As the contributions to this two-part special issue demonstrate, Spanish and Latin American criminal theory has attained a remarkable degree of sophistication. Regrettably, Anglo-American scholars have had limited access to this rich body of literature. With this volume, the New Criminal Law Review has taken a very important first step toward rectifying this situation. Although the articles written for this special issue cover a vast range of subjects, they can be divided into four main categories: (1) the legitimacy of the criminal sanction, (2) the punishability of omissions, (3) the challenges that international criminal law and the fight against terrorism pose to criminal theory, and (4) the theory of justification and excuse. The articles pertaining to the first two categories will appear in the first half of this special issue (Volume 11, Number 3) and the pieces belonging to the third and fourth categories will be published in the upcoming second half (Volume 11, Number 4). In accordance with this general structure, in the pages that follow I will provide a brief summary and critique of the pieces contained in both parts.


The growing potential of quantum dots (QDs) in biological and biomedical applications has raised considerable concern due to their toxicological impact. Consequently, it is urgent to elucidate the underlying toxicity mechanism of QDs. In this work, we comprehensively investigated the cellular uptake of four CdSe/ZnS QDs (COOH CdSe/ZnS 525, COOH CdSe/ZnS 625, NH2 CdSe/ZnS 525, and NH2 CdSe/ZnS 625) and induced physiological responses in Phanerochaete chrysosporium (P. chrysosporium) through inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy, and the determination of malondialdehyde content, superoxide level, superoxide dismutase activity, catalase activity and glutathione level. The results showed that the four CdSe/ZnS QDs accumulated largely in the hyphae and caused oxidative stress to P. chrysosporium in the tested concentration range (10–80 nM). Furthermore, the cellular uptake and cytotoxicity were related to the physicochemical properties of the QDs, such as particle size and surface charges. Negatively charged CdSe/ZnS QDs with small size could be more easily ingested by P. chrysosporium than large ones; thus small size CdSe/ZnS QDs were more cytotoxic to P. chrysosporium. On the other hand, small negatively charged CdSe/ZnS QDs resulted in greater cytotoxicity than large negatively charged CdSe/ZnS QDs. The obtained results offer valuable information for revealing the toxicity mechanism of QDs in living cells.


Since the 1950s, small tremors created by human actions have been catalogued and recorded by the USGS. However, there is no academic explanation of the mechanism involved in these quakes. The aim of this work is to show that the propagation of mechanical fractures created in certain areas is one factor responsible for triggering earthquakes. Technically, this fracturing process depends on the ratio between pressure and tension, i.e., Young's modulus, and locally depends on the specific material under pressure. Examining the entire territory of the U.S., we were able to identify certain states where Griffith's theory was applied to explain the results found in those states. This study works with public records available from USGS. Therefore, any classified event or information is outside of the scope of this paper. We also investigate mid-continent or intraplate earthquakes during the period 2000-2016 with magnitudes M2 to M3.8 in shallow depths that appear to be amplified in consonance with development by companies in fracking, oil-gas assessment, mining, quarry blasting, experimental explosions, and collapses. Of particular interest was the enhancement of earthquakes during 2000-2016 for events M ≥ 4 surrounding the Mississippi Lime near the Oklahoma/Kansas border. Overall, all the anthropogenic events could be elucidated by Griffith theory.


Background: Aggression in adolescence is a key point of focus for psychologists, educationists, parents, and teachers. On the other hand, interdisciplinary researches with special reference to yoga and psychology are growing rapidly in this era of applied science. Despite rapidly growing scientific literature on yoga and its application, there has been no study conducted to determine whether Kapālabhāti (a yogic practice) affects the aggression level in adolescents. Aims: The current study aimed at exploring the effect of Kapālabhāti on the aggression level of adolescents. Methods: A sample consisting of 40 intermediate and undergraduate students from Gayatri Vidyapeeth and Dev Sanskriti Vishwavidyalaya, Haridwar, Uttarakhand, respectively, was taken. The entire sample belonged to the age group of 15-20 years. Kapālabhāti practice was given to each and every subject of the group for a period of 30 days regularly. In this research, pre-post single-group design has been applied. Participants were given a questionnaire named as "aggression scale" (A-scale) which was developed by Pal and Naqvi (1983) for measurement of aggression score. Statistical Analysis Used: Paired sample t-test and eta-squared statistics have been used for comparing pre- and post-mean scores and computing the magnitude of the effect of intervention, respectively. Results: There was a statistically significant decrease in the aggression score from pre-test (M = 63.85, SD = 21.75) to post-test (M = 49.95, SD = 14.53), t (39) = 8.42, P < 0.01 (two-tailed). The mean decrease in aggression score was 13.9 with a 99% confidence interval. The eta-squared statistics was 0.64, which indicates large effect of the intervention on aggression. Conclusions: The findings revealed that the practice of Kapālabhāti is highly effective in reducing the aggression level in participants, which was significant at 0.01 level of significance.


The theory of path dependence provides important claims to explain institutional development, relating to the roles of self-reinforcing process called 'increasing returns' since the theory is based on insights from economics. Countries remain locked-in onto a given trajectory. Reversals are possible only due to exogenous shocks. Path dependence has been criticized because it provides an overly static view of the world and for its poor treatment of institutional change. The thesis seeks to remedy these shortcomings and presents a case study based on increasing returns and institutional change. It asks whether increasing returns affect institutional reform and, if so, how and why. The case study proposed concerns the trajectory of Italian telecommunications institutions between 1979 and 2007. The trajectory of British telecommunications institutions is used as a benchmark to offer a structured comparison. In answer to the research question, the thesis argues that, between 1979 and 1992, there were increasing returns arising out of the relationships between telecommunications providers and elected politicians. These increasing returns contributed to the failure of proposals for reform, thus confirming that increasing returns keep countries on a steady trajectory. But, between 1992 and 1997 remarkable reforms took place. The thesis shows that new institutions were designed with a view to 'cut off' the opportunities for increasing returns to arise, thus indicating that increasing returns can contribute to institutional reform too. The new institutional trajectory of Italian telecommunications since 1997 continues to be shaped by increasing returns through a complex pattern of reactions and counter reactions by elected politicians. Thus, the thesis makes a contribution to path dependence insofar as it demonstrates that increasing returns can also bring institutional change. New paths can arise without exogenous shocks. In addition, the thesis' findings illustrate that path dependence needs to specify the relationships between increasing returns and actors.


Early in the twentieth century, maternal and child welfare evolved from a private family responsibility into a matter of national policy. Women played the central role in this development. In Mother-Work, Molly Ladd-Taylor explores both the private and public aspects of childrearing, using the direct relationship between them to shed new light on the histories of motherhood, the welfare state, and women's activism in the United States. Mother-work, defined as women's unpaid work of reproduction and caregiving, was the motivation behind women's public activism and maternalist ideology. Ladd-Taylor emphasizes the connection between mother-work and social welfare politics by showing that their mothering experiences led women to become active in the development of public health, education, and welfare services. In turn, the advent of these services altered mothering experiences in a number of ways, including by reducing the infant mortality rate. By examining women's activism in organizations including the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, the U.S. Children's Bureau, and the National Woman's Party, Ladd-Taylor dispels the notion of mother-work as a contradictory term and clarifies women's role in the development of the American economic system.


For over three decades, the planning community has explored countless methods for data-driven model acquisition. These range in sophistication (e.g., simple set operations to full- blown reformulations), methodology (e.g., logic-based -vs-planing-based), and assumptions (e.g., fully -vs- partially ob- servable). With no fewer than 43 publications in the space, it can be overwhelming to understand what approach could or should be applied in a new setting. We present a holistic characterization of the action model acquisition space and further introduce a unifying framework for automated action model acquisition. We have re-implemented some of the land- mark approaches in the area, and our characterization of all the techniques offers deep insight into the research opportu- nities that remain; i.e., those settings where no technique is capable of solving.


This paper is a theoretical analysis of individual and societal demands for life saving. We begin by demonstrating that the allocation of health expenditures to maximize lives saved may be inconsistent with the willingness-to-pay criterion and consumer sovereignty. We further investigate the effects of information on aggregate willingness to pay. This discussion is related to the concepts of statistical and identified lives. Methods of financing health expenditures are considered. We show that risk averse individuals may reject actuarially fair insurance for treatments of fatal diseases even if they plan to pay for the treatment if they get sick. This result has implications regarding the choice of treatment or prevention. Finally, we examine the importance of the timing of life-saving decisions. A conflict arises between society's preferences before it is known who will be sick and after, even if it is known in advance how many people will be sick.


Abstract. The closed chamber technique is widely used to measure the exchange of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) from terrestrial ecosystems. There is, however, large uncertainty about which model should be used to calculate the gas flux from the measured gas concentrations. Due to experimental uncertainties the simple linear regression model (first-order polynomial) is often applied, even though theoretical considerations of the technique suggest the application of other, curvilinear models. High-resolution automatic chamber systems which sample gas concentrations several hundred times per flux measurement make it possible to resolve the curvilinear behavior and study the information imposed by the natural variability of the temporal concentration changes. We used more than 50 000 such flux measurements of CH4 and CO2 from five field sites located in peat-forming wetlands ranging from 56 to 78° N to quantify the typical differences between flux estimates of different models. In addition, we aimed to assess the curvilinearity of the concentration time series and test the general applicability of curvilinear models. Despite significant episodic differences between the calculated flux estimates, the overall differences are generally found to be smaller than the local flux variability on the plot scale. The curvilinear behavior of the gas concentrations within the chamber is strongly influenced by wind-driven chamber leakage, and less so by changing gas concentration gradients in the soil during chamber closure. Such physical processes affect both gas species equally, which makes it possible to isolate biochemical processes affecting the gases differently, such as photosynthesis limitation by chamber headspace CO2 concentrations under high levels of incoming solar radiation. We assess the possibility to exploit this effect for a partitioning of the net CO2 flux into photosynthesis and ecosystem respiration as an example of how high-resolution automatic chamber measurements could be used for purposes beyond the estimation of the net gas flux. This shows that while linear and curvilinear calculation schemes can provide similar net fluxes, only curvilinear models open additional possibilities for high-resolution automatic chamber measurements.


Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) are fully distributed networks that consist of fully-connected collaborative nodes. Each node in the network can act as a relay, if required, in order to route information from source to destination nodes. Traditional routing approaches that are being further investigated for standardisation at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) are flat reactive and proactive routing protocols such as Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing and Optimised Link State Routing (OLSR) respectively. However, in literature, various more elaborate approaches have been presented based on hybrid routing solutions which include nature inspired routing algorithms, cluster based routing as well as proactive-reactive zonal based routing. A further avenue towards optimising the flat routing approaches in MANETs is to adopt a converged hybrid routing approach where the nodes in the network use cognitive algorithms to detect the state of the network and adapt the routing approach to fit these conditions. Furthermore, in order to tackle the issue of deploying ad-hoc networks, a more realistic cognitive and adaptive framework is required. In this paper, we describe our work towards the development of such a converged routing approach and a suitable Cognitive and Adaptive Module (CAM), which is patent pending, for MANET deployments.


Droplet based single cell RNA sequence analyses assume all acquired RNAs are endogenous to cells. However, any cell free RNAs contained within the input solution are also captured by these assays. This sequencing of cell free RNA constitutes a background contamination that has the potential to confound the correct biological interpretation of single cell transcriptomic data. Here, we demonstrate that contamination from this "soup" of cell free RNAs is ubiquitous, experiment specific in its composition and magnitude, and can lead to erroneous biological conclusions. We present a method, SoupX, for quantifying the extent of the contamination and estimating "background corrected", cell expression profiles that can be integrated with existing downstream analysis tools. We apply this method to two data-sets and show that the application of this method reduces batch effects, strengthens cell-specific quality control and improves biological interpretation


Background Icotinib hydrochloride is a novel epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) with preclinical and clinical activity in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This retrospective analysis was performed to assess the efficacy of icotinib on patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods 82 consecutive patients treated with icotinib as first (n = 24) or second/third line (n = 58) treatment at three hospitals in Nanjing were enrolled into our retrospective research. The Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) was used to evaluate the tumor responses and the progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) was evaluated by the Kaplan-Meier method. Results Median PFS was 4.0 months (95% CI 2.311–5.689). Median OS was 11.0 months (95% CI 8.537–13.463) in this cohort. Median PFS for first and second/third line were 7.0 months (95% CI 2.151–11.8) and 3.0 months (95% CI 1.042–4.958), respectively. Median OS for first and second/third line were 13.0 months (95% CI 10.305–15.695) and 10.0 months (95% CI 7.295–12.70), respectively. In patients with EGFR mutation (n = 19), icotinib significantly reduced the risk of progression (HR 0.36, 95% CI 0.18–0.70, p = 0.003) and death (HR 0.10, 95% CI 0.02–0.42, p = 0.002) compared with those EGFR status unknown (n = 63). The most common adverse events were acne-like rash (39.0%) and diarrhea (20.7%). Conclusions Icotinib is active in the treatment of patients with NSCLC both in first or second/third line, especially in those patients harbouring EGFR mutations, with an acceptable adverse event profile.


SpaceWire is a spacecraft on-board data-handling network which connects instruments to the mass-memory, data processors and control processors, which is already in orbit or being designed into more than 100 spacecraft. SpaceFibre is a new, multi-Gbits/s, on-board network technology, which runs over both electrical and fibre-optic cables. SpaceFibre is capable of fulfilling a wide range of spacecraft on-board communications applications because of its inbuilt quality of service (QoS) and fault detection, isolation and recovery (FDIR) capabilities. The Microsemi RTG4 is a new generation radiation tolerant FPGA. It has extensive logic, memory, DSP blocks, and IO capabilities and is inherently radiation tolerant, having triple mode redundancy built in. The RTG4 has a flash configuration memory built into the device. In addition the FPGA incorporates 16 SpaceWire clock-data recovery circuits and 24 multi-Gbits/s SerDes lanes to support high-speed serial protocols like SpaceFibre. STAR-Dundee has implemented SpaceWire and SpaceFibre IP cores using the Microsemi RTG4 Development Kit. The flight proven SpaceWire IP core was initially run at over 200 Mbits/s and the SpaceFibre IP core at 2.5 Gbits/s. With a little more work it is expected to reach 300 Mbits/s and 3.125 Mbits/s respectively. The SpaceWire IP core takes around 1% of the FPGA and the SpaceFibre IP core around 3-5% depending on the number of virtual channels supported. The use of the RTG4 with the SpaceWire and SpaceFibre IP cores provides a powerful platform for future spacecraft on-board instrument control, data-handling, and data processing. Furthermore the advanced QoS and FDIR capabilities of SpaceFibre make it suitable for a wider range of spacecraft onboard applications including integrated payload data-handling and attitude and orbit control networks and launcher applications where deterministic data delivery is required. This paper reports on the implementation and testing of the SpaceWire and SpaceFibre IP cores in the Microsemi RTG4 FPGA.


Trends for major fisheries products are evaluated for the past two decades, using aggregate annual data. Major changes have been propelled by income growth, changes in preferences and health concerns about meat in developed countries, leading to increased consumption of high-valued fisheries items such as shell and filet fish. Developing countries, especially East Asia, are rapidly increasing consumption of lower valued fishery items, and fish-culture is becoming an increasingly important source of food and exports. Developed countries accounted for 85 percent of net world fish imports in 1994, mostly at the high end of the value spectrum, from about twenty countries. In the ten years preceding 1993, the net value of fisheries exports from developing countries went from less than a third of net developing country exports of sugar, beverage crops and tropical specialty products combined, to a level exceeding that total. While real fish prices have remained relatively stable since 1970, real beef prices have declined by 300 percent, suggesting that a rally in meat prices would further accentuate the shift to fish. Current evidence suggests a 15 percent relative strengthening of fish prices to beef through 2020.


Abstract The ability of polar (1:1 water/methanol) and non-polar (dichloromethane) extracts of macroalgae from Arraial do Cabo, RJ, Brazil, to inhibit quorum sensing (QS) was investigated. Before extraction, half of the algae were treated with 30% ethanol to kill and remove surface-associated bacteria. Twenty of 22 polar extracts inhibited the QS of the acyl homoserine lactone (AHL) producer and reporter Chromobacterium violaceum CV017 with minimal inhibitory concentrations (MIC) ranging from 0.28 μg ml-1 (Ulva fasciata) to 189 μg ml-1 (Codium sp.). The MIC of non-polar extracts varied from 69 μg ml-1 (Sargassum furcatum) to 2730 μg ml-1 (Peyssonnelia capensis). Usually, extracts from algae with associated bacteria had a higher bioactivity than ones without them. Among 11 algal species tested, 50% of extracts with associated bacteria were toxic to C. violaceum CV026. None of the extracts contained AHLs, which was shown using reporters C. violaceum CV026 and Agrobacterium tumefaciens NTL4 (pZLR4). Polar (11%) and non-polar extracts (2%) inhibited QS-dependent attachment of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA01 at tissue-level concentrations. Our data suggest that secondary metabolites from algae and their associated microbiota are an important source of QS inhibitors, which potentially can be used in future biotechnological applications.


Gamification refers to the use of game mechanics and game dynamics in non-gaming environments and contexts. Gamification is increasingly gaining attention among system designers across various industries especially in education due to the benefits associated with its implementation. The adoption of gamification in information systems (IS) education is promising for engaging and motivating students to complete their degree programs. Call for research in this area is particularly on the increase in the IS field. Accordingly, we need to organize the aggregation of research in this area and use common terminologies to promote progressive research practice in the field. In this paper, we use a multi-method approach to systematically review existing research on gamification in IS education to identify common terminologies, identify trends in topics studied, highlight understudied areas, and, thus, present opportunities for future research. The multi-method approach combines classical systematic review method and social network analysis to provide additional insight into the knowledge structure of researchers involved in the gamification of IS education. This review also highlights possible interventions that can improve student retention in IS education through the design of effective gamified courses.


The flow in the Turbine-99 Kaplan draft tube was thoroughly investigated at three workshops (1999, 2001, 2005), which aimed at determining the state of the art of draft tube simulations. The flow is challenging due to the different flow phenomena appearing simultaneously such as unsteadiness, separation, swirl, turbulence, and a strong adverse pressure gradient. The geometry and the experimentally determined inlet boundary conditions were provided to the Turbine-99 workshop participants. At the final workshop, angular resolved inlet velocity boundary conditions were provided. The rotating non-axi-symmetry of the inlet flow due to the runner blades was thus included. The effect of the rotating angular resolution was however not fully investigated at that workshop. The first purpose of this work is to further investigate this effect. Several different inlet boundary conditions are applied – the angular resolved experimental data distributed at the Turbine-99 workshop, the angular resolved results of a runner simulation with interpolated values using different resolution in the tangential and radial directions, and an axi-symmetric variant of the same numerical data. The second purpose of this work is to compare the results from the OpenFOAM and CFX CFD codes, using as similar settings as possible. The present results suggest that the experimental angular inlet boundary conditions proposed to the workshop are not adequate to simulate accurately the flow in the T-99 draft tube. The reason for this is that the experimental phase-averaged data has some important differences compared to the previously measured time-averaged data. Using the interpolated data from the runner simulation as inlet boundary condition however gives good results as long as the resolution of that data is sufficient. It is shown that the difference between the results using the angular-resolved and the corresponding symmetric inlet data is very small, suggesting that the importance of the angular resolution is small. The results from OpenFOAM and CFX are very similar as long as the inlet data resolution is fine enough. CFX seems to be more sensitive to that resolution.


