The cultural heritage in the built environment is developing discursively, and the   concept is today exposed more variously than a decade ago when I explained in the doctoral dissertation through a case study how the place, the process and the experience were arising in the Foucaldian discourses. My on-going research on the change of the cultural heritage discourse (kulttuuriymparisto) is showing how the designations are changing and the concepts re-defined. The national strategy on the cultural heritage (2014) is emphasizing everybody's right on the good cultural heritage environment and also the responsibilities to take care of that. When we now share the idea that the cultural heritage in the built environment is belonging to all of us, the places and experiences of all are also important.
Nevertheless, in the end is the experience or the aesthetic experience exactly, really important when opinions are contradictory and the crucial decision has to be made: to preserve or to dismantle the building? The absence of aesthetics in decision-making has been extremely explicit since the recession of the 1990s and public discussions and political decision-making seem to involve mostly economic arguments.
Architects are using the experience, meaning the aesthetic, bodily experience or referring to art, in their professional speech but to speak about "the beauty experience" or able to emphasize the meaning of beauty in architecture, and also in the environment is usually left outside the discussions. The experience, together with reflection, following Dewey, is very important in the speech of teaching architects. In the cultural heritage discourse, narratives, experiences and local stories from bottom-up are arising but do we talk about the aesthetics or the experiences of beauty in the built environment?
In this paper, the aim is to discuss about the meaning of experiences and the role of beauty in cultural heritage discourse. The method used here is the case study research, and two local cases from different decades will be introduced to demonstrate how miniscule or completely absent aesthetic argumentation in decision making processes can remain, and how different the solutions ended up, though both cases concerned the question of built cultural heritage. The central question in my on-going research project on the changing cultural heritage discourse is: How "the aesthetic experience" is appearing today in the cultural heritage discourses? This paper aims to cast light on that and tries to answer especially this: How did the cultural heritage discourse evolve from different experiences; and how did ugliness become important rather than beauty in the case studies?


We show how a preselection of hidden variables can be used to efficiently train generative models with binary hidden variables. The approach is based on Expectation Maximization (EM) and uses an efficiently computable approximation to the sufficient statistics of a given model. The computational cost to compute the sufficient statistics is strongly reduced by selecting, for each data point, the relevant hidden causes. The approximation is applicable to a wide range of generative models and provides an interpretation of the benefits of preselection in terms of a variational EM approximation. To empirically show that the method maximizes the data likelihood, it is applied to different types of generative models including: a version of non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), a model for non-linear component extraction (MCA), and a linear generative model similar to sparse coding. The derived algorithms are applied to both artificial and realistic data, and are compared to other models in the literature. We find that the training scheme can reduce computational costs by orders of magnitude and allows for a reliable extraction of hidden causes.


The economic growth of industrial countries is increasingly hindered due to the huge demand for natural resources such as energy, raw materials and minerals. While resource demand in the world increases the current economic model, the 'linear economy', entails significant limits and resource losses. Circular economy is an alternative economic system for the linear economy in which the economic growth is decoupled from the resource use. The construction sector, including civil infrastructure, is an important economic engine with one of the largest users of raw materials and energy. Therefore the potential impact of circular economy in this sector is enormous. In this research, the concept of circular economy including the principles and circular economy loops is described. In addition the barriers and strategies for the integrating of the circular economy principles into the design and engineering process is analysed. Making use of resource efficient design principles and involving stakeholders in the early design stage are the main steps in order to integrate the principles of circular economy into the engineering process of civil infrastructure systems.


Simulating the interaction of electromagnetic terahertz radiation with metals poses difficulties not encountered in the optical regime. Owing to a penetration depth small compared to the wavelength, such simulations in the terahertz frequency range require large discretization volumes with very small grid spacings. We present a unique subgridding scheme that accurately describes this interaction while keeping computational costs minimal. Bidirectional coupling between grids allows for the complete integration of subdomains into the simulation volume. Implementation in one and two dimensions is demonstrated, and a comparison with theoretical and experimental results [Opt. Express15, 6552 (2007)] [Phys. Rev. B69, 155427 (2004)] is given. Using our technique, we are able to accurately simulate plasmonic effects in terahertz experiments for the first time.


Understanding the source and loss processes of various plasma populations is greatly aided by having accurate knowledge of their pitch angle distributions (PADs). Here we statistically analyze ~1 eV to 600 keV hydrogen (H+) PADs near the geomagnetic equator in the inner magnetosphere based on Van Allen Probes measurements, to comprehensively investigate how the H+ PADs vary with different energies, magnetic local times (MLTs), L shells, and geomagnetic conditions. Our survey clearly indicates four distinct populations with different PADs: (1) a pancake distribution of the plasmaspheric H+ at low L shells except for dawn sector; (2) a bidirectional field‐aligned distribution of the warm plasma cloak; (3) pancake or isotropic distributions of ring current H+; (4) radiation belt particles show pancake, butterfly, and isotropic distributions depending on their energy, MLT, and L shell. Meanwhile, the pancake distribution of ring current H+ moves to lower energies as L shell increases, which is primarily caused by adiabatic transport. Furthermore, energetic H+ (>10 keV) PADs become more isotropic following the substorm injections, indicating wave‐particle interactions. The radiation belt H+ butterfly distributions are identified in a narrow energy range of 100 < E < 400 keV at large L (L > 5), which are less significant during quiet times and extend from dusk to dawn sector through midnight during substorms. The different PADs near the equator provide clues of the underlying physical processes that produce the dynamics of these different populations.


How are endangered species discovered? How can they save a city? Barton Springs is a resource unique to Austin drawing thousands of visitors every year. Yet, Barton Springs is home to endangered species of salamanders rarely seen by the public. In the early 1990s, Dr. David Hillis, a professor at The University of Texas, discovered the Barton Springs salamander. Dr. Hillis will share how the Barton Springs salamander was identified as an endangered species and its impact in Austin's economic development. Live animals, including the Barton Springs salamander, will be present during the Community Science Fair.


: This article traces the social life of Our Lady of Ipswich, a statue taken to be destroyed during the English Reformation, and the possibility of pilgrimage in the context of dramatic urban change and loss of place memory. Arguing that iconoclasm is not an end-point, we see that the life of the image is not extinguished on the pyre, but is set into motion by conflict surrounding its significance, efficacy, and survival. Indeed, it is not simply the act of iconoclasm that animates the statue; rather, such agonistic animation is an ongoing process which involves both those who reject and those who are devoted to the image. My argument is that the potency of contemporary images of Our Lady of Ipswich relies on an active cultivation of dissonance: the consciousness of religious schism; the disjuncture between Ipswich's historic importance and the perceived failures of twentieth-century development; and the juxtaposition between devotional pilgrimage destination and disenchanted shopping space.


Abstract For achieving accurate and safe measurements of the force and power exerted on a load during resistance exercise, the Smith machine has been used instead of free weights. However, because some Smith machines possess counterweights, the equation for the calculation of force and power in this system should be different from the one used for free weights. The purpose of this investigation was to calculate force and power using an equation derived from a dynamic equation for a Smith machine with counterweights and to determine the differences in force and power calculated using 2 different equations. One equation was established ignoring the effect of the counterweights (Method 1). The other equation was derived from a dynamic equation for a barbell and counterweight system (Method 2). 9 female collegiate judo athletes performed bench throws using a Smith machine with a counterweight at 6 different loading conditions. Barbell displacement was recorded using a linear position transducer. The force and power were subsequently calculated by Methods 1 and 2. The results showed that the mean and peak power and force in Method 1 were significantly lower relative to those of Method 2 under all loading conditions. These results indicate that the mean and peak power and force during bench throwing using a Smith machine with counterweights would be underestimated when the calculations used to determine these parameters do not account for the effect of counterweights.


The project of cultural materialism is to examine the political implications of cultural artifacts, particularly their subversive potential. The critic attempts to reconstruct the social, political, and economic context that contributed to the formation of the art work, his or her intention being to examine how the artifact interacts with other cultural processes. Both cultural materialists and new historicists maintain that the art work enjoys a dynamic relationship of mutual exchange with the society that generated it (Greenblatt, "Poetics" 12). The French philosopher Michel Foucault's theories of power were influential in the formation of the political theory that is the trademark of the new historicist/cultural materialist movement. Foucault argues that power in a given society is not centralized in the oppressive actions of a single individual or a ruling class, but instead emanates from all of its cultural practices (Holstun 200). The society's ideological apparatus conditions the individual, teaching him how to be an obedient social subject. This apparatus includes the legal, political, economic, and educational institutions as well as social structures such as the family. Cultural materialists suggest that the individual, once shaped by social institutions, is unable to extricate him/herself sufficiently from the ideological predispositions of his/her age to challenge the dominant culture: "... if we come to consciousness within a language that is continuous with the power structures that sustain the social order, how can we conceive, let alone organize, resistance?" (Sinfield 35). This question has led to the "subversion/containment debate." The contending factions within this exchange disagree on the extent to which subversion is possible within the power structure. Stephen Greenblatt maintains that the individual is "remarkably unfree, the ideological product of the relations of power in a particular society" (Renaissance 256-57). In this model, subversion is effectively contained by the dominant power structure. Potentially seditious actions and ideas are shown to reinforce the dominant values of the society or are instrumental in providing an occasion for the state apparatus to employ its instruments of suppression and thus exert its authority in a dramatic display of its own invulnerability. On the other hand, Louis Montrose contends that the artist can achieve a "relative autonomy" in order to affect cultural change (5-11), "fashioning and refashioning consciousness, defining possibilities of action, shaping identities, [and] shaping visions of justice and order" (Fox-Genovese 222). This position is further reinforced by the recent work of cultural materialists who argue that subversive potential is facilitated by the inherent contradictions that are a part of the political mythology the dominant culture perpetuates in order to justify its own ascendancy, albeit these contradictions are normally effaced by the ideological apparatus of the society.(1) These insights are especially relevant to an understanding of Claude McKay's protest sonnets, in which the contrast between form and content has long been observed. The poet chose to contain his politically volatile subject matter within a verse form that signifies the aristocratic European literary tradition. It is my contention that the ideological contradiction manifest in the practice of joining tradition and dissent is functional, that through this poetic compromise McKay was attempting to create a space in which to challenge white America's claim to cultural superiority. In order to ameliorate the social injustice experienced by African Americans in the early twentieth century, the poet had to appeal to the same group whose power he challenged in the poems' content, namely the European cultural apparatus in America. He did this by observing the ideological paradoxes manifest in America's treatment of minorities and by adopting Western literary traditions, and thus he gains a voice among those whose project of subjugation has been to efface the native cultural heritage of African-Americans and to silence the discourse of dissent. …


