This article uses organisational learning literature to explore how employees' orientations to corporate social responsibility, mental models and assessments of organisations' espoused and enacted values, impact upon the success of corporate social responsibility programmes and actions. Work by Aguilera et al. (2007) is used to consider the potential dissonance between individual and organisational motives for corporate social responsibility. This theoretical article discusses the role of motives and learning within change. It contemplates both the role of motives held within mental models as a crucial factor in the successful adoption of effective corporate social responsibility practices and the function of learning practices in the support of corporate social responsibility change. Its contribution is in its focus at the level of the individual employee and in its challenge to assumptions about the relationship between individual and organisational motives for corporate social responsibility implementation. It is argued that effective implementation of corporate social responsibility requires organisations to consider both the role of learning and unlearning. Furthermore, organisations need to provide active support for the development of mental models about corporate social responsibility to prevent the development of dissonance between individual and organisational dispositions towards it.


Editorial note: A meeting on 'Conditions of Dalradian Metamorphism', convened by Drs C. M. Graham and B. Harte (Edinburgh University) and Dr R. Powell (Leeds University) on behalf of the Metamorphic Studies Group was held at the University of Edinburgh on 20 and 21 September 1983, and was followed by a field trip to the Dalradian of the Scottish Highlands. Drs Colin M. Graham and Ben Harte have provided the following introduction to the proceedings of the conference and the published papers: The metamorphosed rocks of the Dalradian Super-group, with their clearly developed and contrasting (Barrovian and Buchan) metamorphic zonal sequences and varied (pelitic-psammitic, basic, calcareous) lithologies, have played an important part in the development of metamorphic petrology through the studies of such early workers as Barrow, Horne, Tilley, Read, Wisemen and Harker. More recently, models of thermo-tectonic development have shown a broad array of ideas: regional depth control in a 'tectogen' (Kennedy 1948); self-heating of a crustal pile (Richardson & Powell 1976); importance of high-level magma (Atherton 1977; Yardley 1980); the development of inverted zonal sequences (Chinner 1978); and suggestions of tectonically controlled lateral heat transfer (Harte & Hudson 1979). The diversity of these suggestions no doubt partly reflects the complexity of the Scottish-Irish Dalradian terrain as a whole, a feature which was further brought out in several papers at the meeting. In order to provide a setting for viewing the broader aspects of metamorphic studies and their relation to structural–tectonic and temporal evolution, the meeting commenced with


Fruits and vegetables are an important source of nutrients for a large number of Kenyans, as well as major earners of foreign exchange, and are commonly grown crop among smallholder farmers, who often sell them for cash. Little is known, however, about the structure of domestic demand for fruits and vegetables in this rapidly urbanizing nation and in Sub-Saharan Africa in general. We apply the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) with seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) to data collected through a household expenditure survey conducted between June and July of 2009. Inelastic estimates of own-price elasticities for cabbage and tomato, and for all fruits, with the exception of onion and avocado, indicate that these are necessities. The own-price elasticities for the vegetables were negative and in the range of (-0.693) and (-0.792). The own-price elasticities for the fruits range between (-0.577) and (-1.104). Estimated cross-price elasticities also illustrate both substitutability and complementarity in demand. Expenditure elasticities above unity for kale, onion, mango and avocado suggest they are luxuries. The high expenditure elasticity of demand for some fruits and vegetables means that potential growth in demand could be large. We recommend that public investments address production and marketing systems with the aim of increasing the availability of fruits and vegetables to Nairobi households, also stimulating domestic demand for these crops among smallholder farmers.


Continuous service certification (CSC) involves the consistently gathering and assessing certification-relevant information about cloud service operations to validate whether they continue to adhere to certification criteria. Previous research has proposed test-based CSC methodologies that directly assess the components of cloud service infrastructures. However, test-based certification requires that certification authorities can access the cloud infrastructure, which various issues may limit. To address these challenges, cloud service providers need to conduct monitoring-based CSC; that is, monitor their cloud service infrastructure to gather certification-relevant data by themselves and then provide these data to certification authorities. Nevertheless, we need to better understand how to design monitoring systems to enable cloud service providers to perform such monitoring. By taking a design science perspective, we derive universal meta-requirements and design guidelines for CSC monitoring systems based on findings from five expert focus group interviews with 33 cloud experts and 10 one-to-one interviews with cloud customers. With this study, we expand the current knowledge base regarding CSC and monitoring-based CSC. Our derived design guidelines contribute to the development of CSC monitoring systems and enable monitoringbased CSC that overcomes issues of prior test-based approaches.


Purpose: The aim of this article is to analyse legal solutions determining the principles of undertaking and performing pharmacy activities in Poland, with particular emphasis on the importance of these solutions to guarantee the public health protection in terms of theory of state interference in the economy. Design/Methodology/Approach: The article uses the method of analysis of legal regulation and the descriptive method. Findings: The object of pharmacy's activities is the provision of pharmaceutical services that remain in the domain of practising the profession of pharmacist as a profession of public trust. The provisions of Polish Pharmaceutical Law, shaping the principles of rationing pharmaceutical activities in Poland, and thus determining the subjective structure of the pharmacy market, have undergone a particular change, which entered into force on June 25, 2017, giving rise to polarization of participants in the pharmacy market for entrepreneurs. Practical Implications: Considering the existing differentiation of the pharmaceutical activities model, it is necessary to assess the legal conditions of the public health protection guarantee in the field of the entrepreneur's social interest. This assessment should concern both running a pharmacy by a non-pharmacist and an entrepreneur with the right to practice as a pharmacist. Recognizing the close correlation between the economic objective and the public objective of the pharmacy activities, the question should also be asked about the significant changes in Pharmaceutical Law aimed at strengthening the pharmacist's position as an important participant in the market of pharmacy services. Originality/Value: The implementation of the public health care facility function by the generally accessible pharmacy is in line with the context of public health protection guarantee in the field of the functioning of the pharmacy market, both in terms of the principles of undertaking pharmacy operations as well as legal solutions that determine the pharmacy management model.


The larvae of the arborescent bryozoan Bugula neritina are chemically defended against predators by unpalatable secondary metabolites called bryostatins. Bryostatins, polyketide- derived secondary compounds, are produced by the bacterial symbiont 'Candidatus Endobugula sertula', which is present throughout all life stages of B. neritina. Crude extracts of larval and all juve- nile stages of B. neritina significantly reduced pinfish feeding (p < 0.003). Extract unpalatability is due to high bryostatin concentrations. As B. neritina increases in age after larval settlement and metamor- phosis, palatability increases as bryostatin concentrations decrease precipitously. Extracts of brood- ing portions of adult colonies reduced pinfish feeding by a significant 54% (p = 0.008), whereas ex- tracts of non-brooding portions of the same colonies resulted in a non-significant 20% decline in feeding (p = 0.125). Our data suggest that the different life stages of B. neritina employ alternate de- fensive strategies. The mobile, short-lived larvae and early-stage juveniles are defended from preda- tors by having deterrent levels of bryostatins; in contrast, the older juveniles and adults, which are clonal and relatively long-lived, may be defended largely by high levels of structural material (i.e. chitin and carbonate). Predation pressure on the vulnerable larval stage of B. neritina appears in part to have driven selection for the development and maintenance of the symbiotic relationship between B. neritina and Ca. Endobugula sertula whereby the larvae are chemically defended by symbiont- produced bryostatins.


. In this paper, authors deal with a problem of an impaired TCP stream reconstruction from a real-world captured data. The goal is to obtain an original application data. The data are synthesized to be used as an input for a traffic generator. Authors describe a way to solve specific problems at transport and application layers during the reconstruction of an impaired TCP stream. The traffic reconstruction is oriented to IEC 60870-5-104 protocol on top of TCP. The evaluation of proposed algorithms shows that it is possible to estimate original time dependencies between received and dispatched messages with high accuracy.


Growing inequality, the decline in labor's share of national income, and increasing evidence of labor market concentration and employer buyer power are all subjects of national attention, eliciting wide-ranging proposals for legal reform. Many proposals hinge on labor market fixes and empowering workers within and beyond existing work law or through tax-and-transfer schemes. But a recent surge of interest focuses on applying antitrust law in labor markets, or "labor antitrust." These proposals call for more aggressive enforcement by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as well as stronger legal remedies for employer collusion and unlawful monopsony that suppresses workers' wages.

The turn to labor antitrust is driven in part by congressional gridlock and the collapse of labor law as a dominant source of labor market regulation, inviting regulation through other means. Labor antitrust promises an effective attack because agency discretion and judicial enforcement can police labor markets without substantial amendments to existing law, bypassing the current impasse in Congress. Further, unlike labor and employment law, labor antitrust is uniquely positioned to challenge industry-wide wage suppression; suing multiple employers is increasingly challenging in work law as a statutory, doctrinal, and procedural matter.

But current labor antitrust proposals, while fruitful, are fundamentally limited in two ways. First, echoing a broader antitrust policy crisis, they inherit and reinvigorate debates about the current consumer welfare goal of antitrust. The proposals ignore that, as a theoretical and practical matter, employers' anticompetitive conduct in labor markets does not necessarily harm consumers. As a result, workers' labor antitrust challenges will face an uphill battle under current law: where consumers are not harmed, labor antitrust can neither effectively police employer buyer power nor fill gaps in labor market regulation left by a retreating labor law. Second, the proposals ignore real synergies between antitrust enforcement and labor regulation that could preempt the rise of employer buyer power and contain its exercise.

