This paper examines the impact of climate change on rich and poor countries across the world. We measure two indices of the relative impact of climate across countries, impact per capita, and impact per GDP. These measures sum market impacts across the climate-sensitive economic sectors of each country. Both indices reveal that climate change will have serious distributional impact across countries, grouped by income per capita. We predict that poor countries will suffer the bulk of the damages from climate change. Although adaptation, wealth, and technology may influence distributional consequences across countries, we argue that the primary reason that poor countries are so vulnerable is their location. Countries in the low latitudes start with very high temperatures. Further warming pushes these countries ever further away from optimal temperatures for climate-sensitive economic sectors.


The neuroanatomical correlates of temporal structure and expectancies in music were investigated using a unique stimulus manipulation involving scrambled music. The experiment compared brain responses (using functional magnetic resonance imaging) while participants listened to classical music and scrambled versions of that same music. The scrambled versions disrupted musical structure while holding low-level musical attributes constant, including such psychoacoustic parameters as pitch, loudness, and timbre. Comparing music to its scrambled counterpart, we found focal activation in the pars orbitalis region (Brodmann Area 47) of the left inferior frontal cortex, a region that has been previously closely associated with the processing of linguistic structure in spoken and signed language, and additional activation in the right hemisphere homologue of that area. We speculate that this particular region of inferior frontal cortex may be more generally responsible for processing fine-structured stimuli that evolve over time, not merely those that are linguistic.


We develop a full theoretical analysis of the nonlinear interactions of the two polarizations of a waveguide by means of a vectorial model of pulse propagation which applies to high index subwavelength waveguides. In such waveguides there is an anisotropy in the nonlinear behavior of the two polarizations that originates entirely from the waveguide structure, and leads to switching properties. We determine the stability properties of the steady state solutions by means of a Lagrangian formulation. We find all static solutions of the nonlinear system, including those that are periodic with respect to the optical fiber length as well as nonperiodic soliton solutions, and analyze these solutions by means of a Hamiltonian formulation. We discuss in particular the switching solutions which lie near the unstable steady states, since they lead to self-polarization flipping which can in principle be employed to construct fast optical switches and optical logic gates.


The objective of this paper is to systematically develop privacy heuristics for Online Social Network Services (SNS). In order to achieve this, we provide an analytical framework in which we characterize privacy breaches that have occurred in SNS and distinguish different stakeholders' perspectives. Although SNS have been criticized for numerous grave privacy breaches, they have also proven to be an interesting space in which privacy design is implemented and critically taken up by users. Community involvement in the discovery of privacy breaches as well as in articulating privacy demands points to possibilities in user-driven privacy design. In our analysis we take a multilateral security analysis approach and identify conflicts in privacy interests and list points of intervention and negotiation. In our future research, we plan to validate the usefulness as well as the usability of these heuristics and to develop a framework for privacy design in SNS.


Abstract The research deals with biodegradation of films prepared from polyvinylpyrrolidone and polylactic acid (PVP/PLA). Biodegradation of PVP/PLA films was supported by the following additives: 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, 1-octyl-2-pyrrolidone, acrylamide and N-acetyl-L-phenylalanine according to the previous study. The films were prepared by a solvent casting technique. Biodegradation was observed using the respirometric method in different environments. The films subjected to biodegradation were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. It was found that the films are substantially degraded, but not in the biological way; PVP was quickly removed in presence of water because of its easy solubility. In contrast, this fact could support biodegradation of PLA, which becomes more available for microorganisms when PVP leaves PLA matrix.


BACKGROUND
A cross-sectional study carried out at a teaching hospital in Kaduna, Nigeria, to investigate the extent and reasons for the delay between onset of symptoms and admission for treatment of symptomatic breast cancer.

METHODS
The patients had histologically proven breast cancer and had been admitted for treatment. Data were obtained from interviews and patients' clinical and referral records.

RESULTS
One hundred and eleven consecutive breast cancer patients were interviewed from July 2003 to June 2005. Only 12 (10.8%) could be admitted for treatment within a month of onset of symptoms. Delays were significantly associated with younger patients, elementary or no Western education, and domicile outside the Kaduna metropolitan area. Patients who were referred from, or received initial treatment at, peripheral hospitals had longer delays than those who came for first consultation at the teaching hospital. The proportion of early breast cancer cases (stages I and II) decreased from 45.9% at diagnosis to 25.2% at treatment, as concerns about mastectomy and hospital treatment led a significant number of the patients to temporarily abandon hospital treatment for alternatives, only to return with advanced cancers. The predominant reasons among the 99 patients who had delays of more than a month before admission were: ignorance of the seriousness of a painless breast lump (47.5%), non-acceptance of hospital treatment (46.5%), and preference for traditional treatment (38.4%). A significant number of patients referred from peripheral hospitals had inappropriate surgeries and biopsy management which contributed to the advanced stage on admission.

CONCLUSION
This study shows that delayed treatment of symptomatic breast cancer at this centre in Nigeria is as much related to the quality of medical care as it is to local beliefs, ignorance of the disease, and lack of acceptance of orthodox treatment.


At the time of writing this article, SAFA was telling all those who cared to listen that it would be looking for a new nickname for the national soccer team. Not because the name Bafana Bafana's failing to do the business - au contraire, since 2010 the moniker's probably become as well known as Azzurri, Les Bleus or Oranje. And not because it's felt that a team that's suddenly charging up the world rankings needs a name with more gravitas or one that's a bit more intimidating. No, it's simply down to the fact that SAFA doesn't have full ownership of the name. And that's because, from a trade mark management point of view, Bafana Bafana is a textbook example of how not to do things.


Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) plays a most substantial role in the microprocessor world, but as the technology is scaling down in nanometers, leakage parameters and delay are the most common problems for SRAM cell which is basically designed for very low power application. Transmission gate is used to further reduced leakage current penetrating in the 8T SRAM cell. Comparative analysis is performed by using transmission gate. This paper represents a method for design a variability aware SRAM cell. The proposed architecture of the TG8T SRAM cell is analogous to the standard 6T SRAM cell, the only exception is that they possess full transmission gates which replace an access pass transistor. The paper studies the different parameters of TG8Twrite operation at 0.7 V like leakage current is 229.2fA, leakage power is 297.4nW, delay is 20.92ns and SNR is 4.77dB. This result performs on the cadence virtuoso tool at 45nm technology.


The DPA attack can efficiently disclose the secret key of an AES Engine easily. To increase DPA Resistant of the AES engine by XORing the generated 16 bit from Pseudo Random Number Generator with the cipher text from the AES Engine. The cipher text is created by AES algorithm which is very Efficient Algorithm for data Securing. The 16 Bit Sequence Generator Circuit also provide Reduction in Area occupied by the Countermeasure circuit and Delay of propagation time by using pipelining process. The Speed of the DPA Countermeasure circuit also increased without degradation in throughput.


Abstract Holstein production records (364,328) from the Northeast were used to develop a procedure to extend in-progress and terminated records. A function was developed involving last-sample production which accounts for systematic influences in estimating remaining yield, which is yield from day of last sample to day 305. Last-sample production was used because remaining yield is estimated more accurately from last-sample production than from cumulative yield. The function is: estimated 305-day yield=yield in first n days + [(b 1 + b 2 n) last production + \( b 3 + b 4 n \) /last production)]· (305-n). The coefficients (b's) were estimated within three stages ( 245 days in milk), four age at freshening groups ( 60 mo, 34 to 36 mo cows were placed in the first group if freshening for the first time), three herd yields ( 7000kg), and six 2-mo season-of-freshening groups by least squares for milk and fat yield. Cumulative yield factors were developed from the same data and compared with this function. The last-sample function had smaller error variance.


Objective: To investigate whether heavy load carrying, wearing a patuka, and body position at work are risk factors for uterine prolapse among Nepali women. Methods: Community-based case-control study of 448 women (170 cases of uterine prolapse; 278 controls) aged 18–60 years in Kaski district, Nepal was conducted. Women diagnosed with uterine prolapse were cases. Two controls were recruited for each case, frequency-matched by residential area and age. Multivariate logistic regression was used to investigate associations between outcome and exposures. Results: No association of heavy load carrying with uterine prolapse was observed; women who never used a patuka had lower odds of uterine prolapse (odds ratio = 0.18, 95% confidence interval = 0.05–0.71). Women working in a sitting position had higher odds than those working in a standing position (odds ratio = 2.94, 95% confidence interval = 1.74–4.96), as did women who mainly worked in a bending position (odds ratio = 2.45, 95% confidence interval = 1.12–5.34). Housewives were more prone to uterine prolapse than women engaged in farming (odds ratio = 2.13, 95% confidence interval = 1.31–3.47). Conclusion: Using a patuka, occupation, and body position during work were all associated with uterine prolapse. No association was found with heavy load carrying, although that might be attributable to the cross-sectional nature of study recruitment.


We have developed a Forward Acknowledgment (FACK) congestion control algorithm which addresses many of the performance problems recently observed in the Internet. The FACK algorithm is based on first principles of congestion control and is designed to be used with the proposed TCP SACK option. By decoupling congestion control from other algorithms such as data recovery, it attains more precise control over the data flow in the network. We introduce two additional algorithms to improve the behavior in specific situations. Through simulations we compare FACK to both Reno and Reno with SACK. Finally, we consider the potential performance and impact of FACK in the Internet.