The pendulum swings widely When it comes to banks' experience with guaranteed student loans. Some banks, caught in the grip of stringent collection regulations, have decided that guaranteed student loans are a hassle and have gotten out altogether. Others have spent millions upgrading their current in-house loan administration systems and hope the investment will pay off down the road. Most banks are somewhere in the middle, finding student loans not their most profitable investment, but not being hurt by what has remained a relatively dependable business. Department of Education statistics show that overall student loan volume has increased 6% in the first quarter of 1991 from the same time last year, despite the $60 billion in outstanding loans. Nearly 10,000 institutions make the loans, including credit unions. Guaranteed program. Through the guaranteed student loan program set up by the Higher Education Act of 1965, the government pays banks a 3.75% "special allowance" on guaranteed student loans. This supplements the rate hanks can charge for the loans--8% as of mid-March. The flat rate varies each quarter, "so other market forces won't unduly influence a lender's willingness to offer student loans," says Larry Oxendine, director of the department of policy and program development for the Department of Education's financial assistance program, which oversees all guaranteed student loans. The rate is maintained at a slightly higher level than the rate on 91-day Treasury bills. Whether or not that is sufficient for the bank to make a profit depends on several factors, such as the bank's efficiency of loan administration. Collection rules. In 1985, the Department of Education got fed up with what it perceived as irresponsibility on the part of lenders in getting delinquent borrowers to make good on their guaranteed student loans. "Banks were getting their claims paid without making a diligent effort, which became an increased cost for the government to bear," says Oxendine. The Department of Education responded with due diligence requirements--specific steps that banks must take to collect on delinquent loans over a designated length of time--or else risk getting their claims rejected. Banks' due diligence is monitored by the state agencies that act as primary guarantors for guaranteed student loans. But bankers say the requirements were a typically bureaucratic response. "The whole program was poorly conceived," says Don Grigley, senior vice-president of Connecticut National Bank, Hartford, and chairman of ABA's consumer credit division. Grigley says the government did not adequately train lenders in collection procedures. The regulations, which became effective in 1987, divide the guaranteed student loan collection procedure into 30-day increments over a six-month period. The lender is first required to notify the borrower through the mall that the loan is delinquent, then follow up with a combination of increasingly aggressive letters and phone calls. After the final demand for payment has been made within the 151 to 180 days, the lender may file a claim for losses with its state guarantor. The claim must show documented proof that the required steps were taken to collect the funds. The Department has 100 reviewers for student loan programs that help 1,000 schools and guarantee agencies keep up to regulatory snuff. Curing. The six-month series of intimidating correspondence is not banks' only option for trying to collect on guaranteed student loans. The government allows banks to "cure" the loan. If the lender can get the delinquent borrower to re-sign the agreement and make an initial payment, the slate is wiped clean and the loan is reinstated. Curing helps both the guarantor and the bank, because the bank receives payments and the guarantor is saved the trouble of filing its claim with the government. The Department of Education introduced the cure option in March 1988 because many lenders had experienced difficulties interpreting due diligence procedures. …


Economic growth is often a kind of miracle because like most miracles, it is not easy to explain. Countries that have not grown for a century, at times begin to grow at a fast pace, while countries that were growing fast stop growing. From time to time economists have advanced particular theories that argue that some factors, such as investment, human capital, technological development, intangible capital, rule of law, good institutions, good policies, and so on, play a fundamental role in the growth process. The problem is that the number of these factors keeps growing. Recently some economists as well as several political leaders have suggested that infrastructure would be one of these factors. Some estimates have even been presented about how much Latin America should spend per year on the creation of infrastructure. Without addressing, at this point, the validity of these claims, or the realism of the estimated "infrastructure gap" for Latin America, it may be useful to be reminded that the term infrastructure is relatively new in economics. The focus in this paper is on regional projects. That is, infrastructure that concerns or links at least two countries. Furthermore, much of the discussion is mostly relevant for transportation projects, which, in any case absorb often an overwhelming share of total infrastructure costs and are less likely to generate incomes that make them interesting for private sector?s investments. The discussion is much less relevant for projects related to the exploitation of material resources, including energy or for projects related to communication.


The role of small business, as part of the value adding chain in any economy, should never be understated. In Australia small business represents 96% of all private sector business, accounts for 47% of all private sector employment and the majority fail within three to five years of establishment. Despite this contribution the small business sector, and in particular the service sector component, appear to be underrepresented in the development of specific performance measurement models, which, within the academic and professional literature appear to focus on their larger firm counterparts. Given the unique position of small business service organisations the above suggests a critical need for the design and development of an industry specific performance model suitable for this sector. This paper represents the conceptual issues and preliminary literature review of a major project to develop such a model.


In this paper a brief overview of the third workshop on Multimodal Analyses enabling Artificial Agents in Human-Machine Interaction. The paper is focussing on the main aspects intended to be discussed in the workshop reflecting the main scope of the papers presented during the meeting. The MA3HMI 2018 workshop is held in conjunction with the 18th ACM International Conference on Mulitmodal Interaction (ICMI 2018) taking place in Boulder, USA, in October 2018. This year, we have solicited papers concerning the different phases of the development of multimodal systems. Tools and systems that address real-time conversations with artificial agents and technical systems are also within the scope.


The application of a hybrid asymptotic/finite‐element method to the problem of scattering from prismatically shaped objects is considered. The hybrid method is based on patching a short wavelength asymptotic expansion of the scattered field to a finite‐element interpolation of the near field. In patching, the diffracted field shape functions with unknown amplitude are forced to agree smoothly with the solution in the near field along a curve at a prescribed distance from the diffraction points. An asymptotic DtN (Dirichlet‐to‐Neumann) map on this artificial boundary represents the effect of the outer domain on the solution within this new boundary. This allows us to replace the original boundary value problem with an asymptotically equivalent boundary value problem, the domain of which is small and efficiently discretized. The method is applied to diffraction by a blunted wedge, which in this context represents a degenerate prism. The hybrid scattering solution shall be compared to a complete analytic fie...


The advent of race riots each summer between 1964 and 1967 confronted President Johnson with a serious rhetorical problem: how to make clear his condemnation of the riots while also sympathizing with some of their causes and recognizing the need for significantly more and faster progress for American blacks. In his public discourse, Johnson tried to carefully balance four themes: declaration that the riots were unconscionable, insistence that the country must remain committed to civil rights, emphasis on local responsibilities, and the stress on the need for studying the riots to understand their causes and prevention. Pragmatically, this approach was not successful. Every one of his carefully balanced positions could be outflanked by opponents taking a harder-line position. Yet it is not clear that Johnson had any available alternatives that could have resolved his problem.


Abstract In this study, snow particle size variability was investigated along a transect in Dronning Maud Land from the coast to the polar plateau. The aim of the study was to better understand the spatial and temporal variations in surface snow properties. Samples were collected twice daily during a traverse in 2007–08 to capture regional variability. Local variability was assessed by sampling in 10×10 m grids (5 m spacing) at selected locations. The particle size and shape distributions for each site were analysed through digital image analysis. Snow particle size variability is complex at different scales, and shows an internal variability of 0.18–3.31 mm depending on the sample type (surface, grid or pit). Relationships were verified between particle size and both elevation and distance to the coast (moisture source). Regional seasonal changes were also identified, particularly on the lower elevations of the polar plateau. This dataset may be used to quantitatively analyse the optical properties of surface snow for remote sensing. The details of the spatial and temporal variations observed in our data provide a basis for further studies of the complex and coupled processes affecting snow particle size and the interpretation of remote sensing of snow covered areas.


Oil terminals are complex infrastructures due to their diverse operational activities. They are exposed to diverse risks because they usually operate in a dynamic environment in which safety barriers are sometime overwhelmed, leading to the disruption of operations due to a high level of uncertainty. However, the ability of oil terminals to minimise vulnerability and maximise resilience depends on the availability of the correct anticipated information at the right time for a decision-making process. An important finding from the reviewed literature revealed that uncertainties and the unpredictability of the convergent effect of several hazardous factors have the potential to cause major disruptions such as fire, explosion and transit accidents. The consequences of these disruptions can lead to infrastructure damage and loss of life. The common operational threats to oil terminal operations (OTOs) substantiates the need for a holistic resilience model for operations in offshore/onshore terminals such as berthing/unberthing, vessel manoeuvring, loading and offloading, storage, etc. Due to the uncertainties associated with these operations and the cases of reported incidents/accidents, this research focuses more on the aspect of loading and offloading operations at ship/terminal interface. An emphasis on a resilience modelling approach provides a flexible yet robust model for OTOs to address disruption proactively, particularly with constantly evolving hazards and threats. This thesis introduces an innovative approach towards resilience modelling based on a developed novel framework. The key aspect of the framework was supported using three proposed models: (1) the integration of Utility Theory and Swiss Cheese Model (UtiSch_+), to evaluate the relative importance of the identified hazard factors (HFs), (2) a Bayesian network (BN), to calculate the overall probability that a specific hazard is present and, (3) an Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) - Prospect Theory (PT) approach, as an important model for a strategic decision selection method. An empirical study was conducted to test the validity the proposed models, using case studies and Sensitivity Analysis (SA). The result obtained demonstrated that the models are effective techniques to obtain the relative weight of the identified Hazard Factors (HFs) in order to prioritise them, for dynamic hazards probability evaluation and to prioritise suggested resilience strategies in order of importance to mitigate hazard/risk level. Evidently, the result revealed appears reasonable and appropriate for investment, in order to support a strategic decision for the selection of a resilience strategy for resilience improvement in OTOs.


