injuries are considerably more common among adolescents, and can lead to pain, physical impairment, emotional distress and negative impact on the quality of life. Theories link most types of injuries to individual behaviours within a complex matrix involving both the physical and social environments. However, most of the aetiological studies on TDIs focus on proximal risk factors and overlook the underlying more distal determinants. This PhD thesis aimed to assess whether certain behavioural and psychosocial determinants were associated with the prevalence of TDIs among adolescents in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with a particular focus on the role of their risk-taking behaviours and peer influence. Methods: A stratified two-stage cluster sample of 902 students (461 boys and 441 girls) was randomly selected from adolescents attending 1st and 2nd years of public and private secondary schools in Riyadh, using a self-weighting design for both sexes and school types. Data were collected through clinical examination and questionnaire. TDIs were clinically diagnosed using a modified version of the WHO classification for epidemiological studies. The clinical examination also included assessment of overjet and lip coverage. The questionnaire was based on the WHO Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children questionnaire and the CDC Youth Risk Behaviour Surveillance System, assessing exposures risk-taking behaviours and peer influence, as well as demographics, socio-economic status and physical activity. The differences in prevalence of TDIs between the different groups of the covariates and exposures were calculated. Then, Poisson regressions with a robust error variance were used to estimate adjusted prevalence ratios (relative risks) of TDIs between the different exposures to provide sequential adjustment for confounding factors. The models were further checked for interactions between the main exposure and the peer influence variables. Results: Overall, 42.6% of adolescents had TDIs to their anterior teeth (Boys: 59.4%; Girls: 24.9%). After adjusting for age, sex, father's education, nationality, physical activity and overjet >3mm, smoking was significantly associated with TDIs among girls (RR 2.50; 95% CI 1.42–4.41), and the same was the case among boys for fights (RR 1.46; 95% CI 1.19–1.79), for spending time with friends after school on more than three days a week (RR 1.25; 95% CI 1.07–1.46) and for having peers who carried weapons (RR 1.19; 95% CI 1.01–1.40), compared to their counterparts. TDIs were also significantly associated with both boys and girls who carried weapons (RR 1.36; 95% CI 1.12–1.66), had multiple risk-taking behaviours (RR 1.44; 95% CI 1.20–1.72) and had less than three close friends (RR 1.19; 95% CI 1.00–1.42) compared to their counterparts. The risk of TDIs was intensified among adolescents who carried weapons and had multiple risk-taking behaviours when they lacked peer support (RR 2.18; 95% CI 1.05–4.57 and RR 2.18; 95% CI 1.05–4.57, respectively) compared to their counterparts who had supportive peers (RR 1.28; 95% CI 1.01–1.62 and RR 1.36; 95% CI 1.11–1.68, respectively). Conclusions: Adolescents in Riyadh, particularly boys, had a very high prevalence of TDIs. Risk-taking behaviours (smoking, fights and carrying weapons) and negative peer influence (having peers who carried weapons) indicated an increased risk of TDIs among those adolescents independent of their age, socioeconomic status, physical activity and incisor overjet level. Negative peer influence (lack of peer support) intensified the association between risk-taking behaviours and TDIs.


In "Brennan and Democracy," a leading thinker in U.S. constitutional law offers some powerful reflections on the idea of "constitutional democracy," a concept in which many have seen the makings of paradox. Here Frank Michelman explores the apparently conflicting commitments of a democratic governmental system where key aspects of such important social issues as affirmative action, campaign finance reform, and abortion rights are settled not by a legislative vote but by the decisions of unelected judges. Can we--or should we--embrace the values of democracy together with constitutionalism, judicial supervision, and the rule of law? To answer this question, Michelman calls into service the judicial career of Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, the country's model "activist" judge for the past forty years. Michelman draws on Brennan's record and writings to suggest how the Justice himself might have understood the judiciary's role in the simultaneous promotion of both democratic and constitutional government.The first chapter prompts us to reflect on how tough and delicate an act it is for the members of a society to attempt living together as a people devoted to self-government. The second chapter seeks to renew our appreciation for democratic liberal political ideals, and includes an extensive treatment of Brennan's judicial opinions, which places them in relation to opposing communitarian and libertarian positions. Michelman also draws on the views of two other prominent constitutional theorists, Robert Post and Ronald Dworkin, to build a provocative discussion of whether democracy is best conceived as a "procedural" or a "substantive" ideal.


We prove a new outer bound on the rate-distortion region for the multiterminal source-coding problem. This bound subsumes the best outer bound in the literature and improves upon it strictly in some cases. The improved bound enables us to obtain a new, conclusive result for the binary erasure version of the "CEO problem." The bound recovers many of the converse results that have been established for special cases of the problem, including the recent one for the Gaussian two-encoder problem.