In collaboration with a local non-profit organization, this study evaluated the expansion of a program that promoted and installed Mesita Azul, an ultraviolet-disinfection system designed to treat household drinking water in rural Mexico. We conducted a 15-month, cluster-randomized stepped wedge trial by randomizing the order in which 24 communities (444 households) received the intervention. We measured primary outcomes (water contamination and diarrhea) during seven household visits. The intervention increased the percentage of households with access to treated and safely stored drinking water (23–62%), and reduced the percentage of households with Escherichia coli contaminated drinking water (risk difference (RD): −19% [95% CI: −27%, −14%]). No significant reduction in diarrhea was observed (RD: −0.1% [95% CI: −1.1%, 0.9%]). We conclude that household water quality improvements measured in this study justify future promotion of the Mesita Azul, and that future studies to measure its health impact would be valuable if conducted in populations with higher diarrhea prevalence.


LAW Dispensing Justice in Islam: Qadis and their Judgments, ed. by Muhammad Khalid Masud, Rudolph Peters, and David Powers. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2006. xiv + 541 pages. Bibl. to p. 569. Index to p. 591. $195. Intent in Islamic Law: Motive and Meaning in Medieval Sunni Fiqh, by Paul R. Powers. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2006, xii + 213 pages. Bibl. to p. 228. Index to p. 236. $117. Reviewed by Lawrence Rosen Islamic law is often regarded by students of the Muslim world either as terribly arcane or as the expression of strict religious and political control. What is seldom understood is the way Islamic law operates as a living, if quite varied, system presently affecting more than a billion people. Because Orientalists have been joined by those working in contemporary courts, the capacity of each to enrich the work of the other has the potential to revise many of our assumptions about this vital topic. The two books under review form an intriguing entry to these issues. While Intent in Islamic Law, which focuses on the medieval period, carries a central theme - the role of "intention" in Islamic law - across a number of legal domains, Dispensing Justice in Islam offers numerous examples of courtroom practice whose manifestations invite the reconsideration of some of the dominant ideas in Islamic legal studies generally. Readers might wish to begin with Dispensing Justice in Islam, skipping the volume's introduction initially and concentrating on the case studies themselves. Here several themes come to the fore. Since, as Leslie Pierce notes, Orientalists have commonly overlooked the importance of local circumstance in Islamic law, she, among others, demonstrates that in the 16th century Ottoman period no single standard of conduct was applied to all men and women, judicial dissent from mufti advisors was (as Christian Muller also shows for Mamluk Jerusalem) more often the rule than the exception, and judges were not, therefore, bound by scholarly opinion. While the works of the various schools of Islamic law formed an important backdrop, far more important, both historically and at present, has been the role of custom and procedure. For while Orientalists fail to regard custom as one of the "sources" of Islamic law, Muslims quite clearly do. Indeed, Delfina Serrano shows that, in the Almoravid period in Morocco and Spain, the positions of qadi and mufti were often interchangeable, while Aharon Layish shows that Libyan judges commonly ignore scholarly opinion, and Muhammad Khalil Masud that even qadis were treated as if they were advisory muftis rather than entering enforceable judgments. All of these studies reaffirm the implication that the actual role of scholarly opinions is more complex than binding. While none of the authors explicitly notes what others have demonstrated - that in most instances, Muslims regard custom as Islamic, not something set apart from it - all of the archival and field-based studies suggest that judicial "creativity" (as Alien Christelow and Masud show) is crucial to actual decision-making. Procedural elements are no less important. The materials on Yemeni contracts presented by Brinkley Messick not only show no reference to the opinions of muftis, but they also reveal the paramount role of procedure in giving Islamic law its legitimacy. Ron Shahem's demonstration that non-Muslims often shopped for the most favorable forum, including using Muslim courts, couples with Erin Stiles' demonstration, stemming from work in Zanzibar, of the key role played by clerks and other personnel in formulating issues for the court and hence the qadis ' actual decisions. John R. Bowen's study of Indonesia fits precisely with work elsewhere and at other periods in showing that the assignment of burdens of proof and levels of proof are characteristically more germane than references to substantive legal norms alone. Both he and Maribel Fierro, then, can assert that courts very frequently work in favor of women, though as Abdul-Karim Rafeq argues for Ottoman Damascus, one cannot understand the actual disposition of something like waqf cases without understanding the broader power equation affecting the courts. …


Federal Rule of Civil Procedure ("FRCP") 24(a)(2) permits third parties whose interests are not adequately represented by existing parties to intervene in ongoing litigation to protect those interests. This Comment considers whether intervention can and should be used as a tool for nonparty racial minorities in the fight for social justice. Ultimately, it posits that in light of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and Ricci v. DeStefano, minority intervention is imperativenot only to give voice to minority interests and to influence the outcome of "reverse discrimination" litigation, but also to avoid forfeiture of related claims in future suits.


In anaphora resolution for English, animacy identification can play an integral role in the application of agreement restrictions between pronouns and candidates, and as a result, can improve the accuracy of anaphora resolution systems. In this paper, two methods for animacy identification are proposed and evaluated using intrinsic and extrinsic measures. The first method is a rule-based one which uses information about the unique beginners in WordNet to classify NPs on the basis of their animacy. The second method relies on a machine learning algorithm which exploits a WordNet enriched with animacy information for each sense. The effect of word sense disambiguation on the two methods is also assessed. The intrinsic evaluation reveals that the machine learning method reaches human levels of performance. The extrinsic evaluation demonstrates that animacy identification can be beneficial in anaphora resolution, especially in the cases where animate entities are identified with high precision.


Of Microbes and Cancer Inflammation is a well-established driver of tumorigenesis. For example, patients with inflammatory bowel disease have an elevated risk of developing colorectal cancer (CRC). Whether the gut microbiota also contributes to the development of CRC is less well understood. Arthur et al. (p. 120, published online 16 August; see the Perspective by Schwabe and Wang) now show that the microbiota does indeed promote tumorigenesis in an inflammation-driven model of CRC in mice. Although germ-free mice were protected against developing cancer, colonization of mice with Escherichia coli was sufficient to drive tumorigenesis. Microbes resident in the gut can promote colorectal cancer in mice in an inflammation-independent manner. Inflammation alters host physiology to promote cancer, as seen in colitis-associated colorectal cancer (CRC). Here, we identify the intestinal microbiota as a target of inflammation that affects the progression of CRC. High-throughput sequencing revealed that inflammation modifies gut microbial composition in colitis-susceptible interleukin-10–deficient (Il10−/−) mice. Monocolonization with the commensal Escherichia coli NC101 promoted invasive carcinoma in azoxymethane (AOM)–treated Il10−/− mice. Deletion of the polyketide synthase (pks) genotoxic island from E. coli NC101 decreased tumor multiplicity and invasion in AOM/Il10−/− mice, without altering intestinal inflammation. Mucosa-associated pks+ E. coli were found in a significantly high percentage of inflammatory bowel disease and CRC patients. This suggests that in mice, colitis can promote tumorigenesis by altering microbial composition and inducing the expansion of microorganisms with genotoxic capabilities.


Abstract. Here we present a comprehensive attempt to correlate aragonitic Na∕Ca ratios
from Desmophyllum pertusum (formerly known as Lophelia pertusa), Madrepora oculata and a caryophylliid cold-water coral (CWC) species with
different seawater parameters such as temperature, salinity and pH. Living
CWC specimens were collected from 16 different locations and analyzed for
their Na∕Ca ratios using solution-based inductively coupled plasma-optical
emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) measurements. The results reveal no apparent correlation with salinity (30.1–40.57 g kg−1) but a significant inverse correlation with temperature (-0.31±0.04 mmolmol-1∘C-1). Other marine aragonitic organisms such as Mytilus edulis (inner
aragonitic shell portion) and Porites sp. exhibit similar results highlighting the
consistency of the calculated CWC regressions. Corresponding Na∕Mg ratios
show a similar temperature sensitivity to Na∕Ca ratios, but the combination
of two ratios appears to reduce the impact of vital effects and
domain-dependent geochemical variation. The high degree of scatter and
elemental heterogeneities between the different skeletal features in both
Na∕Ca and Na∕Mg, however, limit the use of these ratios as a proxy and/or make
a high number of samples necessary. Additionally, we explore two models to
explain the observed temperature sensitivity of Na∕Ca ratios for an open and
semi-enclosed calcifying space based on temperature-sensitive Na- and Ca-pumping enzymes and transport proteins that change the composition of the
calcifying fluid and consequently the skeletal Na∕Ca ratio.


