Structural analysis by two-dimensional peptide maps (2D-PM) of the human Ia molecular pool expressed on the cell surface of two distinct lymphoblastoid cell line, LG-2 and Raji, revealed the existence of a novel MHC class II molecular heterodimer that differs at the level of both alpha and beta subunits from the previously described DP, DQ, and DR antigens. These differences were also seen at the level of two- dimensional electrophoresis (2D-PAGE) of biosynthetically labeled intact molecules, although to a lesser extent, due to the intrinsic limitations of this technique in resolving fine structural differences. We have designated this new class II antigen as the fourth Ia subset. The fourth Ia subset seems to represent a small proportion of the human Ia pool. Comparative analysis by 2D-PM of the two cell lines showed the presence of structural variations in the alpha chains of the fourth Ia subset, suggesting the existence of polymorphism for these subunits. Cell surface iodination did not show appreciable labeling of the fourth subset beta chain in LG-2 cells, and this prevented analysis of the structural polymorphism of this subunit. Furthermore, for the first time, we have shown that DP alpha chains display distinct peptide maps in LG-2 and Raji cells, thus suggesting the presence of structural polymorphism for these Ia subunits also. The DQ1 alpha and beta allelic products present in LG-2 cells (DQ homozygous) did not show appreciable structural variation when compared with the homologous allelic products present in Raji cells (DQ heterozygous). Finally, we have confirmed the absence of polymorphism for the DR alpha subunits. By 2D-PM, relatively low structural variation was instead found for the highly polymorphic DR beta subunits expressed in the two cell lines, suggesting that cell surface iodination preferentially labels constant domains of DR beta chains.


We evaluate the performance of various commercially available InGaAs/InP avalanche photodiodes for photon counting in the infrared at temperatures that can be reached by Peltier cooling. We find that dark count rates are high, and this can partially saturate devices before optimum performance is achieved. At low temperatures the dark count rate rises because of a strong contribution from correlated afterpulses. We discuss ways of suppressing these afterpulses for different photon-counting applications.


Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the approach and materials of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "Learn the Signs. Act Early." (LTSAE) health education campaign, which aims to improve awareness of developmental milestones and early warning signs of developmental delay among parents of young children. Methods: We conducted 2 phases of qualitative research. Focus groups assessed the campaign's objectives by exploring the experiences of parents with children who have developmental delays or disabilities to determine facilitators of and barriers to identification. In-depth interviews were conducted with parents of typically developing children, who reviewed campaign materials and provided feedback on appropriateness, appeal, and clarity with regard to the campaign's objectives. Results: Phase 1: Parents were typically the first to express concern about their child's development, and most talked with their child's health care provider. Two categories of health care providers emerged: those who proactively asked about a child's development, used tools to facilitate conversations, and made referrals, and those who did not ask about development, told parents to "wait and see," and did not provide information about services and supports. Few parents knew about special education services before identification. Phase 2: Participants found the campaign materials appealing, but were unclear about how to act early and why acting early was important. Conclusions: Results affirmed LTSAE's evidence-based approach to educating parents about child development. Additional campaign considerations include providing more information about how to act early and why acting early is important and enhancing outreach to providers to help them communicate with concerned parents.


We present a novel approach to facilitate the creation of stylized 2D rigid body animations. Our approach can handle multiple rigid objects following complex physically-simulated trajectories with collisions, while retaining a unique artistic style directly specified by the user. Starting with an existing target animation (e.g., produced by a physical simulation engine) an artist interactively draws over a sparse set of frames, and the desired appearance and motion stylization is automatically propagated to the rest of the sequence. The stylization process may also be performed in an off-line batch process from a small set of drawn sequences. To achieve these goals, we combine parametric deformation synthesis that generalizes and reuses hand-drawn exemplars, with non-parametric techniques that enhance the hand-drawn appearance of the synthesized sequence. We demonstrate the potential of our method on various complex rigid body animations which are created with an expressive hand-drawn look using notably less manual interventions as compared to traditional techniques.


Recent geochronological data show that geon 14 and older rocks are found at least 700 km south of the Grenville front in the eastern Grenville province. In the southwestern Grenville province, comparable rocks extend only 200 km south; farther south, in the Central metasedimentary belt and the Adirondack Mountains, the crust mostly postdates 1350 Ma. We explain this contrast by postulating a major rifting event, commencing at ∼1430 Ma, during which large sections of older crust were detached from that part of southern Laurentia now occupied by the Central metasedimentary belt. Crust was also removed from the area between northwest Britain and Scandinavia. Failed arms extended (1) from Missouri to where the Belt Supergroup accumulated, (2) from the Central metasedimentary belt eastward into Labrador, and (3) between Baltica and east of Greenland. The geologic history following late geon 14 rifting was dominated by a southward-subducting magmatic arc that eventually collided with southern Laurentia-Baltica, resulting in the Elzevirian orogeny at ∼1200 Ma.


Spatial thinking is considered a fundamental cognitive skill and there has been more focus on it in recent years due to improved geospatial technologies. Teaching spatial concepts to students by using publicly available resources is an appropriate method to increase spatial thinking ability. More than 1.5 million photographs are publicly available through the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth website. We wanted to explore the effectiveness of using photographs to improve students' spatial thinking by using a set of these photographs. In this research, we selected uncataloged photographs from the International Space Station astronauts' collection and asked undergraduate students in the "Principles of Remote Sensing" course to interpret each photograph and locate it on the Earth by using "Google Earth". They used different spatial primitives, simplespatial, and complex spatial concepts in their interpretation. We recognized and analyzed the concepts used in three assignments during a semester by using the chi-square goodness of fit test and assessed how significantly students increased or decreased their ability to used different types of spatial concepts. We tested the utility of astronaut photographs for the acquisition and practice of spatial concepts knowledge and examined whether the use of astronaut photographs in a remote sensing course would support students' understanding and use of higher level spatial concepts. An additional outcome of this research is a guide to select appropriate photographs for teaching specific spatial concepts. The results show that students made progress in spatial thinking skills through their work with half of the photographs. We concluded that by selecting a proper photograph for teaching a specific spatial concept, we can see improvement in spatial thinking skills among students.


In Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), the graph structure is incorporated into the learning of node representations. This complex structure makes explaining GNNs' predictions become much more challenging. In this paper, we propose PGM-Explainer, a Probabilistic Graphical Model (PGM) model-agnostic explainer for GNNs. Given a prediction to be explained, PGM-Explainer identifies crucial graph components and generates an explanation in form of a PGM approximating that prediction. Different from existing explainers for GNNs where the explanations are drawn from a set of linear functions of explained features, PGM-Explainer is able to demonstrate the dependencies of explained features in form of conditional probabilities. Our theoretical analysis shows that the PGM generated by PGM-Explainer includes the Markov-blanket of the target prediction, i.e. including all its statistical information. We also show that the explanation returned by PGM-Explainer contains the same set of independence statements in the perfect map. Our experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets show that PGM-Explainer achieves better performance than existing explainers in many benchmark tasks.


Context Informed consent is crucial in daily clinical practice and research in medicine and psychiatry. A recent neuroethical investigation explored the psychological factors that are crucial in determining whether or not subjects give consent. While cognitive functions have been shown to play a central role, the impact of empathy and emotions on subjects' decisions in informed consent remains unclear. Objective To evaluate the impact of empathy and emotions on subjects' decision in informed consent in an exploratory study. Design Decisional capacity and informed consent to a subsequent imaging study were evaluated with the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Clinical Research (MacCAT-CR). Empathy and emotion recognition were measured with the Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET) and the Florida Affect Battery (FAB). Setting Psychiatric subjects were recruited from a general psychiatric hospital and a forensic state hospital. Patients A mixed group of 98 healthy men and forensic and non-forensic psychiatric subjects were investigated. Results Both empathy (MET) and emotion recognition (FAB) correlated with MacCAT-CR scores. Higher cognitive empathy and good emotion recognition (compared with low empathy and emotion recognition) were associated with increased decisional capacity and higher rates of refusal to give informed consent. Conclusions This study shows an empirical relationship between decision-making and informed consent, on the one hand, and emotions and empathy on the other. While this study is exploratory and preliminary, the findings of a relationship between informed consent, emotions and empathy raise important neuroethical questions with regard to an emotional-social concept of informed consent and potential clinical implications for testing informed consent.


Large (up to 31-meter high) coral banks (or bioherms) occur on the continental shelf off mid-Norway at water depths between 220 and 310 meters. They are built up by the cold-water, ahermatypic, scleractinian coral Lophelia pertusa (L.). A 3-km-wide and 200-km-long traverse was mapped geophysically across a large part of the mid-Norway shelf. A total of 57 suspected individual banks were found. Although they occur in local clusters of up to 9 banks per km 2 , the mean density along the whole transect is only 0.09 suspected banks per km 2 , with the highest regional density (1.2 banks per km 2 ) occurring above subcropping presumed Paleocene bedrock. A detailed investigation employing an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) was conducted of a cluster consisting of 9 individual banks. Based on geophysical, visual, geochemical, radiocarbon, and other analyses, we conclude that at least some of the coral banks have been forming at the same locality for over 8,000 years, and that there is a strong correlation between coral-bank occurrence and relatively high values of light hydrocarbons (methane, ethane, propane, and n-butane) in near-surface sediments. To explain the structure and distribution of these coral banks, we propose a model where they form as a consequence of local fertilization that results from focused hydrocarbon micro-seepage of deep thermogenic hydrocarbons migrating to the surface along inclined, permeable sedimentary strata. A direct corollary of this model is that if and when the source of local fertilization is shut off, the bioherms die out. This possibly could be the reason why extinct bioherms are more common than live ones in some areas of the ocean.