Hydroamination gets a light push uphill Hydroamination of olefins is a broadly useful method for making carbon-nitrogen bonds. However, when both the amine and the olefin have multiple alkyl substituents, the reaction can become energetically unfavorable. Musacchio et al. used the energy in blue light to surmount this obstacle (see the Perspective by Buchanan and Hull). A photo-excited iridium complex oxidized the amine, which in turn bonded efficiently to the olefin, after which a thiophenol cocatalyst shuttled the electron back. The reaction could operate across a wide range of amine and olefin partners. Science, this issue p. 727; see also p. 690 Photochemical electron transfer drives C–N bond formation that would otherwise be energetically unfavorable. The intermolecular hydroamination of unactivated alkenes with simple dialkyl amines remains an unsolved problem in organic synthesis. We report a catalytic protocol for efficient additions of cyclic and acyclic secondary alkyl amines to a wide range of alkyl olefins with complete anti-Markovnikov regioselectivity. In this process, carbon-nitrogen bond formation proceeds through a key aminium radical cation intermediate that is generated via electron transfer between an excited-state iridium photocatalyst and an amine substrate. These reactions are redox-neutral and completely atom-economical, exhibit broad functional group tolerance, and occur readily at room temperature under visible light irradiation. Certain tertiary amine products generated through this method are formally endergonic relative to their constituent olefin and amine starting materials and thus are not accessible via direct coupling with conventional ground-state catalysts.


The paper discusses the role of teachers in the inclusion of migrant students and provides some suggestions for the active engagement of teachers in developing intercultural education, with examples from Slovenia. To support teachers who develop intercultural competence among all students, it is important to include concrete learning objectives in the syllabuses, in the framework of which teachers will be able to teach about social diversity. It will also be necessary to introduce content about multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious society into the academic programmes, so that (future) teachers are more prepared for a diverse school environment and the development of an intercultural society.


Yeats XVII is the latest addition to the important annual that collects the best and most recent Yeats criticism. This volume includes essays by established and up-and-coming scholars and a bibliography of recent international scholarship on Yeats by K. P. S. Jochum. Special to this volume is a complete index of the articles and books reviewed in all seventeen issues. Featured original articles include: "Yeats: Cast-offs, Non-starters and Gnomic Illegibilities," by David R. Clark, which transcribes some little-known manuscript poems found in Yeats's notebooks and collections; "Our Lives with the Yeatses' Ghosts: The Writing and the Editing of the Automatic Script," by Barbara J. Frieling, Margaret Mills Harper, and Sandra L. Sprayberry, which balances literary criticism and biographical detail as it reevaluates the work done--by these authors and their contemporaries--on Yeats's compelling but enigmatic experiments with automatic writing; and "The Collar-Bone of a Hare: On a Manuscript by W. B. Yeats," by Louis Houet, which reveals the historical and biographical milieu in which Yeats created this famous inscription.Richard J. Finneran is Professor of English, University of Tennessee, Knoxville."


Intraspecific hybridization work was carried out on Clarias anguilaris and exotic hollandis Clarias gariepinus with the aim of determining the combination with the best hatchability, survival, and growth performance. The highest percentage hatchability (52.94%) was recorded for the parental exotic Clarias gariepinus while the least (43.99%) was recorded for the parental Clarias anguilaris, 51.80% hatchability was recorded for female Clarias anguilaris x male exotic Clarias gariepinus and 50.68% hatchability for female exotic Clarias gariepinus x male Clarias anguilaris respectively. The highest percentage survival of 74.5% was recorded for parental Clarias anguilaris and the least percentage survival of 38% was recorded for parental exotic Clarias gariepinus. The highest growth performance of 1.77g was observed in pure exotic hollandis C .gariepinus fry, followed by the hybrid cross of female exotic Clarias gariepinus x male Clarias anguilaris(1.60g), then the hybrid cross of male exotic Clarias gariepinus x female Clarias anguilaris (1.53g) and the least was 1.43g for pure Clarias angularis fry. The highest length increase of 0.89cm was observed in the fry of pure exotic hollandis Clarias gariepinus and the least is 0.53cm for pure Clarias angularis fry. Therefore the result of this research work shows that the hybrid of Male exotic holladis Clarias gariepinus x Female Clarias anguilaris is better for culture since the percentage survival, hatchability and length increase is higher than that of Female exotic Clarias gariepinus x Male Clarias anguilaris. Although there was no significant difference in their growth performance.