Competition between the voluntary sector and across sectors has, over the years, intensified. As a result, a growing body of literature urge the voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) to adopt the best practices of the private sector, in order to demonstrate professionalism, win contracts and increase organisational survival. Such advocates assume the generic character of private-sector management practices and inherent structural similarities between organisations in both the voluntary and private sectors. However, if a VSO is to adopt the private sector practices to be able to more effectively compete, demonstrate effectiveness and continuous improvement, how would that impact on that VSO's effectiveness? Not much is known about the inner intricacies of VSOs experiencing drastic competitive pressures and having to adapt to ensure organisational survival.
This study set out to evaluate the impact of such competitive pressures and the
organisations' adaptive strategies on the VSOs' effectiveness. The study has taken on and
challenged the market driven notion that the efficiency of markets and the value of
competition should underpin the strategy for improving VSO's effectiveness and the delivery
of public services.
The researcher sought theoretical models that could provide an understanding of how social processes would determine the efficacy of VSOs in such a competitive environment. The neo-institutional and the resource dependence theories were preferred, enabling the study to predict the possible organisational behaviours; under competitive pressures. As result, five testable propositions were developed, based on the key institutional differences between the voluntary and the private sectors. The study then adopted a longitudinal comparative case study research method to test the propositions. Three case study organisations were selected, based on their sources of income, provisions and characteristics of organisations where change had occasioned concern amongst stakeholders. From an insider perspective, with at least two of the case organisations, the overall context of the pressures leading to adaptation at the three case study organisations was shaped by changes in the delivery of public services.
Using a variety of qualitative data collection methods, a wide range of data was collected, triangulated and analysed. The study also drew on the long term professional and practical work experience of the researcher as a senior practicing manager within the voluntary sector, and as a reflective scholar-practitioner.
The findings reveal that, as a result of competitive pressures, VSOs have to adapt to ensure organisational survival. Although this may be of some immediate benefits to the organisations, such adaptive strategies lead to goals and mission drifts; erode organisational independence and legitimacy; weaken democratic accountability and reduce wider participation. It reduces voluntarism, informality and diversity, and erodes the VSOs' traditional values and ethos. This has wider implications for the individual voluntary sector organisations, sector leaders and the public sector seeking to maximise the value of service delivery by the voluntary sector, and those advocating, indiscriminately, the adoption of private sector practices, as a strategy for improving voluntary sector effectiveness.
The study provides an understanding of VSOs' organisational behaviours under competitive pressures, and the transformational effect that such competitive pressures may have on an organisation's distinctive capabilities.


The Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics (BTRE) has recently conducted a study of the avoidable social costs of congestion in Australia. Congestion imposes significant costs on society with interruptions to urban traffic flow lengthening average journey times, making trip travel times more variable, and making vehicle engine operation less efficient. The latter leads not only to higher rates of fuel consumption, than would otherwise have occurred, but also to poorer urban air quality (with vehicles under congested conditions typically emitting far higher rates of noxious pollutants than under more freely flowing conditions, resulting in even higher health costs to the community). As part of the investigation of congestion occurrence, long-term trends in traffic within the Australian capital cities were analysed. These trend analyses form the basis of the findings discussed in this paper. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E215911.


The loss of large fishes from coral reefs can alter the composition of benthic assemblages and increase the abundance of smaller fishes at lower trophic levels. An experimental exclusion of medium and large fishes, maintained over 30 mo, had a major impact on the dynamics of 2 abundant damselfishes (Pomacentrus adelus and P. wardi) and altered their relative abundance in favour of the larger species, P. wardi. The territory size of both species inside exclusion cages increased by 20 to 50% in the first year, but then declined to their original size after a further 6 mo. The exclusion of larger fishes also led to an increase in the quantity and quality of food algae within damselfish territories. These results suggest that larger predatory and herbivorous fish influence the composition of coral reef communities not only directly, but also indirectly, by controlling the abundance and territorial activities of damselfish.


From iPods to EZPass technology to YouTube to eGovernment initiatives, the impact of technology is changing our lives more and more each day. This book, a counterpart to a Maryland Public Television documentary, chronicles how and why and shows ways people can take advantage of the revolution in their personal and professional lives. As technology expert Henry C. Lucas, Jr., argues, the fundamentals of business and the economynot to mention the details of daily lifeare changing in every market, in every industry, and in every nation. This book explores the most significant of these technology-enabled transformations to help readers understand and appreciate the opportunities and threats presented by a new, technology-driven global economy.Among other things, Inside the Future demonstrates that: -A revolution in technology is transforming business and the way individuals live and work. -It's essential to adapt to change. Resisting technological advances is futile, and countries or people that fall behind in technology may never catch up. -The U.S. needs to prepare current and future workers for an economy that incorporates technology in every business process, an economy in which there are almost no constraints from time and place, and an economy in which most hierarchical organizations disappear. -The future competitiveness of the country depends on our ability to innovate and implement change enabled by technology. This revolution is leaving no person or organization untouched. From business to education and healthcare, the digitization and mobilization of every process affects us all. Yet this isn't a book about technology, but one that shows how people and organizations can adapt technology to transform their businesses as well as create a more productive, satisfying personal life. Readers will gain a new awareness of how leading organizations apply IT to create transformations, and how they can use technology to improve their lives, remain competitive in the workforce, and survive in this new age of constant change and re-invention.


Goblet cells are situated in the epithelium of the conducting airways, often with their apical surfaces protruding into the lumen, a location which fits them for a rapid response to inhaled airway insults. Together with the submucosal glands, goblet cells secrete high molecular weight mucus glycoproteins (mucins), which confer upon the airway surface fluid the requisite biochemical and biophysical properties which determine the efficiency of entrapment and transportation of inhaled irritants, particles and micro-organisms. The diversity of glycosylation of airway mucins may be important in facilitating adherence of micro-organisms to mucus prior to mucociliary clearance. Other secretory products, including lipids and "small" glycoproteins, may also be produced by goblet cells. It is possible that goblet cells have the potential to produce markedly more mucus than do the glands. Mucins are tightly packed in the intracellular granules of the goblet cell. The morphology of these granules varies with fixation technique, and release of mucins may be via a combination of merocrine and apocrine secretion. Discharge of mucus is accomplished remarkably rapidly (tens of milliseconds) and vast quantities of mucus are released (size expansions from the granule of many hundredfold). Depending upon species and preparation, goblet cells discharge mucus in response to a wide variety of stimuli, including proteinases, irritant gases, inflammatory mediators, reactive oxygen species, nerve activation and changes in the biophysical environment. Under normal conditions, goblet cell proliferation and differentiation, particularly to ciliated cells, contributes to maintenance of the airway epithelial cell population. In addition to participating in acute airway defence, goblet cells increase in number in response to chronic airway insult, with a resultant increase in output of mucus. The increase in number of cells is via hyperplastic and metaplastic mechanisms. Early triggers for the development of a hypersecretory epithelium include excessive discharge of mucus and increased expression of airway mucin messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA). Cessation of chronic airway stress rapidly reverses the increased number of goblet cells. Irritant-induced increases in number of goblet cells can be inhibited by a variety of drugs with anti-inflammatory and mucoregulatory properties, and the reversal to normal numbers after cessation of the irritation is speeded by these drugs. The ability of goblet cells to be progenitors of ciliated cells, to rapidly produce vast quatities of mucus in response to acute airway insult, and to change in number according to variations in chronic insult indicates that these cells are vitally important responsive and adaptable front-line defenders of the airways.


Abstract We estimated nutritional condition for 96 female northern Yellowstone elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni) during mid- to late winter 2000, 2001, and 2002. Neither year nor capture location significantly influenced any measure of condition (body fat, body mass, and longissimus dorsi thickness; P ≥ 0.14). Overall, age = 8.9 years ± 0.4 SE, body fat = 9.5% ± 0.4, body mass = 235.1 kg ± 2.2, and longissimus dorsi muscle thickness = 5.6 cm ± 0.1. Despite an age segregation pattern across the winter range (P = 0.016), we found no evidence of bias in our estimates of nutritional condition due to this pattern because condition was unrelated to age. Yearly pregnancy and lactation rates of all cows ranged from 78 to 84% and 8 to 16%, respectively, at the time of capture. Lactational status significantly influenced body condition (P = 0.003), with lactating cows having 50% less body fat than nonlactating cows. Probability of pregnancy observed for elk that we captured followed a logistic curve as a function of body fat levels. Based on mid- to late winter body fat levels, we would predict low mortality of adult cows during mild to normal winters. We suggest the possibility of nutritional limitations acting on this herd through summer–autumn forage conditions, in association with limitations during harsh winters.


Laser fault injection (LFI) attacks on cryptographic processor ICs are a critical threat to information systems. This paper proposes an IC-level integrated countermeasure employing an information leakage sensor against an LFI attack. Distributed bulk current sensors monitor abnormal bulk current density caused by laser irradiation for LFI. Time-interleaved sensor operation and sensitivity tuning can obtain partial secret key leakage bit information with small layout area penalty. Based on the leakage information, the secret key can be securely updated to realize high-availability resilient systems. The test chip was designed and fabricated in a 0.18 μm standard CMOS, integrating a 128-bit advanced encryption standard cryptographic processor with the proposed information leakage sensor. This evaluation successfully demonstrated bulk current density and leakage bit monitoring.