This Essay analyzes the limitations of current labor antitrust proposals and argues for regulatory sharing between antitrust and labor law to combat the adverse effects of employer buyer power. It makes three key contributions. First, it frames the new labor antitrust as disrupting a grand regulatory bargain, reinforced by the Chicago School, that segregated labor and antitrust regulation to resolve a perceived paradox in serving two masters: workers and consumers. The dominance of the consumer welfare standard resolved that paradox. Second, it explains how scholarly attempts to invigorate labor antitrust fail to overcome this paradox and ignore theoretical and doctrinal roadblocks to maximizing both worker and consumer welfare, leaving worker plaintiffs vulnerable to failure. Third, it proposes a novel restructuring of labor market regulation that integrates antitrust and labor law enforcement to achieve coherent and effective regulation of employer buyer power. It refocuses labor antitrust claims on consumer welfare ends and relegates worker welfare considerations to a labor law supplemented and fortified by the creation of substantive presumptions and defenses triggered by labor antitrust findings as well as labor agency involvement in merger review.


Chitinases (EC 22.214.171.124) are enzymes that degrade chitin. These enzymes are gaining importance for their wide-ranging applications including the preparation of pharmaceutically important chitooligosaccharides and N-acetyl D glucosamine, preparation of single-cell protein, isolation of protoplasts from fungi and yeast, control of pathogenic fungi, treatment of chitinous waste, mosquito control and morphogenesis and especially in agriculture fields to control pathogens. Previously, we have cloned chiA gene encoding chitinase for overexpresion in E. coli . Herein, we optimized the expression conditions for improvement of chitinase biosynthesis in recombinant E. coli strain using response surface method (RSM) based on Design-Expert 10.1 software (Stat-Ease, Inc., Minneapolis, USA. Fermentation conditions such as inducer concentrate, induction time and cell density at the time of induction and their effects on the chitinase biosynthesis were investigated. The RMS analysis suggested that the optimal conditions for production of recombinant ChiA are at lactose concentration of 6,15 mM, 8,12 hours after induction and cell density OD 600nm = 0,87 with predicted enzyme activity of 7,49 U/ml. The model obtained was used for fermentation of recombinant strain and the real chitinase activity achieved 7,54 U/ml which is 1.32 times higher compared to that of the pre-optimization (5.71 U/ml). The RSM was found to be useful in optimizing and determining the interactions among process variables in ChiA enzyme production. Our data also indicated that using lactose as the inducer instead of ITPG for ChiA expression can also reduce product costs. Citation: Trinh Thi Thu Ha, Dong Van Quyen, Ngo Dinh Binh, 2018. Optimization and improvement of recombinant chitinase biosynthesis in E . coli using response surface method. Tap chi Sinh hoc, 40(1): x-xx. DOI: 10.15625/0866-7160 /v40n1.10495. *Corresponding author: firstname.lastname@example.com Received 5 July 2017 , accepted 20 December 2017


Statins are one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in clinical practice. They are usually well tolerated and effectively prevent cardiovascular events. Most adverse effects associated with statin therapy are muscle-related. The recent statement of the European Atherosclerosis Society (EAS) has focused on statin-associated muscle symptoms (SAMS), and avoided the use of the term 'statin intolerance'. Although muscle syndromes are the most common adverse effects observed after statin therapy, excluding other side effects might underestimate the number of patients with statin intolerance, which might be observed in 10 – 15% of patients. In clinical practice, statin intolerance limits effective treatment of patients at risk of, or with, cardiovascular disease. Knowledge of the most common adverse effects of statin therapy that might cause statin intolerance and the clear definition of this phenomenon is crucial to effectively treat patients with lipid disorders. Therefore, the aim of this position paper was to suggest a unified definition of statin intolerance, and to complement the recent EAS statement on SAMS, where the pathophysiology, diagnosis and the management were comprehensively presented.


The use of phylogenetic methods in anthropological fields such as archaeology, linguistics and stemmatology (involving what are often called "culture data") is based on an analogy between human cultural evolution and biological evolution. We need to understand this analogy thoroughly, including how well anthropology data fit the model of a phylogenetic tree, as used in biology. I provide a direct comparison of anthropology datasets with both phenotype and genotype datasets from biology. The anthropology datasets fit the tree model approximately as well as do the genotype data, which is detectably worse than the fit of the phenotype data. This is true for datasets with <500 parsimony-informative characters, as well as for larger datasets. This implies that cross-cultural (horizontal) processes have been important in the evolution of cultural artifacts, as well as branching historical (vertical) processes, and thus a phylogenetic network will be a more appropriate model than a phylogenetic tree.


There are three usable regional depth phases, sPg , sPmP , and sPn , and their corresponding reference phases, Pg , PmP , and Pn . The differential time between each depth phase and its reference phase can be used to estimate earthquake focal depth. We have developed a method to determine focal depth for moderate and small earthquakes by using a regional depth-phase modeling (RDPM) method. We used a default focal mechanism to generate the differential times for all earthquakes. To estimate the reliability of the modeled focal depths, we compared our solutions with those obtained by other methods and found the consistency is good. Because the focal depths estimated by RDPM are model dependent, we tested the extent of the dependency and found that a 10% error in the crustal model may generate a 10%–15% error in the modeled depth. The absolute error is determined by the error in the crustal model and the focal depth itself. We found that earthquake location errors have only a small effect on the modeled focal depths. By analyzing synthetic and observed waveforms, we found a distance window within which sPmP and PmP are well developed, and, within the window, the P portion of the waveform is relatively simple and sPmP and PmP are easy to identify. We also demonstrated that the assumptions of sPmP and PmP are correct, that regional depth phases are not developed or not discernible in some regions, and that regional depth phases have special features that can be used to identify those phases.


The alkenone–pCO2 methodology has been used to reconstruct the partial pressure of ancient atmospheric carbon dioxide (pCO2) for the past 45 million years of Earth's history (Middle Eocene to Pleistocene epochs). The present long-term CO2 record is a composite of data from multiple ocean localities that express a wide range of oceanographic and algal growth conditions that potentially bias CO2 results. In this study, we present a pCO2 record spanning the past 40 million years from a single marine locality, Ocean Drilling Program Site 925 located in the western equatorial Atlantic Ocean. The trends and absolute values of our new CO2 record site are broadly consistent with previously published multi-site alkenone–CO2 results. However, new pCO2 estimates for the Middle Miocene are notably higher than published records, with average pCO2 concentrations in the range of 400–500 ppm. Our results are generally consistent with recent pCO2 estimates based on boron isotope-pH data and stomatal index records, and suggest that CO2 levels were highest during a period of global warmth associated with the Middle Miocene Climatic Optimum (17–14 million years ago, Ma), followed by a decline in CO2 during the Middle Miocene Climate Transition (approx. 14 Ma). Several relationships remain contrary to expectations. For example, benthic foraminiferal δ18O records suggest a period of deglaciation and/or high-latitude warming during the latest Oligocene (27–23 Ma) that, based on our results, occurred concurrently with a long-term decrease in CO2 levels. Additionally, a large positive δ18O excursion near the Oligocene–Miocene boundary (the Mi-1 event, approx. 23 Ma), assumed to represent a period of glacial advance and retreat on Antarctica, is difficult to explain by our CO2 record alone given what is known of Antarctic ice sheet history and the strong hysteresis of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet once it has grown to continental dimensions. We also demonstrate that in the Neogene with low CO2 levels, algal carbon concentrating mechanisms and spontaneous biocarbonate–CO2 conversions are likely to play a more important role in algal carbon fixation, which provides a potential bias to the alkenone–pCO2 method.


Free radical chain reactions result when atoms containing unpaired electrons bind with biomolecules and alter their biological functions, contributing to the progression of diseases such as atherosclerosis, cancer, and diabetes. Antioxidants, such as vitamin E and sulforaphane, are effective neutralizers of free radicals and prevent cellular damage. This present study is conducted to determine the relative effectiveness of sulforaphane against free radicals generated by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) compared with the known antioxidant vitamin E. In this experiment, H2O2 is a source of free radicals and germinating radish seeds are models to test the protective effects of antioxidants against free radicals. Generally, H2O2 diffuses into the cell and dissociates to form hydroxyl radicals through Fenton reactions. Based on current literature, the hypothesis is that sulforaphane is more effective than vitamin E in inhibiting free radicals from 1% H2O2 on germinating radish seeds due to its activation of different antioxidant pathways compared to vitamin E's direct neutralization of free radicals. The 1% H2O2-treated radish seeds show lower germination rates than seeds treated with sulforaphane and vitamin E with 1% H2O2. Furthermore, the germination rate is higher in sulforaphane with 1% H2O2-treated seeds compared to vitamin E and 1% H2O2 treated seeds. In summary, these experiments show sulforaphane is more effective than vitamin E in neutralizing the free radical effects of H2O2 on radish seed germination. These results point to sulforaphane's potential use as a dietary supplement to counteract free radical effects on cellular levels, helping to prevent the progression of certain diseases.


In this paper hazard of nano-material application is taken into consideration for ranking of nanomaterials. In other words, the importance of toxicity caused by nano material usage is a part and parcel of this research. And for the first time in the literature, the maximum amount of allowed nano-materials in the air is considered as an effective quantitative factor in prioritizing the nano-material alternatives. With respect to the problem of ranking the properties, a new multiobjective model is proposed to determine the priority of nano-materials. Solving the new model, proved that by adding toxicity factor to the previous factors in the literature, a completely new ranking of nano-materials would be presented. The validity of the presented ranking is confirmed by Spearman Correlation Coefficient. It should be mentioned that the different rankings achieved in our research is mainly due to addition of toxicity factor in our model. This issue is an endorsement of the fact that addition of the ignored factor, toxicity, changes the results and rankings of the prior research work. Results of this paper may be referred to by future researcher and may be of value to macroeconomic policy makers, private investors and factories interested in ranking and selecting the best field of nano technology.