Abstract. The extracellular concentration of H2O2 in surface aquatic
environments is controlled by a balance between photochemical production and the microbial synthesis of catalase and peroxidase enzymes to remove
H2O2 from solution. In any kind of incubation experiment, the
formation rates and equilibrium concentrations of reactive oxygen species (ROSs) such as H2O2 may be sensitive to both the experiment design, particularly to the regulation of incident light, and the abundance of different microbial groups, as both cellular H2O2 production and catalase–peroxidase enzyme production rates differ between species. Whilst there are extensive measurements of photochemical H2O2 formation rates and the distribution of H2O2 in the marine environment, it is poorly constrained how different microbial groups affect extracellular H2O2 concentrations, how comparable extracellular H2O2
concentrations within large-scale incubation experiments are to those
observed in the surface-mixed layer, and to what extent a mismatch with
environmentally relevant concentrations of ROS in incubations could
influence biological processes differently to what would be observed in
nature. Here we show that both experiment design and bacterial abundance
consistently exert control on extracellular H2O2 concentrations across a range of incubation experiments in diverse marine environments. During four large-scale (>1000 L) mesocosm experiments (in Gran Canaria, the Mediterranean, Patagonia and Svalbard) most experimental factors appeared to exert only minor, or no, direct effect on H2O2
concentrations. For example, in three of four experiments where pH was manipulated
to 0.4–0.5 below ambient pH, no significant change was evident in
extracellular H2O2 concentrations relative to controls. An
influence was sometimes inferred from zooplankton density, but not
consistently between different incubation experiments, and no change in
H2O2 was evident in controlled experiments using different
densities of the copepod Calanus finmarchicus grazing on the diatom Skeletonema costatum (<1 % change in
[H2O2] comparing copepod densities from 1 to 10 L−1). Instead, the changes in H2O2 concentration contrasting high- and low-zooplankton incubations appeared to arise from the resulting changes in bacterial activity. The correlation between bacterial abundance and extracellular H2O2 was stronger in some incubations than others (R2 range 0.09 to 0.55), yet high bacterial densities were consistently associated with low H2O2. Nonetheless, the main control on H2O2 concentrations during incubation experiments relative to those in ambient, unenclosed waters was the regulation of incident light. In an open (lidless) mesocosm experiment in Gran Canaria, H2O2 was persistently elevated (2–6-fold) above ambient concentrations; whereas using closed high-density polyethylene mesocosms in Crete, Svalbard and Patagonia H2O2 within incubations was always reduced (median 10 %–90 %) relative to ambient waters.


This chapter analyzes the factors of religion and politics in the trajectory of Falun Gong. Falun Gong's trajectory can be viewed as a conflict-amplifying process in which the interplay between the group as a religious actor and the state policies and apparatus of religious control led to the eventual crackdown. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the state's policies toward religion and civic organizations created a unique niche for qigong. In the early 1990s, after qigong successfully opened up a space in the gray zone between state and society, Falun Gong emerged as part of the state-sanctioned "scientific" qigong movement by adopting a strategy of accommodation that eschewed explicit spiritual teaching. In the mid-1990s, faced with increasing state suspicion of qigong and fierce competition from thousands of qigong groups, Falun Gong brought its spiritual dimension to the fore and became a new religious movement. This proved a huge success as it met the needs of spiritual seekers in the gray market. Unsettled by Falun Gong's ideological challenge, the state began to take measures to keep Falun Gong out of the political realm. However, the minor irritations that ensued convinced the practitioners that the state was merely misinformed. To convince the state of its "apolitical" nature, Falun Gong launched a persistent "truth clarification" campaign, but the small-scale demonstrations further warned the state of Falun Gong's defiance of its symbolic order. The linkage and clustering of the events eventually exploded into the massive Zhongnanhai protest of 1999. Shocked by Falun Gong's mobilization capacity and ideological challenge, the state officially banned the group and has since harshly purged its practitioners. But the crackdown only served to fully release Falun Gong's political potential. While Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, previously only vaguely referred to evil, the crackdown polarized and intensified Falun Gong's apocalyptic message, which now unequivocally views the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) as a nefarious force. Falun Gong in exile has become a major anti-CCP force that has built a coalition with other political forces and launched waves of political activities aimed at the overthrow of the CCP. The conflict between Falun Gong and the state brings us to the question of what is political and what is religious, as the escalation of the level of conflict can be seen as a result of conflicting interpretations of what counted as "political" and what counted as "religious." In communist China, religion and politics are often fluid spheres in society and always intersect with other social phenomena. Different interpretations of religion and politics by the state and Falun Gong played a huge role in the eventual politicization of the Falun Gong movement. As a result, the story of Falun Gong is one of unintended consequences. The organizational evolution of Falun Gong is an illustration of the religion of the non-religious and the politics of the apolitical in an authoritarian state.