Public education is critically important to the human capital, social well-being, and economic prosperity of nations. It is also an intensely political realm of public policy that is heavily shaped by power and special interests. Yet political scientists rarely study education, and education researchers rarely study politics. This volume attempts to change that by promoting the development of a coherent, thriving field on the comparative politics of education. As an opening wedge, the authors carry out an 11-nation comparative study of the political role of teachers unions, showing that as education systems everywhere became institutionalized, teachers unions pursued their interests by becoming well-organized, politically active, highly influential - and during the modern era, the main opponents of neoliberal reform. Across diverse nations, the commonalities are striking. The challenge going forward is to expand on this study's scope, theory, and evidence to bring education into the heart of comparative politics.


Objective: Metacognitions are vulnerability factors in predicting development of psychological disorders especially Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and dysthymia, which are highly comorbid. Many studies have shown that GAD and dysthymia have similar underlying metacognitive factors but the results are contradictory. The aim of present research was to test this hypothesis by using new instruments that has been designed to measure multiple metacognitive factors. Methods: Fifty-eight students referred to university counseling centers in Tehran who met the diagnostic criteria of DSM-IV-TR for dysthymia (n=21), GAD (n=18), and comorbidity of them (n=19) were selected. The participants completed Meta Cognitions Questionnaire (MCQ), Anxious Thoughts Inventory (AnTI), Thought Control Questionnaire (TCQ) and the Ruminative Response Scale (RRS). Results: Results of one-way analysis of variance demonstrated no significant differences between groups on metacognitive factors. Conclusion: It seems that GAD and dysthymia are associated to common underlying metacognitive factors. This study confirms the results of some previous research indicating similarities between the two disorders. A B S T R A C T Article info:


The results reported by Kidd and Castano (2013) indicated that reading a short passage of literary fiction improves theory of mind (ToM) relative to reading popular fiction. However, when we entered Kidd and Castano's results in a p-curve analysis, it turned out that the evidential value of their findings is low. It is good practice to back up a p-curve analysis of a single paper with an adequately powered direct replication of at least one of the studies in the p-curve analysis. Therefore, we conducted a direct replication of the literary fiction condition and the popular fiction condition from Kidd and Castano's Experiment 5 to scrutinize the effect of reading literary fiction on ToM. The results of this replication were largely consistent with Kidd and Castano's original findings. Furthermore, we conducted a small-scale meta-analysis on the findings of the present study, those of Kidd and Castano and those reported in other published direct replications. The meta-analytic effect of reading literary fiction on ToM was small and non-significant but there was considerable heterogeneity between the included studies. The results of the present study and of the small-scale meta-analysis are discussed in the light of reading-times exclusion criteria as well as reliability and validity of ToM measures.


After the Estonian Parliamentary Elections held in 2011, an additional verification mechanism was integrated into the i-voting system in order to resist corrupted voting devices, including the so called Student's Attack where a student practically showed that the voting system is indeed not verifiable by developing several versions of malware capable of blocking or even changing the vote. This mechanism gives voters the opportunity to verify whether the vote they cast is stored in the central system correctly. However, the verification phase ends by displaying the cast vote in plain form on the verification device. In other words, the device on which the verification is done learns the voter's choice. In this work, our aim is to investigate this verification phase in detail and to point out that leaking the voter's choice to the verification application may harm the voter privacy. Additionally, when applied in a wide range, this would even compromise the fairness and the overall secrecy of the elections. In this respect, we propose an alternative verification mechanism for the Estonian i-voting system to overcome this vulnerability. Not only is the proposed mechanism secure and resistant against corrupted verification devices, so does it successfully verify whether the vote is correctly stored in the system. We also highlight that our proposed mechanism brings only symmetric encryptions and hash functions on the verification device, thereby mitigating these weaknesses in an efficient way with a negligible cost. More concretely, it brings only $m$ additional symmetric key decryptions to the verification device, where $m$ denoting the number of candidates. Finally, we prove the security of the proposed verification mechanism and compare the cost complexity of the proposed method with that of the current mechanism.


Software development projects have evolved over time and newer methods, Agile software development methods are changing the ways software is developed. Agile methods are based on a set of values and activities that reflect the values and teaching Agile methods should discuss both the values as well as the methods themselves. This teaching case describes a successful Agile software product development project. The case describes how Agile software methods, communication tools and prototypes were used to ensure efficient communication and collaboration amongst stakeholders. The case illustrates how artefacts and tools can be used to clarify the project goals and maintain effective customer collaboration. The case also illustrates how the artefacts and tools can be used to mitigate risks of communicational breakdowns. The teaching notes suggest that the case can be used to teach the concepts of Agile software development, stakeholder theory and concept of boundary objects.


Southwest (SW) Taiwan lies on the deformation front of a plate collision zone. Most earthquakes in this region occur due to deformation of the upper crust, therefore, potential seismic hazards in this area must be considered. On 6 February 2016, a moderate, but disastrous earthquake (ML = 6.6; depth = 14.6 km) occurred in Meinong, a district in the Kaohsiung area of Taiwan. This earthquake produced three cluster-like aftershocks. Among them, two of the aftershocks clusters were not spatially correlated with the main earthquake. Additionally, the trends of these two seismic clusters were not associated with previously known faults or geological structures. Therefore, our major intention is not only to investigate the rupture process of the 2016 Meinong earthquake, but more importantly, to look into the corresponding seismogenic process. In this research, high quality strong-motion data was used to invert the slip distribution on the fault plane using the isochron method. In addition, we relocated aftershocks to further obtain focal mechanisms using a 3D velocity model. Coulomb failure stress maps are calculated for different depth ranges based on the obtained source slip distribution to verify whether the main-shock triggers nearby unknown faults or not. In conclusion, we suggest that there might exist a NWSE trending, north-dipping fault, which is located north of the source area and may have been triggered by the initial shock. We also conclude that the 2016 Meinong earthquake did trigger the pre-existing normal faults beneath Tainan City. Article history: Received 19 September 2016 Revised 16 February 2017 Accepted 17 February 2017


This study is motivated by the theoretical framework that suggests market timing and other algorithmic trading strategies can add value in some aspects of the investment and portfolio management process. This study examines whether a moving average crossover strategy can outperform a buy and hold strategy across a set of stock portfolios. Although the algorithm used in this study is likely to underperform over the long run, the end-of-year selloff in 2018 revealed that moving average trading strategies add value during down markets. Consistent with Marshall et al. (2012) and Han et al. (2012), this study finds that the performance of the algorithm is amplified by the annual return, standard deviation, and downside deviation of the underlying portfolios of stocks. Where the preceding studies examine stock indices, this study examines exchange traded funds (ETFs) across six categories based on market capitalization: total market, mega cap, large cap, mid cap, small cap, and micro cap. The study finds that the algorithm outperforms the conventional buy and hold strategy across all ETFs during the observed down markets. Additionally, the study finds that the algorithm outperforms the most on the ETFs that experience the greatest selloffs. In conclusion, the study is optimistic about the use of trading algorithms to reduce the impact of market selloffs on investment returns.


Abstract Radiocarbon-calibrated amino acid racemization ages of 428 individually dated shells representing four molluscan taxa are used to quantify time-averaging and shell half-lives with increasing burial depth in the shallow-water carbonate lagoon of Rib Reef, central Great Barrier Reef, Australia. The top 20 cm of sediment contains a distinct, essentially modern assemblage. Shells recovered at depths from 25 to 125 cm are age-homogeneous and significantly older than the surface layer. Taxon age distributions within sedimentary layers indicate that the top 125 cm of lagoonal sediment is thoroughly mixed on a sub-century scale. The age distributions and shell half-lives of four taxa (Ethalia, Natica, Tellina, and Turbo) are found to be largely distinct. Shell half-lives do not coincide with any single morphological characteristic thought to infer greater durability, but they are strongly related to a combined durability score based on shell density, thickness, and shape. These results illustrate the importance of bioturbation in tropical sedimentary environments, indicate that age estimates in this depositional setting are sensitive to taxon choice, and quantify a taxon-dependent bias in shell longevity and death assemblage formation.


The Universum sample, which is defined as the sample that doesn't belong to any of the classes the learning task concerns, has been proved to be helpful in both supervised and semi-supervised settings. The former works treat the Universum samples equally. Our research found that not all the Universum samples are helpful, and we propose a method to pick the informative ones, i.e., in-between Universum samples. We also set up a new semi-supervised framework to incorporate the in-between Universum samples. Empirical experiments show that our method outperforms the former ones.


Evidence-based practice can improve patient outcomes and safety and reduce variation in health care delivery. Published studies suggest that allied health professionals experience many barriers with the implementation of evidence-based practice. This thesis describes a quasi-experimental study that aimed to enhance the uptake of evidence-based practice with a large group of allied health professionals. A tailored intervention was developed to address the barriers identified in phase 1 of the study. Evaluation showed an improvement in the propensity of allied health professionals to engage in evidence-based practice, including using research studies to support clinical decision making.


Ecosystem-based management (EBM) of forests is gaining acceptance for its focus on the maintenance of the long-term integrity of ecosystem processes, but climate change challenges this view because of its impacts on these very processes. We have therefore evaluated the robustness of EBM to projected climate change, considering the role of climate on forest growth and fire regime in a boreal forest of eastern Canada. A climate sensitive growth index model was calibrated for three commercial species and used to project the evolution of merchantable volume for two climate scenarios (B1 and A2) under conventional and EBM strategies. Current burn rate and burn rates under future climate scenarios were also considered. Under the most extreme projected climate scenario, the periodic timber supply could be reduced by up to 79% through direct (growth reduction) and indirect (fire) effects. However, ecological indicators show that EBM is a more robust forest management strategy than conventional one demonstrating its adaptation potential to climate change at least in the short term.