The larvae of Philornis downsi (Diptera: Muscidae) are external haematophagous parasites of nestling birds. It is an invasive fly to the Galapagos Islands that poses a threat to several endemic bird species. Preliminary investigations were conducted in Trinidad on suitable hosts from which to source Philornis for laboratory rearing and with which to conduct field studies on P. downsi within its natural range. Bird nests were collected from 13 locations around Trinidad and all examined for parasitism by Philornis species. The most abundant Philornis species by far was P. trinitensis . Several common birds from residential and agricultural areas were found to be hosts of P. downsi including the Carib Grackle, Greater Kiskadee, Tropical Mockingbird, House Wren and Palm Tanager. Of these the House Wren, Troglodytes aedon and Carib Grackle, Quiscalus lugubris appear to be most suited for field studies and collection. Key words (not in title): laboratory rearing, host range, parasitoids, House Wren, Carib Grackle.


In order to activate students and make them active contributors in a class, the concept of "Flipped Classroom" has been used at several Universities, also at The Inland University of Applied Sciences Norway. Flipping the classroom and making the students contribute, and being active, has supported the students learning outcome. Generally, when using games for learning, the game scenario is either decided by the lecturer/teacher, or defined by the designers and/or producers of the game used. In this paper we will explore how the teachers/lecturers role changes when the scenarios to be played in the game environment are defined and developed by the students themselves. The methodological approach is mainly qualitative and the data are observations from gaming sessions, minutes from review processes and interviews with faculty staff responsible for the course. The paper will present how the lecturer/teacher changes role from being the center of attention and the provider of knowledge, to a facilitator that both empower the students and enables the students to contribute towards developing increased understanding and enhanced learning outcome. By enabling the students to contribute in such a way, the support towards the reflection processes described by Donald Schön in his work "The reflective practitioner" from 1991, is being supported in all stages. The reflection before action is when they discuss and agree on scenario, they need to reflect in action upon action, and they need to reflect on action when finished gaming. These reflection processes need to be facilitated in order to support the learning process and when flipping the gaming, this is one of the roles of the facilitator; the lecturer/teacher. The paper will present a project called "Seed corn 2017 – Pedagogical Use of Games in Crisis Management Education", using a course at The Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Campus Rena, Norway, and the results from the research.


ABSTRACT While some diseases and human behaviors fluctuate consistently with season, the extent of seasonal variations in sleep, especially at high latitudes, is less consistent. We used data from a geographic region (69º North) with extremely large seasonal differences in daylight that had the participants blinded for the current study's hypotheses. Data were derived from the Tromsø Study (2015–2016), an ongoing population-based study in Northern Norway comprising citizens aged 40 years and older (n = 21,083, participation = 64.7%). The sleep parameters included bedtime, rise time, sleep onset latency (SOL), and total sleep time. Insomnia was defined according to recent diagnostic criteria (International Classification of Sleep Disorders; ICSD-3). We found some evidence of monthly or seasonal variation in sleep problems. Insomnia was most common during the winter months among men, but not women. No seasonal or monthly effects were observed for sleep duration. SOL was slightly longer during the winter months, but the differences were small and hardly of any clinical relevance. The small or non-existing seasonal variation in sleep and sleep difficulties indicate that extreme seasonal variation in daylight is of little influence on sleep status. The city of Tromsø is a modern city with considerable level of artificial light, which may contribute to the observed rather stabile sleep patterns throughout the year.


At his death in 1945, the influential German philosopher Ernst Cassirer left manuscripts for the fourth and final volume of his magnum opus, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. John Michael Krois and Donald Phillip Verene have edited these writings and translated them into English for the first time, bringing to completion Cassirer's major treatment of the concept of symbolic form. Ernst Cassirer believed that all the forms of representation that human beings use-language, myth, art, religion, history, science-are symbolic, and the concept of symbolic forms was the basis of his thinking on these subjects. In this volume, which contains one text written in 1928 and another in about 1940, Cassirer presents the metaphysics that is implicit in his epistemology and phenomenology of culture. The earlier text grounds the philosopher's conception of symbolic forms on a notion of human nature that makes a general distinction between Geist (mind) and life. In the later text, he discusses Basis Phenomena, an original concept not mentioned in any of his previous works, and he compares his own viewpoint with those of other modern philosophers, notably Bergson and Heidegger.


[1] The Cd/Ca ratios of planktonic foraminiferal tests have been used to reconstruct surface water nutrient utilization and paleoproductivity. The reliability of this proxy has hitherto not been comprehensively studied, however. To fill this gap, we present novel Cd/Ca data for in situ sampled and sedimentary planktonic foraminifers of the species Globigerinoides ruber, G. sacculifer, Globigerina bulloides, Orbulina universa, and Globorotalia truncatulinoides from the Arabian Sea and the North Atlantic. The Cd/Ca ratios obtained for G. ruber sampled from the live habitat generally display a correlation with seawater phosphate content, but no such trend is observed for G. sacculifer. This distinct behavior may reflect different ecological niches or species-specific incorporation of Cd into the calcite shells of the organisms. The Cd/Ca ratios of G. ruber, G. sacculifer, and G. bulloides from surface sediments are consistently higher than those obtained for live collected specimens of the same species. Postdepositional alteration of the tests is unlikely to be responsible for these systematic differences. Rather, they appear to reflect a combination of factors, including the formation of calcite crusts with high Cd contents, the different timescales that are represented by in situ and sedimentary foraminiferal tests, and the dominance of tests from periods of high productivity in sediments. Our results also reveal higher Cd/Ca ratios for live G. ruber than for settling tests of the same species. This suggests that planktonic foraminiferal shells are partially dissolved while they individually settle through the water column. Sedimentary tests, however, will be less affected by dissolution processes because these shells are primarily deposited in mass sinking events, which feature much higher settling velocities than those experienced by single settling shells.


Treatments to stop smoking contain nicotine at concentrations sufficient to activate TRPA1 channels, which contribute to irritation. Nicotine is a highly addictive substance that activates nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs), which are a class of ligand-activated cation channels defined by this ligand. Smoking-cessation therapies include topical application of nicotine, but patient usage may be limited partly due to local discomfort and irritation associated with the patches. Talavera et al. show that high concentrations of nicotine, like those in smoking-cessation treatments, activated the transient receptor potential (TRP) family member TRPA1, which is a calcium-conducting cation channel found in nociceptive neurons and which mediates responses to painful cold and irritating chemicals such as mustard oil. Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells expressing mouse TRPA1 exhibited a delayed current in response to extracellularly applied nicotine. Nicotine activated TRPA1 channels in cell-free inside-out patches, and this was faster than the activation in intact cells, suggesting that part of the delayed response may be due to nicotine's diffusion across the plasma membrane to reach its binding site in the channel. Nicotine stimulated calcium transients in a subset of mouse trigeminal ganglion neurons, and the proportion of responding neurons was diminished in Trpa1-knockout mice. Application of nicotine to the noses of wild-type, but not Trpa1-knockout, mice triggered airway constriction, and this was blocked by the addition of menthol, a chemical that is added to cigarettes to produce a cooling, soothing, analgesic effect. Menthol also reversed nicotine-induced current and calcium transients in the TRPA1-expressing CHO cells. Thus, TRPA1 appears to be a previously unrecognized receptor for nicotine, which likely contributes to the irritating effects of high concentrations of nicotine. K. Talavera, M. Gees, Y. Karashima, V. M. Meseguer, J. A. J. Vanoirbeek, N. Damann, W. Everaerts, M. Benoit, A. Janssens, R. Vennekens, F. Viana, B. Nemery, B. Nilius, T. Voets, Nicotine activates the chemosensory cation channel TRPA1. Nat. Neurosci. 12, 1293–1299 (2009). [PubMed]


Identity-invariant facial expression recognition (FER) has been one of the challenging computer vision tasks. Since conventional FER schemes do not explicitly address the inter-identity variation of facial expressions, their neural network models still operate depending on facial identity. This paper proposes to quantify the inter-identity variation by utilizing pairs of similar expressions explored through a specific matching process. We formulate the identity matching process as an Optimal Transport (OT) problem. Specifically, to find pairs of similar expressions from different identities, we define the inter-feature similarity as a transportation cost. Then, optimal identity matching to find the optimal flow with minimum transportation cost is performed by Sinkhorn-Knopp iteration. The proposed matching method is not only easy to plug in to other models, but also requires only acceptable computational overhead. Extensive simulations prove that the proposed FER method improves the PCC/CCC performance by up to 10\% or more compared to the runner-up on wild datasets. The source code and software demo are available at https://github.com/kdhht2334/ELIM_FER.


