Human tumor cells in a 3-dimensional (3D) spheroid can reflect the characteristics of solid tumors by forming cell-cell interactions and microenvironments. This makes 3D cell culture useful for preclinical stability and drug efficacy tests. In this study, the drug delivery and action mechanisms in SK-N-SH neuroblastoma cells cultured in 3D spheroids were quantitatively compared to those cultured in 2D monolayers using confocal microscopy imaging and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. In the 3D spheroids, cisplatin only accessed the surface, accumulating in the cells on the spheroid exterior. As a result, an increased cellular amount of cisplatin was required to obtain similar cytotoxicity in the 3D spheroid cells to that in 2D monolayers. The mechanisms of reduction of drug efficacy by dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) in the 3D spheroid cells compared to those in the 2D monolayer cells were further investigated. DMSO reduced the drug cytotoxicity by forming stable DMSO-substituted compounds that inhibited the cellular uptake of cisplatin and DNA-Pt adduct formation. The quantitative analysis used in this study is promising for understanding drug delivery and drug action mechanisms in cells in various microenvironments.


Analytics has become a key element of the business decision process over the last decade. In today's competitive business world, organizations have found out that their data and how they use it can make them much more competitive. According to many research institutions (e.g., Gartner and McKinsey), the worldwide market for business analytics solutions in practice, research, and education is growing exponentially. As the use of analytics become widespread, business school graduates need to gain the necessary knowledge and skill sets to use these assets effectively. In the spirit of analytical thinking, we developed a practice-oriented business case that uses a sample scenario, managerial dashboards, betting templates, model repository and model performance management metrics that teaches predictive analytics concepts and decision making with incomplete information intended for MIS courses. Through exercises and interactions, students gain the skills, knowledge and experience necessary to be become effective decision makers through applying analytical thinking. Digital copies of workshop lesson plans with dashboard and data entry templates can be downloaded free of charge from the Teradata University Network.


Two new species of Phyxelididae are described from southern Africa: Xevioso cepfi sp. nov. (♂♀), from mountains in the Niassa Province of northern Mozambique, and X. megcummingae sp. nov. (♂♀), from urban Harare, northern Zimbabwe and the Viphya Mts in Malawi. They represent the northernmost localities of the genus. An identification key, partially adapted for the new species, is presented. The biogeographical importance of the mountain areas on both sides of the northern part of Lake Malawi is discussed.


Among many dimensional and dimensionless amplitude parameters, Kurtosis (4-th normalized moment of probability density function) is recognized to be the sensitive good parameter for machine diagnosis. Kurtosis has a value of 3.0 under normal condition and the value generally goes up as the deterioration proceeds. But there are cases that kurtosis value goes up and then goes down when damages increase as time passes. In this paper, a simplified calculation method of kurtosis is introduced for the analysis of impact vibration including affiliated impact vibration. Affiliated impact vibration is approximated by triangle and simplified calculation method is introduced. By varying the shape of triangle, various models are examined and above phenomenon is traced and its reason is clarified by the analysis. As peak value grows up, Kurtosis increases, then after the damage spread to other rolling elements, the width of the signal shape spread and Kurtosis falls. 1 College of Business Administration, Tokoha University. E-mail: email@example.com Article Info: Received : March 15, 2016. Revised : April 18, 2016. Published online : June 10, 2016. 86 Analysis of the behavior of kurtosis for machine diagnosis ... When the peak value arises after that, Kurtosis rises up again. Such movement can be confirmed. Many similar cases could be observed. Utilizing this method, the behavior of kurtosis is forecasted and analyzed while watching machine condition and correct diagnosis is executed. Mathematics Subject Classification: 60G35