This research, which was begun as part of the now defunct CargoLifter project, concerns the ground handling and support systems of the large rigid airships (commonly known as "Zeppelins") that were built between 1900 and 1940. The intention was to assess the value of such historical information as has survived from the previous generation of very large airships in order to minimise the physical and financial risks inherent in the development of any future generations of such aircraft. The idea was to isolate and understand the fundamental issues that were actually encountered by the ground based personnel responsible for looking after the various British, German, American and Italian airships of the previous generation, and to gather as much information as possible about the techniques and operational procedures that were devised, tried and tested in the field. This information would then be used to establish guidelines for future projects that are based on real experience rather than on prediction, assumption or theory. Sadly, the CargoLifter project foundered in 2002; however the author had by then amassed sufficient research material for him to complete the study independently and to present it as a guide for the ground handling of hitherto unrealised concepts such as the proposed new "Transport category" or "CargoLifter" type large airships. Such practical skills as those required by airship ground crew personnel are normally passed on by firsthand instruction from one experienced practitioner to the trainee. This option is not available for the next generation of very large airships because there are no personnel alive today with any operational experience of the previous generation of really large airships. The problem therefore is to examine the historical records and to evaluate the written information in order to interpret it and pass on knowledge that will reduce the risk of future generations wasting their time in "re-inventing the wheel. " In the course of the study it was found that historical research (HR) enabled the results of the pre-war prototype projects to be usefully assessed despite the fact that very little of the material was written with that end in view. More specifically the analysis of historical airship activities (AHAA) revealed that it was possible to retrieve a considerable amount of lost or forgotten knowledge concerning the ground handling of very large airships, also to unearth ideas that were ahead of their time, which might be applicable today or in the future; and in addition to identify several areas worthy of further investigation (e. g. ideas that were rejected at the time but which may now be feasible due to technological progress). The research and analysis also uncovered some ideas and suggested solutions which are fundamentally flawed and that should be avoided by designers of large airships and their support systems. The work includes a detailed analysis of the tasks involved in the ground handling of very large airships and concludes with a suggested strategy for all those intent upon the design and planning of ground support infrastructures for any further large airship development projects either today or in the future.


Investigating dolomite fragments derived from pre-existing dolomite-containing sediments or rocks, that is detrital dolomites, constitutes a challenge in carbonate sedimentology. Detrital dolomites are generally difficult to recognize and their presence can have profound consequences, even in small quantities, on the interpretation of the tectonosedimentary evolution and palaeoenvironmental conditions of the enclosing basin. In addition, identification and quantification of detrital dolomites may provide insight into provenance and sediment transportation, quality of hydrocarbon reservoirs, and some aspects of the dolomite problem. Typically, detrital dolomites are recognized by their clastic behaviour, such as 1) their wide range of grain sizes and shapes, 2) evidence for transportation and weathering, and 3) their association with other detrital grains. Detrital dolomite can be derived from dolomite-containing sediments (by reworking) or dolomite-containing rocks (by disintegration) and can be transported by various means including wind, water, glaciers and sediment gravity flows. Detrital dolomite can be found in a variety of lithofacies confirming that they are controlled by availability of dolomite detritus and not by depositional environment. The role of detrital dolomite in promoting diagenetic dolomitisation is examined whereby they have provided nucleation sites, for syntaxial overgrowth, or a source of Mg, through dissolution.


The purpose of this paper is to examine four finest perfume brands. Two metaphor based personification methods-mood-boards and job-sorting are employed to study the association that the participants have with the brands. Both methods use open ended assignments to decipher how participants think or feel about the research object in question. The study analyses the congruent validity of the two methods and differences in their ability to personify the chosen brands of deu. Both methods yielded almost similar outcomes, thereby reiterating that the two methods possess congruent validity. The latter part of the paper analyses the brand personality characteristics that were connected to the celebrities and jobs, as identified in the mood-boards and job-sorting exercise respectively. SWOCC Brand Personality Scale, which is a further elaboration of Aaker's brand personality research, was used to provide a list of the personality characteristics.

 Key words: Brand personality enhancement, sources of brand personality, brand personality dimensions, SWOCC scale.


This study is the first empirical research that focuses only on successful female entrepreneurs in North Cyprus to identify their motivational factors, personality traits and challenges shown and faced by them. To accomplish this objective, an in-depth analysis of 10 female entrepreneurs employing at least 5 staff is used. Results indicate that pull factors are the key motivational drives of successful female entrepreneurs. Self-determination and an achievement-oriented mind set together with honesty and reliability in business life are found to be their main personality traits. The level of risk especially due to the Cyprus conflict and difficulties in accessing funding are found to be the key constraints on these successful female entrepreneurs.


What and how much can children learn without subject teachers? In an attempt to find a limit to self organized learning, we explored the capacity of 10–14 year old Tamil-speaking children in a remote Indian village to learn basic molecular biology, initially on their own with a Hole-in-the-Wall public computer facility, and later with the help of a mediator without knowledge of this subject. We then compared these learning outcomes with those of similarly-aged children at a nearby average-below average performing state government school who were not fluent in English but were taught this subject and another group of children at a high-performing private school in New Delhi who were fluent in English and had been taught this subject by qualified teachers. We found that the village children who only had access to computers and Internet-based resources in the Hole-in-the-Wall learning stations achieved test scores comparable with those at the local state school and, with the support of the mediator, equal to their peers in the privileged private urban school. Further experiments were conducted with unsupervised groups of 8–12 year-olds in several English schools using the Internet to study for GCSE questions they normally would be examined on at the age of 16. We conclude that, in spite of some limitations, there are opportunities for self-organised and mediated learning by children in settings where they would otherwise be denied opportunities for good, or indeed any, schooling. We also show that this approach can be enhanced by the use of local or online mediators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]


A new organic-inorganic hybrid material, which shows photo-induced reduction of refractive index as well as volume contraction, is prepared using a sol-gel method. This material is coated on a Si substrate by spin-coating to manufacture film. After irradiated by ultraviolet (UV) light with a deuterium lamp for 5 h, the thickness of film decreases largely by 55%, and the refractive index of film changes from 1.484 to 1.445 at 550 nm. The film's optical thickness exhibits an exponential change with the increasing irradiation time. Futhermore, the photo-patternning of the organic-inorganic hybrid film without any further process (wet etching and thermal curing) is performed utilizing the volume contraction on UV-light irradiation. This film has potential applications for fabrication of patterned filter array and apodizing filter by direct light writing, and also demonstrates good temperature stability and immunity to visible light exposure.


This article reports two series of investigations into the formation of synapses after injury in the adult rat. A comparison is made between synapse formation in a peripheral nervous site - the superior cervical sympathetic ganglion after destroying almost all the afferent fibres by cutting the preganglionic chain, and a central nervous site - the septal nuclei, after selectively destroying afferent fibres from the hippocampus running in the fimbria. The method consists of a quantitative electron microscopic assessment of numbers of synapses in the neuropil of the deafferented regions at progressively increasing survival times after the injury. The superior cervical ganglion has about 8.8 x 10 $^6$ synapses and about 8000 preganglionic axons. After a freeze lesion of the preganglionic chain over 90% of the synapses disappear, indicating that the preganglionic axons each form an average of about 1100 synaptic contacts. A proportion of the deafferented postsynaptic sites are recognizable by the presence of the vacated postsynaptic thickenings. As the preganglionic axons regenerate back across the lesion, the synapses gradually reappear, and the vacated thickenings disappear. If an insufficient number of axons regenerates, less than the normal complement of synapses is formed; the number of synapses bears a constant relation to the number of axons, and under these circumstances each axon forms about the same number of synapses as in the normal ganglion. This suggests that the number of synapses which an axon can form is limited, and that the preganglionic axons may be close to this limit in the normal ganglion. The ganglion can also be reinnervated by foreign nerves such as the vagus and hypoglossal. These nerves form less than normal numbers of synapses. In all cases of less than complete reinnervation, the numbers of vacated thickenings remaining are inversely proportional to the numbers of synapses which appear; this indicates that the synapses are formed at the originally denervated postsynaptic sites. The septum receives inputs of hippocampal origin both through the ipsilateral and the contralateral fimbria. After section of one fimbria, the terminals of the cut axons are recognizable by the reaction of electron dense degeneration. About half the synapses on dendritic spines belong to the ipsilateral fimbria and about half this number to the contralateral fimbria. The degenerating terminals are progressively removed from the postsynaptic sites by the phagocytic action of astrocytes. However, unlike the ganglion, the sites only rarely appear as vacated thickenings. Instead, there is a progressive increase in the number of non-degenerating terminals as the degenerating terminals are removed. This spontaneous reinnervation process results in restoration of the original complement of synapses. However, the originally cut fimbrial axons do not regenerate: this process of synapse formation is due to formation of additional contacts by the other axons remaining in the deafferented region. If the second fimbria is now cut, it results in an amount of degeneration equal to the sum of that found after cutting both the ipsilateral and the contralateral fimbria. This indicates that the sites left vacant by section of one fimbria are reinnervated exclusively by the other fimbria. However, this preference is not absolute. After section of the second fimbria, the degeneration is still removed, and a normal complement of synapses once again restored. Thus the septal neuropil has great powers of re-establishing normal synapse numbers even after major deafferentation. The ganglion and the septum are similar to the extent that denervated postsynaptic sites are capable of being reinnervated - spontaneously in the case of the central nervous site. The major difference is that in the peripheral nervous site the originally cut axons can regenerate back to their former targets. It is not clear why the cut fimbria - behaving in a manner typical for central nervous tracts - does not regenerate. The proximal parts of the cut fimbrial axons and their cells of origin survive the injury. The denervated sites in the septum also survive, and are capable of being reinnervated. Further, this reinnervation process is selective for fimbrial axons from the opposite hippocampus. This also shows that fimbrial fibres are capable of forming new synapses. Thus the defect which prevents true regeneration of the originally cut axons back to their former targets does not appear to be due to failure in the mechanism of synapse formation or matching. This suggests that the defect may be an inability of the cut axons to regenerate across the site of the lesion.


Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are both green and sustainable, making them an increasingly attractive alternative to conventional solvents. One of their applications is the electrochemical deposition of metals that cannot be deposited from aqueous solution because of the limited electrochemical window of water. The electrodeposition process is influenced by the structure and dynamics of the solvent at the solid-liquid interface. Therefore,the nanoscale structure of the interface between a silicon substrate and deep eutectic solvent (choline chloride-ethylene glycol) was studied by neutron reflectometry (NR) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. It is not possible to model NR measurements of this system without simulating a dense DES layer at the solid-liquid interface. This study used an MD simulation trajectory to extract the density, thickness, and roughness of this DES layer. With this input, the model reproduces the reflectometry data at all measured H/D contrasts very well. The thickness of the layer does not change appreciably when applying charge or at higher temperatures. Further analysis revealed a reorganization of ions and reorientation of the choline cations in the interface layer when the electrodes are charged. These changes in ion orientation are not observed with the NR technique since they do not influence the neutron scattering length density profile due to the high number of ethylene glycol molecules at the interface. However, the agreement between measured neutron reflectometry data and model parameters obtained from MD simulations justified subnanoscale analysis of the MD trajectory and confirmed that these two complementary techniques can be successfully combined to reveal the solid/DES interface structure.


This paper clarifies first the nature and significance of financial profit by applying the structural axiom set as consistent point of departure. As a crucial result the fundamental theorem of income distribution emerges. It states: profit is no factor income. Since the individual firm is blind to this structural fact it subjectively interprets profit as some kind of reward. As a matter of fact, firms do not 'make' profit, they only redistribute it among themselves. With profit consistently defined it is possible to determine the nominal and real shares of the elementary income categories wage income and distributed profit.


Stratospheric aerosols play an important role in a number of atmospheric issues such as midlatitude ozone depletion, atmospheric dynamics and the Earth radiative budget. Polar stratospheric clouds on the other hand are a crucial factor in the yearly Arctic and Antarctic ozone depletion. It is therefore important to quantify the stratospheric aerosol/PSC abundance. In orbit since March 2002, the GOMOS instrument onboard the European Envisat satellite has provided a vast aerosol extinction data set. In this paper we present aerosol/PSC zonal median values that were constructed from this data set, together with a discussion of the results.


Recent work has shown that augmenting environments with language descriptions improves policy learning. However, for environments with complex language abstractions, learning how to ground language to observations is difficult due to sparse, delayed rewards. We propose Language Dynamics Distillation (LDD), which pretrains a model to predict environment dynamics given demonstrations with language descriptions, and then fine-tunes these language-aware pretrained representations via reinforcement learning (RL). In this way, the model is trained to both maximize expected reward and retain knowledge about how language relates to environment dynamics. On SILG, a benchmark of five tasks with language descriptions that evaluate distinct generalization challenges on unseen environments (NetHack, ALFWorld, RTFM, Messenger, and Touchdown), LDD outperforms tabula-rasa RL, VAE pretraining, and methods that learn from unlabeled demonstrations in inverse RL and reward shaping with pretrained experts. In our analyses, we show that language descriptions in demonstrations improve sample-efficiency and generalization across environments, and that dynamics modelling with expert demonstrations is more effective than with non-experts.


The range of uncertainties inherent in climate models can only be portrayed by provision of multiple climate projections. Unfortunately, such provision poses a challenge to model-based impact studies, since driving the relevant impact models using weather data from large numbers of climate projections may not be computationally feasible. Hence, it is important to investigate how to draw sub-samples of climate projections in a manner that reduces the subsequent computational burden. We describe a stratification-based protocol for sub-sampling climate projections to drive crop models with strata based on changes in mean temperature and changes in relative mean rainfall. As an example of the protocol's utility, simulated weather for each selected climate projection was used to drive 3 contrasting process-based models of plant-environment interactions to predict yields of spring barley, managed grassland, and short-rotation coppice. Many of the questions about potential impact that we wish to answer are related to variation in predicted yields. Variance components analyses of predicted yields for each of 2 time periods (2040s and 2080s) indicated that, after allowing for variability between grid squares, between 16 and 61% of the remaining variance in annual yields was uncertainty due to climate projections, the corresponding range for mean yields over 9 yr being from 63 to 93%. We found that our stratification procedure enhanced the precision in the estimate of the variance component due to climate projection, enabling reductions of up to 20% in the number of climate projections required to achieve equivalent precision compared to simple random sampling.


As a basis for the commercial separation of normal paraffins a detailed study has been made of factors affecting the adsorption of binary liquid mixtures of high molecular weight normal paraffins (C12, C16, and C20) from isooctane on type 5A molecular sieves. The literature relating to molecular sieve properties and applications, and to liquid-phase adsorption of high molecular weight normal paraffin compounds by zeolites, was reviewed. Equilibrium isotherms were determined experimentally for the normal paraffins under investigation at temperatures of 303oK, 323oK and 343oK and showed a non-linear, favourable- type of isotherm. A higher equilibrium amount was adsorbed with lower molecular weight normal paraffins. An increase in adsorption temperature resulted in a decrease in the adsorption value. Kinetics of adsorption were investigated for the three normal paraffins at different temperatures. The effective diffusivity and the rate of adsorption of each normal paraffin increased with an increase in temperature in the range 303 to 343oK. The value of activation energy was between 2 and 4 kcal/mole. The dynamic properties of the three systems were investigated over a range of operating conditions (i.e. temperature, flow rate, feed concentration, and molecular sieve size in the range 0.032 x 10-3 to 2 x 10-3m) with a packed column. The heights of adsorption zones calculated by two independent equations (one based on a constant width, constant velocity and adsorption zone and the second on a solute material balance within the adsorption zone) agreed within 3% which confirmed the validity of using the mass transfer zone concept to provide a simple design procedure for the systems under study. The dynamic capacity of type 5A sieves for n-eicosane was lower than for n-hexadecane and n-dodecane corresponding to a lower equilibrium loading capacity and lower overall mass transfer coefficient. The values of individual external, internal, theoretical and experimental overall mass transfer coefficient were determined. The internal resistance was in all cases rate-controlling. A mathematical model for the prediction of dynamic breakthrough curves was developed analytically and solved from the equilibrium isotherm and the mass transfer rate equation. The experimental breakthrough curves were tested against both the proposed model and a graphical method developed by Treybal. The model produced the best fit with mean relative percent deviations of 26, 22, and 13% for the n-dodecane, n-hexadecane, and n-eicosane systems respectively.


Earthquakes can cause considerable fatalities, injuries and financial loss. The forces of nature cannot be blamed, as the problem lies with the structures in seismic regions that may not have been designed or constructed to a sufficient degree to resist earthquake actions or they may have design flaws. This Structural Engineering Document (SED) concerns reinforced concrete and masonry buildings together with geotechnical aspects and presents in a concise and practical way the state of the art of current understanding of building failures due to earthquakes. It classifies the different types of seismic failure, explains the reasons for each failure, describes good practices to avoid such failures and also describes seismic retrofitting/upgrading procedures for pre-earthquake strengthening and post-earthquake repair and/or strengthening techniques for deficient buildings. Carefully selected photographs and diagrams illustrate the different failure types. This document could be considered as quite unique, as this is the first time such material concerning characteristic seismic failures of buildings has been presented together in one single document. It is intended to be a valuable educational reference textbook aimed at all levels of experience of engineers. It provides background information, ideas, guidance and reassurance to engineers in earthquake regions faced with the task of building a safer future for the public and to protect lives.


The thesis investigates the effects of false memory and belief in the paranormal on reports of events. The first chapter reviews the existing literature on false memory. The main theories of how false memory develops are described and the individual differences of those susceptible to false memories are considered. The paranormal belief literature is then examined, particularly with regard to the cognitive differences between believers and disbelievers. It is concluded that these differences would be suggestive of a relationship between paranormal belief and false memory. The second chapter considers the relationship between imagination inflation, paranormal belief and ESP. No correlation between the factors was found. The third chapter examines whether pre-event suggestion and belief in the paranormal can affect experiences of `ghostly' phenomena in an allegedly haunted location. Evidence for the effect of belief in the paranormal was found, but there was no effect of pre-event suggestion or an interaction between the two factors. The fourth chapter investigates the effects of positive and negative during-event suggestion and paranormal belief on reports of events in the seance room, and the fifth chapter explores the effects of duringevent suggestion on reports of a key bending video. There was some evidence that during-event suggestion is effective in altering reports of events, and the causes for this effect are considered. Paranormal belief was not shown to consistently affect acceptance of suggestion, but may affect reports of phenomena which are judged to be paranormal. The thesis concludes that during-event suggestion and negative suggestion are areas which offer great potential for further research. The relationship between paranormal belief and false memory development has not been demonstrated. However, it has been shown that belief and suggestion can affect the manner in which situations are attended to and interpreted.