A detailed description is given of MULTSPEC, which is an area, age and length structured multispecies simulation model for the species capelin ( Mallotus villosus), herring (Clupea harengus ), cod (Gadus morhua ), harp seal ( Phoca groenlandica ) and minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata ) in the Barents Sea. In the model, both harp seals and minke whale, and cod, prey on capelin, herring and cod, and in addition, herring prey on capelin larvae. Cod is the most important predator. Information on food preferences and food requirements obtained from the Norwegian research program on marine mammals is used to quantify the predation by marine mammals on fish. The sensitivity of the model to the stock sizes and food preferences of harp seals and minke whales is investigated, together with the sensitivity to the food preferences of cod. A tentative conclusion on likely effects of an increasing whale stock is that the herring stock will be most heavily affected. An increasing harp seal stock will most heavily affect the capelin and cod stock. The model is more sensitive to changes in the food preferences of cod than to changes in food preferences or stock sizes of marine mammals.


The subject of this paper is the direct identiflcation of continuous-time autoregressive moving average (CARMA) models. The topic is viewed from the frequency domain perspective which then turns the reconstruction of the continuous-time power spectral density (CT-PSD) into a key issue. The flrst part of the paper therefore concerns the approximate estimation of the CT-PSD from uniformly sampled data under the assumption that the model has a certain relative degree. The approach has its point of origin in the frequency domain Whittle likelihood estimator. The discrete- or continuous-time spectral densities are estimated from equidistant samples of the output. For low sampling rates the discrete-time spectral density is modeled directly by its continuous-time spectral density using the Poisson summation formula. In the case of rapid sampling the continuous-time spectral density is estimated directly by modifying its discrete-time counterpart.Copyright c ∞2008 IFAC


A 58-year-old woman harboring a partially thrombosed giant aneurysm of the vertebral artery (VA) presented with lower cranial nerve palsies and cerebellar ataxia. The authors initially attempted to reduce the mass effect by obliterating the lumen of the aneurysm as well as by trapping of the parent artery with coils. Although there was no angiographically demonstrated evidence of filling, the aneurysm continued to enlarge. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed a marked enhancement around the packed coils close to the neck of the aneurysm. Aneurysmectomy and removal of the coils were performed and resulted in an almost complete cure of the patient's symptoms. Interestingly, at the time of resection, a marked development of vasa vasorum on the occluded VA and the neck of the aneurysm was noted. When the occluded VA was cut, there was blood oozing through the coils packed within its lumen on the side where the aneurysm lay. Histological examination showed the presence of inflammatory cells and neovascularization of a partially organized thrombus around the packed coils in both the aneurysm and occluded VA. The proliferation of vasa vasorum was also recognized histologically. This unique case provides insight into the growth mechanisms of a partially thrombosed giant aneurysm after an apparently complete occlusion by endovascular treatment, especially the role of vaso vasorum on the occluded parent artery in the dynamic process of neovascularization in the incomplete organization of thrombus around the packed coils.


Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) rely on in-network aggregation for efficiency, however, this comes at a price: a single adversary can severely influence the outcome by contributing an arbitrary partial aggregate value. Secure in-network aggregation can detect such manipulation (H. Chan et al, 2006). But as long as such faults persist, no aggregation result can be obtained. In contrast, the collection of individual sensor node values is robust and solves the problem of availability, yet in an inefficient way. Our work seeks to bridge this gap in secure data collection: we propose a system that enhances availability with an efficiency close to that of in-network aggregation. To achieve this, our scheme relies on costly operations to localize and exclude nodes that manipulate the aggregation, but only when a failure is detected. The detection of aggregation disruptions and the removal of faulty nodes provides robustness. At the same time, after removing faulty nodes, the WSN can enjoy low cost (secure) aggregation. Thus, the high exclusion cost is amortized, and efficiency increases.


BACKGROUND
Chronic low back pain (LBP) and sciatica can occur without obvious structural causes and are often resistant to conventional analgesic drugs. The effect of periradicular injection of meloxicam on LBP with or without a radicular component was assessed. A secondary objective of this prospective observational study was to assess the effect of meloxicam on functional recovery.

METHODS
Seventy-two patients (30 men, 42 women) with LBP and/or sciatica were followed for 90 days to six years after injecting 10 mg meloxicam in 10 mL saline at each of the involved dermatomal levels. A standard verbal rating scale (VRS) from 0=no pain to 10=severe pain was used for assessing LBP before the injection of meloxicam (at baseline) and at 1, 5, 10, 30 and 60 min, and 1, 5, 15, 30 and 90 days intervals after the injection. The meloxicam injection was repeated only if the VRS score remained >3. Rescue analgesic requirements and functional activity levels were also assessed from 30-90 days after the last injection of meloxicam.

RESULTS
The mean baseline LBP score was 8.60 ± 1.50 (SD) despite the use of multi-modal analgesic regimens (NSAIDs, glucocorticosteroids, paracetamol, oral opioids, gabapentanoid compounds, epidural or periradicular steroid and/or local anesthetics) as well as laser treatments and physical therapy. The majority of patients reported that their pain intensity decreased by ~50% 1-2 min after the meloxicam injection was completed. Thirty-six patients (50%) required no further injections, 25 patients (35%) required a second injection after seven days, and 11 patients (15%) required a total of three injections. After the meloxicam treatment(s), only 10 patients (14%) required "rescue" analgesia with oral NSAIDs. All patients were able to increase their level of functional activity after the meloxicam treatment(s).

CONCLUSION
Periradicular injections of meloxicam (10 mg) appear to be a useful alternative to opioid and non-opiod analgesics for patients with intractable LBP due to nerve root inflammation.


Simile recognition is to detect simile sentences and to extract simile components, i.e., tenors and vehicles. It involves two subtasks: simile sentence classification and simile component extraction. Recent work has shown that standard multitask learning is effective for Chinese simile recognition, but it is still uncertain whether the mutual effects between the subtasks have been well captured by simple parameter sharing. We propose a novel cyclic multitask learning framework for neural simile recognition, which stacks the subtasks and makes them into a loop by connecting the last to the first. It iteratively performs each subtask, taking the outputs of the previous subtask as additional inputs to the current one, so that the interdependence between the subtasks can be better explored. Extensive experiments show that our framework significantly outperforms the current state-of-the-art model and our carefully designed baselines, and the gains are still remarkable using BERT. Source Code of this paper are available on https://github.com/DeepLearnXMU/Cyclic.


As the profession of occupational therapy enters its second century of existence, it is important to recognize that for continued sustainability and strength through the effects of healthcare reform, strong leadership is required. While experts agree that leadership development for occupational therapists needs to begin in the classroom setting, there is little existing research on occupational therapy leadership education. Built upon a theoretical framework of the transformative learning theory, this qualitative study sought to determine whether students in an online leadership course within a post-professional doctor of occupational therapy degree program believed they experienced a transformation in their leadership knowledge and skills as a result of the course. Additionally, the study sought to identify the teaching strategies and course materials that students perceived as the most beneficial to their leadership development. Summative course evaluations and written reflective forum discussions were used to examine students' personal narratives regarding the experience of the leadership course and their thoughts on which components of the course were most beneficial to their leadership development process. Findings revealed that students did indeed experience transformative learning, which provided them with a new understanding of leadership and confidence to engage in leadership opportunities. Students attributed their learning to several factors including reflection, assigned readings, peer support, and meaningful TED talk videos. Insight gained from this study's results can assist other leadership course instructors to develop a course that will facilitate a transformative learning experience.


Economic incentives play a key role in the decision to run for office, but little is known on how they shape immigrants' selection into candidacy. We study this question using a two-period Roy model and show that if returns to labour market experience are higher for migrants than natives, migrants will be less likely to seek office than natives. We empirically assess this prediction using administrative data from Norway, a country with a very liberal regime for participation in local elections. Our results strongly support our theoretical model and indicate that immigrants' political and economic integration are closely intertwined.


Adversarial training is one of the most popular ways to learn robust models but is usually attack-dependent and time costly. In this paper, we propose the MACER algorithm, which learns robust models without using adversarial training but performs better than all existing provable l2-defenses. Recent work shows that randomized smoothing can be used to provide certified l2 radius to smoothed classifiers, and our algorithm trains provably robust smoothed classifiers via MAximizing the CErtified Radius (MACER). The attack-free characteristic makes MACER faster to train and easier to optimize. In our experiments, we show that our method can be applied to modern deep neural networks on a wide range of datasets, including Cifar-10, ImageNet, MNIST, and SVHN. For all tasks, MACER spends less training time than state-of-the-art adversarial training algorithms, and the learned models achieve larger average certified radius.


Light scattering from a laser-induced thermal grating produced in an atmospheric-pressure H(2)/O(2) flame is observed with a phase-matching geometry commonly used in resonant four-wave mixing and laser-induced grating spectroscopy. The presence of thermal gratings is confirmed in both the time and the frequency domains in two distinct experiments. Diluting the flame with helium decreases the thermal grating signal intensity. Experimental results agree well with calculations based on a solution of the linearized hydrodynamic equations.


BACKGROUND AND AIMS
Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is the most abundant neuropeptide found in the heart and is released alongside norepinephrine following prolonged sympathetic activation, a process that is implicated in the pathophysiology of heart failure (HF). In patients with severely impaired left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) undergoing cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), higher levels of NPY measured in coronary sinus blood, are associated with poorer outcome. The aim was to examine the association of peripheral venous NPY levels and outcomes in a HF population with a range of LVEF, using a highly sensitive and specific assay.

METHODS
The association between NPY and the composite outcome of cardiovascular death or HF hospitalization, its components, and all-cause mortality was examined using Cox regression analyses among 833 patients using a threshold of elevated NPY identified through binary recursive partitioning adjusted for prognostic variables including eGFR, ejection fraction and BNP.