The M w 5.9 Ferrara earthquake that struck northern Italy on 20 May 2012 was recorded with an infrasound array at a source‐to‐receiver distance of 300 km. The infrasound record revealed early and late detections characterized by large back‐azimuth variations, suggesting the existence of an extended area of infrasound radiation. Unlike most previous studies, the modeled area of maximum infrasound radiation appears to mimic an extended flat area (plain of the Po River) with no significant contributions from nearby mountain ranges. The ShakeMap of the earthquake and the map of the reported acoustic boom are in good agreement with the modeled area of infrasound radiation, suggesting how the transition of seismic waves into acoustic atmospheric waves is efficiently exciting infrasound recorded at far distances from the source. Such a result is in agreement with the significant seismic amplification within the Po plain alluvial sediments.


In the last decade, patterns have proved their effectiveness for the reuse of software development artifacts from early as well as late phases of the process. This paper proposes analysis patterns based on accurate and thorough observations of administrative processes such as organizing meetings, making group decisions, hiring of personnel, etc. The patterns proposed in this work are characterized by coming equipped with a basic workflow, captured in the form of an UML activity diagram, aside of providing an object structure modeled as UML static structure diagram. Besides serving as analysis models for subsequent software development, the primary intent behind administrative patterns is to visualize and to standardize frequently reoccurring processes and thus to support quality assurance and - control. Furthermore, administrative patterns lay the basis for various ways of evaluating the underlying processes in order to improve them.


The thesis firstly examines the extent to which different sources of governance activity have both changed the supply, processing and consumption of seafood in Britain and achieved its sustainability, food safety and quality over the period 1950 to 2013 and secondly reflects on the implications for agri-food and governance theories in which the UK seafood chain has not previously been considered. Using documentary sources, the compilation of a database of seafood companies and stakeholder interviews the research has reconstructed development and change over this period. In doing so it demonstrates a range of changes which can be related to different forms of governance: these include transformation of supply, diverse activities to raise sustainability, greatly improved quality and food hygiene systems and variations in consumer attitudes and practices. The thesis underlines the significance of public forms of regulation in changing the sources of supply as well as in the contested movement towards the more sustainable exploitation of fisheries, in raising food hygiene standards and in establishing the basis for nutritional advice to consumers with regard to seafood. Complementarily, the account also shows how private forms, particularly certification systems, have dominated governance of domestic aquaculture and of quality generally and how they have impacted on food safety. The thesis further examines how implementation of public governance is delegated and shared, including by analysis of various forms of mixed public and private governance, considers the various ways seafood consumption has been governed with attention both to both retailing and foodservice roles and assesses the contributions of civil society organisations. Based on these findings, the thesis argues that agri-food theories about internal supply chain functioning and the role of major retailers needs to be modified; it shows the limitations of explaining standards systems as the mode of control and the benefits of incorporating a power model of chain relationships. Further, in relation to external supply chain impacts the thesis demonstrates the need to emphasise the role of state regulation in the overall governance of food systems to a much greater extent than has usually been done hitherto. In relation to governance theory more broadly, the thesis examines the way changes in the operation of the British state have related to the seafood supply chain and the importance of examining the interests served in different types of governance with particular attention to the balance of public and private benefits resulting. The thesis thus analyses change in an important food source, illustrates how delegated state governance functions in a specific area and contributes to the theoretical basis for understanding food chains in general.


Decision making in the energy sector has to be based on accurate forecasts of the load demand. Short-term forecasting, which forms the focus of this paper, gives a day ahead hourly forecast of electric load. This forecast can help to make important decisions in the field of scheduling, contingency analysis, load flow analysis, preventing imbalance in the power generation and load demand, load switching strategies, thus leading to greater network reliability and power quality. A method called Artificial Neural Network is used to anticipate the future load of Kathmandu Valley of Nepal. The Neural Network is build, trained with historical data along with seven different input variables and used for prediction of day ahead 24 hours load. The output is validated with the real Load collected from NEA. In addition, forecasting is performed by some other time series methods as well, and whose output are compared with that of neural network. The range of Mean Absolute Deviation for four different time series models lied between 1.50-2.59. When the errors were calculated in terms of MSE and MAPE the range of these values were found to be in between 2.59-7.78, and 1.615.07 respectively. The Artificial Neural Network proved to be the more accurate forecast method when the results are compared in terms of error measurements with a MAD having 1.23, MSE having 1.79 and MAPE having 1.17. The Neural Network proved to be more accurate method comparatively with satisfactory minimum error.


Eco-fashion clothes offer considerable promise to reduce clothing waste associated with improving consumer profits and the health of the community. The aim of this paper is to explore the consumer purchase behaviour toward Eco-fashion clothes made of recycled materials. The clothing waste is increasing each year and there is a lack of landfill sites for disposing of them. This resulted in governments encourage industries markets to recycle more. However, it is necessary to support the clothing recycling technology program, and the achievement of those markets depends on consumer demand for these products. Hence, understanding consumer behaviour toward Eco-fashion clothes made of recycled materials can provide a basis to develop effective guidelines for disposal and purchase recycled clothes. This study applied the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) as the foundation of the consumer's behaviour. A two-stage mixed-method approach was explored. Statistical analysis was commenced through direct logistic regression. The model was tested via structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Overall, findings reveal that the most significant factor on purchase intention of Eco-fashion clothes is the positive attitude which was followed by the perceived behavioural control and then subjective norms on the construct intention. Furthermore, there is a strong connection to sustainable disposal clothing behaviour and purchase behaviour toward Eco-fashion clothes. Hence, strengthening people attitude in order to purchase Eco-fashion clothes made of recycled contents as a sustainable trend is applicable to help reduction of clothing waste. This happens when people's need is along with these clothes. The implications of this study can be examined from an educational and managerial perspective to form an effective strategy to encourage an increased rate in the disposal of clothing toward recycling and development policies to improve recycling technology programs. Therefore, it can lead to produce clothes made of recycled materials based on the consumer's needs and distribute them in the fashion market


The fluid–structure interaction of a pivoting rigid wing connected to a spring and subjected to freestream airflow in a wind tunnel is presented. Fluid–structure interactions can, on the one hand, lead to undesirable aerodynamic behaviour or, in extreme cases, to structural failure. On the other hand, improved aerodynamic performance can be achieved if a controlled application within certain limitations is provided. One application is the reduction of drag of road vehicles at higher speeds on a straight, while maintaining downforce at lower speeds during cornering. Conversely, another application concerns increased downforce at higher windspeeds, enhancing vehicle stability. In our wind tunnel experiments, the angle of incidence of the spring-mounted wing is either increased or decreased depending on the pivot point location and spring torque. Starting from a specified initial angle, the aerodynamic forces overcome a pre-set spring preload at incrementally increased freestream velocity. Reynolds numbers at a range of Re = 3 × 104 up to Re = 1.37 × 105 are considered. The application of a symmetrical NACA 0012 and a cambered NACA 6412 airfoil are tested in the wind tunnel and compared. For both airfoils mounted ahead of the aerodynamic centre, stable results were achieved for angles above 15 and below 12 degrees for the symmetrical airfoil, and above 25 and between 10 and −2 degrees for the cambered airfoil. Unsteady motions were observed around the stall region for both airfoils with all spring torque settings and also below −2 degrees for the cambered airfoil. Stable results were also found outside of the stall region when both airfoils were mounted behind the aerodynamic centre, although the velocity ranges were much smaller and highly dependent on the pivot point location. An analysis is reported concerning how changing the spring torque settings at each pivot point location effects performance. The differences in performance between the symmetrical and cambered profiles are then presented. Finally, an evaluation of the systems' effects was conducted with conclusions, future improvements, and potential applications.


According to western observers, slavery was almost universal in Africa by the end of the slave trade era. I investigate the extent to which the international slave trades transformed the institutions of slavery in Africa. I use newly-developed data on travel time to estimate the inland reach of international slave demand. I find that societies in decentralized catchment zones adopted slavery to defend against further enslavement. More generally, I find that the international slave trades incentivized the evolution of aristocratic slave regimes characterized by slavery as a property system, polygyny as a family organization, inheritance of property within the nuclear family and hereditary succession in local politics. I discuss the implications for literatures on long-term legacies in African development.


Since 1993, the rural water sector of Ghana has implemented a policy of increased private sector partnerships within the sector. The policy has resulted in private sector driven supply chains in rural water supply. This paper takes a look at these private sector driven supply chains and at the perceptions of various stakeholders regarding their outputs. These perceptions were gathered through a survey carried out in two communities in Ghana. The paper concludes that though supply chains in the two communities are significantly private sector driven, demand for installation services are directly linked to the activities of implementing agencies (government, NGOs, international donor agencies) while that of repair services, maintenance and spare parts are directly linked to the installed equipment. Policy makers must therefore look more closely at the role of agencies responsible for the implementation of their policies to ensure that maximum benefits are derived from increased private sector partnership.