Abstract In this working paper we seek to contribute to debates about the scaling up of citizen participation in towns and cities of the Global South through a focus on participatory planning. Our contribution is three-fold. First, we discuss existing experiences of integrating participation into citywide planning and urban governance processes, highlighting that such efforts often do not adequately consider the views of low-income communities, and restrict participation to the level of the neighbourhood. Second, drawing on these experiences, we outline what we mean, theoretically and practically, by scaling up participation and summarise the ways and extent to which the scaling up of participation has occurred as discussed in the literature, and the factors that emerge as significant to its progress. We consider government, academic and civil society-led efforts. Third, we identify factors perceived to be significant challenges and potential opportunities to scaling processes, focusing specifically on experiences in three African cities: Bulawayo (Zimbabwe), Johannesburg (South Africa) and Nairobi (Kenya). In the concluding section we summarise the implications for the next stage of an action research programme to advance our understanding of how to achieve citywide participatory planning.


Using Canadian plant-level data, this paper shows that, depending on the industry, the differences in the average plant-level productivity and cross-plant allocation of resources between multi-plant and single-plant firms account for 1 to 15 per cent of the industry-level TFP. A large part of this contribution stems from more efficient cross-plant allocation of resources, measured by the covariance between plant size and productivity, in the pool of plants in multi-plant firms compared to the pool of plants in single-plant firms. There is less dispersion in the marginal products of the inputs, and thus less misallocation, in industries in which multi-plant firms account for a larger share of output. The patterns found in the cross-plant distribution of productivity and size are also consistent with better allocative efficiency among plants in multi-plant firms than among plants in single-plant firms.


Vanguard is the world's largest complex of mutual funds, with over $3 trillion in assets under management, including $215 billion added in 2014. Vanguard's main attraction to investors is its low costs. Profs. Freeman and Brown (2000) report that the advisory fees charged by the Vanguard Group "tend to present lower expense ratios than the rest of the mutual fund industry" because "Vanguard funds are run on the same basis as most companies in the economy: boards are unswervingly devoted to making as much money as possible…for shareholders [of the funds]. Stated differently, Vanguard funds are uncontaminated by the conflict of interest that affects most of the rest of the fund industry." Michael Rawson, a Morningstar analyst, told the Financial Times in May 2015 that "[i]t is phenomenal that a single company could represent almost 20 percent of the US mutual fund industry. But they have done it through offering products that are consistently lower cost than other funds". The main reason for Vanguard's lower fees than, for example, the fees charged by Fidelity (its closest rival) is that Vanguard has a unique structure, approved by the SEC in 1975: The investment manager (Vanguard Group Inc., or VGI) is owned by the Vanguard domestic mutual funds (the Funds) in proportion to Net Asset Value. This structure, Profs. Freeman and Brown argue, means that there is no conflict of interest between VGI and the Funds, while every other mutual fund complex has the advisor charging too much because it puts the interest of shareholders of the advisor ahead of investors that are shareholders of the funds.Coates and Hubbard (2007) have argued that this situation should result in investors moving from other funds to Vanguard, and the recent phenomenal growth of Vanguard suggests that they were right. But there is a problem: As David Danon, a former Vanguard in-house tax lawyer, has argued in a lawsuit filed in 2013, the Vanguard structure directly contravenes the arm's length standard of Treags. Reg. 1.482-1(b)(1) because VGI provides services to the Funds "at cost", i.e., without charging an arm's length profit. VGI is a C corporation and the Funds are Regulated Investment Companies (RICs) not taxable at the corporate level, so this situation results in avoidance of billions of corporate taxes. The IRS has not taken action on Danon's whistleblower complaint, nor has the NY Attorney General intervened in his qui tam lawsuit against Vanguard. Given the millions of Americans that have invested in Vanguard funds and the billions in tax at stake (which would presumably be borne by the investors in the Funds if Vanguard raises its fees to include the tax), this case raises the question: Is Vanguard too big to tax?This article will argue (a) that the Vanguard "at cost" pricing is unsustainable under the arm's length standard, and that the IRS will win in court if it challenges Vanguard's transfer pricing; (b) that the Vanguard case illustrates some of the problems with the arm's length standard and would have been avoided had unitary taxation principles been applied to Vanguard and its Funds.


Top-Down VLSI Design: From Architectures to Gate-Level Circuits and FPGAs represents a unique approach to learning digital design. Developed from more than 20 years teaching circuit design, Doctor Kaeslins approach follows the natural VLSI design flow and makes circuit design accessible for professionals with a background in systems engineering or digital signal processing. It begins with hardware architecture and promotes a system-level view, first considering the type of intended application and letting that guide your design choices. Doctor Kaeslin presents modern considerations for handling circuit complexity, throughput, and energy efficiency while preserving functionality. The book focuses on application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), which along with FPGAs are increasingly used to develop products with applications in telecommunications, IT security, biomedical, automotive, and computer vision industries. Topics include field-programmable logic, algorithms, verification, modeling hardware, synchronous clocking, and more. Demonstrates a top-down approach to digital VLSI design. Provides a systematic overview of architecture optimization techniques. Features a chapter on field-programmable logic devices, their technologies and architectures. Includes checklists, hints, and warnings for various design situations. Emphasizes design flows that do not overlook important action items and which include alternative options when planning the development of microelectronic circuits.


Objective: The purpose of this study is to determine the presence and transfer of plasmids in bacteria isolated from tears of HIV/AIDS patients, their sensitivity and resistance to commercially available antibiotics. Design: This was a cross sectional experimental study. Materials and methods: One hundred tears samples from HIV/ AIDS patients and fifty tears samples from HIV/AIDS negative patients were screened for resistance to 14 commercially available antibiotics using disc diffusion method. Result: Three multiple antibiotics resistant strains of staphylococcus aureus and four multiple antibiotics resistance strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa were identified. staphylococcus aureus strains showed 100% resistance to Ampiclox and erythromycin, 66.6% to Perfloxacin, amoxicillin and septrin, 33.33% to ciprofloxacin. Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains showed 100% resistance to streptomycin, amoxicillin, septrin and chloramphenicol. Only I strain of staphylococcus aureus showed presence of plasmid which was not transferable to Escherichia coli because of presence of disulphide crosslinked cell wall. Other strains of both staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa remained resistant after curing . Conclusion: Further studies are needed in this area to show if antibiotic resistance in HIV/AIDS positive patients could be as a result of plasmid as well as other factors. Key words: Plasmids, Resistance, antibiotics, bacteria


This paper investigates whether sell-side equity analysts fully incorporate the future earnings implications of really dirty surplus (RDS) into their earnings forecasts. RDS refers to gains or losses from contingent equity transactions settled at prices other than the fair value. We find that analysts' earnings forecasts are over-optimistic for firms with large RDS losses, RDS over-optimism is lower for firms with higher analyst following, and the over-optimism carries over to stock recommendations. Our findings suggest that the lack of fair value information in accounting records about the off-market settlement drives the RDS-related analyst over-optimism.


Most English-as-a-second-language (ESL)/ English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers would agree that modal verbs remain difficult notions to teach. While intermediate to advanced ESL/ EFL students manifest sufficient command of form, they invariably struggle with using English modals in pragmatic and meaningful ways. With regard to Arab EFL learners' acquisition of modal verbs, several studies have investigated the issue (e.g. Elenizi, 2004; Saeed, 2009; Sabri, 2011). However, none of the previous research endeavors has tried to study Arab learners' difficulties with modal verbs outside of EFL contexts, nor have they explored how ESL/EFL textbooks deal with modality and Arab learners. Thus, this paper attempts to examine the nature of Arab ESL learners' difficulties with modal verbs in English and the inadequacies of ESL textbooks in this regard. Thereby, it analyzes modal verbs from the lenses of reference grammar books and also from the lenses of ESL student grammar textbooks, and it also puts forward some suggestions on how to approach the Arab students' challenges with English modal verbs.


This paper addresses the problem of electricity cost management for Internet service providers with a collection of spatially distributed data centers. As the demand on Internet services drastically increases in recent years, the electricity consumed by Internet data centers (IDCs) has been skyrocketing. While most existing research focuses on reducing electric energy consumption of IDCs at one specific location, the problem of reducing the total electricity cost has been overlooked. This is an important problem faced by service providers, especially in the present multi-electricity-market environment, where the price of electricity may exhibit temporal and spatial diversities. Further, for these service providers, guaranteeing the quality of service (i.e., service level objectives) such as service delay guarantees to the end users is of critical importance. This paper studies the problem of minimizing the total electricity cost under multiple electricity markets environment while guaranteeing the quality of service geared to the location diversity and time diversity of electricity price. The problem is modeled as a constrained mixed-integer programming and an efficient solution algorithm is proposed. Extensive evaluations based on real-world electricity price data for multiple IDC locations illustrate the efficiency and efficacy of our approach.