Here, Richard Lachmann offers a new answer to an old question: Why did capitalism develop in some parts of early modern Europe but not in others? Finding neither a single cause nor an essentialist unfolding of a state or capitalist system, Lachmann describes the highly contingent development of various polities and economies. He identifies, in particular, conflict among feudal elites--landlords, clerics, kings, and officeholders--as the dynamic which perpetuated manorial economies in some places while propelling elites elsewhere to transform the basis of their control over land and labor. Comparing regions and cities within and across England, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands from the twelfth through eighteenth centuries, Lachmann breaks new ground by showing step by step how the new social relations and political institutions of early modern Europe developed. He demonstrates in detail how feudal elites were pushed toward capitalism as they sought to protect their privileges from rivals in the aftermath of the Reformation. Capitalists in Spite of Themselves is a compelling narrative of how elites and other classes made and responded to political and religious revolutions while gradually creating the nation-states and capitalist markets which still constrain our behavior and order our world. It will prove invaluable for anyone wishing to understanding the economic and social history of early modern Europe.


Abstract. Molecular inorganic materials are currently considered photoresists for extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL). Their high EUV absorption cross section and small building block size potentially allow high sensitivity and resolution as well as low line-edge roughness. The photochemical reaction mechanisms that allow these kinds of materials to function as photoresists, however, are still poorly understood. We discuss photochemical reactions upon deep UV (DUV) irradiation of a model negative-tone EUV photoresist material, namely the well-defined molecular tin-oxo cage compound [(SnBu)12O14(OH)6](OH)2, which is spin-coated to thin layers of 20 nm. The core electronic structures (Sn 3d, O 1s, and C 1s) of unexposed and DUV exposed films were then investigated using synchrotron radiation-based hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Different chemical oxidation states and concentrations of atoms and atom types in the unexposed and exposed films were found. We observed that the exposure in a nitrogen atmosphere prevented the oxidation but still led to carbon loss, albeit with a smaller conversion. Finally, a mechanistic hypothesis for the basic DUV photoreactions in molecular tin-oxo cages is proposed.


Risk matrices have been widely used in the industry under the notion that risk is a product of likelihood by severity of the hazard or safety case under consideration.
When reliable raw data are not available to feed mathematical models, experts are asked to state their estimations. This paper presents two studies conducted in a large European airline and partially regarded the weighting of 14 experienced pilots' judgment though software, and the calculation of agreement amongst 10 accident investigators when asked to assess the worst outcome, most credible outcome and risk level for 12 real events. According to the results, only 4 out of the 14 pilots could be reliably used as experts, and low to moderate agreement amongst the accident investigators was observed. Although quite alarming results, this paper does not aim at raising concerns about the skills of experienced employees; rather, we urge organizations to comprehend the distinction between experience and expertise, and focus on training their staff in published expert judgment methods.


Simulated Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) interferograms and spectra of mixture samples are used to investigate the effects of bandwidth and overlap on a quantitative analysis in which multivariate calibration models are constructed from short segments of digitally filtered interferogram data. By a comparison of calibration models constructed with interferogram data to similar models built with spectral data of varying instrumental resolution, the concepts of spectral resolution are explored in the context of an interferogram-based analysis. In this work, nominal spectral point spacings of 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 cm−1 are explored. Five data sets are constructed in which the width and overlap of an analyte and interference band are varied. Calibration models based on partial least-squares (PLS) regression are optimized for both interferogram and spectral data. Even in cases of extreme spectral overlap between the analyte and interference bands, interferogram-based calibration models constructed from segments of 151 points or less are observed to perform as well as or better than all models computed with absorbance and single-beam spectral data, regardless of instrumental resolution. These results suggest that an interferogram-based analysis is a viable option for applications in which an FT-IR spectrometer is used in a dedicated monitoring application.


Network research generally requires a simulation or emulation environment to test protocol implementations, to evaluate the performance of a scheme or a system, and to study complicated and highly varying network operations. For large network simulation, simulators consume a large amount of time and memory; and its result is largely based on some modeling assumptions that may not hold in the real world. Emulators are difficult to scale for large network emulation because of the high cost of equipment if a one-to-one mapping scheme is employed. Otherwise, the target network has to be abstracted to a single router modeled with some performance metrics. We present a distributed IP network emulator cluster EMPOWER, which not only can be used to emulate a large network with a limited number of commodity computers, but also can generate user-defined arbitrary network conditions and traffic dynamics at packet level for specific test scenarios. EMPOWER is highly scalable in that each emulator node could be configured to emulate multiple network nodes, and the increment of the number of emulator nodes does not affect emulation validity. Some significant research issues such as network mapping and mobile wireless network emulation are discussed and addressed. Preliminary emulation results show that EMPOWER is capable of assisting the study of both wireline and wireless network protocols and applications.


RNA interference (RNAi), an evolutionarily conserved mechanism triggered by double- stranded RNA (dsRNA), causes gene silencing in a sequence-specific manner. RNAi evolved naturally to mediate protection from both endogenous and exogenous pathogen‐ ic nucleic acids and to modulate gene expression. Multiple technological advancements and precision in gene targeting have allowed a plethora of potential applications, ranging from targeting infections in crop plants to improving health in human patients, which have been reviewed in this chapter.


Cotton fabrics were treated with sodium hydroxide, morpholine and cellulase enzyme. These treated cotton fabrics were applied by chitosan followed by dyeing with some selected dyes such as annatto, onion, pomegranate, indigo, myrobalan, bar berry (natural dyes); and reactive and Sulphur dyes (synthetic) respectively. These treated samples were tested for different functional properties such as, wicking, water vapor & air permeability, K/S value, fastness properties, antimicrobial property, and SEM analysis. Results show that chitosan treatment imparts functional properties on cotton fabrics. Among all the treated fabrics, sodium hydroxide treated cotton fabric revealed higher values.


We exploit long time series of industry-level data in a group of OECD countries to analyze the short-term labor market effects of reforms lowering barriers to entry and dismissal costs. Our estimates show that both policies induce non-negligible transitory employment losses, a result that is confirmed by complementary evidence from case studies of three recently implemented EPL reforms. The strength of these effects varies depending on the underlying industry and labor market structure, and on cyclical conditions: the employment cost of deregulation is higher in economic downturns, negligible in good times. These findings prove robust to a set of specification and sensitivity checks, and are confirmed after standard reverse causality and falsification tests.


Fluorinated gradient copolymers were synthesized by the tandem catalysis of ruthenium-catalyzed living radical polymerization (LRP) and titanium alkoxide-mediated transesterification of methyl methacrylate (MMA) with fluoroalcohols. Although transesterification using less nucleophilic fluoroalcohols is generally regarded as difficult, we found that MMA was efficiently transesterified with fluoroalcohols (RFOH) into fluorinated methacrylates (RFMA) by Ti(Oi-Pr)4 catalysts (2–8 mol%) in the presence of molecular sieves 4A (MS 4A). The yield of RFMA increased with increasing the alkyl spacer (carbon number) between a hydroxyl group and a fluorinated alkyl segment in fluoroalcohols: propyl (4,4,5,5,5-pentafluoro-1-pentanol: 5FPOH) > ethyl (1H,1H,2H,2H-nonafluoro-1-hexanol: 9FHOH) > methyl (1H,1H-heptafluoro-1-butanol). Tandem polymerization of MMA was conducted with a ruthenium catalyst, a chloride initiator, and Ti(Oi-Pr)4 in toluene/fluoroalcohol mixtures (1/1, v/v) at 80 °C. Typically, in the presence of 4 mol% Ti and MS 4A, transesterification of MMA with 5FPOH or 9FHOH was efficiently synchronized with LRP to produce well-controlled MMA/5FPMA or MMA/9FHMA gradient copolymers in high yield (Conv. >95%, Mw/Mn = 1.2).


« The judges lack the intimate knowledge of the very dynamic process of industrial relations and collective bargaining. For these reasons...the new labour code has removed the court's jurisdiction over labour disputes...The new law seeks an administrative rather than a judicial solution to labour disputes. »** * JOSEPH, P.A., Faculty of Law, University of Canterbury, New Zealand. ** BRITISH COLUMBIA LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY DEBATES (1973) (Third Session), at 399-400 per the Hon. W.S. King, Minister of Labour.


Gearing assembly remains one of the major vibration sources in power transmission systems especially used in automotive, aerospace, marine and industrial applications. This study presents a novel means of reducing gear vibrations using a simple 1:1 ratio spur gear pair using a method of phasing. Variation in the gear mesh stiffness over a mesh cycle which depends on the number of pairs of teeth in contact is one of the principal causes of vibrations and instabilities and has a strong influence on the overall dynamics of the geared system. This method is based on reducing the variation in gear mesh stiffness by adding another pair of gears with phasing. Because of added phasing gear, the numbers of pairs of teeth in contacts are increased which reduces the variation in mesh stiffness. A simple spur gear model with rectangular-wave-type mesh stiffness are assumed and mesh stiffness variation is obtained numerically using MATLAB 7.5 software and is comparable in both cases i.e. normal and phasing gears. The numerical result of analysis shows the reduction in mesh stiffness variation and the possibility of reduction in vibration in simple spur gear pair using the proposed method.