Abstract This short paper gathers insight about learning environments in design and leadership in the creative industries. The production of expertise is often highly specialised and domain specific, however this study observes a learning situation that places emphasis on collaborative interaction and group dynamics nested within dense creative networks. Design learning demands complex problem solving and decision making in response to contingent situations. These environments defy brevity of explanation, yet are microcosms of radical transformations in the digital economy. The reciprocal relationship between learning environments and industry are explored. Embedding in a network of learners and experts, using ethnographic methods blend situated insight with theoretical oversight. An ethnographic investigation of a learning organisation is applied to generate insight that reveals a dense network of collaborative practices, the production of experts and complex reciprocal relationships between learning and professional practice. Intense and inevitably participatory ethnographic engagements are indicative the processes of transformative change and challenge our understanding of the nature of learning. The role of innovation and flux in societal structures is reflected in these radically different approaches to learning. The image that appears is highly counterintuitive but prescient, providing foundations of new approaches to design education at the boundary. Learning environments that are responsive to a world that is rapidly moving beyond a stable state.


Interactive display and visualization of large geometric and textured models is becoming a fundamental capability. There are numerous application areas, including games, movies, CAD, virtual prototyping, and scientific visualization. One of observations about geometric models used in interactive applications is that their model complexity continues to increase because of fundamental advances in 3D modeling, simulation, and data capture technologies. As computing power increases, users take advantage of the algorithmic advances and generate even more complex models and data sets. Therefore, there are many cases where we are required to visualize massive models that consist of hundreds of millions of triangles and, even, billions of triangles. However, interactive visualization and handling of such massive models still remains a challenge in computer graphics and visualization. In this monograph we discuss various techniques that enable interactive visualization of massive models. These techniques include visibility computation, simplification, levels-of-detail, and cache-coherent data management.We believe that the combinations of these techniques can make it possible to interactively visualize massive models in commodity hardware. Table of Contents: Introduction / Visibility / Simplification and Levels of Detail / Alternative Representations / Cache-Coherent Data Management / Conclusions / Bibliography


The dopamine D2 receptor activates inhibitory G proteins that inhibit adenylyl cyclase activity, culminating in reduced production of cAMP. Ca2+ pathways can regulate effectors that are controlled by D2 receptors; however, the molecular interactions between these two paths are unclear. Bofill-Cardona et al. provide evidence that calmodulin (CaM) directly attenuates D2 receptor activation of the inhibitory G protein Gαi1. In the presence of calcimycin, a Ca2+ ionophore, the inhibitory effect of D2 receptor agonists on production of cAMP was reduced. CaM reduced guanosine 5'-O-(3'-thiotriphosphate) (GTP-γ-S) loading in membranes containing D2 receptors and G proteins; however, this effect was not direct, because coincubation of CaM with Gαi1 and GTP-γ-S did not alter the rate of GTP-γ-S loading, and CaM did not directly bind Gαi1. The authors identified a cytoplasmic sequence in the D2 receptor, termed D2N, that bound CaM and Gαi1 simultaneously. D2N was required for the activation of Gαi1, but the presence of CaM inhibited G protein activation. Thus, these results suggest that CaM blocks the nucleotide exchange reaction on Gαi1 not by uncoupling D2 from Gαi1, but by preventing D2N-mediated enabling of the G protein activation switch. Bofill-Cardona, E., Kudlacek, O., Yang, Q., Ahorn, H., Freissmuth, M., and Nanoff, C. (2000) Binding of calmodulin to the D2-dopamine receptor reduces receptor signaling by arresting the G protein activation switch. J. Biol. Chem. 275: 32672-32680. [Abstract] [Full Text]


The Takab calcareous rocks of northwest Iran crop out in association with a variety of metamorphic rocks including mafic granulites, amphibolites, granitic gneisses, pelitic schists and meta-ultramafic rocks. They can be divided into marbles and calc-silicate rocks on the basis of the dominance of calcite/dolomite and silicate minerals. Dominant peak metamorphic granulite facies assemblage of calc-silicate rocks is Scp + Grt(I) + Cpx + Cal + Qtz +/- Hbl(I). The decrease of temperature and pressure during exhumation produced post-peak metamorphic assemblages. Coronal garnet (Grt II) in the calc-silicate rocks was produced by retrograde reactions consuming plagioclase and clinopyroxene, while peak metamorphic garnet (Grt I) occurs as preserved xenoblastic grains in calcite and/or plagioclase (Pl II). Regional metamorphism took place at 740 degrees C and X-CO2 similar to 0.9. Garnet-clinopyroxene-plagioclase-quartz (GADS) barometry yields a pressure of 8-9 kbar, corresponding to a depth of ca. 24-27 km. This was followed by decompression and hydration during exhumation of the crustal rocks up to the surface. Secondary phases such as garnet (II) hornblende (II), plagioclase (II), zoisite and titanite (II) constrain the temperature and pressure of post-peak metamorphism as similar to 600 degrees C and similar to 6 kbar respectively and a fluid with XCO2 as low as 0.4. Halogens were near-absent during the peak metamorphic stage. The scapolite and hornblende crystallized underpeak metamorphic conditions contain very low fluorine and chlorine, whereas relatively high fluorine (similar to 0.8 wt%) in the titanite (II) and hornblende (II) suggests a possible infiltration of F-rich fluids into the calc-silicate rocks during retrogression. It is interpreted to be related to external fluids released during crystallisation of granitoid magmas and/or leucosome patches in the adjacent migmatites.


We consider organizations that optimally choose the level of adaptation to a changing environment when coordination among specialized tasks is a concern. Adaptive organizations provide employees with flexibility to tailor their tasks to local information. Coordination is maintained by limiting specialization and improving communication. Alternatively, by letting employees stick to some preagreed action plan, organizations can ensure coordination without communication, regardless of the extent of specialization. Among other things, our theory shows how extensive specialization results in organizations that ignore local knowledge, and it explains why improvements in communication technology may reduce specialization by pushing organizations to become more adaptive.


Objective: The goal of this study was to analyse the attitudes and perceptions of emergency and mental health nurses through the validation of the SM-GIBED scale in specialised care in Spain on alcoholics and other drug-dependent patients. Design and Setting: This cross-sectional study was developed using the Spanish hospital version of the Seaman-Mannello scale to denominate the SM-GIBED scale. Participants: 170 Emergency and Mental Health Nursing from five Spanish Hospitals. Intervention: Self-administered questionnaire to analiyse the perceptions and attitudes about the drug addict and the alcoholic. Primary and Secondary Outcome Measures: A descriptive and inferential analysis of the study variables was carried out. A psychometric analysis was performed to validate the scale. Results: A total of 170 questionnaires were collected from 257 healthcare workers. Overall, 99.1% of the participants had contact with drug-dependent patients during their professional experience. Nearly 75% had difficulties in treating them. The psychometric analysis of the SM-GIBED scale in the Spanish context obtained values of KMO = 0.655 and Bartlett's test p < 0.000. Cronbach's alpha of 0.738 was obtained from the reliability analysis. A reliability analysis of each of the SM-GIBED questions found no case with an alpha lower than 0.71. In conclusion, positive aspects include an ingratiating attitude and subject-to-subject communication when nurses self-define as empathic and non-paternalistic. Among the negative aspects, there is a lack of communication skills and assertiveness with these patients. This highlights a certain degree of resignation and dissatisfaction when working with drug addicts.


I present here an experience report of doctoral research in Communication Sciences area entitled I do not want to be the naughty woman! I'd rather be Isabella Swan! Appropriations of the female[1] identities by children in media reception, which aimed to analyze the meanings produced by them about female identities in media reception. The initial proposal had as observable printed magazines[2], but the "place of speech" of the subjects in the magazines revealed so only the adultcentric view about children and childhoods. Children were conceived as producing-cultures subjects (Corazza, 2004; Sarmento, 2018), so it was necessary to listen to them, to know their choices and what they are offered and the perceptions and meanings they produce, refuting the perspectives that identify the child audience as the passive pole of the communicative process. In this sense, the reception is the object that became the place of research, entended with production and consumption (Lopes, 1999, 2014; Orozco, 2011; Canclini, 2010).

[1] We understand that, according to Louro and Goellner (2007), the cultural and social atributes que os atributos culturais e sociais conferidos ao genero sao construcoes sociais, culturais e historicas acopladas ao corpo biologico.
[2] Magazines "Decora Baby" (Ed. Escala), "Pais e Filhos" (Ed. Manchete) and "Crescer em Familia" (Ed. Globo).


Evidence is presented from a Case Study of the Inquiry into King Edward Memorial Hospital, a tertiary level maternity hospital in Perth, Western Australia, that values of medical professionalism can be distorted and contribute to impaired standards of care. Moreover, it is argued that the managerial tools of clinical governance will be insufficient to remedy dysfunctional institutional care.

This thesis proposes that an augmented primary level doctor-patient relationship support a coordinating and advocacy role for general medical practitioners into the care and safety of their patients when those patients are admitted to hospitals under the care of medical specialists. A relationship between patients and primary level doctors willing to undertake such roles would reciprocally support the more personally involved relationship required. This relationship could expand to promote a more appropriate and sustainable use of medical technology.