It is a widely known fact that gifted students have different skills compared to their peers. However, to what extent gifted students use mathematical thinking skills during probability problem solving process emerges as a significant question. Thence, the main aim of the present study is to examine 8th grade gifted students' probability problem-solving process related to daily life in terms of mathematical thinking skills. In this regard, a case study was used in the study. The participants of the study were six students at 8th grade (four girls and two boys) from the Science and Art Center. One of the purposeful sampling methods, maximum variation sampling was used for selecting the participants. Clinical interview and problems were used as a data collection tool. As a results of the study, it was determined that gifted students use reasoning and strategies skill, which is one of the mathematical thinking skills, mostly on the process of probability problem solving, and communication skills at least.


In this paper, is proposed the use of multi-view three-dimensional (3D) imaging techniques, such as synthetic aperture integral imaging (SAII) for underwater applications. We analyze SAII systems for reconstructing 3D objects submerged in water. The effects of beam propagation in shallow water on the traditional SAII system are studied and computational reconstructions of 3D scenes are presented. We present experiments with SAII to reconstruct underwater 3D objects placed behind heavy occlusion. These systems could benefit deployments in unmanned underwater vehicles. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on underwater multi-view 3D imaging.


The synthesis of those new derivatives of 3-allyl-4-(R-phenyl)-N-(R1-phenyl)-thiazole-2-imine was conducted which consist substituted aromatic radicals. Structure of the compounds synthesized has proved by means of a comprehensive use of modern physical and chemical methods of analysis. In silico research has been conducted of the potential molecular mechanisms of cardioprotective action of the obtained substances with the method of a soft molecular docking, and recommendations to the rational design of the ligands have been made.


In The Yearning for Relief Klaas van Walraven traces the history of the Sawaba movement in Niger and its rebellion against the French-protected regime during the 1960s. The book analyses its guerrilla campaign and failure, followed by the movement's destruction.


This paper examines the limitations of the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) as a regional financial safety net in East Asia, and proposes a new regional financial arrangement. To overcome the drawbacks of the CMIM, which has never been activated so far, a new regional financial arrangement suggests that ASEAN 3 members establish a regional reserve system based on a supranational regional reserve asset. The new regional financial arrangement, so-called "Reserve Liquidity Line" (RLL), guarantees a degree of automaticity in liquidity facility, based on upfront funding instead of pledge funding. As a backdrop of the regional reserve system, some market movements have been manifested to reduce excessive U.S. dollar dependency in East Asia and to enhance the use of local currencies. Establishing the RLL mechanism could find a way of making up for the weak points of the CMIM and responding to the regional needs for effective regional financial arrangements. The proposed operational mechanism of RLL comprises (i) institution building of ASEAN 3 Reserves System (ARS) to manage the Regional Reserves Asset (RRA), (ii) an Operations Account and a Substitution Account, and (iii) a sort of basket exchange rate for RRA valuation.


Strict analytic formulas are the tools usually derived for determining the formal relationships between a sample of independent variables and a variable which they affect. If we cannot formalize the function tying the independent and dependent variables then we will utilize some control actions. Apart from crisp versions of control we often adopt their fuzzy variants developed by Mamdani and Assilian or Sugeno. Fuzzy control algorithms are furnished with softer mechanisms, when comparing them to classical control. The algorithms are particularly adaptable to support medical systems, often handling uncertain premises and conclusions. From the medical point of view it would be desirable to prognosticate the survival length for patients suffering from gastric cancer. We thus formulate the objective of the current paper as the utilization of fuzzy control actions for the purpose of making the survival prognoses.


The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) is the central scientific network within the massive set of bureaucracies that is responsible for Europe's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). While spending the past 25 years failing to sustain Europe's fish stocks, this management system also became adept at making the lives of its scientists miserable. Now it is being confronted by the complex challenge of an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management. If this combination of a multi-national bureaucracy, hard politics, and scientific uncertainty has made it impossible to maintain many individual fish stocks, how are decisions going to be made that consider everything from sea birds to climate change? The old political saw that "if you can't solve a problem, make it bigger" has never been put to a test like this! Yet ICES has begun to rise in an impressive way to the scientific challenge of providing advice for an ecosystem approach within the world's most cumbersome fisheries management system. This book lays out the results of extensive sociological research on ICES and the decision making systems into which it feeds. ICES is finding ways to provide effective advice in the many situations where scientific advice is needed but a clear, simple answer is out of reach. In spite of the difficulties, scientists are beginning to help the various parties concerned with management to deal with facts about nature in ways that are more useful and transparent.


BACKGROUND
Peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) for metastatic or inoperable neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) is a systemic therapy which targets somatostatin receptors overexpressed by differentiated NETs for endoradiotherapy. This guideline has been compiled by the College of Nuclear Physicians of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa, with endorsement by the South African Society of Nuclear Medicine and the Association of Nuclear Physicians to guide Nuclear Medicine Physicians in its application during the management of these patients.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Patients with well- to moderately-differentiated NETs should be comprehensively worked-up to determine their suitability for PRRT. Treatment should be administered by a Nuclear Medicine Physician in a licensed, appropriately equipped and fully staffed facility. Patient monitoring is mandatory during and after each therapy cycle to identify and treat therapy-related adverse events. Patients should also be followed-up after completion of therapy cycles for monitoring of long-term toxicities and response assessment.

CONCLUSION
PRRT is a safe and effective therapy option in patients with differentiated NETs. Its use in appropriate patients is associated with a survival benefit.


Abstract This Special Publication provides a snapshot of our understanding of volcanic processes through the use of palaeomagnetic and rock magnetic techniques. Here, we provide a context for the book, placing individual chapters within the milieu of previous work, including some magnetic techniques that were not used in the particular studies described herein. Thermoremanent magnetization is a powerful tool to understand processes related to heating and cooling of rocks, including estimating the temperature of emplacement of pyroclastic deposits, which may allow us to better understand the rates of cooling during eruption and transport. Anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility and anisotropy of remanence are used primarily to investigate rock fabrics, and allow the interpretation of flow dynamics in dykes, lava flows and pyroclastic deposits, as well as the location of the eruptive vents. Rock magnetic characteristics can help in the correlation of volcanic deposits but also provide means to date volcanic deposits and to better understand the processes of cooling of the deposits, as the magnetic minerals can change with temperature. In addition, volcanic rocks may be key recorders of past magnetic fields, allowing a better understanding of changes in field intensity and, perhaps, providing clues of how the magnetic field is formed.


Post-mortem measures of Abeta amyloid deposition correlate only weakly with cognitive dysfunction antemortem. We tested the hypothesis that functional reorganization forms a critical intermediary step between Abeta amyloid-associated brain injury and clinical disease expression. Fifteen patients with early-stage probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 16 cognitively intact controls participated in this combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) study. The fMRI design had two factors: task (associative-semantic versus visuoperceptual judgement) and input-modality (written words versus pictures). We measured Abeta amyloid by means of Pittsburgh Compound B (11C-PIB). In the posterior third of the left superior temporal sulcus (STS), the fMRI response during the associative-semantic compared with the visuoperceptual task was lower in AD than in controls, in particular for words. Response amplitude correlated inversely with PIB uptake in this region. Contralaterally, the functional pattern differed substantially: the fMRI response in the right posterior STS during the associative-semantic versus the visuoperceptual task was higher in AD than in controls. Accuracy on the Boston Naming test correlated positively with the degree to which AD patients were able to recruit the right STS (r = 0.84, P(corrected) = 0.014). PIB uptake did not correlate with naming accuracy. Functional reorganization of the language system in response to Abeta amyloid-related brain injury exists in early-stage AD and determines the degree of anomia more than Abeta amyloid load per se does.


This volume discusses topics from classical large scale models to quantum gravity effects in the mathematical formulation of physically motivated cosmological theories. There are contributions dealing with topics such as the singularity theorem, the cosmic no-hair theorem and other results realted to the big bang and the inflationary cosmological models. Also discussed are non-standard themes such as field equations of order higher than 2, and space-times of dimension different from 4 are addressed.


Kevin Hillstrom, through his MineThatData blog, made available a dataset describing two email campaigns and a control group and issued a challenge to analyse that dataset and answer various questions. This paper uses Uplift Modelling to take up (and, in fact, win) Hillstrom's challenge. In the paper, we look at three different formulations of the problem and use Uplift Models to analyse each of the campaigns using those formulations. Broadly, our conclusions are that both campaigns had a positive impact overall and that both can be modelled successfully, allowing us to identify subpopulations particularly suitable and unsuitable for these campaigns. We also identified some segments for which the Women's mailing, in particular, appeared to reduce rather than increase spending; such effects were less prominent with the Men's campaign. We also observed that while average spend among purchasers increased significantly with the Women's campaign, it declined slightly for recipients of the Men's campaign. Furthermore, an extremely small number of people (of the order of 50) were responsible for over half of the incremental spend, making modelling challenging. Indeed, the problem in tackling this entire analysis was the difficulty of estimating most statistics reliably given the relatively small samples available and the low purchase rate. Despite these obstacles, by using fairly simple models and a variety of methods for controlling noise, we believe that the insights we present are fairly robust. Stochastic Solutions Limited Hillstrom's MineThatData Email Analytics Challenge: An Approach Using Uplift Modelling. Copyright © Stochastic Solutions Limited 2008. 1


A variety of pluripotency reprogramming frequencies from different somatic cells has been observed, indicating cell origin is a critical contributor for efficiency of pluripotency reprogramming. Identifying the cell sources for efficient induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) generation, and defining its advantages or disadvantages on reprogramming, is therefore important. Human ocular tissue-derived conjunctival epithelial cells (OECs) exhibited endogenous expression of reprogramming factors OCT4A (the specific OCT 4 isoform on pluripotency reprogramming) and SOX2. We therefore determined whether OECs could be used for high efficiency of iPSCs generation. We compared the endogenous expression levels of four pluripotency factors and the pluripotency reprograming efficiency of human OECs with that of ocular stromal cells (OSCs). Real-time PCR, microarray analysis, Western blotting and immunostaining assays were employed to compare OECiPSCs with OSCiPSCs on molecular bases of reprogramming efficiency and preferred lineage-differentiation potential. Using the traditional KMOS (KLF4, C-MYC, OCT4 and SOX2) reprogramming protocol, we confirmed that OECs, endogenously expressing reprogramming factors OCT4A and SOX2, yield very high efficiency of iPSCs generation (~1.5%). Furthermore, higher efficiency of retinal pigmented epithelial differentiation (RPE cells) was observed in OECiPSCs compared to OSCiPSCs or skin fibroblast iMR90iPSCs. The findings in this study suggest that conjunctival-derived epithelial (OECs) cells can be easier converted to iPSCs than conjunctival-derived stromal cells (OSCs). This cell type may also have advantages in retinal pigmented epithelial differentiation.