A total of 26 litters of pigs (PIC 327 × 1050; initially 7.1 lb and 10 d of age) were used in a 31-d growth trial to evaluate the effects of creep feed pellet diameter on suckling pig and subsequent nursery pig growth performance. On d 10 of the suckling phase, sows and their litters were allotted to one of two dietary treatments by parity and pig weight in a completely randomized design with 13 replications per treatment. Starting on d 10, pigs were fed the same creep feed formulation, but pelleted using either a 1/8 in. (small) or 1/2 in. (large) die. Chromic oxide was included in the diets as a fecal marker, and fecal swabs were taken twice a day on d 14, 17, and 21 to determine the percentage of pigs that were consuming creep feed. On d 21, pigs were weaned, re-allotted to nursery treatments for 21 d, and fed in two phases. Phase 1 (d 0 to 7 postweaning) treatment diets were the same diets as fed during the suckling period, with 50% of the pigs remaining on their previously allotted pellet diameter treatment. The other 50% of pigs were re-allotted to the opposite pellet diameter treatment in the nursery, creating a 2 × 2 factorial with the main effects of pellet diameter during suckling and pellet diameter during the nursery phase. A common meal Phase 2 diet (d 7 to 21) was fed to all pigs. During the suckling phase (d 10 to 21), litters of pigs fed the large creep feed pellet had decreased (P < 0.03) pre-weaning mortality and tended (P < 0.06) to have greater litter BW gain and litter ADG. There were no significant differences observed in pig BW, pig BW gain, litter CV, or pigs identified as creep feed eaters. From d 17 to 21 of suckling, pigs fed the large creep feed pellet had increased (P < 0.05) average daily creep feed intake. During the nursery phase, no interactions were observed for Phase 1 (d 0 to 7) when experimental diets were fed. Feeding a large pellet during the nursery phase, regardless of previous creep feed treatment, increased (P < 0.05) ADFI from d 0 to 4, 4 to 7, and 0 to 7. Pigs fed the large pellet in the suckling phase, regardless of pellet diameter fed during the nursery phase, had improved (P < 0.01) ADG from d 0 to 7 after weaning. Results from this study indicate that feeding a large creep feed pellet may be correlated with reduced preweaning mortality. However, there is no improvement on individual suckling pig growth performance or percentage of pigs eating creep feed between feeding either a small or large diameter pellet. Feeding a large creep feed pellet improved F/G for the entire nursery phase, and feeding a large nursery pellet increased ADFI during the first week in the nursery.


Assuming that job search efficiency decreases with distance to jobs, workers' location in a city depends on spatial elements such as commuting costs and land prices and on labour elements such as wages and the matching technology. In the absence of moving costs, we show that there exists a unique equilibrium in which employed and unemployed workers are perfectly segregated but move at each employment transition. We investigate the interactions between the land and the labour market equilibrium and show under which condition they are interdependent. When relocation costs become positive, a new zone appears in which both the employed and the unemployed co-exist and are not mobile. We demonstrate that the size of this area goes continuously to zero when moving costs vanish. Finally, we endogeneize search effort, show that it negatively depends on distance to jobs and that long and short-term unemployed workers coexist and locate in different areas of the city. J.E.L. Classification: E24, J41, R14


Reverberation is a phenomenon in auditoriums such as concert halls and churches. Reverberation consists of a combination of multiple echoes, and its intensity and duration depend on factors such as the dimensions of the enclosure, materials used in construction and shape. Reverberation is desirable in music reproduction, however, it renders speech unintelligible. Thus there is a requirement to control reverberation of speech. This thesis work investigates the performances of different signal processing algorithms applied to suppress reverberation. Theoretical methods which have been verified with simulations are tested with real measurements. This gives a practical evaluation of the performance to be expected in the use of the algorithms.