Plants require the function of plasma membrane-bound sulphate transporters for the initial uptake of inorganic sulphate. Part of this fundamental process is the energy-dependent proton/sulphate co-transport systems that are located in the surface cell layers of roots. During sulphur limitation, plants are able to activate the expression of sulphate transporters that facilitate the uptake of sulphate in roots. SULTR1;1 and SULTR1;2 are suggested to be the essential components of the sulphate uptake system in Arabidopsis roots. The physiological importance of SULTR1;1 and SULTR1;2 is supported by characteristics that can cope with sulphur deficiency: they were (i) functional high-affinity sulphate transporters; (ii) induced by sulphur limitation at the mRNA levels; and (iii) predominantly localized in the root hairs, epidermis, and cortex. The expression of high-affinity sulphate transporters was primarily regulated by sulphur in a promoter-dependent manner. Aside from the sulphur-specific regulation, the induction of SULTR1;1 and SULTR1;2 high-affinity sulphate transporters by sulphur limitation was dependent on the supply of carbon and nitrogen. In this review, the application of SULTR promoter-GFP systems for the analysis of regulatory pathways of sulphate acquisition in plants is described.


Largely shallow and putatively explosive divergences in the family Leporidae (rabbits and hares; order: Lagomorpha) have resulted in phylogenetic relationships that remain currently unresolved. These rapid radiations in different branches of the leporid tree have resulted in conflicting phylogenetic hypotheses. However, this phylogenetic incongruence may also result from inadequate taxon or character sampling, due to the high number of extinct and difficult to sample extant species, and highly conserved morphological characters. Sylvilagus (cottontail rabbits) constitute about 30% of the known extant leporid species. New species are routinely being recognized, and phylogenetic relationships with respect to other leporid genera, and within the genus, have failed to be recovered with certainty. Within Sylvilagus, the South American S. brasiliensis is the most widespread and poorly known taxon, likely comprising multiple species. Here, we reanalyze previously published molecular data from phylogenetic studies on Leporidae, focusing on the S. brasiliensis group, and assessing phylogenetic relationships using bifurcating trees and split networks to identify phylogenetic regions with polytomies. We estimate differentiation and phylogenetic relationships of molecular lineages within the S. brasiliensis group. Our analyses suggest that this group contains a number of divergent taxa, well differentiated from other cottontail species. We discern two major polytomies during leporid diversification. The first, at the base of the leporid radiation, likely resulted from a combination of hard (rapid radiation) and soft polytomies (high number of unsampled extinct species). The second polytomy likely resulted from a rapid radiation during the initial diversification of the genus Sylvilagus. We conclude that only a molecular phylogeny based on a broader taxonomic representation will fully resolve leporid phylogeny.


Denosumab, an antibody targeting RANKL, is effective against osteosarcoma in mouse models. Osteosarcoma is the most common primary bone cancer, and it can be difficult to treat, especially in patients with metastatic disease. Chen et al. developed a series of genetically engineered mouse models of osteosarcoma and used these models to dissect the role of receptor activator of nuclear factor κB ligand (RANKL) signaling in the progression of this disease. Denosumab, an antibody against RANKL that is already used in patients with some bone diseases, was effective in mouse models of osteosarcoma, thus is a viable candidate for future testing in human patients. Y. Chen, M. A. Di Grappa, S. D. Molyneux, T. D. McKee, P. Waterhouse, J. M. Penninger, R. Khokha, RANKL blockade prevents and treats aggressive osteosarcomas. Sci. Transl. Med. 7, 317ra197 (2015). [Abstract]


Lake Taihu in China is a eutrophicated lake surrounded by industrial and urbanized zones, thus its water quality often suffers from organic and nutrient contaminants. In this paper, a 1 year water quality survey was conducted around the lake and statistical analysis tools were used to characterize the variations of organic pollutants. Analysis of variance (ANOVA), cluster analysis and principal component analysis (PCA) confirm the seasonal and spatial variations of surface water quality in Lake Taihu. Surface water quality is better during the wet season and worse downstream during the dry season. The dissolved organic matter was further analyzed using a parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) model with three-dimensional excitation-emission fluorescence matrices. Four components were extracted from the fluorescence data, namely, two autochthonous biodegradation products (C1: amino acids, C4: protein-like materials) and two humic-like substances (C2: from microbial processing, C3: terrestrial). C1 and C4 were dominant in the chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) fluorophores; this result is similar to those of other inland water bodies in China. The CDOM fluorophores showed similar seasonal and spatial variations with common water quality indices, with the exception of the seasonal responses of C2 in winter. Bivariance correlations between the organic and nutrient concentrations and the fluorescence intensities of the CDOM fluorophores imply possible common sources of the different contaminants. This paper exemplifies advanced statistical methods as a useful tool in understanding the behavior of contaminants in inland fresh water systems.


Aim

For most higher-order taxa, species diversity peaks sharply in the moist tropics and declines rapidly at higher latitudes. However, the mechanisms driving this latitudinal gradient are numerous, remain uncertain and are even undocumented in some important major clades such as the grasses. Grasses are a cosmopolitan, important plant family with more than 11,000 species world-wide. Our aims were: to investigate the latitudinal distributions of species richness for different grass lineages, and the grass family as a whole; and to test hypotheses proposed in general for the latitudinal diversity gradient or specifically as determinants of grass species richness patterns at the global scale.

Location

Global.

Methods

We used the most comprehensive global database of grass distributions currently available to calculate species richness for 340 political regions of the world. Using generalized additive models we used these data to model the latitudinal gradients of species richness for different grass lineages and for the grass family as a whole. We constructed multiple regression models to include climatic, productivity, topographic, habitat and geographic variables.

Results

An unusual, shallow latitudinal diversity gradient arises because different grass lineages exhibit contrasting latitudinal patterns. This reflects differential specialization of grass lineages to arid and cool environments, the legacy of historical effects, most notably the Gondwanan origin of the grasses, and a strong association between grasses and topographically heterogeneous, mountainous regions.

Main conclusions

The grasses are one of the relatively few higher-order lineages that exhibits an atypical latitudinal gradient; this has arisen because of climatic specialization of particular grass lineages to cold and arid environments. Key additional roles have been inferred for historical biogeography and topographical heterogeneity in determining global patterns of grass species richness. These mechanisms have generally been under-appreciated and are probably important for many other lineages.


A former research laboratory facility utilized a leach field for sanitary and aqueous laboratory waste. Surrounding soils and groundwater are impacted by ammonia and pH varies between 3.6 and 5. The feasibility of employing an in-situ, two-stage, nitrification/denitrification program was evaluated via a soil column study. The objectives of the study were to a) determine the efficacy of stimulating nitrification, followed by denitrification, and b) provide a scale-up implementation design and cost for the full-scale remedy. The study consisted of monitoring the inorganic nitrogen content of leachates from 7 columns with 4 conditions over six weeks. The four conditions were 1) un-amended groundwater controls, 2) pH adjusted, o-PO4-P amended groundwater tests with daily peroxide addition, 3) condition 2 augmented with a pure nitrifying consortium and, 4) condition 3 amended with catalase enzyme. During the nitrification phase, condition 1 nitrified to a very limited degree, indicating the presence of indigenous nitrifying organisms. Condition 2 confirmed the presence of indigenous nitrifiers, although nitrification performance was incomplete and sporadic. Condition 3 significantly outperformed condition 2. No benefit was observed from catalase addition. Column exhaustion required the denitrification phase to be performed as a slurry reaction. Slurries 1 and 2 were fed nitrate, glucose, phosphate, and sulfite to scavenge oxygen. Slurry 3 was treated in the same manner with the addition of a single denitrifying bacterial strain. Slurry 1 failed to denitrify. Slurries 2 and 3 reduced 100 mg/L of nitrate at rates of 14 and 59.5 mg/L/day, respectively.


Arnold Bennett is famous for his stories about the Five Towns and the people who live there. They look and sound just like other people, and, like all of us, sometimes they do some very strange things. There's Sir Jee, who is a rich businessman. So why is he making a plan with a burglar? Then there is Toby Hall. Why does he decide to visit Number 11 Child Row, and who does he find there? And then there are the Hessian brothers and Annie Emery - and the little problem of twelve thousand pounds.


Systematic empirical research has yet to explain how national parties join political groups in the European Parliament. This article first demonstrates, using original empirical measures from expert surveys of party positions, that EP party groups consist of national parties sharing similar policy positions. Secondly, using Bayesian/MCMC methods, the paper estimates the policy determinants of group affiliation using a (conditional) multinomial logit model to explain that 'party group' choice is largely driven by policy congruence. Finally, predictions from the model identify national parties not in their 'ideally congruent' EP groups. The findings suggest that the organization of and switching between EP groups is driven mainly by a concern to minimize policy incongruence between national and transnational levels.


There has been long-standing debate in the comparative welfare state literature as to whether social policy regimes come to look more alike over time ("converge") or else retain their distinctiveness. In this article, we explore this question through a detailed interrogation of the social policy record since 1996 of three states widely classified as "liberal": Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Overall, we find that the social/economic pressures faced by all three countries are more similar now than they were two decades ago and that each has sought to legitimize its politic response to the global financial crisis (GFC) in similar ways. In terms of the three policy areas we explore, we find convergence is much more substantial in "welfare-to-work" than in either child-contingent support, or pensions. But we also find that any straightforward convergence story is unsustainable, despite the GFC and accelerating globalization, and partisan effects remain important.


Established by Martin Eakes and Bonnie Wright in North Carolina in 1980, the nonprofit Center for Community Self-Help has grown from an innovative financial institution dedicated to civil rights into the nation's largest home lender to low- and moderate-income borrowers. Self-Help's first capital campaign—a bake sale that raised a meager seventy-seven dollars for a credit union—may not have done much to fulfill the organization's early goals of promoting worker-owned businesses, but it was a crucial first step toward wielding inclusive lending as a weapon for economic justice.