Research in this thesis explores the adequacy of the primary level doctor-patient relationship in Perth to establish the individual level care of the type necessary to breakdown the present fragmented nature of healthcare services. Healthcare consumers in focus groups were presented with hypothetical situations designed to illustrate aspects of healthcare by general medical practitioners. There was found minimal support for the concept of continuity of care unless co-payments were discarded and attendance was made convenient and timely.

A number of experienced general practitioners in Perth were also interviewed on their views of the fragmented nature of healthcare, and the degree to which primary level medical care could contribute to its improvement. They all supported the concept that continuity of care was important to primary level healthcare and thought that most of their older patients agreed with this concept. The research found a significant difference in the perceptions of patients and doctors that requires being resolved. Some Perth general practitioners aspire to more demanding professional roles that could include leadership in total patient care. However any hope for an expansive contribution by primary medical care in promoting a patient voice in the use of healthcare technology, including in tertiary level hospitals, is at present unlikely. This thesis makes suggestions into reforms and research that could lead to a redirected healthcare system based around the concept of personalised patient care.


The basis for skeletal muscle dysfunction in phosphate-deficient patients and animals is not known, but it is hypothesized that intracellular phosphate deficiency leads to a defect in ATP synthesis. To test this hypothesis, changes in muscle function and nucleotide metabolism were studied in an animal model of hypophosphatemia. Mice were made hypophosphatemic through restriction of dietary phosphate intake. Gastrocnemius function was assessed in situ by recording isometric tension developed after stimulation of the nerve innervating this muscle. Changes in purine nucleotide, nucleoside, and base content of the muscle were quantitated at several time points during stimulation and recovery. Serum concentration and skeletal muscle content of phosphorous are reduced by 55 and 45%, respectively, in the dietary restricted animals. The gastrocnemius muscle of the phosphate-deficient mice fatigues more rapidly compared with control mice. ATP and creatine phosphate content fall to a comparable extent during fatigue in the muscle from both groups of animals; AMP, inosine, and hypoxanthine (indices of ATP catabolism) appear in higher concentration in the muscle of phosphate-deficient animals. Since total ATP use in contracting muscle is closely linked to total developed tension, we conclude that the comparable drop in ATP content in association with a more rapid loss of tension is best explained by a slower rate of ATP synthesis in the muscle of phosphate-deficient animals. During the period of recovery after muscle stimulation, ATP use for contraction is minimal, since the muscle is at rest. In the recovery period, ATP content returns to resting levels more slowly in the phosphate-deficient than in the control animals. In association with the slower rate of ATP repletion, the precursors inosine monophosphate and AMP remain elevated for a longer period of time in the muscle of phosphate-deficient animals. The slower rate of ATP repletion correlates with delayed return of normal muscle contractility in the phosphate-deficient mice. These studies suggest that the slower rate of repletion of the ATP pool may be the consequence of a slower rate of ATP synthesis and this is in part responsible for the delayed recovery of normal muscle contractility.


We show that task juggling, i.e., the spreading of effort across too many active projects instead of focussing on few tasks at the same time, decreases the performance of workers, raising the chances of low throughput, long duration of projects and exploding backlogs. Individual productivity cannot be explained only in terms of effort, ability and experience: work scheduling is a crucial "input" that cannot be omitted from the production function of individual workers. We provide a simple theoretical model to study the effects of increased task juggling on the duration of projects. Using a sample of Italian judges we show that those who are induced for exogenous reasons to work in a more parallel fashion on many trials at the same time take longer to complete similar portfolios of cases. The exogenous variation that identifies this causal effect is constructed exploiting the lottery that assigns cases to judges together with the prescription requiring judges to hold the first hearing of a case no later than 60 days from filing. JEL-Code: J0; K0; M5.


At present, in the whole world from developed countries to third-world, digitization has taken place in society and economy with great intensity and also being adapted by a common person as his/her normal daily routine. Due to this huge amount of data is being processed and stored in data centers. Based on earlier studies, it has been observed that, Due to the overload of data & traffic, data centers are consuming more energy than any other setup. Energy consumption of hyperscale & mid level data centers increasing continuously from the very beginning of their setup. As the demand of energy is growing, so the need of production and expense on energy is also growing in energy demand in future (at-least one decade). In this paper one of the topics specially related to the improvement of energy efficiency through IT software has been taken. And a method has to be established whereby all the data centers with different geographical locations can have fewer loads on power sources and they can take advantage of low cost energy and hence will be able to operate even less.


Dowe really knowwhatwewant?Ormustwe sometimes construct our preferences on the spot, using whatever cues are available – even when these cues lead us astray? One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the conceptwithin psychology, law,marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.


Allopolyploidization, genome duplication through interspecific hybridization, is an important evolutionary mechanism that can enable organisms to adapt to environmental changes or stresses. This increased adaptive potential of allopolyploids can be particularly relevant for plant pathogens in their quest for host immune response evasion. Allodiploidization likely caused the shift in host range of the fungal pathogen plant Verticillium longisporum, as V. longisporum mainly infects Brassicaceae plants in contrast to haploid Verticillium spp. In this study, we investigated the allodiploid genome structure of V. longisporum and its evolution in the hybridization aftermath. The nuclear genome of V. longisporum displays a mosaic structure, as numerous contigs consists of sections of both parental origins. V. longisporum encountered extensive genome rearrangements, whereas the contribution of gene conversion is negligible. Thus, the mosaic genome structure mainly resulted from genomic rearrangements between parental chromosome sets. Furthermore, a mosaic structure was also found in the mitochondrial genome, demonstrating its bi-parental inheritance. In conclusion, the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes of V. longisporum parents interacted dynamically in the hybridization aftermath. Conceivably, novel combinations of DNA sequence of different parental origin facilitated genome stability after hybridization and consecutive niche adaptation of V. longisporum.


Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer death for both men and women worldwide. The 5-year survival rate for lung cancer is only 15%, and it accounts for approximately 1.4 million deaths every year. Recently, it has been reported that changes in expression level of claudin proteins, a family of tight junction integral membrane proteins, has been associated with several types of cancer tissues. Claudin proteins are vital components of the tight junction complex, playing a crucial role in maintaining cell polarity, adhesion, and paracellular permeability. Studies have illustrated that claudin-7 expression is lost in head, neck, invasive breast cancer, and certain types of lung cancer. The objective of this study was to investigate apoptosis in a human lung adenocarcinoma cancer cell line transfected with claudin-7. We transfected claudin-7 cDNA tagged with myc into human NCI-H522 lung cancer cells, which have no detectable expression of claudin-7 protein. H522 cells transfected with vector alone were used as a control. Flow cytometry analysis demonstrated that cells transfected with claudin-7 had a significantly higher percentage of cell apoptosis when compared to that of vector transfected cell population. The cell viability by MTT, (3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5- diphenyltetrazolium bromide, a tetrazole), assay was significantly decreased and cell apoptosis by Annexin V assay was significantly increased in claudin-7 transfected cells compared to that of vector transfected cells after cisplatin treatment. Cisplatin is an anti-cancer drug clinically used to treat tumors in several tissues including lung tumors. Furthermore, we found that claudin-7 transfected cells exhibited upregulation of caspase-3, -8, and -9. Also, the phosphorylation of claudin-7 in the H522 cells was examined, and analyses revealed that claudin-7 was phosphorylated at serine 204 by protein kinase C. Comparison of phosphorylated and non- phosphorylated claudin-7 in the H522 cells showed decreased cell viability by the MTT assay suggesting that phosphorylation increases chemosensitivity to cisplatin treatment. We demonstrated that claudin-7 expression in H522 lung cancer cells increases chemosensitivity to cisplatin through increased activation of caspase pathways.


In 1981, Stanley applied the Aleksandrov-Fenchel inequalities to prove a logarithmic concavity theorem for regular matroids. Using ideas from electrical network theory we prove a generalization of this for the wider class of matroids with the ``half-plane property''. Then we explore a nest of inequalities for weighted basis-generating polynomials that are related to these ideas. As a first result from this investigation we find that every matroid of rank three or corank three satisfies a condition only slightly weaker than the conclusion of Stanley's theorem.


The recently updated and complete genome of the C57BL/6J mouse strain provides a model mammalian system for genetics, comparative genomics and evolutionary studies. The extensive freely available resources of mouse genetics and breeds and similarity between mouse and much of human biology makes the mouse genome the primary choice to enable discernment of the biological function of human and other mammalian genes. Of huge importance is that along with human, mouse is currently the only mammalian genome to be sequenced to completeness allowing the investigation of lineage specific biology. In particular the mouse genome sequence provides an unrivalled resource for medical bioscience, in encouraging a deeper understanding of the shared mammalian evolutionary history of potential drug targets.

Key Concepts:

The availability of high quality genome sequence is the cornerstone of comparative genomics.

Although many mammalian genomes have been sequenced with high coverage they are considered 'drafts'. Only the mouse and human genomes are characterised as 'complete' and do not contain gaps in their genome coverage. The comparison of genes and genomes allows the investigation of evolutionary history of species.

The availability of multiple animal genomes provides the raw material for the discipline of genome zoology.