The hypothalamus in the brain is the main center for appetite control and integrates signals from adipose tissue and the gastrointestinal tract. Antidepressants are known to modulate the activities of hypothalamic neurons and affect food intake, but the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which antidepressants modulate hypothalamic function remain unclear. Here we have investigated how hypothalamic neurons respond to treatment with antidepressants, including desipramine and sibutramine. In primary cultured rat hypothalamic cells, desipramine markedly suppressed the elevation of intracellular Ca2+ evoked by histamine H1 receptor activation. Desipramine also inhibited the histamine-induced Ca2+ increase and the expression of corticotrophin-releasing hormone in hypothalamic GT1-1 cells. The effect of desipramine was not affected by pretreatment with prazosin or propranolol, excluding catecholamine reuptake activity of desipramine as an underlying mechanism. Sibutramine which is also an antidepressant but decreases food intake, had little effect on the histamine-induced Ca2+ increase or AMP-activated protein kinase activity. Our results reveal that desipramine and sibutramine have different effects on histamine H1 receptor signaling in hypothalamic cells and suggest that distinct regulation of hypothalamic histamine signaling might underlie the differential regulation of food intake between antidepressants.


Analyzing patterns of forest pest infestation is necessary for monitoring the health of forested ecosystems because of the impact insects and diseases can have on forest structure and composition, biodiversity, and species distributions (Castello and others 1995). In particular, introduced nonnative insects and diseases can extensively damage the diversity, ecology, and economy of affected areas (Brockerhoff and others 2006, Mack and others 2000). Examining pest occurrences from a landscape-scale perspective is useful, given the regional extent of many infestations and the interaction between landscape patterns and the development of pest outbreaks (Holdenrieder and others 2004). The detection of geographic clusters of disturbance is one such landscape-scale approach, which allows for the identification of areas at greatest risk of significant impact and for the selection of locations for more intensive analysis.


Particles larger than a specific size have been thought to extravasate from tumor vessels but not from normal vessels. Therefore, various nanoparticles incorporating anticancer drugs have been developed to realize selective drug delivery to solid tumors. However, it is not yet clear whether nanoparticles extravasate readily from all tumor vessels including vessels of microtumors. To answer this question, we synthesized new polymeric micelles labeled with fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) and injected them into the tail vein of rats with implanted skinfold transparent chambers. We also analyzed, by means of time-lapse vital microscopy with image analysis, extravasation of FITC micelles from tumor vessels at different stages of growth of Yoshida ascites sarcoma LY80. Polymeric micelles readily leaked from vessels at the interface between normal and tumor tissues and those at the interface between tumor tissues and necrotic areas. The micelles showed negligible extravasation, however, from the vascular network of microtumors less than 1 mm in diameter and did not accumulate in the microtumor. Our results suggest that we must develop a novel therapeutic strategy that can deliver sufficient nanomedicine to microtumors.


This article presents a theoretical framework with which to discuss how non-state modes of security governance evolve in the context of state failure and/or collapse. To address this issue, we present the logic of security markets, which assumes that the evolution of security governance by non-state groups in failed states is a function of both resource availability and the strategies that armed groups apply to extract resources from the civilian population. Axiomatically, we expect that in the short term the central purpose for the use of force is survival and achieving the ability to finance one's capabilities to use force, although ultimately this also includes the seizure and control of territory. The main argument is that the changing competitive conditions in security markets – which we measure in terms of the total number of violent groups and their organizational design, size and strength – explain the rationales behind the decisions of armed groups either to use violence against the civilian population or to invest in the provision of security.


Mesoporous material SBA-15 of hexagonal structure was synthesised and its usefulness as a carrier for a poorly soluble drug – lacidipine (LA) – was tested. The source of silica was tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and the structure ordering agent was non-ionic surfactant Pluronic P123. SBA-15 with encapsulated LA was characterised by X-ray diffraction (XRD), infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetry (TG), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Adsorption of the therapeutically active substance was performed in anhydrous environment (chloroform). The content of the therapeutic substance in SBA-15 estimated from TG measurements reached 9%. The properties of the compound obtained were compared with those of a physical mixture of the components.