In Lending Power journalist and historian Howard E. Covington Jr. narrates the compelling story of Self-Help's founders and coworkers as they built a progressive and community-oriented financial institution. First established to assist workers displaced by closed furniture and textile mills, Self-Help created a credit union that expanded into providing home loans for those on the margins of the financial market, especially people of color and single mothers.

Using its own lending record, Self-Help convinced commercial banks to follow suit, extending its influence well beyond North Carolina. In 1999 its efforts led to the first state law against predatory lending. A decade later, as the Great Recession ravaged the nation's economy, its legislative victories helped influence the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the formation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Self-Help also created a federally chartered credit union to expand to California and later to Illinois and Florida, where it assisted ailing community-based credit unions and financial institutions.

Throughout its history, Self-Help has never wavered from its mission to use Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of justice to extend economic opportunity to the nation's unbanked and underserved citizens. With nearly two billion dollars in assets, Self-Help also shows that such a model for nonprofits can be financially successful while serving the greater good. At a time when calls for economic justice are growing ever louder, Lending Power shows how hard-working and dedicated people can help improve their communities.


We present a method for extracting parts of objects from wholes (e.g. "speedometer" from "car"). Given a very large corpus our method finds part words with 55% accuracy for the top 50 words as ranked by the system. The part list could be scanned by an end-user and added to an existing ontology (such as WordNet), or used as a part of a rough semantic lexicon.


In an N x N shared buffer switch architecture, a common buffer space is shared among output ports, which provides flexibility in resource allocation. However the problem arises when the buffer space is dominated by one or more output ports in case of imbalanced input traffic. Thus this results in an increased packet loss rates due to unfair sharing of buffer space. For this reason buffer management policies are essential to regulate the buffer space occupied by active output ports. In this paper we introduce a dynamic threshold policy, which is inspired from the exponential decay. This policy suggests that the buffer space accessed by an output port decays exponentially with respect to its queue length. In this work we compare the packet loss rate performance of this scheme with the dynamic thresholds policy by carrying out a simulation study. We have shown that the performance of the exponential decay function policy can be improved by considering unused buffer space. It is found that the improved policy achieves the same packet loss rate as the dynamic thresholds policy with an improved buffer utilisation. The results suggest that the best threshold based buffer management policy is the one that allows buffer overflow in the case of hotspot packets.


Formal training programs, which can be called education, enhance cognition in human and nonhuman animals alike. However, even informal exposure to human contact in human environments can enhance cognition. We review selected literature to compare animals' behavior with objects among keas and great apes, the taxa that best allow systematic comparison of the behavior of wild animals with that of those in human environments such as homes, zoos, and rehabilitation centers. In all cases, we find that animals in human environments do much more with objects. Following and expanding on the explanations of several previous authors, we propose that living in human environments and the opportunities to observe and manipulate human-made objects help to develop motor skills, embodied cognition, and the use of objects to extend cognition in the animals. Living in a human world also furnishes the animals with more time for such activities, in that the time needed for foraging for food is reduced, and furnishes opportunities for social learning, including emulation, an attempt to achieve the goals of a model, and program-level imitation, in which the imitator reproduces the organizational structure of goal-directed actions without necessarily copying all the details. All these factors let these animals learn about the affordances of many objects and make them better able to come up with solutions to physical problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).


ETV5 is an ETS transcription factor which has been associated with obesity in genomic association studies. However, little is known about the role of ETV5 in hepatic lipid metabolism and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). In the present study, we found that ETV5 protein expression was increased in diet- and genetic-induced steatotic liver. ETV5 responded to the nutrient status in an mTORC1 dependent manner and in turn regulated mTORC1 activity. Both viral-mediated and genetic depletion of ETV5 in mice led to increased lipid accumulation in the liver. RNA sequencing analysis revealed that PPAR signaling and fatty acid degradation/metabolism pathways were significantly downregulated in ETV5 deficient hepatocytes in vivo and in vitro Mechanistically, ETV5 could bind to the PPRE region of PPAR downstream genes and enhance its transactivity. Collectively, our study identifies ETV5 as a novel transcription factor for the regulation of hepatic fatty acid metabolism which is required for the optimal β oxidation process. ETV5 may provide a therapeutic target for the treatment of hepatic steatosis.


The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the existence of the category 'comment clause' whose range of use by far exceeds the traditional comment-on-topic category. In addition to a topicalized noun, the comment clause may have in its scope an element in focus, an adverbial phrase, and most important, a wide variety of clauses. The distinction between the many kinds of complex sentences and the simple sentence with a comment clause boils down to what element is in the scope of the comment clause. The data for the present study come from Wandala (Central Chadic), where the comment clause is overtly marked. The importance of this study transcends Wandala or Chadic languages, as it provides an explanation, applicable cross-linguistically, for the formal syncretism involving a variety of functions considered hitherto unrelated.


Structural Identification of Constructed Systems: Approaches, Methods, and Technologies for Effective Practice of St-Id offers an overview of nearly 20 years of research directed at bridging the gap in structural engineering between models and real structural systems. Structural identification, known as St-Id, can be defined as the process of creating and updating a model of a structure (for instance, a finite element model) using experimental observations and data. By developing reliable estimates of the performance and vulnerability of structural systems, St-Id produces improved simulations that, in turn, assist in decision making and the transition to performance-based civil engineering. Drawing upon contributions from experts in the field, this report focuses on defining the most critical considerations of St-Id, which include: modelling, both analytical and numerical experimentation, including observations, sensing, and monitoring data processing, including error screening and feature extraction model calibration, including comparisons of models and experimental data, model updating, and model selection decision support, such as scenario analyses and risk assessment Two appendixes present case studies demonstrating the St-Id of buildings and of bridges. Structural engineers, educators, and researchers working in the areas of structural modelling, health monitoring, assessment, forensics, performance evaluation, predictive analysis, and decision making will find this book useful in covering critical and practical aspects of these concepts.


Both Volvo and SAAB are now Chinese owned car companies. This means that a substantial amount of Swedish innovation takes place in China. In order to understand this phenomenon better and what it means to innovation strategy we look at how industrial clusters in the automobile industry in different phases of development differ. The Diamond Model is used to explain and measure the competitive situation in three cluster regions in China. The new automobile manufacturing clusters of Chongqing and Chengdu (2C) is compared with two well-developed clusters in Shanghai and Jiangsu, and Beijing and Hebei. Although Shanghai is the most attractive automobile cluster, automobile manufacturing firms choose to locate their production in other regions. The move is also related to the level of innovation in different regions.


Domestic water and sanitation provide examples of a situation where long-term, target-driven efforts have been launched with the objective of reducing the proportion of people who are water-insecure, most recently through the millennium development goals (MDGs) framework. Impacts of these efforts have been monitored by an increasingly evidence-based system, and plans for the next period of international policy, which are likely to aim at universal coverage with basic water and sanitation, are being currently developed. As distinct from many other domains to which the concept of water security is applied, domestic or personal water security requires a perspective that incorporates the reciprocal notions of provision and risk, as the current status of domestic water and sanitation security is dominated by deficiency This paper reviews the interaction of science and technology with policies, practice and monitoring, and explores how far domestic water can helpfully fit into the proposed concept of water security, how that is best defined, and how far the human right to water affects the situation. It is considered that they fit well together in terms both of practical planning of targets and indicators and as a conceptual framework to help development. The focus needs to be broad, to extend beyond households, to emphasize maintenance as well as construction and to increase equity of access. International and subnational monitoring need to interact, and monitoring results need to be meaningful to service providers as well as users.


Two major pathways contribute to Ras-proximate-1-mediated integrin activation in stimulated platelets. Calcium and diacyglycerol-regulated guanine nucleotide exchange factor I (CalDAG-GEFI, RasGRP2) mediates the rapid but reversible activation of integrin αIIbβ3, while the adenosine diphosphate receptor P2Y12, the target for antiplatelet drugs like clopidogrel, facilitates delayed but sustained integrin activation. To establish CalDAG-GEFI as a target for antiplatelet therapy, we compared how each pathway contributes to thrombosis and hemostasis in mice. Ex vivo, thrombus formation at arterial or venous shear rates was markedly reduced in CalDAG-GEFI(-/-) blood, even in the presence of exogenous adenosine diphosphate and thromboxane A(2). In vivo, thrombosis was virtually abolished in arterioles and arteries of CalDAG-GEFI(-/-) mice, while small, hemostatically active thrombi formed in venules. Specific deletion of the C1-like domain of CalDAG-GEFI in circulating platelets also led to protection from thrombus formation at arterial flow conditions, while it only marginally increased blood loss in mice. In comparison, thrombi in the micro- and macrovasculature of clopidogrel-treated wild-type mice grew rapidly and frequently embolized but were hemostatically inactive. Together, these data suggest that inhibition of the catalytic or the C1 regulatory domain in CalDAG-GEFI will provide strong protection from athero-thrombotic complications while maintaining a better safety profile than P2Y12 inhibitors like clopidogrel.