Many executives struggle with the problem of getting things done. They know that they need to get everyone on board — from top to bottom — to make the organization work, but they don't really know how to go about it. Without the presence of a team culture they tend to do things their own way, often resulting in uncoordinated decisions and actions. Executives who behave like ships passing in the night, act in ways that are neither in the interests of the organization or themselves. The implementation of strategy will suffer. This article discusses how to get things done by applying the group coaching methodology, in particular how it can make a difference by insuring that everyone in the organization sees the direction for the business and how their job fits into the "big picture." In the process, executives become mutually invested in encouraging behaviors that insure that everyone works together toward common goals. I present a specific case example to show how group coaching positively affects strategy execution, highlighting the conscious and unconscious psychological processes that induce tipping points for change. Group coaching can be an effective way to create a truly networked organization and to minimize the paranoid thinking that often emerges in matrix-like companies with virtual, highly diverse teams. As part of a group coaching intervention, executives assume constructively challenging follow-up roles, supporting one another to stay on the agreed-upon track. By fostering a greater sense of accountability and trust, "management by fear" is overcome, lateral communication breaks down the silo mentality, and the path is opened to a boundary-less company and real information exchange.


Recent studies have begun to problematize the ways an enduring master-narrative of the "minju" (democratic) labor movement was constructed over the 1970s and 1980s. By examining the voices of women unionists from the past few decades, this article seeks to understand the historical context behind the rise of a particular labor movement discourse and what it might have meant to women workers. It focuses on the complex and sometimes conflictual relationship between exportindustry workers and Christian and student labor activists in the "labor-intellectual alliance" that began in the 1970s. The core of the minju narrative is the idea that a new, historic "labor-intellectual alliance" against the eoyong (pro-company) labor establishment and the repressive state, in which the heroic actions of women workers played the pivotal role, led to the minju camp's eventual triumph in the 1980s. The article deconstructs this hegemonic minju labor discourse, revealing the gap between its rhetoric and reality, by exploring how women themselves coped with the incongruity of their lived experiences and the representations of their struggle in the dominant minju movement. In particular, it focuses on the story of Han Sunim, a well-known leader of the 1970s labor movement whose eventual "betrayal" of the movement was deeply etched in the lore of the minju cause. Understanding minju labor discourse from the perspective of women workers also helps illuminate the little-understood politics of memory in the Korean labor movement and raises new questions on what current scholarly intervention into memory production might mean.


Service-oriented architectures are of vital importance to enterprises maintaining order and service reputation with stakeholders, and by utilizing the latest technologies, advantage can be gained and time and effort saved. Enhancing Enterprise and Service-Oriented Architectures with Advanced Web Portal Technologies offers the latest research and development within the field, filled with case studies, research, methodologies, and frameworks from contributors around the world. In order to stay abreast of the cutting-edge research in the field, it is vital for academics and practitioners to stay involved and studied with the latest publications. This volume contains a wide range of subject matters, levels of technical expertise and development, and new technological advances within the field, and will serve as an excellent resource both as a handbook and a research manual.


In the literature, a lot is discussed about how agroforestry can achieve the mitigation, adaptation and productivity goals of climate-smart agriculture (CSA). However, this may be relatively too broad to assess the trade-offs and synergies of how specific agroforestry technologies or practices achieve the three pillars of CSA. Here, we provide an overview of how improved fallows (an agroforestry technology consisting of planting mainly legume tree/shrub species in rotation with cultivated crops) may achieve the goals of climate-smart agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Our review showed that improved fallow systems have real potential to contribute to food security and climate change mitigation and adaptation in SSA. Under proper management, improved fallows can increase maize yields to about 6 t ha−1, which is comparable to conventional maize yields under fertilization. This is attributed to improved soil fertility and nutrient use efficiency. Although data was generally limited, the growing literature showed that improved fallows increased soil carbon sequestration and reduced greenhouse emissions. Further, as a multiple output land use system, improved fallows may increase fodder availability during dry periods and provide substantial biomass for charcoal production. These livelihood options may become important financial safety nets during off seasons or in the event of crop failures. This notwithstanding, the adoption of improved fallows is mainly in Southern and Eastern Africa, where over 20,000 farmers are now using Sesbania sesban, Tephrosia vogelii, and Cajanus cajan in two-year fallows followed by maize rotations. Land tenure issues, lack of social capital, and improved germplasm and accessions of fallow species have been cited as constraints to scaling up. However, development of seed orchards, nursery development, and the willingness of policy makers to create a policy environment that addresses market failures and alleviates disincentives should improve adoption and future scaling up.


There is no doubt that the language is one of the greatest humankind's tools to communicate. The demand to learn foreign language is fast growing and it is easy once you have simple and instructive methods. This phrase book will feature headwords that offer the users accessibility and make it easy to navigate. It also includes extra cultural words to extend the user's knowledge of the language. It is useful for travelers, students and business people who need quick access to the core words of the language.