The entertainment–education (E-E) strategy in development communication has been widely described as the panacea to development challenges in Africa. However, despite its growing application on the continent, E-E is still argued to be inhibited from contributing meaningfully toward development efforts. E-E interventions are argued to be hamstrung by their failure to embrace theoretical advances in development communication and E-E scholarship and for remaining rooted in the modernization paradigm. Using the social change paradigm as its framework, this article assesses the notions of development, change, communication, audiences, and education that underpin the conceptualization and design of Tsha Tsha, an E-E television drama that uses a novel cultural approach to address issues surrounding HIV and AIDS in South Africa. The data informing the study were gathered through a Focused Synthesis Approach and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The study's findings show that significant efforts have been made by Tsha Tsha's producers to bridge E-E practice and contemporary development communication and E-E scholarship. The data analyzed in the study show that Tsha Tsha's notions of development, change, education, communication, and audience have been significantly remoored in line with the core tenets of the E-E for Social Change paradigm. The implications of the study are that more engagement and synergies need to be cultivated between E-E practitioners and development communication and E-E scholars if E-E's full potential, in contributing to development challenges on the continent, is to be realized.


Everybody loves the movies. But a movie about the colour blue, or an isolated mountain range, or a man grown so thin the world floats through his perfect transparency? 'You know what would be really great - to make a two-hour movie about Taylor Mead's ass, ' remarked Andy Warhol, the most notorious fringe filmer of them all. Welcome to the strange and wonderful universe of fringe cinema, where the only rules left unbroken are the ones that have been forgotten. Twenty-three interviews with Canada's finest underdogs lay it all down like a road, ready to take you through the vanishing point of personality. This new edition includes a foreword by Atom Egoyan, and features never-before-heard raps from Ellie Epp, David Rimmer, Ann Marie Fleming, Anna Gronau, John Kneller, Rick Hancox and Kika Thorne, joining fellow fringers like Mike Snow, Carl Brown, Patricia Gruben, Penelope Buitenhuis, Fumiko Kiyooka, Wrik Mead, Annette Mangaard, Garine Torossian, Richard Kerr and Mike Cartmell.


Molecule-by-molecule construction has for years offered the tantalising prospect of atomic-scale devices. Current transistor fabrication techniques have for decades moved toward progressively smaller dimensions. This has driven interest in 'bottom up' routes to nanofabrication, where atoms and molecules are arranged into a desired structure. The scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) offers such a route. Nanofabrication wth STM lithography can reach sub-nanometre resolution. To achieve such control over individual molecules, a sound understanding of the behaviour of molecules on the surface is fundamentally important. In particular, the behaviour of aromatic organic molecules on surfaces is important for many technologies. Part II of this thesis presents a study of thermally activated movement of aromatic molecules on Si(111)-7 × 7, as recorded by STM. There are distinct variations in the measured rates of thermal displacement and desorption, determined by the different binding sites within the Si(111)-7 × 7 unit cell. The variation in the rates is a consequence of differences in both the energy barriers and Arrhenius prefactors. We reveal site-preference in the adsorption site of an aromatic molecule as it enters the surface from the gas phase via a physisorbed precursor. The complexity of the adsorption mechanism cannot be properly captured by the Langmuir isotherm. A Monte-Carlo simulation that takes into account a mobile physisorbed precursor accurately describes the adsorption process, highlighting the importance of molecular kinetics during adsorption. Part III of this thesis presents STM induced manipulation of aromatic molecules on Si(111)-7 × 7. A high voltage pulse at a point of the Si(111)-7 × 7 surface can desorb benzene, toluene, or chlorobenzene upwards of ten nanometres away from the tunnel junction. Increasing the current or time of the pulse, and hence the number of electrons, causes more molecules to be desorbed. This creates a depopulated region around the pulse site. For benzene, toluene, or chlorobenzene, the threshold bias to the effect is 2.0 V, below which no desorption occurs. Electrons travel across the surface isotropically before inducing desorption in a single electron process (1.18 ± 0.24 e−). Analysis of the effect at different temperatures and pulse voltages reveals that the injected electrons undergo diffusive motion between tip & molecule. The radius of the depopulated region decreases with decreasing temperature, but is constant for pulse voltages between 2.0 − 2.8 V. Drawing comparisons between 2 photon photoemission studies of the Si(111)-7 × 7 surface reveals a common electronic state at 2.0 V through which the electrons propagate the surface. The final chapter describes precise current injections made directly into toluene molecules adsorbed on Si(111)-7 × 7. Injecting directly into the molecule reveals the threshold to desorption of 1.4 eV. The difference in thresholds between locally and nonlocally induced desorption makes it clear that the 2.0 V threshold is a property of the surface, not the molecule.


Fe4N is expected to be used as a superior soft or hard magnetic material mainly because of its high saturation magnetization (186emu/g). The production of its dense compact by using pressureless sintering is said to be difficult, because the diffusivity of Fe atoms is poor even at temperatures just below its decomposition temperature of 940K. Therefore, we investigated whether the dense compact can be obtained by pressureless liquid phase sintering of Fe4N and Zn mixed powder; the melting point of Zn (693K) is lower by 247K than the above decomposition temperature.It was found that a usual simple method, i.e., sintering of Fe4N and Zn mixed powder compact resulted in the expansion of the compact. We, however, succeeded in enhancing the densification of the sintered compact from 54% of theoretical density to 84% by applying the following unique process: Fe4N and 10mass%Zn mixed powder was heat-treated in flowing H2 gas at 703K for 10.8ks to form Fe-Zn compound layer on the surface of Fe4N powder particles, and then the product was mixed with 20mass%Zn powder, compacted and sintered in H2-NH3(2:1) flowing gas at 823K for 3.6ks. The enhanced densification was attributed to good wetting characteristics between Zn liquid phase and the Fe-Zn compound layer.


Local 5'-deiodination of serum thyroxine (T4) is the main source of triiodothyronine (T3) for the brain. Since we noted in previous studies that the cerebral cortex of neonatal rats tolerated marked reductions in serum T4 without biochemical hypothyroidism, we examined the in vivo T4 and T3 metabolism in that tissue and in the cerebellum of euthyroid and hypothyroid 2-wk-old rats. We also assessed the contribution of enhanced tissue T4 to T3 conversion and decreased T3 removal from the tissues to the T3 homeostasis in hypothyroid brain. Congenital and neonatal hypothyroidism was induced by adding methimazole to the drinking water. Serum, cerebral cortex (Cx), cerebellum (Cm), liver (L) and kidney (R) concentrations of 125I-T4, 125I-T3(T4), and 131I-T3 were measured at various times after injecting 125I-T4 and 131I-T3. The rate of T3 removal from the tissues was measured after injecting an excess of anti-T3-antibody to rats previously injected with tracer T3. In euthyroid rats, fractional turnover rates of T3 per hour were: Cx, 0.26 +/- 0.02 (SE); Cm, 0.20 +/- 0.02; L, 0.98 +/- 0.07; R, 0.97 +/- 0.12; and the calculated unidirectional plasma T3 clearance by these tissues were, in milliliters per gram per hour: Cx = 0.38, Cm = 0.32, L = 5.0, and R = 5.6. In hypothyroidism, the fractional removal rates and clearances were reduced in all tissues, in cortex and cerebellum by 70%, and in liver and kidney ranging from 30 to 50%. While greater than 80% of the 125I-T3(T4) in the brain tissues of euthyroid rats was locally produced, in hypothyroid cerebral cortex and cerebellum the integrated concentrations of 125I-T3(T4) were 2.7- and 1.5-fold greater than in euthyroid rats. In the Cx, this response resulted from an approximately sixfold increase in fractional conversion and an approximately fourfold decrease in T3 removal rate hampered by a decreased uptake of T4 from plasma, whereas in Cm the response resulted only from the reduced T3 removal rate. In euthyroid rats, the calculated production rate of T3 in nanograms per gram per hour by the Cx was 0.96 and 0.89 by the Cm, which on a per organ basis equals 15 and 2%, respectively, of the extrathyroidal production rate as assessed in the body pool exchanging with plasma. Several conclusions can be drawn: Production of T3 by developing brain is a very active process in agreement with the need of thyroid hormones during this period. (b) The brain-plasma exchange of T3 is slow compared with that of L or R. (c) This, along with the active local production, explains the predominant role of the latter as a source of T3 for the brain. (d) In hypothyroidism, the Cx is protected by an increase in the efficiency of T4 to T3 conversion and a prolong residence time of T3 in the tissue, whereas the Cm is protected only by the latter. Because of the large fraction of the T3 produced locally and the active turnover rate of T3 in the brain, reductions in T3 removal rate are of utmost importance for T3 homeostasis in these tissues.


Question

Both genetic diversity within a dominant species and species diversity have been shown to affect productivity. However, these two levels of diversity have the potential to affect productivity in similar or opposing ways. Our study assessed direct and indirect relationships between genetic diversity of a dominant grass species and plant community diversity on productivity within a mesic grassland with naturally co-occurring genotypes and species.

Location

Konza Prairie Biological Station, Kansas, USA (39°05′35″ N, 96°33′31″ W).

Methods

We conducted a study at two sites (~65 plots per site) in intact tallgrass prairie that have been subjected to frequent (burned 14 times) and infrequent (burned nine times) fire treatments for ~30 yrs. With frequent burning, the dominant C4 grass, Andropogon gerardii, typically has higher abundance; in contrast, infrequently burned sites typically have higher species diversity but lower abundance of A. gerardii. Therefore, we hypothesized that genetic diversity within A. gerardii would have a significant direct relationship with productivity for the frequently burned site due to higher population abundances of A. gerardii overall, whereas species diversity would have a significant direct relationship with productivity for the infrequently burned site.