Climate change has impacted and will continue to impact indigenous peoples, their lifeways and culture, and the natural world upon which they rely, in unpredictable and potentially devastating ways. Many climate adaptation planning tools fail to address the unique needs, values and cultures of indigenous communities. This Tribal Climate Adaptation Menu, which was developed by a diverse group of collaborators representing tribal, academic, intertribal and government entities in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, provides a framework to integrate indigenous and traditional knowledge, culture, language and history into the climate adaptation planning process. Developed as part of the Climate Change Response Framework, the Tribal Climate Adaptation Menu is designed to work with the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS) Adaptation Workbook, and as a stand-alone resource. The Menu is an extensive collection of climate change adaptation actions for natural resource management, organized into tiers of general and more specific ideas. It also includes a companion Guiding Principles document, which describes detailed considerations for working with tribal communities. While this first version of the Menu was created based on Ojibwe and Menominee perspectives, languages, concepts and values, it was intentionally designed to be adaptable to other indigenous communities, allowing for the incorporation of their language, knowledge and culture. Primarily developed for the use of indigenous communities, tribal natural resource agencies and their non-indigenous partners, this Tribal Climate Adaptation Menu may be useful in bridging communication barriers for non-tribal persons or organizations interested in indigenous approaches to climate adaptation and the needs and values of tribal communities.


When Marvel UK's The Daredevils anthology began publication under editor Bernie Jaye in the early 1980s, Alan Moore was a central contributor for several issues. Presenting its flagship character Captain Britain with art by Alan Davis, (alongside reprints of the much-praised Frank Miller era of Daredevil that supplied the comic's title), certain issues, like number four (cover-dated April 1983) saw Moore's total contribution to a 56-page issue totalling sixteen pages (including the work with Davis, pages of reviews and prose articles, one on 'Sexism in Comics').

Moore's second feature was titled 'Blinded by the Hype: An Affectionate Character Assassination [of Stan Lee]', and had begun in the previous issue, #3. The articles, totalling almost 4,000 words, generated little coverage for the next few decades, as Moore became far more well-known for other non-fiction pieces (such as the much-reprinted Writing for Comics, 2012) not to mention his world-class contribution to comics writing. Lee's reputation, centring on the 1960s-era that Moore's article responded to most directly, went through various iterations, closely linked to debates and controversies over authorship and the claiming of credit for how classic Marvel comics were produced, but also, of course, being plied with respect and admiration for the transmedia successes of many of the characters at their centre.

The essay re-emerged when Sean Howe, author of Marvel Comics: The Untold Story shared its contents on Tumblr in 2012, with much of its content (including Moore's horror at the diving sales of superhero titles in the 1980s) being repeated by comics reporting sites. With reductively few words, Moore's assessment of Lee could be summarised as, a great risk-taker who allowed his principal act of radicalism to be diluted into the 'pale [,] ghost'-like simulacra presented by subsequent, benchmark-setting editors (Moore, 1983: 48). That this is imbricated with views of Marvel's historical merit and Lee's legacy produces an echo that is worth listening to again. This paper also considers Moore's own positioning as a provocative creator aware of Lee's abdication and a 'vacant throne' of comic universe-creating (1983: 48).


Fibrous nanosilica (KCC-1) supported ultrasmall platinum (Pt) nanoparticles (KCC-1/Pt) were prepared as novel nanocatalysts for hydrogenation reactions. The catalysts displayed high activity for the hydrogenation of 3-nitrostyrene with extraordinary selectivity. KCC-1-PEI/Pt (1%) was specifically found to be selective towards reduction to 3-vinylaniline, whereas 10% and 5% Pt loaded on KCC-1-PEI showed high activity and selectivity towards 3-ethylaniline. The role of platinum nanoparticle size on the selectivity of the catalysts was studied. We observed that catalysts with sub-nanometer Pt or pseudo-single atoms of Pt showed excellent selectivity, which decreased drastically with increase in particle size. Although most catalysts offer good activity or selectivity, these KCC-1 based catalysts offer both high activity and selectivity. The reaction proceeded smoothly at room temperature and KCC-1/Pt nanocatalysts showed a wide substrate scope for hydrogenation reactions under mild conditions, making protocols green and sustainable.