Background:Several clinical studies on chronic stroke conducted with end-effector-based robots showed improvement of the motor function in the affected arm. Compared to end-effector-based robots, exoskeleton robots provide improved guidance of the human limb and are better suited to train task-oriented movements with a large range of motions. Objective: To test whether intensive arm training with the arm exoskeleton ARMin I is feasible with chronic-stroke patients and whether it improves motor function in the paretic arm. Methods: Three single cases with chronic hemiparesis resulting from unilateral stroke (at least 14 months after stroke). A-B design with 2 weeks of multiple baseline measurements (A), 8 weeks of training (B) with repetitive measurements and a follow-up measurement 8 weeks after training. The training included shoulder and elbow movements with the robotic rehabilitation device ARMin I. Two subjects had three 1-hour sessions per week and 1 subject received five 1-hour sessions per week. The main outcome measurement was the upper-limb part of the Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA). Results:The ARMin training was well tolerated by the patients, and the FMA showed moderate, but significant improvements for all 3 subjects (p < 0.05). Most improvements were maintained 8 weeks after discharge. Conclusions: This study indicates that intensive training with an arm exoskeleton is feasible with chronic-stroke patients. Moderate improvements were found in all 3 subjects, thus further clinical investigations are justified.


Refractory epilepsy is a complex disorder, affecting approximately 40% of epilepsy patients. To date, no medication has been found to be effective in the treatment of this disorder, except for the ketogenic diet and w-3 supplementation, but the mechanism(s) by which these two treatments inhibit seizures are not yet known. It is known that both these treatments increase the concentrations of individual and total w-3 fatty acids in the plasma. DHA (an w3 fatty acid) is an important component of phospholipids in the cell membrane and influences the membrane integrity and fluidity. We explored the theory that there might be a defect in the biosynthesis of these w-3 fatty acids, particularly docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), that could lead to an alteration in membrane integrity and possibly affect the transport of AEDs (antiepileptic drugs) across the membrane causing a refractory status in these patients. Carnitine facilitates the transport of w-3 fatty acids across the inner mitochondria1 membrane, thus a defect in the carnitine transport or biosynthesis, could lead to a decrease in the w-3 fatty acids in the plasma as well. This investigation was a pilot study defining two aims: (a) are there any differences in the concentrations and concentration ratios of the fatty acids in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy versus patients with drug-responsive epilepsy and healthy individuals? (b) Are there any differences in the acetylcarnitine concentrations in patients with drug-resisitant epilepsy versus patients with drug responsive epilepsy and healthy individuals? We gathered urine and plasma samples from children in three groups, namely a control group (healthy individuals), a group of drug-responsive epileptic children and a group of refractory epileptic children. The urine samples were used for an organic acid analysis (for screening purposes, to determine if there were metabolic disorders in any of the children that would exclude them from this study) and an acylcarnitine analysis to determine if there were any defects. The acylcarnitine analysis was performed by use of ESI MS-MS (electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry). In the plasma we determined the concentrations and concentration ratios of w-3 fatty acids by using the GGMS (gas chromatography mass spectrometry). The refractory epilepsy group did not reveal lower concentrations of w-3 fatty acids, particularly DHA, in fact we found the concentrations to be higher than that of the control group and more or less the same as that of the drug-responsive group. The same tendency was evident for the long chain acylcarnitines (adipyl, suberyl, and octanoylcarnitine). Upon The role of fatty acids in drug-resistant epilepsy merging the two epilepsy groups and dividing them into valproate and carbamazepinetreated groups, we found that the DHA-concentration was higher in both the treated groups. The valproate-group also showed increased levels of the long chain acylcarnitines. No statistically significant differences were found between the valproate drug-responsive, valproate refractory, carbamazepine drug-responsive and carbamazepine refractory groups. The mechanisms by which valproate and carbamazepine inhibit seizures, have not yet been established, but the possible mechanisms proposed for their inhibition differ vastly from each other. Thus, these elevations in the DHA and long chain acylcarnitine concentrations could possibly be attributed to the epileptogenic status of the patients, and not the AED-therarpy. Combining our results with those of Henry (2004) we propose that DHA synthesis is not affected in epileptic patients, but that the incorporation of DHA in the membranes is possibly compromised. The role of fatty acids in drug-resistant epilepsy


The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is the largest public housing manager in North America. One widespread concern for residents and staff is the improper disposal of household trash and litter on NYCHA grounds. Here we present the co-produced service of trash disposal through the lens of administrative burden; official policy is unclear for residents and options are confusing or inconvenient, resulting in significant learning, compliance, and psychological costs. To reduce this burden, we redesigned the trash disposal infrastructure – new large containers placed at convenient locations – and introduced a package of indoor and outdoor posters communicating the new policy. 53 NYCHA developments, randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, were broken into 79 smaller observation sites. Weekly counts of visible trash bags and litter were collected pre-intervention and post-intervention, over a period of 21 weeks. The average number of household trash bags decreased by 25% (p<.05) in treatment sites after the intervention, and the average amount of litter decreased by 16% (p<.05). Providing easier access to disposal infrastructure, complemented by community-oriented and instructional communications, significantly reduced visible trash on NYCHA grounds, demonstrating that new structures and resources can effectively reduce burdens and change behavior.


This article is a contribution to a forthcoming symposium on wrongful convictions. In some cases, a wrongful conviction is virtually unavoidable. The empirical data demonstrating the invalidity of the expert's technique or theory may become available only after the conviction. However, in other cases, the courts can minimize the risk of a wrongful conviction by applying a rigorous admissibility test.
Part I of this article considers -- and then rejects -- two possible admissibility tests. One is an extreme version of the relevancy test allowing the admission of testimony based on a technique or theory so long as one qualified expert vouches for the technique or theory. The second is the traditional FRYE general acceptance test. Both tests provide inadequate assurance against wrongful conviction because they demand nothing more than ipse dixit -- either that of an individual expert or the collective ipse dixit of a substantial majority of the specialists in a field. Both approaches represent the antithesis of scientific methodology.
Part II of the article proposes a refined version of the DAUBERT reliability test. After stating the proposed test, the article dissects the test and explains each test component. Part II argues that the proposed test reflects sound scientific methodology and represents a synthesis of the governing statutes and cases.
Finally, Part III explores both the utility of the proposed test and its limitations. As Part III establishes, the satisfaction of the proposed test guarantees neither the admissibility of the expert's testimony nor its legal sufficiency to support a conviction. Most importantly, Part III underscores that the use of a sound admissibility test does not preclude the possibility that later scientific research will discredit the technique or theory relied on at the time of the earlier trial. Vigilance against wrongful convictions must be a both/and proposition: We must not only apply an exacting test to assess the technique or theory at the time of the initial proffer of the evidence, but we also have to revise the postconviction relief statutes to correct miscarriages of justices that are exposed only by later scientific investigation.


The study is devoted to a very urgent and acute problem for Georgia – remediation/restoration of the arsenic (As) mining and storage sites. The approach of a given work is based on using capabilities of nature itself, which has a great adaptive potential to chemical environmental pollution. The aim of the study is to identify the bacterial strains from the endemic soil microbiota, characteristic to a specific localization of arsenic contaminated sites and able to resist to the toxicant. To determine the level of arsenic contamination, soil samples have been analyzed using Inductively Coupled Plasma - Optical Emission Spectrometry method. The distribution of arsenic in soil samples splits them into categories according to the degree of contamination, ranging from 50 ppm to 13000 ppm. The local bacteria community has been studied using conventional cultivation method along with modern method of bioindication – a biochip. The low density biochip contains the relevant probes for the identification of the bacterial consortium in soil microbiota. Chemical and microbiological analysis was based on the standards and methodologies developed by International Standards Organizations – ISO and Environmental Protection Agency – EPA. It is prospected that bioremediation can become essential part of remediation against arsenic pollution in the context of circular economy.


Abstract This paper focuses to the development of the collective identity of Russian diaspora in transformational Estonia after dissolution of Soviet Union. The case represents the situation in which not only the previous state borders but the the whole political system have changed. The paper analyzes the acceptance and rejection of the collective identification categories. The results indicate limited acceptance of the identification ideologies suggested by Estonian Republics or by Russian Federation. For the people who do not feel strong allegiances towards the state ideologies and surrounding ethno‐cultural groups, the regional‐cultural self‐designations offer a possibility to maintain ones positive distinctiveness.


Extended semi-transparent atmospheres of WR stars in eclipsing WR+O binaries present some difficulties for analysis of their light curves. We present an approach to the problem based on solving the most general form of integral equations describing a light curve of a WR+O binary: Fredholm's equations of the first kind. The unknown functions are the brightness and opacity distributions across the disk of the WR component. The equations represent an ill-posed problem. To get a stable, unique solution one needs to impose some a priori constraints on the solution. We review various physically justified sets of constraints and, using artificially simulated light curves with known solutions, show how these constraints and the so-called regularization technique work to retrieve the functions of interest. The influence of errors in the input light curve on the solution is shown and discussed. The algorithms and the corresponding computer programs are open to the scientific community.


e-mail: email@example.com Nowadays, the use of optical 3D digitisation in metrology becomes more frequent and desired. Unfortunately, there are still no binding standards for determining measurement uncertainty of these systems and manufacturers of 3D scanners often use their own standards to define accuracy of their device. This paper introduces a methodology to assess the accuracy of digitisation using 3D optical scanners. The paper deals with practical implementation of an acceptance test for ATOS contact-less 3D scanners (from design and manufacturing of own test etalon, through the determination of its nominal dimensions, up to digitisation and evaluation) and publishes the results of several experiments demonstrating the impact of various factors on measurement accuracy.