RESULTS
The mean value of NPY was 25.8 ± 18.2 pg/mL. Patients with high NPY levels (> = 29 pg/mL) compared with low values were older (73 ± 10 vs 71 ± 11 years), more often male (58.5% vs 55.6%), had higher BNP levels (583 [261-1096] vs 440 [227-829] pg/ml), lower eGFR (46.4 ± 13.9 vs 52.4 ± 11.7 mL/min/1.73m2 ), and were more often treated with diuretics. There was no associated risk of heart failure hospitalization with NPY levels> = 29 pg/mL vs <29 pg/mL. Higher NPY levels were associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular and all cause death (adjusted HR 1.56 [1.21-2.10] P = 0.003 and 1.30 [1.04-1.62] P = 0.02 respectively). There was no associated risk of heart failure hospitalization with higher NPY levels.

CONCLUSION
Peripherally measured NPY is an independent predictor of all cause and cardiovascular death even after adjustment for other prognostic variables, including BNP. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.


This paper describes a procedure for identifying and correcting anisoinertia and anisoelasticity present in a micro-ring gyroscope. The major disadvantages of popular tuning methods such as mass trimming using laser ablation or focussed ion beam is that it can only be employed prior to packaging. Therefore tuning to correct for environmental or structural changes during operation is not possible. However, electrostatic tuning may be implemented on-chip during operation thus enabling active tuning. Furthermore, mass trimming procedures introduce a degree of damage to the structure, which may reduce the intrinsic high quality factor desirable in the ring gyroscope.


Globally, climate change and its adverse effects on the human population and the environment has necessitated significant research on the sustainable use of natural resources. Gas flaring in Nigeria's oil and gas industry causes environmental and health hazards and to a large extent, culminates in yearly loss of the Nation's revenue. The aim of the study is to highlight the potentials of converting flared gas from the Nigerian oil and gas industry to compressed natural gas (CNG) which could be an alternative fuel for the 220 Lagos Bus Rapid Transit (BRT-Lite) while reducing CO2 emissions. In addition, the study provided an overview of gas flaring in the oil and gas industry and energy utilisation in some selected sectors in the country. The Long-range Energy Alternative Planning System (LEAP) software was employed to model the energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions from the BRT-Lite by creating a current scenario and projections to the year 2030. The use of CNG as an alternative fuel for Lagos BRT-Lite will significantly reduce CO2 emissions in Nigeria's oil and gas industry. Other utilization options for flared gas from this industry includes: Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), and power generation.


Study design:  Randomised, double-blinded, triple-arm, placebo controlled trial in a tertiary care emergency department (ED) in the USA.1

Patients: 122 adults aged ≥18 years, presenting to the ED with nausea or vomiting (eg, abdominal pain and vomiting) with a self reported nausea score of ≥3/10.

Intervention:  Inhaled isopropyl alcohol and oral placebo.

Comparison:  Inhaled saline solution and 4 mg oral ondansetron.

Non-placebo arm:  Inhaled isopropyl alcohol and 4 mg oral ondansetron, included to counteract subjects guessing that the inhaled saline was the placebo. Patients were advised to take the oral solution then take deep inhalations of the medical pad 1–2 cm away from the nose, as frequently as required to achieve nausea relief. Exclusion factors included recent intake of medications contraindicating alcohol, blocked nares (eg, rhinitis), known prolonged QT interval, suspected or known pregnancy …


Transcription is the process during which RNA molecules are synthesized based on the DNAs in cells. Transcription leads to gene expression, and it is the first step in the flow of genetic information from DNA to proteins that carry out biological functions. Transcription is tightly regulated both spatially and temporally at multiple levels, so that the amount of mRNAs produced for different genes is controlled across different kinds of cells and tissues, as well as in different developmental stages and in response to different environmental stimulus. In eukaryotes, transcription is a complicated process and its regulation involves both cis-regulatory elements and trans-acting factors. By studying spatiotemporally what genes are regulated by which cis-elements and trans-factors, we can get a better understanding of how we develop, how we react to environmental signals, and the mechanisms behind diseases like cancer that, at least in part, result from failures in proper transcriptional regulation. In this thesis, we present a suite of computational methods and analyses that, combined, provide a solution to problems related to the identification of DNA binding motifs, linking these motifs to the TFs that bind them and the genes that they control, and integrating these motifs and interactions with time series expression data to model dynamic regulatory networks. Specifically, we first develop a novel method for finding discriminative DNA motifs, motifs that are over-represented in a set of positive sequences but depleted in a set of negative sequences. Second, we present a new method of using protein binding microarray data combined with DNase I hypersensitivity and conservation data to predict tissue-specific transcription factor activities and binding sites. Finally, we extend the DREM framework which was previously developed by our group to study dynamic regulatory networks, and we use the improved version to analyze a biological dataset of gene responses in arabidopsis following ethylene treatment. Together, the methods and analyses presented contribute to the studying and understanding of transcriptional regulation.


Sea ice plays a dynamic role in the air‐sea exchange of CO2. In addition to abiotic
inorganic carbon fluxes, an active microbial community produces and remineralizes
organic carbon, which can accumulate in sea ice brines as dissolved organic matter
(DOM). In this study, the characteristics of DOM fluorescence in Antarctic sea ice brines
from the western Weddell Sea were investigated. Two humic‐like components were
identified, which were identical to those previously found to accumulate in the deep ocean
and represent refractory material. Three amino‐acid‐like signals were found, one of which
was unique to the brines and another that was spectrally very similar to tryptophan and
found both in seawater and in brine samples. The tryptophan‐like fluorescence in the
brines exhibited intensities higher than could be explained by conservative behavior during
the freezing of seawater. Its fluorescence was correlated with the accumulation of
nitrogen‐rich DOM to concentrations up to 900 mmol L−1 as dissolved organic carbon
(DOC) and, thus, potentially represented proteins released by ice organisms. A second,
nitrogen‐poor DOM fraction also accumulated in the brines to concentrations up to
200 mmol L−1 but was not correlated with any of the fluorescence signals identified.
Because of the high C:N ratio and lack of fluorescence, this material is thought to
represent extracellular polymeric substances, which consist primarily of polysaccharides.
The clear grouping of the DOM pool into either proteinaceous or carbohydrate‐dominated
material indicates that the production and accumulation of these two subpools of DOM in
sea ice brines is, to some extent, decoupled.


The paper investigates the importance of probability weighting in financial decisions and examines the degree to which risk-taking behavior deviates from expected utility theory in the presence of probability weighting. A group of professional traders participates in an experiment, whose data are used to calculate risk and uncertainty premiums. This framework allows measuring and disentangling the impact of probability weighting on risk perceptions and behavior. Several findings emerge. Professional traders exhibit probability weighting which has a substantial and heterogeneous effect on behavior. Probability weighting affects traders' perceptions of their own risk attitude more intensely than it affects their actual behavior. Finally, risk-averse or risk-seeking behavior is more intense under conditions of uncertainty than it is under conditions of risk. These findings are consistent with previous studies, but provide new insights on several dimensions of trading decisions, and offer insights into market movements.


Drive-by download attacks attempt to compromise a victim's computer through browser vulnerabilities. Often they are launched from Malware Distribution Networks (MDNs) consisting of landing pages to attract traffic, intermediate redirection servers, and exploit servers which attempt the compromise. In this paper, we present a novel approach to discovering the landing pages that lead to drive-by downloads. Starting from partial knowledge of a given collection of MDNs we identify the malicious content on their landing pages using multiclass feature selection. We then query the webpage cache of a commercial search engine to identify landing pages containing the same or similar content. In this way we are able to identify previously unknown landing pages belonging to already identified MDNs, which allows us to expand our understanding of the MDN. We explore using both a rule-based and classifier approach to identifying potentially malicious landing pages. We build both systems and independently verify using a high-interaction honeypot that the newly identified landing pages indeed attempt drive-by downloads. For the rule-based system 57% of the landing pages predicted as malicious are confirmed, and this success rate remains constant in two large trials spaced five months apart. This extends the known footprint of the MDNs studied by 17%. The classifier-based system is less successful, and we explore possible reasons.


A wide range of disorders are associated with alterations of the central and peripheral vascular system. Modified vascular corrosion casting using a newly developed polymer, allows for the first time hierarchical assessment of 3D vessel data in animals down to the level of capillaries. Imaging of large volumes of vasculature at intermediate resolution (16 μm) was performed using a desktop micro-computed tomography system. Subsequently regions of interest were identified for additional high resolution imaging (1.4 μm) at the X-ray Tomographic Microscopy (XTM) station of the Swiss Light Source (SLS). A framework for systematic hierarchical imaging and quantification was developed. Issues addressed included enhanced XTM data acquisition, introduction of local tomography, sample navigation, advanced post processing, and data combination. In addition to visual assessment of qualitative changes, morphometrical and architectural indices were determined using direct 3D morphometry software developed in house. Vessel specific parameters included thickness, surface, connectivity, and vessel length. Reconstructions of cerebral vasculature in mutant mice modeling Alzheimer's disease revealed significant changes in vessel architecture and morphology. In the future, a combination of these techniques may support drug discovery. Additionally, future ultra-high-resolution in vivo systems may even allow non-invasive tracking of temporal alterations in vascular morphology.