Critics of user charges for government primary health care have focussed on the deterrent effect these charges might have on the poor, but
there is little convincing empirical evidence that supports or contradicts these claims. The main research aims were to assess the equity effects of
user charges for curative PHC services on households in 2 rural districts of Sierra Leone, a country that has suffered severe economic hardship in
the last decade. Secondary objectives were to assess the feasibility of using objective means-testing to identify patients for exemption, and to
recoimiend a simple methodology for acquiring the same information for local, operational purposes.
A survey of 1156 households was carried out in the dry post-harvest season, and covered a range of household economic factors in addition to
the actions taken in response to all reported illness episodes. A followup survey was made the following rainy season to assess seasonal effects.
Supplementary information was obtained through focus groups and case studies. The data were analyzed within the framework of a conceptual model
which assumed that preferences, access, and ability to pay were the main factors (or groups of factors) that determined which of several medical and
non-medical treatment options would be used. Multiple regression models were used to assess the effects of each group of factors.
The main findings were that, while wealthier households used cheap market drugs and expensive medical treatment options more than the poor,
there was little difference in use of medium-priced PHC treatment. Household wealth and income factors correlated weakly with amounts actually
paid for treatment. The immediate availability of money in the household appeared to be the economic factor most affecting utilization, with
wealthier households nearly as likely = to have the amounts needed for PHC treatment on hand as poorer ones. Distance was a much more important
determinant of choice of treatment than was income or assets, as were certain preference factors. However, the poor spent a much higher
proportion of household income on treatment than the wealthy, so a way of limiting total expenditures for the poor would be more important than
limiting their deterrence. Several readily-ascertained household factors correlated well with household income, but means-testing was concluded to
be an inefficient way to accomplish the objective of selectively limiting expenditures unless incorporated into a prepayment scheme.


An edge-based smoothed finite element method (ES-FEM-T3) using triangular elements was recently proposed to improve the accuracy and convergence rate of the existing standard finite element method (FEM) for the solid mechanics analyses. In this paper, the ES-FEM-T3 is further extended to the dynamic analysis of 2D fluid–solid interaction problems based on the pressure-displacement formulation. In the present coupled method, both solid and fluid domain is discretized by triangular elements. In the fluid domain, the standard FEM is used, while in the solid domain, we use the ES-FEM-T3 in which the gradient smoothing technique based on the smoothing domains associated with the edges of triangles is used to smooth the gradient of displacement. This gradient smoothing technique can provide proper softening effect, and thus improve significantly the solution of coupled system. Some numerical examples have been presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed coupled method compared with some existing methods for 2D fluid–solid interaction problems.


This paper looks at the trade off between investment incentives and exit costs for the location of foreign direct investment (FDI). This issue does not appear to have been tackled in much detail in the literature. The analysis considers the effect of profit taxation (as a measure of investment incentives) and an index of hiring and firing costs (proxying exit costs) on the location of US outward FDI in 33 host countries. The results suggest that US FDI, in particular in manufacturing is negatively affected by the level of profit taxation and exit costs. Hence, if countries want to attract FDI it may not suffice that incentives are provided in order to ease the entry of multinationals. Instead, it also appears to be important that exit costs are at a level attractive to multinationals. In other words, multinationals may not check into an attractive looking Hotel California type host country if it is difficult to leave.