TITLE: Automatic Speech Recognition Adaptation for Various Noise Levels AUTHOR: Azhar Sabah Abdulaziz MAJOR ADVISOR: Veton Z. Këpuska, Ph.D. The automatic speech recognition (ASR) is a set of complicated algorithms that convert the intended spoken utterance into a textual form. Acoustic features, which are extracted from the speech signal, are matched against a trained network of linguistic and acoustic models. The ASR performance is degraded significantly when the ambient noise is different than that of the training data. Many approaches have been introduced to address this problem with various degrees of complexity and improvement rates. The general pattern of solving this issue lies in three categories: empowering features, train a general acoustic model and transform models to match noisy features. The acoustic noise is added to the training speech data after collecting them for two reasons: firstly because the data are usually recorded in a specific environment and secondly to control the environments during the training and testing phases. The speech and noise signals are usually combined in the electrical domain using straightforward linear addition. Although this procedure is commonly used, it is iii investigated in depth in this research. It has been proven that the linear addition is no more than an approximation of the real acoustic combination, and it is valid if the speech and noise are non-coherent signals. The adaptive model switching (AMS) solution is proposed, so that the ASR measures the noise level then picks the model that should produce as minimum errors as possible. This solution is a trade-off between model generalization and transformation properties, so that both error and speed costs are maintained as minimum as possible. The short time of silence (STS), which is a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) level detector, was designed specifically for the proposed system. The proposed AMS approach is a general recipe that could be applied to any other ASR systems, although it was tested on Gaussian Mixture Model-Hidden Markov Model (GMM-HMM) recognizer. The AMS ASR has outperformed the model generalization and multiple-decoder maximum score voting for both accuracy and decoding speed. The average error rate reduction was around 34.11% , with a decoding speed improvement of about 37.79% relatively, both compared to the baseline ASR.


In the aristocratic milieu of the Panhellenic games beauty was regarded as an outward manifestation of the ability to perform noble deeds. This connection is made explicit in several of Pindar's odes to victors in the combat sports, e.g. in Olympian 8.19, where it is said of the boy wrestler Alkimedon that "he was beautiful to look at, and with his efforts did not dishonour his appearance". Against this background the unflattering remarks about the appearance of Melissos of Thebes in Isthmian 4 come as a surprise. Why does Pindar find it necessary to refer to his unimposing physique when his succes in the games has provided plenty of material for praise? If one considers the norm for the appearance of combat sports athletes as portrayed in the odes, there seems to have been contempt rather than admiration for the victory of an apparently ugly little man. It is proposed that one of the objects of the poem is to defend Melissos against these perceptions and show that he is a worthy winner. Pindar uses several strategies to achieve this. As Homer restored Aias' honour after his suicide by immortalising his noble deeds, so Pindar hopes to light an unquenchable fire of hymns for Melissos and cover him in "delightful grace". He can do this because Melissos shows that deeds determine the worth of a man, not appearance.


Dr Mathew Varghese is Professor of Psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) at Bangalore, India. He did his training in Medicine at the St John's Medical College, Bangalore and specialised in Psychiatry at NIMHANS in 1984. Since then he has been a faculty at the Department of Psychiatry, NIMHANS for over 25 years. His work at NIMHANS involves clinical services, postgraduate teaching, research and administration. At present he heads an Adult Unit, the Geriatric Clinic and Services and the Family Psychiatry Center at the Department. Dr Varghese's areas of interest are psychogeriatrics, family psychiatry and rehabilitation. He has developed family intervention manuals for WHO projects for use with caregivers of persons with dementia and schizophrenia. He has been involved with research on dementia and since 1998 is one of the founding members of the International 10/66 Dementia Research Group and a member of the World Federation of Neurology Dementia Research Group. He was an investigator on the World Mental Health survey in India. At present he has many ongoing research projects supported by international and national agencies like the Fogarty International Center, the Wellcome Trust, the Department of Science and Technology and Dept of Biotechnology, India. He has over 70 publications in journals, monographs and books. Besides work at the NIMHANS he is a visiting faculty and examiner to other postgraduate courses in mental health. He is on the governing board of the World Association for Psychosocial Rehabilitation (India), the Alzheimer's Disease International, the ARDSI and rehabilitation centers like the Richmond Fellowship Society (RFS) and the Medico Pastoral Association. He was the President, Indian Psychiatric Society (Karnataka State Branch) and is the Vice President, ARDSI (Bangalore) and the Secretary-General of the RFS India. He has also helped organise many conferences, symposia and workshops and was the Organising Secretary of the World Association for Psychosocial Rehabilitation World Congress 2009 at Bangalore. He is the National Coordinator for the National Dementia Strategy of the ARDSI and author of the Dementia India Report 2010.