Results

Contrary to our predictions, genetic diversity of A. gerardii was not related to above-ground productivity either directly or indirectly via traits, while diversity at the community level had a negative indirect relationship with productivity via a negative effect of A. gerardii abundance on community diversity for both frequently and infrequently burned sites.

Conclusions

While much of the focus of diversity–productivity research has been on direct relationships between diversity at the community or population level separately, future studies should examine the indirect and potentially interactive effects of both levels of diversity in natural communities.


Abstract. Carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling under future climate change is associated with large uncertainties in litter decomposition and the turnover of soil C and N. In addition, future conditions (especially altered precipitation regimes and warming) are expected to result in changes in vegetation composition, and accordingly in litter species and chemical composition, but it is unclear how such changes could potentially alter litter decomposition. Litter transplantation experiments were carried out across six European sites (four forests and two grasslands) spanning a large geographical and climatic gradient (5.6–11.4 °C in annual temperature 511–878 mm in precipitation) to gain insight into the climatic controls on litter decomposition as well as the effect of litter origin and species. The decomposition k rates were overall higher in warmer and wetter sites than in colder and drier sites, and positively correlated with the litter total specific leaf area. Also, litter N content increased as less litter mass remained and decay went further. Surprisingly, this study demonstrates that climatic controls on litter decomposition are quantitatively more important than species or site of origin. Cumulative climatic variables, precipitation, soil water content and air temperature (ignoring days with air temperatures below zero degrees Celsius), were appropriate to predict the litter remaining mass during decomposition (Mr). Mr and cumulative air temperature were found to be the best predictors for litter carbon and nitrogen remaining during the decomposition. Using mean annual air temperature, precipitation, soil water content and litter total specific leaf area as parameters we were able to predict the annual decomposition rate (k) accurately.


Mobility on the housing market strongly declines with age. In contrast to younger age groups, older adults show a tendency to 'stay put'. There is little evidence whether this immobility of older adults is due to choice or to constraint. This study makes an empirical analysis of the underlying preferences for housing of Dutch older adults by reporting the stated preferences of Dutch older adults for bundles of housing characteristics. It offers insight in the relative importance of various aspects of housing and explores whether these preferences are stable for different age groups. The study found a strong preference for the current dwelling (i.e. staying put), especially for the older age groups. Running separate models for different age groups results in an improvement of the log likelihood, indicating the presence of heterogeneity among Dutch older adults. The heterogeneity among older adults is further analyzed by differentiating older adults on their attitudes and personality traits. This results in the identification of five groups of older adults who have (more or less) the same view, motivations and attitude with respect to housing. Between these five groups the heterogeneity in housing characteristics is apparent.


Green tea is widely known for its beneficial biologic effect and there have been some reports on the beneficial effect on the reproductive system. There have however been no reports on green tea effects on uterine contractility. This study is therefore aimed at the investigation of green tea extract on the amplitude and frequency of uterine contractility. Green tea bags were macerated in boiling water for 5 min and concentrated to dryness. The extract (0.33 -1333.21 µg/mL) was tested on the isolated mouse uterus. The contractility parameters investigated included spontaneous contraction, oxytocin (60 pg/mL) induced contraction and high KCl (80 mM)-induced contraction. High resolution mass spectrometric (HRMS) determination of secondary metabolites was also performed on the extract. The extract inhibited both the amplitude and frequency of uterine contractility studied, however minimal inhibitory effect was observed with KCl-induced contraction. The HRMS analysis revealed the presence of twenty-five (25) significant compounds, 23 of which were identified and 2 were unknown. Compounds were observed to belong to a diverse range of phytochemical classes including pteridine, flavonoids, cyclitols, and coumarins, with the majority of detected compounds belonging to the flavonoid class. The results obtained in this study have shown that green tea extract inhibits uterine contractility possibly due to the presence of the flavonoids, and through interaction with calcium and/or prostaglandins


The debate on the relative benefits of conventional and organic farming systems has in recent time gained significant interest. So far, global agricultural development has focused on increased productivity rather than on a holistic natural resource management for food security. Thus, developing more sustainable farming practices on a large scale is of utmost importance. However, information concerning the performance of farming systems under organic and conventional management in tropical and subtropical regions is scarce.
This study presents agronomic and economic data from the conversion phase (2007-2010) of a farming systems comparison trial on a Vertisol soil in Madhya Pradesh, central India. A cotton-soybean-wheat crop rotation under biodynamic, organic and conventional (with and without Bt cotton) management was investigated.
We observed a significant yield gap between organic and conventional farming systems in the 1st crop cycle (cycle 1: 2007-2008) for cotton (-29%) and wheat (-27%), whereas in the 2nd crop cycle (cycle 2: 2009-2010) cotton and wheat yields were similar in all farming systems due to lower yields in the conventional systems. In contrast, organic soybean (a nitrogen fixing leguminous plant) yields were marginally lower than conventional yields (-1% in cycle 1, -11% in cycle 2). Averaged across all crops, conventional farming systems achieved significantly higher gross margins in cycle 1 (+29%), whereas in cycle 2 gross margins in organic farming systems were significantly higher (+25%) due to lower variable production costs but similar yields. Soybean gross margin was significantly higher in the organic system (+11%) across the four harvest years compared to the conventional systems.
Our results suggest that organic soybean production is a viable option for smallholder farmers under the prevailing semi-arid conditions in India. Future research needs to elucidate the long-term productivity and profitability, particularly of cotton and wheat, and the ecological impact of the different farming systems.


In Ethiopia, the participation of women in agriculture is high, women farmers provide around 50 percent of the total labor time required for crop production in most parts of the country (Ahmed, 2013). Even though, the presence of the women in the agriculture sector in Ethiopia is very significant in numbers, a 2014 World Bank report affirms that female farmers benefit less from economic growth because they are less productive than their male counter parts. According to the report the gender productivity gap in Ethiopia is one of the highest in sub-Sahara Africa (World Bank 2014). Therefore, the need to have a closer look to the female holder farms, to locate the sources of inefficiency in hopes to contribute to the alleviation of the poverty conditions that the country faces by improved economic performance. The hypothesis I test in the paper is that in Ethiopia, women are more efficient than men in terms of revenue efficiency in absence of price discrimination in the markets. This study used a two-stage performance assessment across 581 farm holders' information obtained from the comparable Living Standard Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys (LSMS-ISA) from 2011-2012 and 2013-2014. In the first stage of the study, the revenue efficiency scores, and scale efficiency scores of female and male headed households were calculated by using Data Envelop Analysis (DEA). In the second stage we employed a Panel Tobit Analysis to identify possible determinants of the farms' inefficiency by including in the model variables related to the farmers' personal characteristics, farms' characteristics, households' characteristics, and managerial characteristics.


There is growing recognition of the need for outcome measures which reflect the aims of services for people with dementia. The development and application of existing outcome measures has often marginalised people with dementia. 'Experts' and carers have been viewed as primary sources when identifying relevant outcomes or domains of quality of life, and proxy respondents have often been responsible for rating outcomes on the resulting measures. This paper reports a small consultation with people with dementia and their carers to identify the desired outcomes of community care. While there was considerable overlap in the outcomes identified by people with dementia and their carers, a number of limitations of relying solely on carers as proxy respondents were identified. A key outcome, which has been relatively neglected in previous work, was maximising a sense of autonomy. A range of outcomes related to the ways in which services are delivered were also identified. Future evaluative studies should encompass both quality-of-life outcomes and service-process outcomes (the impacts of the ways in which services are delivered) in addition to other outcome measures relevant to the aims and objectives of the service.


Atmospheric aerosols from natural and anthropogenic processes have both primary and secondary origins, and can influence human health, visibility, and climate. One key process affecting atmospheric concentrations of aerosols is the formation of new particles and their subsequent growth to larger particle sizes. A field study was conducted at the Blodgett Forest Research Station in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California from May through September of 2002 to examine the effect of biogenic volatile organic compounds on aerosol formation and processing. The study included in-situ measurements of concentration and biosphere-atmosphere flux of VOCs, ozone, aerosol size distribution, aerosol physical and optical properties, and meteorological variables. Fine particle growth events were observed on approximately 30 percent of the 107 days with complete size distribution data. Average particle growth rates measured during these events were 3.8 ± 1.9 nm hr−1. Correlations between aerosol properties, trace gas concentrations, and meteorological measurements were analyzed to determine conditions conducive to fine particle growth events. Growth events were typically observed on days with a lesser degree of anthropogenic influence, as indicated by lower concentrations of black carbon, carbon monoxide, and total aerosol volume. Days with growth events also had lower temperatures, increased wind speeds, and larger momentum flux. Measurements of ozone concentrations and ozone flux indicate that gas phase oxidation of biogenic volatile organic compounds occur in the canopy, strongly suggesting that a significant portion of the material responsible for the observed particle growth are oxidation products of naturally emitted very reactive organic compounds.