This study aims to analyze elderly nursing professionals aged 60 or over who are active in the nursing profession and to identify the socio-demographic data and the agents that provide ergonomic risks that are submitted to nursing professionals in performing their activities Within a hospital unit. The number of elderly people has increased significantly in Brazil, so it will be common to find elderly nursing professionals, who continue to work in hospital units. The methodology used was a qualitative-quantitative research, of the descriptive type, exploratory through questionnaires of closed questions. Four nursing assistants and two nursing technicians participated in the study. The results showed that all the interviewees are female, who did not receive educational training on ergonomic risks during all the nursing years.


Echinacea, commonly referred to as purple coneflower, is an economically important herbaceous perennial native to North America. The demand for Echinacea has dramatically increased within recent years due to the renewed interest in native plantings and its medicinal properties. The roots and above ground parts of E. angustifolia D.C., E. pallida (Nutt.), and E. purpurea (L.) Moench have been proven to stimulate the immune system to prevent and treat colds, flus, and upper respiratory infections. However, Echinacea seeds have a dormancy requirement that ensures that they do not germinate until environmental conditions are favorable for survival, which makes them particularly difficult for plant propagators to germinate. The enlarged demand coupled with the low germination percentage of Echinacea has led researchers to determine what techniques will best help seeds break dormancy in order to improve the seedling germination percentage. The objective of this study was to find the treatment that most enhanced the germination percentage of E. purpurea and E. angustifolia by using a combination of stratification or moist chilling, gibberellic acid, and ethephon. The results of the study indicated that the treatment for both species that had the greatest improved germination percentage was stratification for 7 weeks with ethephon at 5 degrees Celsius.


In parliamentary interaction, more than in other types of institutional dialogue, follow-ups indicate how UK Members of Parliament (MPs) negotiate not only the pros and cons of topic-related issues, but also their status, roles and power positions. While a follow-up is normally conditioned by preceding turns in a dialogue, and, in its turn, it helps to shape the scope, focus and/or content of subsequent uptakes and follow-ups, interactively co-constructed follow-ups during Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) display recurrent argumentative or counter-argumentative strategies since they not only highlight controversial aspects of the debated issues, but they also serve (explicitly or implicitly) to successively and repeatedly call into question the position of a political adversary, thereby undermining the latter's authority and credibility. The aim of the present investigation is to identify and examine the discursive and argumentative functions of follow-ups occurring in PMQs of the House of Commons. The main research questions to be pursued are the following: What recurrent follow-up patterns can be found in PMQs? How are follow-ups initiated and responded to in the ongoing parliamentary interaction? What impact do follow-ups have on subsequent uptakes, and on the power balance between questioning MP and responding Prime Minister?


One of the great English Romantic poets, William Blake (1757-1827) was an artist, poet, mystic and visionary. His work ranges from the deceptively simple and lyrical "Songs of Innocence" and their counterpoint "Experience" - which juxtapose poems such as "The Lamb and The Tyger", and "The Blossom and The Sick Rose" - to highly elaborate, apocalyptic works, such as "The Four Zoas", "Milton" and "Jerusalem". Throughout his life Blake drew on a rich heritage of philosophy, religion and myth, to create a poetic worlds illuminated by his spiritual and revolutionary beliefs that have fascinated, intrigued and enchanted readers for generations.


Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors are pentameric, transmembrane, ligand-gated ion channels critical for neuromuscular signal transmission. Prior to innervation, the genes encoding these receptors are expressed in nuclei throughout the muscle fiber. Muscle innervation leads to a dramatic decrease in expression of these genes in extrasynaptic nuclei. This reduction in gene expression can be reversed by muscle denervation. The effects of denervation on receptor gene expression can be blocked by electrical stimulation of muscle using extracellular electrodes. The molecular mechanisms by which muscle electrical activity leads to altered patterns of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor gene expression are not well understood. Using an in vitro electrical stimulation paradigm to induce muscle activity, we have been able to mimic the effect of innervation on extrasynaptic acetylcholine receptor gene expression. We have found that a 93-bp region of 5'-flanking DNA, spanning nucleotides -150 to -57 relative to the transcription start site of the gamma subunit gene, is required for the suppression of gene expression in response to muscle activity. Sequences downstream of this region are transcriptionally active but are not responsive to muscle activity. However, these downstream sequences become responsive to muscle activity when placed under the control of the gamma subunit muscle-specific enhancer.


Everywhere the Internet goes, new legal problems are sure to follow. As social media expands and infiltrates our daily lives, society must grapple with how to extend the law to modern situations. This problem becomes increasingly pressing as more and more of our social interactions take place online. For example, Facebook has become a colossal gathering place for friends, families, co-workers, frenemies, and others to disseminate their ideas and share information. Sometimes Facebook replaces old institutions; other times it augments them. Where once a neighbor would show allegiance to a political candidate by staking a sign on the front lawn, a user now clicks Like on a candidate's Facebook Page instead. In 2009, a deputy sheriff was fired for doing just that. A U.S. district court, in an opinion that demonstrates the inability of the current legal framework to adequately address social-media activity, held that the termination did not violate the deputy sheriff's First Amendment rights. The judge reasoned that clicking Like does not constitute speech – let alone protected speech – because it is not substantive. This Article demonstrates that the court not only failed to follow well-established Supreme Court precedent, but also fundamentally misunderstood the technological consequences of clicking Like, which include textual statements as well as the symbolic thumbs up sign. Liking a political candidate's Facebook Page is the twenty-first century equivalent of a campaign yard sign and, under the Supreme Court's First Amendment jurisprudence, should be considered protected speech.


In this paper we introduce a novel gas distribution mapping algorithm, Bayesian Spatial Event Distribution (BASED), that, instead of modeling the spatial distribution of a quasicontinuous gas concentration, models the spatial distribution of gas events, for example detection and non-detection of a target gas. The proposed algorithm is based on the Bayesian Inference framework and models the likelihood of events at a certain location with a Bernoulli distribution. In order to avoid overfitting, a Bayesian approach is used with a beta distribution prior for the parameter μ that governs the Bernoulli distribution. In this way, the posterior distribution maintains the same form of the prior, i.e. will be a beta distribution as well, enabling a simple approach for sequential learning. To learn a map composed of beta distributions, we discretize the inspection area into a grid and extrapolate from local measurements using Gaussian kernels. We demonstrate the proposed algorithm for MOX sensors and a photo ionization detector mounted on a mobile robot and show how qualitatively similar maps are obtained from very different gas sensors.


Nationwide, the percentage of four-year-olds enrolled in state-supported preschool programs has more than doubled since the early 2000s as states dramatically increased their investments in early childhood education. Florida's Voluntary Pre-kindergarten Program (VPK), which began in 2005, has been a national leader with respect to preschool access. This paper provides the first evidence of the program's impacts. We measure the effect of VPK participation on the likelihood that children are retained at any point between kindergarten and third grade. Using an instrumental variables approach, we leverage local program expansion and detailed student-level data on eight cohorts of children, four of which were of preschool age in the years before VPK was implemented and four of which had access to VPK programs. The results indicate that VPK did not lead to changes in the likelihood that children complete the third grade without ever being retained. We do find, however, that VPK led to a change in the timing of retention. Specifically, the program led to a drop in the likelihood that children were retained during the kindergarten year, but this drop was counteracted by increases in retention in subsequent school years. Implications for policy are discussed.


This article investigates the feasibility of using spaceborne observations of aerosol optical thickness (AOT) derived with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) for monitoring of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in an environment of low aerosol loading. Previous studies of the AOT-to-PM2.5 relationship benefit from the large range of observed values. The Stockholm region features a comprehensive network of ground-based monitoring stations that generally show PM2.5 values <20 µg m−3. MODIS AOT at 555 nm is usually <0.20 and in good agreement with ground-based sun photometer observations in this region. We use MODIS Collection 5 AOT data with a horizontal resolution of 10 km×10 km and ground-based in-situ PM2.5 observations to derive an AOT-to-PM2.5 relationship that can be used to estimate fields of PM2.5. This has been carried out with respect to the months from April to September of the period 2000–2013. Relative average absolute deviations of 33–55 % (mean of 45 %) are obtained between MODIS-retrieved and ground-based PM2.5. The root mean square error is 0.2159 µg m−3 between retrieved and measured PM2.5. From spaceborne lidar observations, it is found that elevated aerosol layers are generally sparse in the Stockholm region. This favours remote sensing of PM2.5 from space. The deviations found between measured and retrieved PM2.5 are mainly attributed to infrequent situations of inhomogeneous aerosol layering for which column-integrated observations cannot be connected to surface conditions. Using MODIS Collection 6 data with a resolution of 3 km×3 km in a case study actually gives far fewer results than the coarser Collection 5 product. This is explained by the complex geography of the Stockholm region with a coastline and an abundance of lakes, which seems to induce biases in the retrieval of AOT at higher spatial resolution.


In the mammalian central nervous system, generation of new neurons persists in the subventricular zone (SVZ) throughout life. However, the capacity for neurogenesis in this region declines with aging. Recent studies have examined the degree of these age‐related neurogenic declines and the changes of cytoarchitecture of the SVZ with aging. However, little is known about the molecular changes in the SVZ with aging. In this study, we dissected the SVZs from rats aged postnatal day 28, 3 months, and 24 months. The SVZ tissues were processed for 2‐D gel electrophoresis to identify protein changes following aging. Protein spots were subsequently subjected to mass spectrometry analysis to compare age‐related alterations in the SVZ proteome. We also examined the level of cell proliferation in the SVZ in animals of these three age groups by using bromodeoxyuridine labeling. We found significant age‐related changes in the expression of several proteins that play critical roles in the proliferation and survival of neural stem/progenitor cells in the SVZ. Among these proteins, glial fibrillary acidic protein, ubiquitin carboxy terminal hydrolase 1, glutathione S‐transferase omega, and preproalbumin were increased with aging, whereas collapsin response‐mediated protein 4 (CRMP‐4), CRMP‐5, and microsomal protease ER60 exhibited declines with aging. We have also observed a significant decline of neural stem/progenitor cell proliferation in the SVZ with aging. These alterations in protein expression in the SVZ with aging likely underlie the diminishing proliferative capacity of stem/progenitor cells in the aging brain. © 2012 Wiley Peridicals, Inc.