Shapley values has established itself as one of the most appropriate and theoretically sound frameworks for explaining predictions from complex machine learning models. The popularity of Shapley values in the explanation setting is probably due to Shapley values' unique theoretical properties. The main drawback with Shapley values, however, is that the computational complexity grows exponentially in the number of input features, making it unfeasible in many real world situations where there could be hundreds or thousands of features. Furthermore, with many (dependent) features, presenting/visualizing and interpreting the computed Shapley values also become challenging. The present paper introduces and showcases a method that we call groupShapley. The idea of the method is to group features and then compute and present Shapley values for these groups instead of for all individual features. Reducing hundreds or thousands of features to half a dozen or so feature groups makes precise computations practically feasible, and the presentation and knowledge extraction greatly simplified. We give practical advice for using the approach and illustrate its usability in three different real world examples. The examples vary in both data type (regular tabular data and time series), feature dimension (medium to high), and application (insurance, genetics, and banking).


Cloud computing service providers, even those based outside Europe, may become subject to the EU Data Protection Directive's extensive and complex regime purely through their customers' choices, of which they may have no knowledge or control. We consider the definition and application of the EU 'personal data' concept in the context of anonymisation/pseudonymisation, encryption and data fragmentation in cloud computing, arguing that the definition should be based on the realistic risk of identification, and that the applicability of data protection rules should be based on the risk of harm and its likely severity. In particular, the status of encryption and anonymisation/pseudonymisation procedures should be clarified to promote their use as privacy-enhancing techniques; data encrypted and secured to recognised standards should not be considered 'personal data' in the hands of those without access to the decryption key, such as many cloud computing providers; and finally, unlike, for example, social networking sites, Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service providers (and certain Software as a Service providers) offer no more than utility infrastructure services, and may not even know if information processed using their services is 'personal data' (hence, the 'cloud of unknowing'), so it seems inappropriate for such cloud infrastructure providers to become arbitrarily subject to EU data protection regulation due to their customers' choices.


A protease inhibitor secreted by the liver enables pancreatic β cells to compensate for reduced insulin sensitivity. Pancreatic β cells adjust the secretion of insulin in response to acute changes in plasma glucose concentration. These cells also compensate for long-term changes in insulin sensitivity by adjusting their activity or numbers, or both (see Tarasov and Rorsman). In addition to being insulin resistant, mice lacking the liver insulin receptor (LIRKO mice) also exhibit β cell hyperplasia that depends on factors released from the liver. Using a proteomic approach, El Ouaamari et al. found that the abundance of the protease inhibitor serpinB1 was greater in liver extracts, liver explant–conditioned medium, and serum from LIRKO mice than in those from wild-type mice. SerpinB1 abundance correlated inversely with insulin sensitivity in human patients with risk factors for type 2 diabetes. Recombinant human serpinB1 stimulated the proliferation of β cells in cultured mouse and human islets in a dose-dependent manner. Elastase is a protease inhibited by serpinB1, and forms of serpinB1 that do not inhibit elastase activity did not stimulate proliferation of cultured mouse β cells. Compounds that inhibit elastase also promoted the proliferation of cultured mouse β cells. In mice, elastase inhibitors stimulated the proliferation of both endogenous β cells and the β cells of human islet grafts. Furthermore, overexpression of serpinb1 increased the regeneration of β cells following β cell ablation in zebrafish embryos. In several models of acute and chronic insulin resistance, serpinb1 knockout mice exhibited reduced β cell proliferation compared with wild-type controls. However, β cell proliferation was not abolished in serpinb1 knockouts, indicating that additional factors can induce compensatory proliferation of β cells. Phosphoproteomic analyses demonstrated that treatment of cultured mouse β cells with human serpinB1 stimulated signaling through several pathways that promote cell proliferation and survival. Commentary by Tarasov and Rorsman considers how these findings might be put to clinical use. A. El Ouaamari, E. Dirice, N. Gedeon, J. Hu, J.-Y. Zhou, J. Shirakawa, L. Hou, J. Goodman, C. Karampelias, G. Qiang, J. Boucher, R. Martinez, M. A. Gritsenko, D. F. De Jesus, S. Kahraman, S. Bhatt, R. D. Smith, H.-D. Beer, P. Jungtrakoon, Y. Gong, A. B. Goldfine, C. W. Liew, A. Doria, O. Andersson, W.-J. Qian, E. Remold-O'Donnell, R. N. Kulkarni, SerpinB1 promotes pancreatic β cell proliferation. Cell Metab. 23, 194–205 (2016). [PubMed] A. I. Tarasov, P. Rorsman, Dramatis personae in β-cell mass regulation: Enter SerpinB1. Cell Metab. 23, 8–10 (2016). [Online Journal]