Keywords:

comparative genomics;
positive selection;
adaptive evolution;
drug discovery


Considerable work indicates that early cumulative risk exposure is aversive to human development, but very little research has examined the neurological underpinnings of these robust findings. This study investigates amygdala volume and reactivity to facial stimuli among adults (mean 23.7 years of age, n = 54) as a function of cumulative risk exposure during childhood (9 and 13 years of age). In addition, we test to determine whether expected cumulative risk elevations in amygdala volume would mediate functional reactivity of the amygdala during socioemotional processing. Risks included substandard housing quality, noise, crowding, family turmoil, child separation from family, and violence. Total and left hemisphere adult amygdala volumes were positively related to cumulative risk exposure during childhood. The links between childhood cumulative risk exposure and elevated amygdala responses to emotionally neutral facial stimuli in adulthood were mediated by the corresponding amygdala volumes. Cumulative risk exposure in later adolescence (17 years of age), however, was unrelated to subsequent adult amygdala volume or function. Physical and socioemotional risk exposures early in life appear to alter amygdala development, rendering adults more reactive to ambiguous stimuli such as neutral faces. These stress‐related differences in childhood amygdala development might contribute to the well‐documented psychological distress as a function of early risk exposure. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


In this study, a biosurfactant produced by a Bacillus subtilis strain isolated from oil-contaminated soil from an Omani oil field was tested for its potential in enhancing oil recovery by a series of coreflooding experiments. It was found that the performance of the biosurfactant was increased by mixing with chemical surfactants, by which the maximum production went up to 50% of residual oil at a mixing ratio of (50:50). The second objective of this study was to investigate the effects of the biosurfactant on wettability alteration and to estimate its tendency to loss caused by adsorption. The influence of biosurfactant on wettability was studied by contact-angle measurements, atomic force microscopy (AFM) technique on few-layer graphene (FLG) surfaces, and Amott wettability tests on Berea sandstone cores. Contact-angle measurements showed that the wettability of the biosurfactant solution changes to more oil-wet as the angle decreased from 70.6 to 25.32° when treated with 0.25% (w/v) biosurfactant solution. Amott testing showed a change in wettability index from strongly water-wet in the untreated core toward less water-wet in biosurfactant-treated cores. These results confirmed the ability of the biosurfactant to alter the wetting conditions against different surfaces, thereby serving as a mechanism for enhancing oil recovery. The maximum loss of biosurfactant caused by adsorption was 1.2 mg/g of rock, which is comparable with reported chemical-surfactant values.


OBJECTIVE: To estimate the effect of mode of delivery on the incidence of urinary incontinence in primiparous women. METHODS: A population-based survey was mailed to all Oregon women who delivered a liveborn neonate in a 1-year period. Data were collected on urinary incontinence, childbirth experience, and other risk factors for incontinence at 3–6 months postpartum. Univariable analyses were conducted using t tests and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests for continuous variables and &khgr;2 tests for categorical variables. Logistic regression analyses were used to estimate odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for demographic and clinical risk factors. RESULTS: A total of 15,787 women completed the survey, for a response rate of 39%. Of these women, 5,599 were primiparous, completed the survey in the desired timeframe, submitted information on their urinary continence, and did not have incontinence before pregnancy. A total of 955 (17.1%) reported leakage of urine. Women who had vaginal deliveries were more likely to have urinary incontinence than women who had cesarean deliveries (odds ratio 4.96 [95% confidence interval 3.82–6.44], P<.001). This risk increased with assisted delivery and perineal laceration. No statistical difference in the incidence of urinary incontinence was found among women who had elective cesarean deliveries (6.1%), women who had cesarean deliveries after laboring (5.7%), and women who had cesarean deliveries after laboring and pushing (6.4%). CONCLUSION: Urinary incontinence is common in the immediate postpartum period after a woman's first pregnancy. Although vaginal delivery increases the risk of urinary incontinence, labor and pushing alone without vaginal delivery do not appear to increase this risk significantly. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II


The way people communicate — be it verbally, visually, or via text– is indicative of personality traits. In social media the concept of the status update is used for individuals to communicate to their social networks in an always-on fashion. In doing so individuals utilize various kinds of speech acts that, while primarily communicating their content, also leave traces of their personality dimensions behind. We human-coded a set of Facebook status updates from the myPersonality dataset in terms of speech acts label and then experimented with surface level linguistic features including lexical, syntactic, and simple sentiment detection to automatically label status updates as their appropriate speech act. We apply supervised learning to the dataset and using our features are able to classify with high accuracy two dominant kinds of acts that have been found to occur in social media. At the same time we used the coded data to perform a regression analysis to determine which speech acts are significant of certain personality dimensions. The implications of our work allow for automatic large-scale personality identification through social media status updates.


An evolutionary structural optimization (ESO) method is used for plastic design of frames. Based on safe theorems some criteria are derived and made an effort to satisfy them during the optimization process. In this regard, equilibrium is checked and yield condition is gradually satisfied during the optimization process. In this method, the amount of used material and the stiffness for each element are improved, simultaneously, to impose upper bound of moment in the element. Frame analysis and optimization algorithm are implemented as PLADOF (PLAstic Design of Frames) computer code. Four examples are presented to illustrate the performance of the algorithm.


Introduction: Newborn screening (NBS) for congenital hypothyroidism (CH) in the Netherlands consists of thyroxine (T4), thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), and T4-binding globulin (TBG) measurements to detect thyroidal CH and central CH (CH-C). CH-C is detected by T4 or a calculated T4/TBG ratio, which serves as an indirect measure of free T4. TSH and TBG are only measured in the lowest 20 and 5% of daily T4 values, respectively. A recent evaluation of the Dutch NBS for CH showed that the T4 and T4/TBG ratio contribute to the detection of CH-C but also lead to a low positive predictive value (PPV). Dried blood spot (DBS) reference intervals (RIs) are currently unknown and may contribute to improvement of our NBS algorithm. Materials and Methods: RIs of T4, TSH, TBG, and the T4/TBG ratio were determined according to Clinical & Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines in heel puncture cards from routine NBS in both sexes and at the common NBS sampling ages. Scatter plots were used to compare the healthy reference population to previously published data of CH-C patients and false positives. Results: Analyses of 1,670 heel puncture cards showed small differences between subgroups and led to the formulation of total sample DBS RIs for T4 (56–118 nmol/L), TSH (<2.6 mIU/L), TBG (116–271 nmol/L), and the T4/TBG ratio (>20). 46% of false-positive referrals based on T4 alone had a TBG below the RI, indicating preventable referral due to partial TBG deficiency. One case of CH-C also had partial TBG deficiency (TBG 59 and T4 12 nmol/L blood). Discussion/Conclusion: Established DBS RIs provided possibilities to improve the PPV of the Dutch CH NBS algorithm. We conclude that by taking partial TBG deficiency into account, approximately half of T4 false-positive referrals may be prevented while maintaining NBS sensitivity at the current level.


The criminal regulation of sexual harm in the United States is afflicted by deep pathology. Although sexual harm appears before the law in a variety of forms — from violent rape, to indecent exposure, to the sexual touching by an older child of a younger child — the prevailing U.S. criminal regulatory framework responds to this wide range of conduct with remarkable uniformity. All persons so convicted are labeled "sex offenders," and most are subjected to registration, community notification, and residential restrictions, among other sanctions. These measures purport to prevent the perpetration of further criminal sexual harm by publicizing the identities and restricting the residential opportunities of persons presumed to be strangers to their victims. But even as these measures render many subject to them homeless and unemployable, sexual abuse remains pervasive and significantly underreported in our schools, prisons, military, and between intimates in families. Thus, at once, the U.S. criminal regulatory regime constructs a peculiarly overbroad category of feared persons, compels a misguided approach to this population, and neglects the most prevalent forms of vulnerability to sexual predation and assault. This essay argues that an alternative social institutional reform framework could address pervasive forms of sexual harm more meaningfully and with fewer problems than attend the prevailing criminal regulatory framework. This alternative framework would depart in large measure from purportedly preventive post-conviction criminal regulation, focusing instead on institutional, structural, and social dynamics that enable sexual violence and abuse.


Under the guiding principles of its nuclear policy—maintaining a minimum deterrent, asserting a no-first-use pledge, and avoiding a nuclear arms race—China is modernizing its nuclear forces to assure a limited, reliable, and effective counterattack capability that will deter a first nuclear strike. China's nuclear modernization has been focusing on the quality rather than the quantity of its nuclear forces for the past three decades. There is no convincing evidence the country has expanded its arsenal significantly. Based on the Chinese government's statements about its nuclear modernization efforts and available public information, the author estimates that China has a total inventory of approximately 170 nuclear warheads. This estimate is significantly lower than previous appraisals. China could well have the smallest arsenal of nuclear weapons among the five original nuclear weapons states. One factor that could cause China to increase the size of its nuclear arsenal is a US deployment of additional or more effective missile defenses.


This paper focuses on the dynamic relationships among transport infrastructure, exports and economic growth in the United States using a multivariate time-series analysis. Results suggest that the formation of highways and streets affects economic growth indirectly through enhancing the capital stock of non-transport infrastructure and crowding in private capital. The reverse causality from economic output to highway and street infrastructure is observed. Aggregate capital stock of non-transport infrastructure, excluding national defense, has sustainable positive effects on economic output and exports over a number of years. Empirical evidence also shows that highway and street infrastructure and non-transport infrastructure Granger cause exports.