Nephron‐sparing surgery has been proven to positively impact the postoperative quality of life for the treatment of small renal tumors, possibly leading to functional improvements. Laparoscopic partial nephrectomy is still one of the most demanding procedures in urological surgery. Laparoscopic partial nephrectomy sometimes results in extended warm ischemic time and severe complications, such as open conversion, postoperative hemorrhage and urine leakage. Robot‐assisted partial nephrectomy exploits the advantages offered by the da Vinci Surgical System to laparoscopic partial nephrectomy, equipped with 3‐D vision and a better degree in the freedom of surgical instruments. The introduction of the da Vinci Surgical System made nephron‐sparing surgery, specifically robot‐assisted partial nephrectomy, safe with promising results, leading to the shortening of warm ischemic time and a reduction in perioperative complications. Even for complex and challenging tumors, robotic assistance is expected to provide the benefit of minimally‐invasive surgery with safe and satisfactory renal function. Warm ischemic time is the modifiable factor during robot‐assisted partial nephrectomy to affect postoperative kidney function. We analyzed the predictive factors for extended warm ischemic time from our robot‐assisted partial nephrectomy series. The surface area of the tumor attached to the kidney parenchyma was shown to significantly affect the extended warm ischemic time during robot‐assisted partial nephrectomy. In cases with tumor‐attached surface area more than 15 cm2, we should consider switching robot‐assisted partial nephrectomy to open partial nephrectomy under cold ischemia if it is imperative. In Japan, a nationwide prospective study has been carried out to show the superiority of robot‐assisted partial nephrectomy to laparoscopic partial nephrectomy in improving warm ischemic time and complications. By facilitating robotic technology, robot‐assisted partial nephrectomy will be more frequently carried out as a safe, effective and minimally‐invasive nephron‐sparing surgery procedure.


In recent years the number of cores in computers has increased considerably, opening new lines of research to adapt classical techniques of machine learning to a parallel scenario. In this paper, we have developed and implemented with the multi-platform application programming interface OpenMP a method to train Semiparametric Support Vector Machines relying on Sparse Greedy Matrix Approximation (SGMA) and Iterated Re-Weighted Least Squares algorithm (IRWLS). We take advantage of the matrix formulation of SGMA and IRWLS. We recursively apply the partitioned matrix inversion lemma and other matrix decompositions to obtain a simple procedure to parallelize SVMS with good performance and computational efficiency.


This study gives the report of an epidemiological investigation of seven death cases in a police force headquarters by pesticide poisoning diagnosed by the decrease of the enzyme choline esterase activity. A case control study with an environmental description has been realized, permitting the establishment of temporarily dynamic relationships among the death cases. In Africa, there are many incidents of domestic or professional poisoning with a fatal ending for which, few data are available. The aetiological orientations are discussed in the African context and the difficulties to reach the analysis of toxicology in sub-Saharan Africa are underlined. Key words:


Both oxidative stress and increased nitric oxide (NO) production have been linked to the progression of various neurological disorders. However, the specific pathogenesis of these disorders is unknown. To investigate the role of nitric oxide in cell death, we researched the effect of selective and non-selective nitric oxide synthase (NOS) inhibitors on synaptic transmission in crayfish during exposure to the oxygen derivative H2O2, which mimics oxidative stress. We hypothesized that n-Nitroarginine methyl ester (L-NAME), a nonselective NOS inhibitor, will be more effective than 7Nitroindazole (7-NI), a selective nNOS inhibitor, at preventing the negative effects of H2O2 on the excitatory junction potential (EJP) in crayfish. We performed intracellular recording to measure the change in synaptic transmission before and after the addition of H2O2. Our results did not support our hypothesis, as 7-NI more effectively mitigated the inhibitory effects of H2O2 on synaptic transmission than L-NAME. We conclude that the ineffectiveness of L-NAME may be a result of the drug targeting NOS isoforms necessary for synaptic transmission.


Aims In symptomatic patients with suspected coronary artery disease (CAD), computed tomographic angiography (CTA) improves patient selection for invasive coronary angiography (ICA) compared with functional testing. The impact of measuring fractional flow reserve by CTA (FFRCT) is unknown. Methods and results At 11 sites, 584 patients with new onset chest pain were prospectively assigned to receive either usual testing (n = 287) or CTA/FFRCT (n = 297). Test interpretation and care decisions were made by the clinical care team. The primary endpoint was the percentage of those with planned ICA in whom no significant obstructive CAD (no stenosis ≥50% by core laboratory quantitative analysis or invasive FFR < 0.80) was found at ICA within 90 days. Secondary endpoints including death, myocardial infarction, and unplanned revascularization were independently and blindly adjudicated. Subjects averaged 61 ± 11 years of age, 40% were female, and the mean pre-test probability of obstructive CAD was 49 ± 17%. Among those with intended ICA (FFRCT-guided = 193; usual care = 187), no obstructive CAD was found at ICA in 24 (12%) in the CTA/FFRCT arm and 137 (73%) in the usual care arm (risk difference 61%, 95% confidence interval 53–69, P< 0.0001), with similar mean cumulative radiation exposure (9.9 vs. 9.4 mSv, P = 0.20). Invasive coronary angiography was cancelled in 61% after receiving CTA/FFRCT results. Among those with intended non-invasive testing, the rates of finding no obstructive CAD at ICA were 13% (CTA/FFRCT) and 6% (usual care; P = 0.95). Clinical event rates within 90 days were low in usual care and CTA/FFRCT arms. Conclusions Computed tomographic angiography/fractional flow reserve by CTA was a feasible and safe alternative to ICA and was associated with a significantly lower rate of invasive angiography showing no obstructive CAD.


The article presents a pilot study based on video-recordings of four experiments taking the form of encounters, each involving a Norwegian-speaking child, a woman speaking only in English and an interpreter. Taking the interpretermediated encounter as the basic research element, and applying an interactionist theoretical perspective, small children's participation in these encounters is explored. The aim of the pilot study is to use the explorations of a few children's interactions with one particular interpreter to generate hypotheses and identify new research areas that may be further investigated through a larger collection of data. Preliminary results indicate that a child as young as three has sufficient communicative competence to participate successfully in an interpreter-mediated encounter. In addition, the interpreter's simultaneous speech in the other language did not seem to disrupt a child's narrative. These findings need to be further explored through more extensive and naturally occurring data. An identified topic that needs further exploration is young children's understanding of the nature of an interpreter's specific mandate and responsibility during such interaction.


The design of a photosensitizer characteristic of both excellent absorption of infrared solar photons and high external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) should be a momentous stride towards the further performance improvement of dye-sensitized solar cells. In this paper, by using a binary twisting electron-donor triphenylamine-phenanthrocarbazole (TPA-PC) we first demonstrate that the transformation of the electron-acceptor from twisting 4-(benzo[c][1,2,5]thiadiazol-4-yl)benzoic acid (BTBA) to planar 4-((7-ethynylbenzo[c][1,2,5]thiadiazol-4-yl)ethynyl)benzoic acid (EBTEBA) can significantly stabilize the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy level of an organic dye but does not lower EQEs. Also we show that the application of the electron-donor 11-(2-hexyldecyl)-8-(4-((2-hexyldecyl)oxy)phenyl)-6,6-bis(4-hexylphenyl)-6,11-dihydrothieno[3′,2′:8,9]chryseno[10,11,12,1-bcdefg]carbazole (P-TCC) with a planar electronic skeleton, featuring a comparable electron-releasing strength to the twisting counterpart TPA-PC, can enhance the absorption of infrared solar photons, without reducing the energy gap between the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and LUMO. Dye C288 with P-TCC as the electron-donor and EBTEBA as the electron-acceptor retains an almost planar electronic skeleton and a high power conversion efficiency of 12%. Stationary and femtosecond dynamic photoluminescence (PL) measurements have suggested cascade excited state relaxations and multiple-state electron injections at the titania/dye interface, in collaboration with theoretical calculations on the excited state conformations.