Abstract Australian lizards are a diverse group distributed across the continent and inhabiting a wide range of environments. Together, they exhibit a remarkable diversity of reproductive morphologies, physiologies, and behaviours that is broadly representative of vertebrates in general. Many reproductive traits exhibited by Australian lizards have evolved independently in multiple lizard lineages, including sociality, complex signalling and mating systems, viviparity, and temperature-dependent sex determination. Australian lizards are thus outstanding model organisms for testing hypotheses about how reproductive traits function and evolve, and they provide an important basis of comparison with other animals that exhibit similar traits. We review how research on Australian lizard reproduction has contributed to answering broader evolutionary and ecological questions that apply to animals in general. We focus on reproductive traits, processes, and strategies that are important areas of current research, including behaviours and signalling involved in courtship; mechanisms involved in mating, egg production, and sperm competition; nesting and gestation; sex determination; and finally, birth in viviparous species. We use our review to identify important questions that emerge from an understanding of this body of research when considered holistically. Finally, we identify additional research questions within each topic that Australian lizards are well suited for reproductive biologists to address.


The financial crisis and ensuing recession have had an enormous impact on state-administered pension plans. Funded levels declined sharply, the Annual Required Contribution (ARC) increased to make up for the fall in funding, and the percent of ARC paid declined as the bottom fell out of state revenues. In response, states have increased employer and employee contributions, cut employment, slowed wage growth, and lowered benefits for new employees (and in a few instances reduced COLAs for current employees, but these initiatives have been challenged and are currently in the courts). Less is known about how locally-administered plans have fared in the last four years. This brief attempts to fill that gap. The discussion proceeds as follows. The first section describes our sample of 97 locally-administered plans from 40 states, which was collected initially in 2006 and updated to 2010 for this brief. The second section presents the change in the funded status of local plans over the last four years, looking separately at plans for police/fire, teachers, and general employees. It also reports the changes in the ARC and the percent of ARC paid during this period. And it compares the experience of locally-administered plans with those of state-administered plans. The third section reports on the impact of pension contributions to local budgets. This analysis is complicated by the fact that, in aggregate, only 40 percent of local pension contributions go to locally-administered plans, while 60 percent go to state plans. While good data are available for local-to-local contributions, local-to-state contributions are less explicit and in some cases must be estimated. Our calculations suggest that total local pension contributions for our sample account for about 8 percent of local budgets. The final section concludes that despite the perils facing cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Omaha, locally-administered plans, overall, are as well-funded as those administered by the states. But the demands of local plans are only half the story in terms of pressure on local budgets; local contributions to state plans will be a major driver of future budget burdens.


Recently used in various machine learning contexts, the Gromov-Wasserstein distance (GW) allows for comparing distributions whose supports do not necessarily lie in the same metric space. However, this Optimal Transport (OT) distance requires solving a complex non convex quadratic program which is most of the time very costly both in time and memory. Contrary to GW, the Wasserstein distance (W) enjoys several properties ({\em e.g.} duality) that permit large scale optimization. Among those, the solution of W on the real line, that only requires sorting discrete samples in 1D, allows defining the Sliced Wasserstein (SW) distance. This paper proposes a new divergence based on GW akin to SW. We first derive a closed form for GW when dealing with 1D distributions, based on a new result for the related quadratic assignment problem. We then define a novel OT discrepancy that can deal with large scale distributions via a slicing approach and we show how it relates to the GW distance while being $O(n\log(n))$ to compute. We illustrate the behavior of this so called Sliced Gromov-Wasserstein (SGW) discrepancy in experiments where we demonstrate its ability to tackle similar problems as GW while being several order of magnitudes faster to compute.


Drug dosage in the perinatal period represents a continuous challenge for the neonatologist because of interindividual variability of drug metabolism. The human liver plays a central role in the uptake, transport, metabolism and excretion of the vast majority of xenobiotics and drugs. The protein products of human CYP3A account for the largest portion of CYP450 proteins in human liver. At least 50% of currently used drugs in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) are substrates of CYP3A4 including antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, immunomodulators, benzodiazepines, proton pump inhibitors, steroid hormones and acetaminophen. The variable CYP3A4 and CYP3A7 expression recently reported in neonatal liver suggests the existence of a marked interindividual variability in drug metabolism during the intrauterine and neonatal lives and, as a consequence, the need of an individualized tailored therapeutic approach in NICUs. The increased risk for adverse effects reported for some drugs in neonates could be related to pharmacokinetic peculiarities of the newborn liver. The fetal and neonatal liver in infants undergoing drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is always characterized by the overlapping between developmental and pathological changes, the differential diagnosis between these changes representing often a challenge for the pathologist. Data here reported clearly evidence the peculiarity of the histological examination of the newborn liver, as compared to the adult liver. In conclusion, the role of the pathologist in the interpretation of liver reactions to drugs may be relevant, only when supported by the dialogue with neonatologists. A deep knowledge of the events taking place during Review Proceedings of the International Course on Perinatal Pathology (part of the 10 International Workshop on Neonatology · October 22-25, 2014) Cagliari (Italy) · October 25, 2014 The role of the clinical pathological dialogue in problem solving Guest Editors: Gavino Faa, Vassilios Fanos, Peter Van Eyken Proceedings Journal of Pediatric and Neonatal Individualized Medicine • vol. 3 • n. 2 • 2014 www.jpnim.com Open Access 2/13 Fanni • Fanos • Gerosa • Ambu • Gibo • Faa liver development at different gestational ages is necessary for a dedicated neonatal pathologist, in order to avoid misinterpretation of the histological changes related to liver development, giving them a pathological significance.


This descriptive study illustrates the multitude of intertwining factors contributing to suicidal ideation and attempts, and deaths by suicide among South Sudanese refugees in Moyo/Obongi Palorinya settlements in northern Uganda. It was conducted from 2019 to 2020 due to escalating rates of suicide attempts and deaths by suicide noted in a rapid assessment by Lutheran World Federation mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) workers. This study aimed to better understand factors contributing to suicidal ideation and attempts among refugees, to tailor MHPSS interventions and prevent potential escalation of suicidality across the region, including nearby refugee hosting districts in Adjumani/Lamwo. Data collection techniques included key informant interviews, focus group discussions, case studies and review of the lead author's therapy recovery notes. The findings highlighted the following factors contributing to escalating suicidality among the refugees: war stressors (experiencing and witnessing violent acts), daily stressors, social fragmentation, normalised violence, social isolation, lack of economic opportunities, loss of assets and loss of confidence and hope, among others. The assessment found that the spiking trend of increased suicidal behaviour is apparently unique to Moyo/Obongi, compared to neighbouring settlements, but emphasises the need for monitoring and preventive interventions in neighbouring districts. The psychosocial as well as economic impact of a reduction in funding for MHPSS programming is underlined, emphasising the need for long-term funding to consolidate programme effects and respond to realities on the ground. Community-based psychosocial support interventions provided by Lutheran World Federation are described that have subsequently helped to mitigate and respond to the escalating trend in suicidality and reflections given to strengthen the ongoing response with lessons learned for other contexts.


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Having a good teacher is the most important school-related factor for student achievement, to the point of closing the gap between low and high-income students. However, the empirical literature is almost silent regarding teacher selection. This paper estimates a teacher selection model using recruitment data from Ensena Peru, a program that recruits top university graduates from all majors and places them in vulnerable schools. Our results suggest that candidates with volunteering experience and who finished their college degree in the top third of their class are significantly more likely to be selected into the program. Teacher recruitment policy that identifies these qualities, which might be related to leadership, high motivation, social commitment and deep content knowledge, could considerably improve the quality of the teaching force.


Gaps remain in our understanding of the contribution of bypass-related practices associated with red blood cell (RBC) transfusions after cardiac surgery. Variability exists in the reporting of bypass-related practices in the peer-reviewed literature. In an effort to create uniformity in reporting, a draft statement outlining proposed minimal criteria for reporting cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB)- related contributions (i.e., RBC data collection/documentation, clinical considerations for transfusions, equipment details, and clinical endpoints) was presented in conjunction with the American Society of ExtraCorporeal Technology's (AmSECT's) 2014 Quality and Outcomes Meeting (Baltimore, MD). Based on presentations and feedback from the conference, coauthors (n = 14) developed and subsequently voted on each proposed data element. Data elements receiving a total of 4 votes were dropped from further consideration, 5-9 votes were considered as "Recommended," and elements receiving ≥10 votes were considered as "Mandatory." A total of 52 elements were classified as mandatory, 16 recommended, and 14 dropped. There are 8 mandatory data elements for RBC data collection/documentation, 24 for clinical considerations for transfusions, 13 for equipment details, and 7 for clinical endpoints. We present 52 mandatory data elements reflecting CPB-related contributions to RBC transfusions. Consistency of such reporting would offer our community an increased opportunity to shed light on the relationship between intra-operative practices and RBC transfusions.