For decades, scholars and practitioners have criticized the deplorable quality of legal representation available to poor criminal defendants across the country. Yet states continue to give short shrift to the constitutional rights of poor defendants. This article proposes a new piece of federal legislation designed to ameliorate the chronic inadequacies of public defense systems, while respecting federalism and leaving in tact the states' ability to devise and implement appropriate public defense systems. The centerpiece of this proposed legislation is a cause of action in federal court that allows indigent defendants to seek equitable relief for systemic Sixth Amendment violations on a prospective basis. This paper proceeds in three parts. In Part I, I document the ongoing national crisis in public defense services and make the case for why Congress should tackle this crisis. The habeas system, currently the primary relief valve to police Sixth Amendment violations, simply is not set up for the task of vindicating the right to counsel. In Part II, I set forth the text of the proposed statute and address the mechanics of the statute in practice. In particular, I deal with the issues of who may sue and be sued under the statute; what constitutes a cognizable claim under the statute; and what a judicial remedy under the statute may look like given the abstention and separation-of-powers concerns in play. In Part III, I anticipate the reactions of two different camps: those readers who question the practical viability of this proposal and those who advocate alternative reform measures. I argue that Congress can enact this legislation pursuant to its civil rights enforcement authority and that there are reasons to be optimistic about its passage and its survival under judicial scrutiny. Finally, I conclude by reiterating a point that I have made in earlier works: systemic challenges to public defense systems require a federal forum. This legislation is designed to pave the way for such a forum, and even if Congress chooses not to pursue the path I describe herein, the federal government should continue to explore ways to bring such suits in federal court.


In this study, we present meta-sequential prediction (MSP), an unsupervised framework to learn the symmetry from the time sequence of length at least three. Our method leverages the stationary property (e.g. constant velocity, constant acceleration) of the time sequence to learn the underlying equivariant structure of the dataset by simply training the encoder-decoder model to be able to predict the future observations. We will demonstrate that, with our framework, the hidden disentangled structure of the dataset naturally emerges as a by-product by applying simultaneous block-diagonalization to the transition operators in the latent space, the procedure which is commonly used in representation theory to decompose the feature-space based on the type of response to group actions. We will showcase our method from both empirical and theoretical perspectives. Our result suggests that finding a simple structured relation and learning a model with extrapolation capability are two sides of the same coin. The code is available at https://github.com/takerum/meta_sequential_prediction.


Ecological and evolutionary research increasingly uses quantitative synthesis of primary research studies (meta‐analysis) for answering fundamental questions, informing environmental policy and summarizing results for decision makers. Knowing how meta‐analysis works is important for researchers so that their research can have broader impact. Meta‐analytic thinking encourages scientists to see single primary research studies as substantial contributions to a larger picture. To facilitate inclusion in a meta‐analysis, relevant primary research studies must be found and basic information about the methods and results must be thoroughly, clearly and transparently reported. While many published papers provide this information, it is common for essential data to be omitted, leading to study exclusion from meta‐analyses. We provide guidelines for correctly reporting basic data needed from primary studies in ecology and evolutionary biology so that they can be included in meta‐analyses, together with examples that show how data should be reported to enable calculation and analysis of effect sizes, and how data should be made accessible. These guidelines are important for reporting research results in general, whether or not results are included in subsequent meta‐analyses, because they are necessary for the interpretation and assessment of study outcomes. Increased implementation of these guidelines by authors, editors and publishers, and reinforcement by funders, will foster higher quality and more inclusive syntheses, further the goals of transparency and reproducibility in science, and improve the quality and value of primary research studies.


This paper investigates the main individual driving forces of Hungarian household credit risk and measures the shockabsorbing capacity of the banking system in relation to adverse macroeconomic events. The analysis relies on survey evidence gathered by the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) in January 2007. Our study presents three alternative ways of modelling household credit risk, namely the financial margin, the logit and the neural network approaches, and uses these methods for stress testing. Our results suggest that the main individual factors affecting household credit risk are disposable income, the income share of monthly debt servicing costs, the number of dependants and the employment status of the head of the household. The findings also indicate that the current state of indebtedness is unfavourable from a financial stability point of view, as a relatively high proportion of debt is concentrated in the group of risky households. However, risks are somewhat mitigated by the fact that a substantial part of risky debt is comprised of mortgage loans, which are able to provide considerable security for banks in the case of default. Finally, our findings reveal that the shock-absorbing capacity of the banking sector, as well as individual banks, is sufficient under the given loss rate (LGD) assumptions (i.e. the capital adequacy ratio would not fall below the current regulatory minimum of 8 per cent) even if the most extreme stress scenarios were to occur.