Abstract Background and study aims The present study aimed to determine the type of intravenous hydration that is best suited to reducing the incidence of post-endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) pancreatitis. Patients and methods In a prospective randomized multicenter trial, average-to-high risk patients who underwent first-time ERCP were randomly assigned to three groups (1:1:1) who received: aggressive intravenous hydration (3 mL/kg/h during ERCP, a 20-mL/kg bolus and 3 mL/kg/h for 8 hours after ERCP) with either lactated Ringer's solution (LRS) or normal saline solution (NSS), or standard intravenous hydration with LRS (1.5 mL/kg/h during and for 8 hours after ERCP). The primary end point was post-ERCP pancreatitis (PEP). Results 395 patients were enrolled, and 385 completed the protocols. The three groups showed no significant differences in demographic characteristics. There was a significant difference in the intention-to-treat (ITT) PEP rate between the aggressive LRS group (3.0 %, 95 % confidence interval [CI] 0.1 % – 5.9 %; 4 /132), the aggressive NSS group (6.7 %, 95 %CI 2.5 % – 10.9 %; 9 /134) and the standard LRS group (11.6 %, 95 %CI 6.1 % – 17.2 %; 15 /129; P = 0.03). In the two-group comparisons, the ITT PEP rate was significantly lower for the aggressive LRS group than for the standard LRS group (relative risk [RR] 0.26, 95 %CI 0.08 – 0.76; P = 0.008). There was no significant difference in the ITT PEP rate between the aggressive NSS group and the standard LRS group (RR 0.57, 95 %CI 0.26 – 1.27; P = 0.17). Conclusion Aggressive hydration with LRS is the best approach to intravenous hydration for the prevention of PEP in average-to-high risk patients.


Theories about visual narrative understanding accentuate the difference between patterns of reading comprehension in children and adults when they read text and images. This study was conducted to explore the differences in eye movement patterns when children and adults read different comic stories using a coherence/incoherence paradigm. A total of 63 participants, 31 children (10-12 years old) and 32 undergraduate university students from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, read 20 comic stories, each of them with both coherent and incoherent versions, for the two ending frames. Fixation durations, number of fixations, and number of regressions were recorded by an eye-tracker, Tobii x-120. A crossed random effects model was applied. Results showed that even though children reach a similar level of understanding than adults they spend more time and have longer fixations than adults, showing more effort to reach the whole comprehension of the stories. Besides, results do not detect significant differences between eye movements' patterns in peak and release for the two groups studied, and therefore both components of the visual narrative grammar are considered equally relevant in the understanding of comics.


This essay explores how institutional responses to human development differentiate capitalist systems and shape developmental dimensions of stratification and freedom. I advocate differentiating the analyses of systems of institutions and freedom, including by setting out their developmental dimensions. Doing so allows me to analyse ethical and political problems of high inequality capitalism that Piketty highlights as they relate to the cooperative and developmental character of public services, and to set the BI project in relation to human development.


The sea surface temperature (SST) and upper-ocean heat content (OHC) have been explored along the track of two tropical cyclones (TCs): TC Pam (2015) and TC Winston (2016). These TCs severely affected the islands of Vanuatu and Fiji, in the South Pacific region (8°–30°S, 140°E−170°W). The SST decreased by as much as 5.4°C along the tracks of the TCs with most cooling occurring to the left of the TCs tracks relative to TC motion. SST cooling of 1°–5°C has generally been observed during both the forced and relaxation stages of TC passage. Argo profiles near the TCs revealed observable temperature-based mixed layer deepening. Subsurface warming was also observed post-TC passage from the temperature profile of one of the floats after the passage of both TCs. The OHC and heat fluxes are seen to play an important part in TC intensification as both these TCs intensified after passing over regions of high OHC and enhanced heat fluxes. Apart from the traditionally used OHC obtained up to the depth of the 26°C isotherm (QH), the OHC was also determined up to the depth of the 20°C isotherm (QH,20). The QH and QH,20 values decreased in the majority of cases post TC passage while QH,20 increased in one instance post-TC passage for both the TCs. QH,20 was also used to identify heat energy changes at deeper levels and it correlated well with the traditionally used OHC during the weaker stages of the TCs.


This paper aims at acquiring knowledge about the quality of sleep of adult and elderly psychiatric patients who receive clinical or outpatient nursing care, and identifying key factors in perceiving a sleep problem. To do so, a sample of 1699 psychiatric patients were asked whether they perceived a sleep problem and were invited to fill in the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and additional questions. Five hundred and sixty (33%) questionnaires were returned. As a result, we find that 36% of the patients perceived a sleep problem, while the PSQI assessed 66% of the sample as being 'bad sleepers'. Forty-nine per cent of the respondents used sleep medication one or more times a week. Five items of the PSQI were shown to be predictors of a perceived sleep problem. Four of these are insomnia symptoms, while the fifth is the use of sleep medication. Moreover, the patients who used sleep medication most scored significantly worse on all PSQI components than patients who used sleep medication less than once a week. In conclusion, many psychiatric patients perceive a sleep problem and all nurses could be confronted not only with the night-time consequences of this, but also with daytime consequences. Therefore, sleep problems must not be viewed as an isolated problem but must be seen in relation with social functioning.


Increasingly, those studying climate change are recognizing the potential of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of Indigenous Peoples for providing insights into sustainable frameworks related to climate change mitigation policy, adaptation planning, and understanding of local-level climate change impacts. TEK has been shown to be highly valuable in identifying long-term trends in climate variables, re-constructing a baseline climate history for a people's territory, and providing locally-generated hypotheses for the changes taking place and their relation to interacting ecosystem components.

However, it is becoming widely acknowledged that research with Indigenous Peoples must go beyond contributing advances to academic fields and must be jointly developed, performed in a way that is conducive to community values, and result in tangible benefits for the community as well as researchers. Climate change researchers or graduate students might not have the background, tools, or institutional support required to fully participate in collaborative research that is productive and meaningful, but this should be a key goal.

This thesis explores Traditional Ecological Knowledge of climate change through these two lenses in collaboration with members of the Gitga'at Nation of northwestern British Columbia. Gitga'ata people are highly knowledgeable about environmental change in their traditional territory. I document and discuss their observations, and bring these together with climate data to strengthen understanding of local impacts, concluding that Gitga'ata knowledge provides insights into local changes that the biophysical and climate modeling data alone does not capture. I also draw on my experience conducting this research to provide an overview of existing frameworks for meaningful research with Indigenous Peoples, to discuss these frameworks in relation to formal institutional requirements, and to support current recognition that productive research relationships with Indigenous communities are both possible and highly desirable.


The major focus of software transaction memory systems (STMs) has been to facilitate the multiprocessor
programming and provide parallel programmers with an abstraction for fast development of the concurrent
and parallel applications. Thus, STMs allow the parallel programmers to focus on the logic of parallel
programs rather than worrying about synchronization.
Heart of such applications is the underlying concurrent data-structure. The design of the underlying
concurrent data-structure is the deciding factor whether the software application would be efficient, scalable
and composable. However, achieving composition in concurrent data structures such that they are efficient as
well as easy to program poses many consistency and design challenges.
We say a concurrent data structure compose when multiple operations from same or different object
instances of the concurrent data structure can be glued together such that the new operation also behaves
atomically. For example, assume we have a linked-list as the concurrent data structure with lookup, insert
and delete as the atomic operations. Now, we want to implement the new move operation, which would delete
a node from one position of the list and would insert into the another or same list. Such a move operation
may not be atomic(transactional) as it may result in an execution where another process may access the
inconsistent state of the linked-list where the node is deleted but not yet inserted into the list. Thus, this
inability of composition in the concurrent data structures may hinder their practical use.
In this context, the property of compositionality provided by the transactions in STMs can be handy.
STMs provide easy to program and compose transactional interface which can be used to develop concurrent
data structures thus the parallel software applications. However, whether this can be achieved efficiently is a
question we would try to answer in this thesis.
Most of the STMs proposed in the literature are based on read/write primitive operations(or methods)
on memory buffers and hence denoted RWSTMs. These lower level read/write primitive operations do not
provide any other useful information except that a write operation always needs to be ordered with any
other read or write. Thus limiting the number of possible concurrent executions. In this thesis, we consider
Object-based STMs or OSTMs which operate on higher level objects rather than read/write operations on
memory locations. The main advantage of considering OSTMs is that with the greater semantic information
provided by the methods of the object, the conflicts among the transactions can be reduced and as a result,
the number of aborts will also be less. This allows for larger number of permissive concurrent executions
leading to more concurrency. Hence, OSTMs could be an efficient means of achieving composability of
higher-level operations in the software applications using the concurrent data structures. This would allow
parallel programmers to leverage underlying multi-core architecture.
To design the OSTM, we have adopted the transactional tree model developed for databases. We extend
the traditional notion of conflicts and legality to higher level operations in STMs which allows efficient
composability. Using these notions we define the standard STM correctness notion of Conflict-Opacity. The
OSTM model can be easily extended to implement concurrent lists, sets, queues or other concurrent data
structures.
We use the proposed theoretical OSTM model to design HT-OSTM - an OSTM with underlying hash table
object. We noticed that major concurrency hot-spot is the chaining data structure within the hash table. So,
we have used Lazyskip-list approach which is time efficient compared to normal lists in terms of traversal
overhead. At the transactional level, we use timestamp ordering protocol to ensure that the executions are
conflict-opaque. We provide a detailed handcrafted proof of correctness starting from operational level to the
transactional level. At the operational level we show that HT-OSTM generates legal sequential history. At
vi
transactional level we show that every such sequential history would be opaque thus co-opaque.
The HT-OSTM exports STM insert, STM lookup and STM delete methods to the programmer
along-with STM begin and STM trycommit. Using these higher level operations user may easily and
efficiently program any parallel software application involving concurrent hash table. To demonstrate the
efficiency of composition we build a test application which executes the number of hash-tab methods (generated
with a given probability) atomically in a transaction. Finally, we evaluate HT-OSTM against ESTM
based hash table of synchrobench and the hash-table designed for RWSTM based on basic time stamp ordering
protocol. We observe that HT-OSTM outperforms ESTM by the average magnitude of 106 transactions
per second(throughput) for both lookup intensive and update intensive work load. HT-OSTM outperforms
RWSTM by 3% & 3.4% update intensive and lookup intensive workload respectively


The value of music in people9s everyday lives depends on the uses they make of it and the degree to which they engage with it, which are in turn dependent on the contexts in which they hear it. Very few studies have investigated people9s experiences of music in naturalistic, everyday circumstances, and this exploratory study provides some initial normative data on who people listen with, what they listen to (and what their emotional responses to this music are), when they listen, where they listen, and why they listen. A total of 346 people who owned a mobile phone were sent one text message per day for 14 days. On receiving this message, participants were required to complete a questionnaire about any music they could hear, or had heard since their previous message. Responses indicated a high compliance rate; a high incidence of exposure to music; that the greatest number of musical episodes occurred while participants were on their own; that pop music was heard most frequently; that liking for the music varied depending on who the participant was with, where they were, and whether they had chosen to be able to hear music; that music was usually experienced during the course of some activity other than deliberate music listening; that exposure to music occurred most frequently in the evening, particularly between 10 pm and 11 pm, and on weekends; that music was heard most frequently at home, with only a small number of incidences occurring in public places; that the importance of several functions of music varied according to temporal factors, the place where the music was heard, and the person or people the participant was with. Further research should include participants from a greater range of sociodemographic backgrounds and should develop context-specific theoretical explanations of the different ways in which people use music as a resource.