Patients presented with poisoning-related suicide a ttempts is one of the most problematic cases of the emergency services. The most important reaso n for this being the failure to decide the department of the hospital in which these patients should be admitted to, following consultation. The objective of this study is to emp hasize the costlowering effect of treatment and follow-up of such suicide cases in Emergency De partments (ED) instead of intensive care units. A total of 791 adult patients with suicidal attempts were retrospectively examined and their clinical and demographic data were included. In addition, the costs of their treatment in the ED, Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and Psychiatric Clinic between 01/01/2007 and 31/12/2011were compared. When patients were classif ied by their month of birth it was found that patients who born in January had the maximum t endency to commit suicide (n:227, 28.7%), while those born in December were the least to do so (n:30, 3.8%). Of all the patients, 122 (15.4%) were followed-up in Anesthesia Intensiv e Care (AIC), 639 (80.8%) in the Emergency Department Observation Unit and 30 (3.8%) in the Psychiatric Clinic.When costs of the patients who could receive the same medical tre atment in case of necessity were compared; mean cost of the patients were found to be $ 665.44 for the patients treated in AIC, $ 204.09 for patients treated in EDs and $186.85 for those recei v d treatments in the psychiatric clinic. We defined that it would be profitable if the intoxication cases were followed-up in the ED observation units and that ED's could be used more ffectively than ICUs.


Once upon a time ethnographers returning from the field simply sat down, shuffled their note cards, and wrote up their descriptions of the exotic and quaint customs they had observed. Today scholars in all disciplines are realizing how their research is presented is at least as important as what is presented. Questions of voice, style, and audience--the classic issues of rhetoric--have come to the forefront in academic circles. John Van Maanen, an experienced ethnographer of modern organizational structures, is one who believes that the real work begins when he returns to his office with cartons of notes and tapes. In Tales of the Field he offers readers a survey of the narrative conventions associated with writing about culture and an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of various styles. He introduces first the matter-of-fact, realistic report of classical ethnography, then the self-absorbed confessional tale of the participant-observer, and finally the dramatic vignette of the new impressionistic style. He also considers, more briefly, literary tales, jointly told tales, and the theoretically focused formal and critical tales. Van Maanen illustrates his discussion of each style with excerpts from his own work on the police. Tales of the Field offers an informal, readable, and lighthearted treatment of the rhetorical devices used to present the results of fieldwork. Though Van Maanen argues ultimately for the validity of revealing the self while representing a culture, he is sensitive to the differing methods and aims of sociology and anthropology. His goal is not to establish one true way to write ethnography, but rather to make ethnographers of all varieties examine their assumptions about what constitutes a truthful cultural portrait and select consciously and carefully the voice most appropriate for their tales.


Environmental law contributes to biodiversity conservation insofar as it is properly drafted and implemented. This article explores one way in which its effectiveness can be impaired: progressive dilution. This occurs when consecutive steps are taken in the law's application which in isolation may not appear much out of line and are presented as legal, but eventually render a result contrary to the law's intentions – like a military mission creeping beyond its mandate. This phenomenon is explored using the case of an orca found emaciated in the Netherlands' waters in 2010. Captured for rehabilitation purposes and subsequently retained for strictly circumscribed scientific research, the animal somehow ended up in a commercial Spanish entertainment park, used for public performances and breeding purposes – all with express approval of various governmental authorities, including courts. The entire chain of events is analysed in light of requirements imposed by diverse (inter)national legal instruments, including the Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic, North East Atlantic, Irish and North Seas (ASCOBANS), the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and European Union regulations.


This paper exploits parallel computing power of graphics cards to accelerate state space search. We illustrate that modern graphics processing units (GPUs) have the potential to speed up breadth-first search significantly. For a bitvector representation of the search frontier, GPU algorithms with one and two bits per state are presented. Efficient perfect hash functions and their inverse are explored in order to achieve enhanced compression. We report maximal speed-ups of up to a factor of 27 wrt. single core CPU computation.


Our recent research has shown that, in large-scale software systems, defective files seldom exist alone. They are usually architecturally connected, and their architectural structures exhibit significant design flaws which propagate bugginess among files. We call these flawed structures the architecture roots, a type of technical debt that incurs high maintenance penalties. Removing the architecture roots of bugginess requires refactoring, but the benefits of refactoring have historically been difficult for architects to quantify or justify. In this paper, we present a case study of identifying and quantifying such architecture debts in a large-scale industrial software project. Our approach is to model and analyze software architecture as a set of design rule spaces (DRSpaces). Using data extracted from the project's development artifacts, we were able to identify the files implicated in architecture flaws and suggest refactorings based on removing these flaws. Then we built economic models of the before and (predicted) after states, which gave the organization confidence that doing the refactorings made business sense, in terms of a handsome return on investment.