This article historicizes "rigor," discipline," and "systematic" as inventions of a certain rational spirit of Enlightenment that was radicalized during the 19th century. These terms acquired temporary value in a transition during the 19th century when a culture of research was established within a modern episteme. Beginning in the 20th century, this development was perceived as problematic, triggering criticism from philosophy and the arts, and even within the sciences. "Discipline," "rigor," and "systematic" have changed meanings over time, and recent contributions from digital humanities are promising for a renewed critical debate about rigor in research. Both digital humanities and quantitative research deal with big data sets aimed at providing a large-scale analysis. However, unlike most quantitative research, digital humanities explore uncertainties as their main focus. Attention to the human-machine collaboration has led to more expansive thinking in scientific research. Digital humanities go further by advancing a metaperspective that deals with the material hermeneutics of data accumulation itself.


As equipment becomes more complex, repair process becomes more complicated, costly and time-consuming. Maintainability principles are developed to facilitate the repair process. Maintainability principles are applied in design phase and they are characteristic that affects time, accuracy, ease and safety requirements of the repair process. Considering Maintainability principles in the design phase are critical in challenging operational conditions such as Arctic offshore. To have an effective design for maintainability a systematic management approach is required during the design phase. This paper is developed a systematic guideline for maintainability management as an engineering discipline for challenges operational condition.


The key features for developing on Microsofts eagerly anticipated Windows 8 operating system are unveiled in this fast-paced 80-page primer. Windows 8 contains the revolutionary Metro application framework for building dynamic and responsive touch-enabled applications that target both desktops and mobile devices. With the official release of Windows 8 looming ever closer, experienced author Adam Freeman invites you to take a crash course in Metro development. Using HTML5 and JavaScript, he ensures you understand the changes that are being made to Windows development practices and puts you on the right course to creating innovative and elegant applications for this latest evolution of the worlds most successful operating system. What youll learn Create and configure Metro applications Implement a touch-enabled user interface Store data and application state using the Metro persistence model Access remote data using Metro networking Package and deploy your Metro application to the app store Who this book is for This book is for early-adopters of the Windows 8 operating system working with the Consumer Preview in order to be ahead of the curve in understand the new ways of working that the operating system introduces. Table of Contents Creating the UI Responding to the User Storage and Persistence Networking Packaging and Deployment These chapters are supported by a substantial stand alone code sample.


Administrative data from tax returns have recently become available in many African countries thanks to the modernisation of revenue authorities and the digitisation of tax records. The availability of these data has opened new opportunities for policy-relevant analysis of real-life taxpaying behaviour. However, despite the increased availability of these data, a gap remains in many countries in relation to administrative records on employment incomes. Without these records, it is very difficult to obtain a realistic picture of income distribution and its evolution, and to understand how policies and macroeconomic conditions, such as high inflation, affect the welfare of workers. In this study, we explore the current state of administrative wage data in Ethiopia and the main challenges that limit their availability and reliability, and identify three key patterns.


This thesis introduces a novel approach to programmable and low power platform design for audio signal processing, in particular hearing aids. The proposed programmable platform is a heterogeneous multi-processor architecture consisting of small and simple instruction set processors called mini-cores as well as standard DSP/CPU-cores that communicate using message passing. The work has been based on a study of the algorithm suite covering the application domain. The observation of dominant tasks for certain algorithms (FIR, IIR, correlation, etc.) that require custom computational units and special data addressing capabilities lead to the design of low power mini-cores. The algorithm suite also consisted of less demanding and/or irregular algorithms (LMS, compression) that required sub-sample rate signal processing justifying the use of a DSP/CPUcore. The thesis also contributes to the recent trend in the development of intellectual property based design methodologies. The actual mini-core designs are parameterized in word-size, memory-size, etc. and can be instantiated according to the needs of the application at hand. They are intended as low power programmable building blocks for a standard cell synthesis based design flow leading to a system-on-chip. Two mini-cores targeting FIR and IIR type of algorithms have been designed to evaluate the concept. Results obtained from the design of a prototype chip demonstrate a power consumption that is only 1.5 – 1.6 times larger than commercial hardwired ASICs and more than 6 – 21 times lower than current state of the art low-power DSP processors. An orthogonal but practical contribution of this thesis is the test bench implementation. A PCI-based FPGA board has been used to equip a standard desktop PC with tester facilities. The test bench proved to be a viable alternative to conventional expensive test equipment. Finally, the work presented in this thesis has been published at several IEEE workshops and conferences [71, 70, 72], and in the Journal of VLSI Signal Processing [73].


The authors provide new estimates of the return to job seniority using a dataset similar to that employed in Joseph Altonji and Robert Shakotko, "Do Wages Rise with Job Seniority?" Review of Economic Studies (1987) and Robert Topel, "Specific Capital, Mobility, and Wages," Journal of Political Economy (1991). They consider the strengths and weaknesses of these studies' treatment of economy-wide trends, their dating conventions for tenure and wages, their handling of wage observations that might span multiple jobs, and their estimation approaches. Re-estimation points to an effect often years of tenure on the log wage equal to .11, which is above the preferred estimate of Altonji and Shakotko but far below that of Topel. Changes in earnings distributions and in the employment relationship motivate the examination of more recent data. Perhaps surprisingly, the return to tenure has probably increased over time.


We demonstrate the usefulness of surroundedness for eye fixation prediction by proposing a Boolean Map based Saliency model (BMS). In our formulation, an image is characterized by a set of binary images, which are generated by randomly thresholding the image's feature maps in a whitened feature space. Based on a Gestalt principle of figure-ground segregation, BMS computes a saliency map by discovering surrounded regions via topological analysis of Boolean maps. Furthermore, we draw a connection between BMS and the Minimum Barrier Distance to provide insight into why and how BMS can properly captures the surroundedness cue via Boolean maps. The strength of BMS is verified by its simplicity, efficiency and superior performance compared with ten state-of-the-art methods on seven eye tracking benchmark datasets.


The cinema of Iran, Egypt and Turkey while different in many ways share a number of common characteristics. This article is an attempt to review and compare these differences and similarities. According to the author, in all these countries introduction of cinema led to similar resistance mostly inspired by religious authorities. Yet, eventually in all three the film became a powerful cultural and social medium.
Film-makers in Turkey, where a secular system of government had been established in early 1920's and women had been franchised in 1934, enjoyed extensive freedom of action, albeit in a politically restrictive atmosphere. Although film production in Turkey reached its zenith in the 1970's, it has been in decline since 1980 as a result of the American management of the Turkish movie theaters and the flood of American films. The Turkish contemporary cinema clearly represents the efforts of a society in the midst of a struggle to break the fetters of a restrictive traditional culture. Cinema, as a western medium, entered closed societies in Turkey, Iran and Egypt with ancient civilizations and yet encumbered with despotic political systems and superstitious tradition-bound cultures. Native cinema in all these three countries clearly reflected continuing social evolution, although the cultural and historical disparities affected the development and quality of film-making in each society. The changes in the last two decades have contributed to the creation of a more purposeful art in all these countries. Two major factors stand out in this transformation: the spread of religious fundamentalism and the onslaught of wester, particularly American, films.
In the last three decades, the most important common characteristic of serious film-making in all these countries is its politicization on the one hand and its commitment to depicting social ills and cultural anomalies, on the other. There is, however, a clear and tragic difference between Iranian cinema and that of Turkey and Egypt. While Turkish and Egyptian film-makers had, in this period, taken on both political despotism and cultural constraints, Iranian film-makers as well as Iranian intellectuals heavily relied on traditional cultural norms in order to carry on their campaign against political repression. For this, not only Iranian intellectuals and film-makers but also the society at large paid a heavy price.


Does stress speed up the onset of skin cancer? The answer, in mice anyway, appears to be "yes." Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center say that chronic stress may speed up the process in those at high-risk for the disease. Their new study, published in the December issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, shows that mice exposed to stressful conditions and cancer-causing UV light develop skin cancers in less than half the time it took for non-stressed mice to grow tumors. The Hopkins investigators say that if what they are seeing in mice has relevance in man, stress-reducing programs like yoga and meditation may help those at high risk for skin cancer stay healthy longer. "There's a lot of evidence pointing to the negative effects of chronic stress, which dampens our immune system and impacts various aspects of our health," says Francisco Tausk, M.D., associate professor of dermatology at Johns Hopkins and director of the study. "But, to help create solid treatment strategies, we need a better understanding of the mechanisms of how stressors affect skin cancer development." Tausk exposed 40 mice to the scent of fox urine - the mouse equivalent of big-time stress - and large amounts of UV light. The first skin tumor in one of the mice appeared after eight weeks of testing. Mice exposed only to UV light began developing tumors 13 weeks later. By 21 weeks of testing, 14 of the 40 stressed mice had at least one tumor, and two non-stressed mice had tumors. Most tumors were squamous cell skin cancers, also known as non-melanoma cancers, but which have the potential to spread to other parts of the body. Chronic stress is known to suppress the activity of immune system cells that recognize foreign invading cells and target them for destruction. Acute stress, which is episodic and time-limited, such as parachuting or riding a roller coaster, may have the opposite effect of chronic stress. "Acute stress actually can rev up the immune system," Tausk says. Tausk and his team will conduct more studies to find the cancer pathways influenced by chronic stress. "Stress reduction programs usually are a good option for many people, but we think they may be more important for individuals at high-risk for skin cancer," he says. Fair-skinned people exposed to large amounts of UV light and patients previously diagnosed with squamous cell skin cancer, genetic diseases or organ transplants that predispose them to the disease are considered high-risk. The investigators urge people concerned about their risk for skin cancer to speak with their health-care provider before starting any stress-reduction or exercise program. This research was funded by the Johns Hopkins Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Participants in this research are Jason L. Parker, Sabra L. Klein, Warwick L. Morison, and Xaobu Ye from the Johns Hopkins; Martha McClintock from the University of Chicago; Claudio J. Conti from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; and Carlos Nousari from the University of Miami.