Industrial accidents are a major risk in many countries. Despite this observation, effective preventive action is not being developed and studies of the behaviours of vulnerable populations remain under-explored. According to safety instructions, residents must take shelter and remain indoors but other behaviours may be observed such as: running away from the affected area, panicking, or following people around. In order to assess the attitudes of people and the effects of local contingencies that could interfere with official advice in the event of a toxic cloud, a specific agent-based model called TOXI-CITY has been developed. The aim of this explorative model is to determine whether a minimum number of well-informed agents (i.e. those who follow the emergency protocol) can save a maximum number of uninformed and impressionable ones. Simulations indicate that the initial number of agents and the spatial configuration of the grid strongly influence final survival rates. A non-linear pattern emerged: survival rates increase when well-informed agent rates are low (below 30 %) while increasing the percentage of informed agents (from 70 %) seems to improve only slightly the chances of survival.


While Bayesian Optimization (BO) has emerged as sample-efficient optimization method for accelerating drug discovery, it has rarely been applied to the process optimization of pharmaceutical manufacturing, which traditionally has relied on human-intuition, along with trial-and-error and slow cycles of learning. The combinatorial and hierarchical complexity of such process control also introduce challenges related to high-dimensional design spaces and requirements of larger scale observations, in which BO has typically scaled poorly. In this paper, we use penicillin production as a case study to demonstrate the efficacy of BO in accelerating the optimization of typical pharmaceutical manufacturing processes. To overcome the challenges raised by high dimensionality, we apply a trust region BO approach (TuRBO) for global optimization of penicillin yield and empirically show that it outperforms other BO and random baselines. We also extend the study by leveraging BO in the context of multi-objective optimization, allowing us to further evaluate the trade-offs between penicillin yield, production time, and CO 2 emission as by-product. Through quantifying the performance of BO across high-dimensional and multi-objective drug production optimization processes, we hope to popularize application of BO in this field, and encourage closer collaboration between machine learning and broader scientific communities.


In this paper we examine the impact of condom use on the sexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) amongst a homogeneously mixing male homosexual population. We first derive a multi-group SIR-type model of HIV/AIDS transmission where the homosexual population is split into subgroups according to frequency of condom use. Both susceptible and infected individuals can transfer between the different groups. We then discuss in detail an important special case of this model which includes two risk groups and perform an equilibrium and stability analysis for this special case. Our analysis shows that this model can exhibit unusual behaviour. As normal, if the basic reproduction number, R0, is greater than unity then there is a unique disease-free equilibrium which is locally unstable and a unique endemic equilibrium. However, when R0 is less than unity two endemic equilibrium solutions can also co-exist simultaneously with the disease-free solution which is locally stable. Numerical simulations using realistic parameter values confirm this and we find that in certain circumstances the disease-free solution and one of the endemic solutions are both locally asymptotically stable, while the other endemic solution is unstable. This unusual behaviour has important implications for control of the disease as reducing R0 to less than unity no longer guarantees eradication of the disease. For a restricted special case of this two-group model we show that there is only the disease-free equilibrium for R0 < or = 1 which is globally stable. For R0 > 1 the disease-free equilibrium is unstable and there is a unique endemic equilibrium which is locally stable. We then attempt to fit the model to HIV and AIDS incidence data from San Francisco, USA. The paper concludes with a brief discussion.


Abstract Separation of lithology from pore fill remains a daunting task, even if using elastic inversion. This is one of the unsolved problems for hydrocarbon prediction in Malaysian basins because of complexities coupled with lithologic trends and fluid responses, which produce an ambiguity due to equivalences. We address this problem and propose a unique transformation in which decoupling can be achieved. From the output of a constrained elastic inversion, a relationship of VP/VS and new attributes SQp and SQs related to attenuation by linking through rock physics can be derived. They are good proxies for gamma rays (SQp) and resistivity logs (SQs) and can clearly identify the zone of interest with hydrocarbon potential. These attributes can also be used for petrophysical-properties prediction with high accuracy. This breakthrough would have a considerable effect on hydrocarbon prediction and lithology discrimination. Other than being a hydrocarbon and lithology indicator, SQp and SQs can also potential...


The topic of language evolution is characterised by the scarcity of records, but also by a large flow of research produced within multiple subtopics and perspectives. Over the past few decades, significant advancement has been made on the geographical and temporal origins of language, while current work is rather devoted to the underpinnings of language, in brain, genes, body, and culture of humans. Much of this literature is polarized over the crucial dichotomy of nativism versus emergentism. Our state of affairs report also confirms a high degree of speculation, albeit with a decrease for modelling. To tackle the speculation and the large research flow, we propose a more impersonal kind of review, focused on the topic's questions rather than on particular accounts. Another observation is that novel perspectives are on the rise. One of these highlights the importance of perceptual cognition, often dubbed 'embodiment,' in the earlier evolution of language. In following this lead, we adapted a previous experiment which had investigated the correspondence between certain perceptual features of events, and different grammatical orders arising as participants acted out those events. That design made a perfect basis for us to put in an additional variable, namely the contrast between body-based communication (gestures), and more disembodied communication (symbol matching). Albeit tentative, the results of this pilot experiment reveal a greater effect of the embodiment variable on the grammatical preferences, which we see as inviting further exploration of embodied cognition in language evolution.


Lifecycle funds offered by retirement plan providers allocate aggressively to risky asset classes when the employee participants are young, gradually switching to more conservative asset classes as they grow older and approach retirement. This approach focuses on maximizing growth of the accumulation fund in the initial years and preserving its value in the later years. The authors simulate terminal wealth outcomes based on conventional lifecycle asset allocation rules as well as on contrarian strategies that reverse the direction of asset switching. The evidence suggests that the growth in portfolio size over time significantly impacts the asset allocation decision. Due to the portfolio size effect that is observed by the authors, the terminal value of accumulation in retirement accounts is influenced more by the asset allocation strategy adopted in later years relative to that adopted in early years. By mechanistically switching to conservative assets in the later years of a plan, lifecycle strategies sacrifice significant growth opportunity and prove counterproductive to the participant's wealth accumulation objective. The authors' conclude that this sacrifice does not seem to be compensated adequately in terms of reducing the risk of potentially adverse outcomes.


Two stations at a distance comparable with the wavelength in the Schumann resonance (SR) frequency range, one in Europe (Nagycenk, Hungary) and one in North America (West Greenwich, Rhode Island) have simultaneously monitored the natural vertical electric and horizontal magnetic field components in the frequency range of 3-25 Hz. This is a unique opportunity, as Schumann resonance stations are scarce and even fewer station have records with 5-6 year durations. The main purpose of this paper is to make comparisons in the SR time series measured simultaneously at the two field site, thereby providing access to global behavior on the seasonal and interannual time scales. The comparative measurements described here point out distinct differences in the nature of convection in South America and in Africa and reveal new aspects about the behavior of tropical continental convection on the ENSO time scale.


In this article, we discuss the use of language portraits (LP) as a research method to investigate the embodied multilingual repertoires of people who use both spoken and signed languages. Our discussion is based on two studies in which most participants were deaf (one study also included hearing participants). We primarily offer a methodological contribution to the discussion around LP, since we argue that the study of linguistic repertoires of signers takes the multimodal aspect of the method to a new level. Indeed, by separating modalities (speech, signing, writing), grouping languages in different ways, and mapping them on the LP, the LP discussed in this article represent multimodal languaging more explicitly than in previous studies. Furthermore, by locating particular signs on the LP, several participants literally mapped their body when signing and gesturing in their narratives, thus performing and becoming their language portrait. We suggest that the study of body language (signing/gesturing/pointing) in the verbal narrations accompanying the LP thus expands the multimodal aspect of the analysis of LP.