The Trauma Score (TS) has been revised. The revision includes Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), systolic blood pressure (SBP), and respiratory rate (RR) and excludes capillary refill and respiratory expansion, which were difficult to assess in the field. Two versions of the revised score have been developed, one for triage (T-RTS) and another for use in outcome evaluations and to control for injury severity (RTS). T-RTS, the sum of coded values of GCS, SBP, and RR, demonstrated increased sensitivity and some loss in specificity when compared with a triage criterion based on TS and GCS values. T-RTS correctly identified more than 97% of nonsurvivors as requiring trauma center care. The T-RTS triage criterion does not require summing of the coded values and is more easily implemented than the TS criterion. RTS is a weighted sum of coded variable values. The RTS demonstrated substantially improved reliability in outcome predictions compared to the TS. The RTS also yielded more accurate outcome predictions for patients with serious head injuries than the TS.


The increased acceptance and employment of microcomputers to control specific functions in small hydroelectric plants has led to computerized integrated total control of hydropower generation. No longer limited to single features such as level control, governing, or data display; the microcomputer can now be used to control all standard functions of small hydro control and can also provide features not previously considered applicable for computerized control. Total integrated hydroelectric plant control, consisting of turbine control, utility protection, generator protection, run-of-river control, cycling level control, maximum revenue control, peak shaving and power control, data acquisition and display, remote control, and more is discussed using the Greggs Falls Hydro Project as an example.


By employing SrWO4 as Raman active media and ceramic Nd:YAG as laser gain media, a diode-pumped actively Q-switched Raman laser is demonstrated. Single or multiple wavelength first-stokes Raman generations at 1238 and 1252 nm are achieved. To our knowledge, this is the first Raman laser demonstration based on fundamental wavelengths around 1.1 μm. Maximum output powers are 1.02 W at single 1252 nm wavelength, 1.08 W at single 1238 nm wavelength, and 442 mW at multiple wavelengths of 1252 and 1238 nm, corresponding to optical-to-optical conversion efficiencies of 4.78%, 4.95%, and 2.54%, respectively.


This essay builds upon the arguments of Alison Dundes Renteln in her influential book, THE CULTURAL DEFENSE, 2004, in which she argues persuasively for a uniformly recognized culture defense in certain litigations. Critiquing some of her details, we recast her three-prong culture defense test to more effectively balance the competing interests of minority culture members to have their ways of life taken seriously by the courts, and of members of the dominant tradition who wish to preserve the rule of law with its necessary perception as treating all parties equally. The offered formulation now includes the following five elements: 1. Is the litigant an enculturated member of the referenced group? 2. Does the group have an acknowledged tradition as that claimed by the litigant? 3. Is that tradition expected to contribute to the fostering of positive social bonds within the culture group? 4. Was the litigant influenced by that tradition when he or she acted? 5. Were the circumstances of the litigant such that he or she could be reasonably presumed to be unaware of the contrary normative standards of the dominant society?


Summary: Computational gene function prediction can serve to focus experimental resources on high-priority experimental tasks. FuncBase is a web resource for viewing quantitative machine learning-based gene function annotations. Quantitative annotations of genes, including fungal and mammalian genes, with Gene Ontology terms are accompanied by a community feedback system. Evidence underlying function annotations is shown. For example, a custom Cytoscape viewer shows functional linkage graphs relevant to the gene or function of interest. FuncBase provides links to external resources, and may be accessed directly or via links from species-specific databases. Availability: FuncBase as well as all underlying data and annotations are freely available via http://func.med.harvard.edu/ Contact: email@example.com


The 1993 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Toni Morrison is well established as one of the leading voices in American letters. Even so, her novels are often read narrowly rather than expansively, read as literary artifacts rather than as dynamic cultural texts. Without ignoring the literary and artistic achievements of Morrison's writing, Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches calls attention to the cultural and political dimensions of her work. Drawing on a diverse range of approaches and theories-from W. E. B. DuBois to deconstruction and postmodernism, from black feminist criticism to reader response-these essays investigate such timely issues as debates about canonization, about race and gender divisions in America, about the founding assumptions of African American identity. Contributors: Barbara T. Christian, Marianne DeKoven, Dwight A. McBride, Patricia McKee, Richard C. Moreland, Toni Morrison, Rafael Perez-Torres, Nancy J. Peterson, James Phelan, Eusebio L. Rodrigues, Judylyn S. Ryan, Caroline M. Woidat "These essays exemplify the kinds of issues being addressed in the nineties by scholars of Morrison and by the profession more broadly. The topics of the individual essays vary, but read together, they offer valuable insights into why Morrison has become a much celebrated, widely taught author."-from the Introduction