Abstract The search for evidence of past or present life on Mars will require the detection of markers that indicate the presence of life. Because deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is found in all known living organisms, it is considered to be a 'biosignature' of life. The main function of DNA is the long-term storage of genetic information, which is passed on from generation to generation as hereditary material. The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is a revolutionary technique which allows a single fragment or a small number of fragments of a DNA molecule to be amplified millions of times, making it possible to detect minimal traces of DNA. The compactness of the contemporary PCR instruments makes routine sample analysis possible with a minimum amount of laboratory space. Furthermore the technique is effective, robust and straightforward. Our goal was to establish a routine for the detection of DNA from micro-organisms using the PCR technique during the EuroGeoMars simulation campaign. This took place at the Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Utah in February 2009 (organized with the support of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG), NASA Ames and the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC)). During the MDRS simulation, we showed that it is possible to establish a minimal molecular biology lab in the habitat for the immediate on-site analysis of samples by PCR after sample collection. Soil and water samples were taken at different locations and soil depths. The sample analysis was started immediately after the crew returned to the habitat laboratory. DNA was isolated from micro-organisms and used as a template for PCR analysis of the highly conserved ribosomal DNA to identify representatives of the different groups of micro-organisms (bacteria, archaea and eukarya). The PCR products were visualized by agarose gel electrophoresis and documented by transillumination and digital imaging. The microbial diversity in the collected samples was analysed with respect to sampling depth and the presence or absence of vegetation. For the first time, we have demonstrated that it is possible to perform direct on-site DNA analysis by PCR at MDRS, a simulated planetary habitat in an extreme environment that serves as a model for preparation and optimization of techniques to be used for future Mars exploration.


We studied the involvement of different types of Ca2+ channels, cyclic nucleotides and different kinases in the regulation of human umbilical artery (HUA) contractility. The elucidation of the precise mechanisms regulating the contractility of this artery could be very important to reveal potential therapeutic targets to treat HUA disorders such as preeclampsia. The relevancy of different types of Ca2+ channels on the regulation of HUA tonus was analyzed. Among the different Ca2+ channel inhibitors used, only the L-type calcium channels (LTCC) inhibition induced relaxation of HUA in Ca2+ containing medium. The inhibition of T-type calcium channels (TTCC) or TRP channels did not significantly affect HUA contractility. In presence of Ca2+, the intracellular increase of a cyclic nucleotide (cAMP or cGMP) induces relaxation of HUA, which was almost complete in histamine-con- tracted HUA, and lower effect was observed in arteries contracted by KCl and serotonin (5-HT). Inhibition of PKA and PKG weakly reduced the relaxations induced by the increase of cAMP and cGMP respectively, suggesting that the relaxation induced by these nucleotides is not totally mediated by the activation of their respective kinases and that other mechanisms are involved. In calcium containing solution, PP2A inhibition produces relaxation of contracted HUA. In KCl contracted arteries, the OA and nifedipine relaxant effects are similar and not additive, suggesting that PP2A could activate LTCC. Besides, the increase of cyclic nucleotides significantly increased the OA effect, suggesting that the effect of PP2A inhibition is independent of the cyclic nucleotide pathways. The contractions induced by KCl, histamine and 5-HT in presence of Ca2+ were not significantly affected by ROCK, ERK1/2 or p38MAPK inhibitors. In absence of extracellular Ca2+, histamine and 5-HT elicited contractions of HUA characterized by two components, a rapid phasic contractile component followed by a decrease of the contraction until a tonic component. However, KCl elicited sustained contractions of HUA in absence of extracellular Ca2+. As in presence of calcium, the ERK1/2 and p38MAPK inhibitors did not influence the contractions induced by KCl, histamine or 5-HT in absence of extracellular Ca2+. However, in these conditions, ROCK inhibition significantly relaxed the contractions induced by KCl and reduced the phasic and tonic components of the contraction elicited either by histamine or 5-HT. Our results show that calcium-dependent contractions of HUA depend on Ca2+ entry by LTCC, and these chan- nels seems to be positive regulated by PP2A. Cyclic nucleotides mediate HUA vasodilatation but their dependent kinases are not the unique responsible of this effect. HUA is able to contract independently of Ca2+ influx by activating the ROCK pathway and/or due to intracellular Ca2+ release.


Rip Van Winkle arose this spring from a slumber of two decades. He gazed in amazement at a world transformed. The Soviet empire, so menacing when he fell asleep in 1977, was now on the ash heap of history. Rising protectionism had given way to exploding commerce and tumbling trade barriers. Nixon-Carter stagflation had been replaced by Reagan-Gingrich prosperity. Business and profits were no longer dirty words. Now everyone wanted to be an entrepreneur. Prices for gasoline, airfare, and long-distance phone service had plummeted thanks to competition and deregulation. California had passed an initiative abolishing racial preferences. Federal farm and welfare programs dating to the New Deal had been abolished. Welfare caseloads in Wisconsin had fallen in half. A new emphasis on local accountability, truth-in-sentencing, and community policing was reducing crime in New York and other major cities. Congress was debating fundamental Medicare reform that would lower costs and give the elderly more choices. Leading liberals were pushing for legislation criminalizing late-term abor- tions. Congressional Black Caucus leaders were breaking with the teachers unions and the NAACP by endorsing school vouchers. Conservative Republicans now controlled both houses of Congress and a robust majority of governorships. Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep listening to a harangue by Ralph Nader. He awakened to the music of Rush Limbaugh. But one thing hadn't changed since Rip closed his eyes. Conservatives were still depressed. They were still complaining about their leaders. And they were still failing to build institutions as powerful as their ideas. The American conservative is seemingly dedicated to three principles: life, liberty, and the pursuit of unhappiness. Something there is about the con- servative temperament that loves despair. Conservatives have been singing the blues for most of the 20 years this magazine has been published. This is not simply nostalgic yearning for a leader like Ronald Reagan. Conservatives were unhappy during most of his administration, too. In October 1983, Policy Review interviewed 12 conservative leaders to ask them what they thought of Ronald Reagan. Nine gave him low ratings. "If Reagan represents no more than a right-of-center vision of the welfare state, he doesn't represent change; he simply represents cheap government. Republicans cannot win in that framework," said a GOP backbencher now in the congressional leadership. "The radical surgery that was required in Washington was not performed. Ronald Reagan made a pledge not to touch entitlement programs, and that's one of the few pledges he has kept absolutely," said a top conservative activist. "This has been essentially another Ford administration. It has been business as usual, not much different from any other Republican administration in our lifetime," said a leading conservative intellectual and journalist. These quotations, from brilliant people I admire, betray an impatience, a set of unrealistic expectations that lead to dejection when they aren't satisfied, and a failure to create a culture of celebration for conservative achievement. In retrospect, we know that 1983 was a glorious year for conservatism. It was the first year of the Reagan boom. During 1983, as Grover Norquist wrote in these pages in the spring of 1984, "America in the throes of a supply-side recovery created more jobs in 1983 than Canada has created since 1965 . . . and as many jobs as Japan created in the entire decade of the 1970s." That year was also the turning point in the great titanic struggle against communism. As Elizabeth Spalding and Andrew Busch wrote in Policy Review in the fall of 1993, "a series of events in 1983 would come together to stop the seemingly inexorable advance of Soviet totalitarianism and to lay the ground- work for the eventual triumph of the West. …


This study developed methodology for statistically assessing groundwater contamination mechanisms. It focused on microbial water pollution in low-income regions. Risk factors for faecal contamination of groundwater-fed drinking-water sources were evaluated in a case study in Juba, South Sudan. The study was based on counts of thermotolerant coliforms in water samples from 129 sources, collected by the humanitarian aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières in 2010. The factors included hydrogeological settings, land use and socio-economic characteristics. The results showed that the residuals of a conventional probit regression model had a significant positive spatial autocorrelation (Moran's I = 3.05, I-stat = 9.28); therefore, a spatial model was developed that had better goodness-of-fit to the observations. The most significant factor in this model (p-value 0.005) was the distance from a water source to the nearest Tukul area, an area with informal settlements that lack sanitation services. It is thus recommended that future remediation and monitoring efforts in the city be concentrated in such low-income regions. The spatial model differed from the conventional approach: in contrast with the latter case, lowland topography was not significant at the 5% level, as the p-value was 0.074 in the spatial model and 0.040 in the traditional model. This study showed that statistical risk-factor assessments of groundwater contamination need to consider spatial interactions when the water sources are located close to each other. Future studies might further investigate the cut-off distance that reflects spatial autocorrelation. Particularly, these results advise research on urban groundwater quality.


Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a fatal genetic disease caused by mutations in the gene encoding the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR), a protein kinase A (PKA)-activated epithelial anion channel involved in salt and fluid transport in multiple organs, including the lung. Most CF mutations either reduce the number of CFTR channels at the cell surface (e.g., synthesis or processing mutations) or impair channel function (e.g., gating or conductance mutations) or both. There are currently no approved therapies that target CFTR. Here we describe the in vitro pharmacology of VX-770, an orally bioavailable CFTR potentiator in clinical development for the treatment of CF. In recombinant cells VX-770 increased CFTR channel open probability (Po) in both the F508del processing mutation and the G551D gating mutation. VX-770 also increased Cl− secretion in cultured human CF bronchial epithelia (HBE) carrying the G551D gating mutation on one allele and the F508del processing mutation on the other allele by ≈10-fold, to ≈50% of that observed in HBE isolated from individuals without CF. Furthermore, VX-770 reduced excessive Na+ and fluid absorption to prevent dehydration of the apical surface and increased cilia beating in these epithelial cultures. These results support the hypothesis that pharmacological agents that restore or increase CFTR function can rescue epithelial cell function in human CF airway.