Learning in the space-time domain remains a very challenging problem in machine learning and computer vision. Current computational models for understanding spatio-temporal visual data are heavily rooted in the classical single-image based paradigm. It is not yet well understood how to integrate information in space and time into a single, general model. We propose a neural graph model, recurrent in space and time, suitable for capturing both the local appearance and the complex higher-level interactions of different entities and objects within the changing world scene. Nodes and edges in our graph have dedicated neural networks for processing information. Nodes operate over features extracted from local parts in space and time and previous memory states. Edges process messages between connected nodes at different locations and spatial scales or between past and present time. Messages are passed iteratively in order to transmit information globally and establish long range interactions. Our model is general and could learn to recognize a variety of high level spatio-temporal concepts and be applied to different learning tasks. We demonstrate, through extensive experiments and ablation studies, that our model outperforms strong baselines and top published methods on recognizing complex activities in video. Moreover, we obtain state-of-the-art performance on the challenging Something-Something human-object interaction dataset.


This article analyses the peculiarities and problems of accentuation of nouns and adjectives in Lithuanian administrative style. The emphasis is made to which word's pronunciation more attention shall be paid, in order to make language more orderly and to avoid common mistakes of accentuation. The analysis is based on data from the computerized frequency dictionary of administrative style. It is shown, that: 1) most frequent within Lithuanian administrative texts are root stress nouns and adjectives, the majority of which being 1st stress paradigm words; 2) the most frequently used nouns of 1st stress paradigm are derivatives with suffixes -ýba, -ýbė and usually stressed on a penultimate syllable and has mainly falling accent; 3) about one third of the most frequently used nouns of 1st stress paradigm are words with suffixes -imas, -ovas, -ė, -entas, -ūra and have a rising accent - the accentuation of these words causes the most number of problems. 4) the most frequently used adjectives of 1st and 2nd stress paradigm are derivatives with suffix -inis,-ė; 5) the correlations of stress paradigms of nouns and adjectives within zones of medium and small frequency is similar to that of large frequency, but the number of root stress nouns and adjectives is increasing while the number of nouns and adjectives stressed at the ending is decreasing.


The two most powerful chemical approaches to date for the sequence-specific recognition of double helical DNA are the pyrrole-imidazole polyamides in the minor groove and oligonucleotide-directed triple-helix formation in the major groove. Described here are the design and synthetic methods to combine the two models for DNA recognition in a single motif. A hairpin polyamide connected to a pyrimidine-oligonucleotide via a simple aliphatic linker was shown to simultaneously recognize the major and minor grooves of DNA at subnanomolar concentrations (Chapter 2). Development of versatile solid phase methodology expanded the protocols for the synthesis of pyrrole-imidazole polyamides to include polyamide-oligonucleotide conjugates. Utilizing the pyrrole-imidazole polyamide moiety as a sequence-specific dimerization domain afforded a class of cooperative polyamide oligonucleotides which bound a 27 bp target with a 2.7 kcal mol(-1) increase in binding energy relative to the unlinked subunits (Chapter 3). Introduction of a new linker design created an extended polyamide-oligonucleotide motif to specifically target 31 contiguous base pairs of DNA at subnanomolar concentrations (Chapter 4). Polyamide-oligonucleotides combine the two binding models to create a paradigm for simultaneous recognition of the major-minor grooves of DNA with synthetic ligands.

For the pyrrole-imidazole polyamide model, sequence specificity depends on side-by-side aromatic amino acid pairings. An Im/Py pair distinguishes G • C from C • G and both of these from A,T base pairs. A Py/Py pair specifies A,T from G,C but does not distinguish A•T from T•A. To break this degeneracy a new aromatic amino acid, 3-hydroxypyrrole (Hp), was synthesized to test for pairings which discriminate A • T from T • A. Replacement of a single hydrogen atom with a hydroxy group in a Hp/Py pairing regulates affinity and specificity by an order of magnitude. By incorporation of a third aromatic amino acid, hydroxypyrrole-imidazolepyrrole polyamides form four ring pairings (Im/Py, Py/Im, Hp/Py, Py/Hp) which distinguish all four Watson-Crick base pairs in the minor groove of DNA (Chapter 5).


Variation explained by environmental variables in multivariate methods such as constrained ordination is often used to quantify the link between environment and species composition (concept of R2 and adjusted R2). In the presence of spatial autocorrelation, explained variation is biased toward higher values (the more the variable is autocorrelated, the more variation it explains). Here, we introduce concept of explained variation adjusted for the effect of spatial autocorrelation. We define it as the amount of variation explained by one or several real spatially autocorrelated variables additionally to the variation explained by the same number of randomly generated variables with the same level of spatial autocorrelation. Using artificial data, we compare performance of several methods generating random variables with certain level of spatial autocorrelation (such as toroidal shift, dual-tree complex wavelet transform). Using vegetation dataset from 25 ha subtropical forest dynamics plot in Taiwan as a case study, we study the relationship between species composition and environmental, using explained variation adjusted for the effect of spatial autocorrelation.


Illegal logging and illegal timber trade is a global problem. Anatomical, genetic, and chemical techniques support illegal logging legislation by verifying the species and geographic origin of timber. In principle, these methods can be used to identify timber species and the origin of harvest, however, the availability of specific tests for important timber species is unclear. We review the status of these methods for the top 322 global priority timber taxa. Our results show that for species identification, reference data exist for 100% of taxa using wood anatomy, 86% using genetics, 41% for using DART TOFMS, and 6% using NIRS. For origin identification, data exist for 24% of taxa, with most studies applying genetic approaches (23%). No studies have developed forensic-ready tests for the global priority timber taxa. The review highlights that the current potential for identifying species is greater than for geographic origin and more research focused on determining the geographical origin of timber is required. Based on the current rate, it will take approx. 27 years to generate geographic data for all 322 priority taxa. Finally, we identify research opportunities to improve global timber tracing efforts. Our findings indicate more research is needed, and quickly so that scientific verification can support regulators to combat illegal logging.


ABSTRACT This paper considers an alternative way of gathering and evaluating information on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the actions taken towards sustainable development. Social accounting theory is currently limited in conceptualising external accounts that sit outside the description of silent or shadow accounts. With the emergence of technological platforms that enable CSR information to be collectively located, new models of stakeholder engagement are growing using the wisdom of the crowd for information collation and analyses. This paper outlines a crowdsourced platform, WikiRate, which aims to both empower corporate transparency surrounding the Sustainable Development Goals and assist in multidimensional stakeholder participation and decision making. Existing theoretical characterisations of external accounts are used as a way of understanding the WikiRate engagement model and more broadly its relationship with social accounting. Through analysis and theoretical development, this research has implications for imagining and exploring new social accountings and social accountants that can lead to emancipatory change. 'Spotlight accounting' is introduced as a process that illuminates global organisational transparency and sustainability through crowdsourcing by independent stakeholders.


Despite the removal of the mercury (Hg)-based preservative thimerosal from vaccines listed on the Australian Immunization Program Schedule for children, concerns remain among some researchers and parents for the safety of the present schedule, in part due to a fear of residual trace levels of Hg. The purpose of this study was to independently assess childhood vaccines for the presence of Hg. Eight vaccines administered to children under the age of 5 yr were assessed for Hg content via a DMA-80 direct mercury analyzer. Seven of the 8 vaccines contained no detectable levels of Hg (less than 1 ppb); however, 1 vaccine (Infanrix hexa) tested positive for Hg at 10 ppb. The result was confirmed and validated by retesting the original sample. Follow-up testing was conducted on three additional samples of Infanrix hexa (one from the same production lot and two from a different lot). All three tested positive for Hg (average of 9.7 ppb). Although the levels of Hg detected are substantially lower than any established exposure safety limits, the results of this study reveal that inaccuracies exist in public health messages, professional communications, and official documentation regarding Hg content in at least one childhood vaccine. In the interests of public health, it is incumbent on vaccine manufacturers and responsible agencies such as the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the Federal Department of Health and Ageing to address this issue as a matter of urgency.


Integration of sustainability aspects into the product development process has been difficult to achieve, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. The main reason is that existing tools are experienced to be too detailed and as a result too demanding in terms of time and resources. This Licentiate Thesis presents a method for sustainable product development (MSPD). The method is intended to be a complement to existing overarching sustainability management tools and detailed quantitative product analysis tools. The objectives of the MSPD are: (i) identification of potential problems of present or planned products caused by substances and activities during the product life cycle that are critical with regard to principles for sustainability; (ii) guidance in finding solutions to the potential problems by modifications of present or planned products, and (iii) promotion of new products and business ideas based on sustainability aspects. A method suitable for most enterprises, irrespective of product type or background knowledge, has been sought. The MSPD includes: (1) a management tool which supports the user with information about, and instructions for applying, the method; (2) a flexible model for an integrated product development process, including checklist questions concerning traditional aspects of product development; (3) a modular system of guiding questions concerning aspects of sustainability, and (4) a prioritisation matrix for evaluation and choice of proposals in each product development phase. A MSPD prototype has been developed and tested in six small and medium- sized enterprises to study the usability of the basic structure of the method, and to obtain ideas for improvements and further development.