Aerosol optical depths (AOD) and Angström coefficients over Europe were retrieved using data from the ATSR-2 radiometer on board the ESA satellite ERS-2, for August 1997. Taking advantage of the nadir and forward view of the ATSR-2, the dual view algorithm was used over land to eliminate the influence of the surface reflection. Over sea the AOD was retrieved using only the forward observations. Retrieved aerosol optical properties are in good agreement with those from ground-based sunphotometers. The AOD and Angström coefficients together yield information on the column integrated effective aerosol distribution. Observed regional variations of the AOD and Angström coefficient are related to anthropogenic emissions of aerosol precursors such as SO 2 and NO x in the major European industrial and urban areas, and their subsequent transformation into the aerosol phase. The influence of anthropogenic aerosols such as ammonium sulphate and ammonium nitrate on the total AOD is estimated using a regional chemistry transport model. Sulphate is estimated to contribute from 15% in very clean areas to 70% in polluted areas, the contribution of nitrate is between 5% and 25% over most of Eu-rope. This paper shows the great importance of nitrate in summer over The Netherlands.


Several recent studies have developed the view, central to the Clinton administration's economic program, that this nation's infrastructure is crumbling and in crisis. They suggest that the public-sector capital stock has declined since the 1970s and that the decline has reduced productivity, with a corresponding decline of the nation's standard of living. According to that view, increased spending on infrastructure is an urgent national priority. The evidence reviewed here indicates that the view presented in those studies is based on a superficial reading of infrastructure trends and on a faulty view of the benefits of public capital formation. While public capital formation slowed in the 1970s, the slowing was concentrated in areas where demand for public capital was reduced by demographic and energy price changes, as well as by other economic influences. The slowing occurred at the state and local levels, not in federal government capital formation. The federal government provides little of the nation's infrastructure, and there has been little change in the per capita stock of federal nonmilitary capital since 1947. More important, the statistical basis of the claim that crumbling infrastructure has reduced the nation's productivity is seriously flawed. When the flaws are corrected, there is no evidence that an increase in public capital raises private productivity. There is a meaningful relationship between the two, but it indicates that higher productivity boosts the demand for infrastructure. Finally, a recent private-sector poll and recent voting behavior show no evidence of an infrastructure crisis. (Executive Summary)


Score-based diffusion models synthesize samples by reversing a stochastic process that diffuses data to noise, and are trained by minimizing a weighted combination of score matching losses. The log-likelihood of score-based diffusion models can be tractably computed through a connection to continuous normalizing flows, but log-likelihood is not directly optimized by the weighted combination of score matching losses. We show that for a specific weighting scheme, the objective upper bounds the negative log-likelihood, thus enabling approximate maximum likelihood training of score-based diffusion models. We empirically observe that maximum likelihood training consistently improves the likelihood of score-based diffusion models across multiple datasets, stochastic processes, and model architectures. Our best models achieve negative log-likelihoods of 2.83 and 3.76 bits/dim on CIFAR-10 and ImageNet 32x32 without any data augmentation, on a par with state-of-the-art autoregressive models on these tasks.


An important component of the parasite fauna of seabirds in arctic regions are the flukes (Digena). Different species of digeneans have life cycles which may consist of 1 intermediate host and no free-living larval stages, 2 intermediate hosts and 1 free-living stage, or 2 intermediate hosts and 2 free-living larval stages. This study examined the distribution of such parasites in the intertidal zones of the southern coast of the Barents Sea (northwestern Russia and northern Norway) by investigating 2 species of periwinkles (Littorina saxatilis and L. obtusata) which are intermediate hosts of many species of digeneans. A total of 26,020 snails from 134 sampling stations were collected. The study area was divided into 5 regions, and the number of species, frequency of occurrence and prevalence of different digenean species and groups of species (depending on life cycle complexity) were compared among these regions, statistically controlling for environmental exposure. We found 14 species of digeneans, of which 13 have marine birds as final hosts. The number of species per sampling station increased westwards, and was higher on the Norwegian coast than on the Russian coast. The frequency of occurrence of digeneans with more than 1 intermediate host increased westwards, making up a larger proportion of the digeneans among infected snails. This was significant in L. saxatilis. The prevalence of different species showed the same pattern, and significantly more snails of both species were infected with digeneans with complicated life cycles in the western regions. In L. saxatilis, environmental exposure had a statistically significant effect on the distribution of the most common digenean species. This was less obvious in L. obtusata. The causes of changing species composition between regions are probably (1) the harsh climate in the eastern part of the study area reducing the probability of successful transmission of digeneans with complicated life cycles, and (2) the distribution of different final hosts.


Visual input from the left and right visual fields is initially processed separately in the two cortical hemispheres, yet the visual system integrates these representations into a single continuous percept of space. In order to represent alignment and symmetry across the visual field, the visual system may continually recalibrate visual information across the hemifields. If so, any differences, such as misalignments across the two hemifields, should be adaptable. To test this, observers adapted to a set of large randomly rotating and moving colored lines in a circular Gaussian contrast aperture on a dark background, while performing a target detection task at fixation. The stimulus was split across the vertical meridian such that the lines in the left hemifield were shifted 1.8º higher than the lines in the right hemifield, or vice versa. An occluder strip (3.5º wide) eliminated visibility of the discontinuity in the lines at the vertical meridian, and observers were tested in a dark room with neutral density filter goggles to eliminate visual references. After 8 minutes of initial adaptation, observers performed a Vernier discrimination task in which they judged the relative positions of two brief (83 ms) horizontal lines straddling the vertical meridian. Vernier judgments reflected a negative aftereffect; an average shift of 0.08º in the direction of adaptation was required to null the perceived misalignment (p = 0.006). We replicated this result with adaptation to natural movies with the left and right halves of the image vertically misaligned. Results showed that a Vernier offset of 0.07º in the direction of adaptation was necessary to cancel the perceived misalignment (p = 0.02). Our results indicate that the visual system computes and dynamically recalibrates the relative alignment of elements across the visual fields-a mechanism that would help achieve and maintain continuous and stable perception of space. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Alternative dispute resolution (ADR), particularly mediation, plays a key role in reducing the costs of civil disputes by fomenting the early settlement of cases. This chapter discusses ADR processes; advantages or disadvantages of ADR and litigation; the cost of ADR; reference to ADR; and court involvement in ADR. Adjudicative ADR results in the third party neutral deciding the dispute or difference between the parties. Non-adjudicative ADR processes involve moving the parties towards reaching a compromise agreement between themselves. Rules of court require parties to consider using ADR. Sanctions may be imposed on parties who act unreasonably.


When ascending to the high altitude, people living in low altitude areas will suffer from hypoxia and acute mountain sickness. To reduce the risk of acute mountain sickness, based on the technology of oxygen concentration membrane, we developed a new portable oxygen enrichment device for individual. Eight healthy male subjects were screened and flew to Tibet (Lhasa, 3,700 m) to perform the experiment. First, subjects wore the oxygen enrichment device and performed an incremental exercise on cycle ergometer. The test included heart rate (HR), saturation of peripheral oxygen (SpO2) and physical work capacity (PWC). Then, after a rest period of 4 hours, the experimental protocol was repeated without oxygen enrichment device. The results showed that higher SpO2, lower HR, and better PWC (measured by the PWC-170) were observed from all the subjects 'with oxygen enrichment device' compared with 'without oxygen enrichment device' (P<0.01). We suggested that the new portable oxygen enrichment device would be effective in improving exercise performance when ascending to the high altitude.


We derive a dynamic theoretical model of renewable resource extraction. In the social optimum, maximum extraction occurs in the last period only, while in the unique subgame perfect Nash equilibrium, the resource is depleted immediately. The predictions are tested in a field experiment conducted at a recreational fishing pond. The subjects, experienced recreational fishermen, face a dynamic social dilemma, in which they risk depletion of the resource by overfishing. We find strong support for the Nash equilibrium. Fishermen exert as much effort in the last period as in preceding periods, and effort is independent of the stock of fish.


Glucoputranjivin (1) and isopropyl isothiocyanate (2) were isolated from an aqueous dry extract of Sisymbrium officinale and were identified by spectroscopic analysis. The antimutagenic activity of these compounds was evaluated in a bacterial reverse mutation assay using E. coli WP2, WP2uvrA, and WP2uvrA/pKM101 strains, in comparison with the extract. In the absence of the exogenous metabolic activation system S9, the thio compounds exerted antimutagenic activity against the direct-acting mutagen methyl methanesulfonate, in all strains. In the presence of S9, both thio compounds were active against the indirect mutagens 2-aminoanthracene, in WP2uvrA, and 2-aminofluorene, in WP2. The antimutagenicity seems to be due to specific mechanisms, such as the induction of the adaptive response or the excision repair system. Conversely, the inhibition of the CYP450-mediated activation of mutagens was not supported by the present results. An antimutagenic effect was also observed for the S. officinale aqueous extract against the arylamines 2AA and 2AF, but not against MMS. These results suggest that both thio compounds are involved in the antimutagenicity of S. officinale. The antimutagenicity of glucosinolate 1 is reported for the first time.


This paper reports a systematic evaluation study of a groupware application that was build to support communities of practice. The purpose of this study was to apply existing Evaluation Methodologies on groupware applications, record the results and point out the weak points of the evaluation scheme. Our main objective is not to evaluate the particular application but to record the whole evaluation process that was followed in order to reflect on the characteristics of the approach, point out the difficulties and significant parts of our study for further research in the field of evaluation of communities of practice groupware tools.