Legal deposit and its sustainability is a major problem that cannot be ignored in South Africa. The value of preserving and making accessible information is of primary importance for legal deposit collections. The concept of legal deposit is evolving from decade to decade as many factors continue to influence it. Among the challenges facing legal deposit libraries is the problem of publishers failing to comply with legal deposit requirements. This study investigated the problems and constraints experienced by publishers in KwaZuluNatal concerning legal deposit. Thirty five publishers were surveyed by means of a selfadministered questionnaire which utilized both open and closed questions. The results of the study reveal that while the vast majority of publishers in KwaZulu-Natal are compliant with legal deposit requirements, they do experience a number of problems while doing so. These problems include financial costs and time constraints while a lack of knowledge about certain aspects of legal deposit on the part of the publishers was evident. Recommendations, which would require participation from all the stakeholders, to address the problems identified were made. The study concluded with suggestions for further research.


Ethylene glycol (EG) has been widely utilized to fabricate silver nanoparticles with uniform size and morphology. However, the majority of the work reported to date using EG routinely require not only heating, but also a surfactant. In the present paper, we report a surfactant-free and facile method for the synthesis of fairly monodisperse smaller silver nanoparticles (~6 nm) through the reaction of silver ions with EG by using tungstates (such as potassium tungstate, sodium tungstate) as catalysts at room temperature. Particularly, in this method, tungstates as catalysts can dramatically speed up the reduction of silver ions, and EG acts as both a solvent and a reducing agent to reduce silver ions to Ag metal. Meantime, we have carried out a series of experiments to investigate the performance of the as-prepared silver nanoparticles. It was found that the silver nanoparticles show excellent catalytic activity for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol in the presence of NaBH4.


In recent years, a growing need has arisen in different fields for the development of computational systems for automated analysis of large amounts of data (high-throughput). Dealing with nonstandard noise structure and outliers, that could have been detected and corrected in manual analysis, must now be built into the system with the aid of robust methods. We discuss such problems and present insights and solutions in the context of behavior genetics, where data consists of a time series of locations of a mouse in a circular arena. In order to estimate the location, velocity and acceleration of the mouse, and identify stops, we use a nonstandard mix of robust and resistant methods: LOWESS and repeated running median. In addition, we argue that protection against small deviations from experimental protocols can be handled automatically using statistical methods. In our case, it is of biological interest to measure a rodent's distance from the arena's wall, but this measure is corrupted if the arena is not a perfect circle, as required in the protocol. The problem is addressed by estimating robustly the actual boundary of the arena and its center using a nonparametric regression quantile of the behavioral data, with the aid of a fast algorithm developed for that purpose.


Abstract. The southeast Atlantic (SEA) region is host to a climatologically significant
biomass burning aerosol layer overlying marine stratocumulus. We present the
first results of the directly measured above-cloud aerosol optical depth (ACAOD)
from the recent ObseRvations of Aerosols above CLouds and their intEractionS
(ORACLES) airborne field campaign during August and September 2016. In our
analysis, we use data from the Spectrometers for Sky-Scanning Sun-Tracking
Atmospheric Research (4STAR) instrument and found an average ACAOD of 0.32
at 501 nm (range of 0.02 to 1.04), with an average Angstrom exponent
(AE) above clouds of 1.71. The AE is much lower at 1.25 for the full column
(including below-cloud-level aerosol, with an average of 0.36 at 501 nm and
a range of 0.02 to 0.74), indicating the presence of large aerosol
particles, likely marine aerosol, in the lower atmospheric column. The ACAOD is
observed from 4STAR to be highest near the coast at about 12 ∘  S,
whereas its variability is largest at the southern edge of the average
aerosol plume, as indicated by 12 years of MODIS observations. In comparison
to MODIS-derived ACAOD and long-term fine-mode plume-average AOD along a
diagonal routine track extending out from the coast of Namibia, the
directly measured ACAOD from 4STAR is slightly lower than the ACAOD product
from MODIS. The peak ACAOD expected from MODIS AOD retrievals averaged over
a long term along the routine diagonal flight track (peak of 0.5) was
measured to be closer to coast in 2016 at about 1.5–4 ∘  E, with 4STAR ACAOD averages showing a peak of 0.42. When
considering the full observation set over the SEA, by spatially binning each
sampled AOD, we obtain a geographically representative mean ACAOD of 0.37.
Vertical profiles of AOD showcase the variability in the altitude of the
aerosol plume and its separation from the cloud top. We measured larger AOD at a
high altitude near the coast than farther from the coast, while generally
observing a larger vertical gap farther from the coast. Changes in AOD with
altitude are correlated with carbon monoxide, a gas tracer of the biomass
burning aerosol plume. Vertical extent of gaps between aerosol and cloud
show a wide distribution, with a near-zero gap being most frequent. The gap
distribution with longitude is observed to be largest at about 7 ∘  E, farther from coast than expected from previous studies.


Given the resilience of the opposition to the liberty of contract jurisprudence, a doctrine that is epitomized by Lochner, and given the insistent dedication of scholars and jurists to a largely mistaken understanding of economic substantive due process argumentation, it is an appropriate time to review David Mayer's contribution to the literature surrounding Lochner. In his new book, "Liberty Of Contract: Rediscovering A Lost Constitutional Right", Mayer rightly contends that the Court, during the Lochner era, was protecting liberty of contract as a fundamental right rather than enacting laissez-faire constitutionalism as Justice Holmes and his intellectual heirs supposed. Building upon Professor Sawyer's exposition of Hammer and its origins in the mind of one of America's most influential legal theorists, Philander Knox, I offer a contrasting conception of the Lochner Court. This conception implies that the Supreme Court's decision making during the Lochner era corresponds with the Court and the nation's capitulation to progressive values. Given Sawyer's analysis, I argue that Mayer's bracing defense of liberty of contract jurisprudence is diminished by analytical gaps that fail to satisfactorily account for the history and potency of the social, cultural and quasi-scientific currents permeating the nation before, during and after the onset of the Lochner era. This Article shows, notwithstanding the elegance of liberty of contract jurisprudence, that the emergence of today's welfare state resembling a dystopian reality that richly manifests itself in legions of "one percenters," who insist on occupying America's capital city, was an unfortunate, but predictable, outcome. Finally, I contend that until citizens, politicians and judges display modesty about the nation's capacity to solve the human problem and immodesty about an individual's right and responsibility to solve her own difficulties in voluntary communion with others, it remains doubtful that the rediscovery of liberty of contract as a lost constitutional right can become anything but an attractive anachronism.


Publisher: FedOA - Federico II University Press.
Series: Pharmakon.
Pages: 767.
Language: Italian.
NBN: http://nbn.depositolegale.it/urn:nbn:it:unina-22027
Abstract: For thousands of years, pharmacological knowledge coming from natural remedies, has been handed down from generation to generation, without any awareness of the ways in which preparations are made to face diseases. The advent of pharmaceutical chemistry and of the modern drug industry turned that lack of awareness into a scientific knowledge that changed the destiny of the human race. The twenty-eight chapters of this book, are taken from the lectures held by Professor Ettore Novellino every year in his course "Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Toxicology 2". The first chapters address the basic notions of drugs, homeostasis, pharmacopoeia, and receptor; then, the different pharmaceutical classes are introduced by analyzing their pharmacological and chemical aspects. In particular, the structural study of the interaction between drugs and receptors or biological enzymes gives the fundamentals to connect the chemical and stereochemical properties of a compound family, with the biological activity, a correlation better known as Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR). Several examples of the synthesis of some of the most historically renown drugs, provided at the end of each chapter, integrate the book.


Federated learning (FL) is an emerging technique for training machine learning models using geographically dispersed data collected by local entities. It includes local computation and synchronization steps. To reduce the communication overhead and improve the overall efficiency of FL, gradient sparsification (GS) can be applied, where instead of the full gradient, only a small subset of important elements of the gradient is communicated. Existing work on GS uses a fixed degree of gradient sparsity for i.i.d.-distributed data within a datacenter. In this paper, we consider adaptive degree of sparsity and non-i.i.d. local datasets. We first present a fairness-aware GS method which ensures that different clients provide a similar amount of updates. Then, with the goal of minimizing the overall training time, we propose a novel online learning formulation and algorithm for automatically determining the near-optimal communication and computation trade-off that is controlled by the degree of gradient sparsity. The online learning algorithm uses an estimated sign of the derivative of the objective function, which gives a regret bound that is asymptotically equal to the case where exact derivative is available. Experiments with real datasets confirm the benefits of our proposed approaches, showing up to 40% improvement in model accuracy for a finite training time.


This beautifully illustrated book paints a multifaceted portrait of sixties London and explores the reasons why it became the epicentre of a cultural boom that resounded around the world and whose echoes can still be heard today. London in the 1960s was the embodiment of everything that was inspirational, innovative and progressive. Powered by the three key elements of youth, affluence and the mass media, the city became the hub of sixties pop culture, with its bold and creative spirit attracting an international cast of artists and luminaries in all fields, from pop music and fashion to literature and the visual arts. While a new aristocracy of rockstars and trendsetters ruled the roost, Pop art took a witty and detached view of contemporary consumerism and architecture looked towards a utopian future. This title features a stellar array of artists, photographers, musicians, models, writers, designers and architects presented in context, including David Hockney, Francis Bacon, David Bailey, Alan Aldridge, Kenneth Tynan, Mick Jagger, The Beatles, Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Ron Heron, Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Lucian Freud, Dirk Bogarde, Julie Christie, Marianne Faithful, Michael Caine, Mary Quant, Bridget Riley, Diana Rigg and many, many more.