Introduction to Computational Cardiology provides a comprehensive, in-depth treatment of the fundamental concepts and research challenges involved in the mathematical modeling and computer simulation of dynamical processes in the heart, under normal and pathological conditions. This book is based on the author's lecture notes from his course 'Introduction to Computational Cardiology' in the Department of Computer Science within the University of California, Los Angeles. It also encompasses the scientific discoveries made by the author, his doctoral students, and his colleagues in the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. in the last 35 years. Several features of this textbook are listed below: - A description of models used in both biology and medicine for discovering the mechanisms of heart function and dysfunction on several physiological scales across different species. - An introduction to the theory of stationary reentrant wave propagation in one- and two-dimensional tissues. - Several examples throughout this textbook and exercises at the end which facilitate understanding of basic concepts and introduces, for implementation, treated problems to parallel supercomputers. Introduction to Computational Cardiology serves as a secondary textbook or reference book for advanced-level students in computer science, electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, and cardiac electrophysiology. It is also suitable for researchers employing mathematical modeling and computer simulations of biomedical problems.


By the 1970s, a therapeutic revolution, decades in the making, had transformed hemophilia from an obscure hereditary malady into a manageable bleeding disorder. Yet the glory of this achievement was short lived. The same treatments that delivered some normalcy to the lives of persons with hemophilia brought unexpectedly fatal results in the 1980s when people with the disease contracted HIV-AIDS and Hepatitis C in staggering numbers. The Bleeding Disease recounts the promising and perilous history of American medical and social efforts to manage hemophilia in the twentieth century. This is both a success story and a cautionary tale, one built on the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of an advocacy movement that sought normalcy-rather than social isolation and hyper-protectiveness-for the boys and men who suffered from the severest form of the disease. Stephen Pemberton evokes the allure of normalcy as well as the human costs of medical and technological progress in efforts to manage hemophilia. He explains how physicians, advocacy groups, the blood industry, and the government joined patients and families in their unrelenting pursuit of normalcy-and the devastating, unintended consequences that pursuit entailed. Ironically, transforming the hope of a normal life into a purchasable commodity for people with bleeding disorders made it all too easy to ignore the potential dangers of delivering greater health and autonomy to hemophilic boys and men.


The aims of this thesis were to increase the knowledge about endocrine disruption and the relations between prepubertal exposure and delayed, long-lasting effects on the reproductive system. Furthermore, the generality of knowledge in reproductive toxicology, generated in rodents was challenged by using a non-rodent species, the pig. In two different experimental sets the immediate and late effects of prepubertal exposure to low repeated doses of the abundant plasticizer di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) on several reproductive traits were investigated in boars. In an additional experiment, the kinetics of DEHP and mono(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP the primary, bio-active metabolite of DEHP) in the boar were investigated. After parenteral exposure to DEHP for five weeks, from the sixth week of age, the plasma concentrations of testosterone were higher and the area of the Leydig cells larger at 7.5 months, compared with the control group. Because the plasma concentrations of LH were unaffected, these data suggest that DEHP early in life causes long-lasting derangements in the fine tuning of the feedback loop in the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis (HPG-axis). After oral exposure to DEHP for four weeks, from the fourth week of age, LH profiles of the exposed and non-exposed boars differed slightly, both during the exposure period, and after stimulation with a GnRH analogue at nine months of age. These results corroborate the hypothesis that DEHP is an endocrine disruptor following prepubertal exposure. In the same pigs orally exposed to DEHP, the gross morphology as well as the microscopic morphology of the testes was unaffected at seven weeks of age. However, at nine months of age, the bulbourethral glands were larger in the boars exposed to although the microscopic morphology of the testes was unaffected. In addition, the mating behaviour of the boars was examined between six and nine months of age. The libido as well as the mating success was tested to determine whether DEHP affected the central nervous system. However, the mating behaviour and mating ability of DEHP-exposed boars was found to be unaffected. In young boars the concentrations of MEHP in plasma after oral exposure to DEHP were analyzed. It seemed that the systemic exposure to MEHP was lower in pigs compared to rats at the same oral dosage of DEHP. This may also explain some of the differences in the effects of this compound in different species. While corroborating the hypothesis that prepubertal exposure to the industrial chemical DEHP affects the reproductive endocrinology in mammals, the contents of this work do not suggest any behavioural effects of DEHP in mammals. It is noteworthy that the effects seen on testosterone concentrations and bulbourethral gland size are seen in the boars after the onset of puberty and not at the time of exposure. In view of the above, the use of pigs as a non-rodent complement in the field of reproductive toxicology is relevant.


In Post-Work, Stanley Aronowitz and Jonathan Cutler have collected essays from a variety of scholars to discuss the dreary future of work. The introduction, The Post-Work Manifesto,, provides the framework for a radical reappraisal of work and suggests an alternative organization of labor. The provocative essays that follow focus on specific issues that are key to our reconceptualization of the notion and practice of work, with coverage of the fight for shorter hours, the relationship between school and work, and the role of welfare, among others. Armed with an interdisciplinary approach, Post-Work looks beyond the rancorous debates around welfare politics and lays out the real sources of anxiety in the modern workplace. The result is an offering of hope for the future--an alternative path for a cybernation, where the possibility of less work for a better standard of living is possible.


This work builds on the first phase of UKDPC family research, with a study investigating the extent and nature of support provided to adult family members affected by a relative's drug problems. The study found that adults who have a relative with drug problems have been increasingly recognised as a group with significant needs as a result of the stress of living and caring for someone with such problems. Policy has reflected this increased recognition to an extent, but there is still lack of clarity in the identification of this specific group of family members. Children affected by parental drug misuse have been increasingly recognised in policy and provision.

Families in general have also been identified as a useful source of support for treatment and recovery of the person with the drug problem. However, apart from a few exceptions, adult family members as a specific group are not yet clearly identified in policy and guidance. The work concluded that services should to a greater extent provide help for adult family members in their own right, as well as to support them as part of treatment of their drug-using relative. It suggests much more assertive promotion of help for adult relatives, including advertising services at locations like GP surgeries, carer organisations and local community centres. It also recommends that services take more account of the needs of adult family members, including with routine assessment of adult family members' needs when drug users enter treatment.

The lack of routine data sources providing information on the numbers affected continues to hamper the development of services to meet the full range of needs of adult family members. Therefore adult family members need to be identified as a specific group in national and local policies, accompanied by data collection to provide estimates of need at local level followed by robust systems for monitoring, coordinating and delivering a range of services to respond to the range of need. This report presents the results of the research in Scotland.


With the Current Expected Credit Loss standard for loan loss accounting set to go into effect starting in 2020 for SEC registrants (and in 2021 for all other banks), financial institutions still have time to consider where CECL's ripples will appear across their operational areas. Better integration between functions such as accounting, risk management and data analysis is just one of several priorities emerging as CECL's effective date draws closer. For institutions looking to get ahead of the curve, data management may rise to the top as a near-horizon priority. Data retention, storage take center stage Banks already possess much of the data covered under CECL. But whether it's housed in the right system or saved in the right form--or whether it's available at all--needs to evaluated. "The systems and the collection of data that a bank would use to measure credit risk either doesn't exist, or it's been written over or, in many cases, it's been purged," explains ABA SVP Michael Gullette, the association's lead expert on CECL. Information may have originally been gathered and used for loan underwriting, for example, but not for overall analysis of portfolio risk. These data sets likely weren't subjected to the strict quality oversight that will now be expected under CECL. "You have to track those things you did during your underwriting process, which never had those controls," Gullette says of existing data. Information integrity is one area that will become key as banks make their data ready for CECL review. Jim Rives, senior director at FTI Consulting in Washington, D.C., says he sees CECL's implementation as an opportunity to get banks' data management houses in order. "As we look at the entire credit lifecycle, from underwriting through loss mitigation, a lot of times banks of all sizes have very disparate data repositories and applications," he explains. To a large degree, CECL will require institutions to bring those standalone platforms into a more holistic, connected grouping. "It's really about having the various systems talk to each other," Rives says. Risk rating platforms illustrate this point. They may be housed within a bank's core system but sometimes they're simply an Excel spreadsheet on a desktop computer. By pulling everything together in advance of CECL, Rives says organizations will have better insight into where data gaps and duplication exist. Banks should also consider that historical information takes on new life once CECL's requirements go live. "Think of a simple instrument like a mortgage, which is typically 25 or 30 years," says Jimmy Yang, managing director of credit and operational risk analytics at the Bank of Montreal's U.S. headquarters in Chicago. "The lifetime losses for a 30-year note are much more difficult to evaluate without data to back it up." Some banks don't have the look-back data that may be called out for review. "Going forward, the lesson learned is that really you need to pay special attention to data, and also the quality of the data," Yang says. Other operational areas also likely to feel CECL's effects CECL won't just change how data storage and analysis are handled. Credit decisions and risk management will also evolve under CECL. On the surface, Rives says he expects credit will slow, but he's quick to add that he actually sees CECL's implementation as a good time to regroup. "I think it's going to make the credit function smarter," he says. "When banks are getting better information and refining it, they'll be able to price their loans better." Price will become more closely aligned with risk, something Rives says doesn't necessarily happen now. …