Background: Sepsis is a life-threatening condition existing worldwide and is frequently known as the "hidden killer" because it is a time-sensitive illness, like myocardial infarction and cardiac arrest; therefore, prehospital providers must have adequate knowledge about it. Aim: The aim was to measure the knowledge and perception of sepsis among emergency medical service (EMS) providers to assure better patient prognosis. Methodology: A cross-sectional paper-based questionnaire survey comprising 15 questions, divided into three sections, was conducted at Makkah Saudi Red Crescent Authority to evaluate their knowledge related to the signs and symptoms of sepsis in particular and management and perception of sepsis in general. The responses received were categorized according to the specialties considering P < 0.05 as statistically significant. Results: The total number of study participants was 102; 26 participants were excluded because they did not meet the inclusion criteria. Among the remaining 76 participants, 64.5% were technicians and 35.5% were specialists. The most common age group was 25 ± 5 years which composed 46.1% of the total participants, and the highest years of experience was between 6 and 10 years which composed 47.4% of the total participants. According to a 5-point Likert scale, there was an adequate level of EMS provider perception on the knowledge of sepsis. Nearly 55.6% of the specialists knew the three stages of sepsis better than technicians (40.8%). Both the technicians and specialists had poor knowledge regarding hypothermia (technicians 20.4% and specialists 25.9%) as a sign of sepsis, in addition to administering intravenous antibiotics (technicians 28.6% and specialists 14.8%) as a management modality. On the other hand, both had enough knowledge regarding the other signs and symptoms with an average of 72.8% and the management of sepsis with an average of 72%. Conclusion: Overall, all participants had a good level of knowledge related to sepsis. However, the participants lack knowledge on administering antibiotics and hypothermia; moreover, their attitude and willingness toward recognizing and managing septic patients is unknown. Hence, it is recommended that further research may be undertaken to measure it at a larger scale and efforts be made to educate the providers certainly on the knowledge they lack of.


Most confocal microscopes do not produce images in real time with nonlaser light sources. The tandem scanning confocal microscope does produce such images but, because the pinhole apertures of the Nipkov disk must be placed far apart to reduce cross talk between neighboring pinholes, only 1% or less of the light available for imaging is used. We show that, by using aperture correlation techniques and relaxing the requirement to obtain a pure confocal image directly, one can obtain real-time confocal images with a dramatically increased (25% or even 50%) light budget.


Exposures to UVA radiation (320 − 400 nm) have been linked to increasing the risk of skin cancer, premature skin photoageing and skin wrinkling. The relative proportion of the UVA irradiances in the solar spectrum changes with time of day and season. Material such as window glass found in offices, homes and motor vehicles acts as a barrier to the shorter solar UVB wavelengths (280 - 320 nm) and transmits some of the longer UVA wavelengths (dependent on the type of glass). As a result, the spectrum of the filtered UV transmitted through the material may be substantially different from that of the unfiltered solar UV spectrum. This results in a change in the relative ratio of UVA to UVB irradiances and a consequent change in the biologically damaging UV exposures. For these environments where the UVB wavelengths have been removed and the UVA wavelengths are still present, it is necessary to consider the erythemal irradiances due to these UVA wavelengths only. This paper investigates the times taken for an exposure of 1 SED (standard erythemal dose) due to the UVA wavelengths.


This report evaluates the U.S. and world wheat markets for the 1999-2009 period by using the Global Wheat Policy Simulation Model. This analysis is based on a series of assumptions about general economic conditions, agricultural policies, weather conditions, and technological change. Both the U.S. and world wheat economies are predicted to be improving for the next ten years. World demands for both common and durum wheat are expected to grow faster than world production of the two wheat classes, resulting in gradual increases in prices of the wheats, which are predicted to increase 36% for durum wheat and 23% for common wheat for the 1999-2009 period. However, the prices are expected to recover slowly for the next 2-3 years. World trade volumes of both classes of wheat are expected to expand, but trade volume of durum wheat may grow faster than common wheat.


ABSTRACT Terrorism provokes not only policy responses in terms of security but also public narratives aimed at restoring routine in shattered societies. This paper investigates the relevance and meanings of 'tolerance' in the discursive response to jihadist terrorist attacks. We ask how 'tolerance' as a value of liberal societies and a key concept of religious pluralism functions as a tool to facilitate this process of reassurance in the immediate aftermath of religiously motivated violence. We examine this question in a comparative case study of the discursive responses in Austria to the jihadist terrorist attacks in Paris in January and November 2015 based on the empirical analysis of media articles, press releases and speeches by political and civil society actors. We find that very different meanings are attributed to 'tolerance', from a praise of pluralism and freedom of rights to the justification of restrictive and exclusionary policies. We argue that this variety of usage is rooted in broader contextual developments, such as increased migration and politicization thereof, and reveal the ambivalent effects of 'tolerance' as a concept to restore routine in liberal democratic societies. Thus, this empirically oriented paper contributes to the mostly theoretical debate on presupposed common values, including tolerance, in liberal democracies.


Dr Paul Thirkell was invited by the Taiwanese National University of the Arts to host a collotype workshop and lecture series for the universities printmaking students and invited guests from the Taiwanese printmaking community. These events took place in February 2009 and as a result TNUA published Collotype Workshop 09. A book publication coming out of a Collotype workshop and lecture series held at the Taiwan National Academy, Taiwan. This output is based on ongoing research done by Thirkell into the collotype printing process.


We present a stochastic algorithm to compute the barycenter of a set of probability distributions under the Wasserstein metric from optimal transport. Unlike previous approaches, our method extends to continuous input distributions and allows the support of the barycenter to be adjusted in each iteration. We tackle the problem without regularization, allowing us to recover a sharp output whose support is contained within the support of the true barycenter. We give examples where our algorithm recovers a more meaningful barycenter than previous work. Our method is versatile and can be extended to applications such as generating super samples from a given distribution and recovering blue noise approximations.


JavaScript is a programming language for interactive clientside functionalities in web applications. It is a sequential pro- gramming language, so it cannot take advantage of multicore processors. Previously Thread-Level Speculation has been used to take advantage of multicore processors for JavaScript execution in web applications with promising results execu- tion time wise, but with a large memory overhead. In this study we have evaluated the effects of limiting the amount of memory, the number of threads and the depth of specula- tion in Thread-Level Speculation. Our results indicate that we can tune these parameters to improve execution time and reduce the memory overhead.


Regulatory failures, which came to the fore after the financial crisis of 2007-2009, lead to the question of why some activities by financial institutions were not regulated prior to the crisis of 2007, even though regulators knew about certain dangers to financial stability? The repo-market, although centrally involved in the last crisis, still awaits stringent regulation. At the same time, the regulatory cycle seems to come to an end, boding ill for future crises which will be amplified by this market. In this situation, NGOs are needed to make regulators act upon their knowledge and to tighten their regulations.


iDigBio Matsunaga et al. 2013 currently references over 22 million media files, and stores approximately 120 terabytes worth of those media files co-located with our compute infrastructure. Using these images for scientific research is a logistical and technical challenge. Transferring large numbers of images requires programming skill, bandwidth, and storage space. While simple image transformations such as resizing and generating histograms are approachable on desktops and laptops, the neural networks commonly used for learning from images require server-based graphical processing units (GPUs) to run effectively.

 Using the GUODA (Global Unified Open Data Access) infrastructure, we have built a model pipeline for applying user-defined processing to any subset of the images stored in iDigBio. This pipeline is run on servers located in the Advanced Computing and Information Systems lab (ACIS) alongside the iDigBio storage system. We use Apache Spark, the Hadoop File System (HDFS), and Mesos to perform the processing. We have placed a Jupyter notebook server in front of this architecture which provides an easy environment with deep learning libraries for Python already loaded for end users to write their own models. Users can access the stored data and images and manipulate them according to their requirements and make their work publicly available on GitHub.

 As an example of how this pipeline can be used in research, we applied a neural network developed at the Smithsonian Institution to identify herbarium sheets that were prepared with hazardous mercury containing solutions Schuettpelz et al. 2017. The model was trained with Smithsonian resources on their images and transferred to the GUODA infrastructure hosted at ACIS which also houses iDigBio. We then applied this model to additional images in iDigBio to classify them to illustrate the application of these techniques to broad image corpora potentially to notify other data publishers of contamination. We present the results of this classification not as a verified research result, but as an example of the collaborative and scalable workflows this pipeline and infrastructure enable.


Peri-implant and periodontal pockets share a number of anatomical features but also have distinct differences. These differences make peri-implant pockets more susceptible to trauma and infection than periodontal pockets. Inadequate maintenance can lead to infections (defined as peri-implant mucositis and peri-implantitis) within peri-implant pockets. These infections are recognized as inflammatory diseases, which ultimately lead to the loss of supporting bone. Diagnostic and treatment methods conventionally used in periodontics have been adopted to assess and treat these diseases. Controlling infection includes elimination of the biofilm from the implant surface and efficient mechanical debridement. However, the prosthetic supra-structure and implant surface characteristics can complicate treatment. Evidence shows that when appropriately managed, peri-implant mucositis is reversible. Nonsurgical therapy, with or without the use of antimicrobials, will occasionally resolve peri-implantitis, but for the majority of advanced lesions this approach is insufficient and surgery is indicated. The major objective of the surgical approach is to provide access and visualize the clinical situation. Hence, a more informed decision can be made regarding whether to use a resective or a regenerative surgical technique. Evidence shows that following successful decontamination, surgical treatment to regenerate the bone can be performed, and a number of regenerative techniques have been proposed. After treatment, regular maintenance and good oral hygiene are essential for a predictable outcome and long-term stability.


In this paper we present a simple deterministic model of a biological tissue growing within a porous scaffold. By neglecting the effects of nutrient limitations and intercellular pressure on cell growth, and by using Darcy's law to model the cells' movement through the scaffold, our model is formulated as a moving boundary problem. Due to the difficulty in solving the resulting system, we reformulate it as a linear complementarity problem using the Baiocchi transformation, and give both one-dimensional analytical solutions and two-dimensional numerical ones. We then focus on the behaviour of the moving boundary as the colony approaches confluence, using asymptotic analysis to derive the time of confluence and the shape of the moving boundary; we show in particular that the moving boundary evolves to an ellipse. We also show that pressures increase considerably in the tissue shortly before the scaffold is filled, and identify the potential problem for tissue engineers of a "slit" being left devoid of cells.