A default in the Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS) occurs when a Direct Clearer is unable to settle its final obligation. In August 2012, the Canadian Payments Association amended the ACSS by-law and rules to repeal the unwinding provisions from the ACSS default framework. Without unwinding, payment items are no longer returned by the defaulter to the other participants as a means of reducing the defaulter's final obligation. Instead, the other Direct Clearers (survivors) pay only additional settlement obligations to cover the defaulter's shortfall. To assess the potential exposures of an ACSS default without unwinding, we use simulations to estimate the value of additional settlement obligations for each survivor and compare these exposures to their capital and liquid assets. Results indicate that these exposures are indeed manageable by survivors and, therefore, that the ACSS does not pose systemic risk.


Subjective experiments were conducted to evaluate the effect of a streamer plasma air purifier on perceived air quality, SBS symptoms and performance of office work during 5-hour exposure of 32 recruited subjects in field laboratory in which real materials were used to establishing a realistic level of air pollution. Intensity of SBS symptoms were indicated using visual-analogue scales. Subjects' performance was evaluated with several computer tasks. The results show that operation of the air purifiers improved perceived air quality and reduced the odor intensity of indoor air. Eye dryness symptom was found significantly improved when the air purifiers were used but no other SBS symptoms or performance of office work were improved when the air purifiers were in operation compared to the condition when they were off.


A hand vein authentication system in which the identity of an individual can be readily confirmed upon gripping a handle is proposed. This recognition method incorporates infrared light-emitting diode (LED) onto a door handle and sets a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera on the other side of the hand. It builds on fuzzy c-means clustering and parallel neural networks (NNs); moreover, it is expected to solve the pattern recognition problem in large-scale databases using NNs due to its self-learning and parallel processing capabilities and by effectively incorporating training patterns. The experimental results validate the e±ciency of the proposed algorithm.


This completely revised second edition presents an introduction to statistical pattern recognition. Pattern recognition in general covers a wide range of problems: it is applied to engineering problems, such as character readers and wave form analysis as well as to brain modeling in biology and psychology. Statistical decision and estimation, which are the main subjects of this book, are regarded as fundamental to the study of pattern recognition. This book is appropriate as a text for introductory courses in pattern recognition and as a reference book for workers in the field. Each chapter contains computer projects as well as exercises.


In this work, we fabricated gold-nanowires (Au NWs) on flexible substrates by direct current electrochemical deposition. Then, we electropolymerized a polypyrrole layer onto the Au NWs via cyclic voltammetry (CV) as the molecular imprinted polymer biosensor to detect dopamine (DA). The influence of the scan rate of CV for the sensor preparation was optimized. CV and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) were used to measure different DA concentrations. The Au/polypyrrole core/shell nanowires sensor showed good DPV signal intensity at 805 μA mM−1 and the determined linear range for DA was 4 × 10−7 to 1 × 10−5 M (N = 3).


Recent topics on PM2.5 and O3 in Japan have been briefly discussed in this paper. In the first part, Japan's policy measures for PM2.5, including the establishment of Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) and monitoring stations, are described. Additionally, we discuss the monitoring data obtained and the exceedance of EQS in the years 2010-2013. The nationwide averaged data shows that sulfate and EC/OC are the most prominent components of PM2.5 and contribute almost equally to it . Secondly, long-term variation of O3 (Ox) and its precursors, NO2 and NMHC/VOC (non-methane hydrocarbon/volatile organic compound) are presented. The paradox of the increase in the average concentration of O3 in spite of the decrease in ambient concentrations of NO2 and VOC is discussed. The phenomenon was found to reflect three components: (1) a decrease in the NO titration effect, (2) an increase in transboundary transport, and (3) a decrease in in situ photochemical production. It is proposed t hat the integrated approach to mitigation measures for PM2.5 and O3 pollution should be considered within a framework of the SLCPs (short-lived climate pollutants) co-control policy.hat the integrated approach to mitigation measures for PM2.5 and O3 pollution should be considered within a framework of the SLCPs (short-lived climate pollutants) co-control policy.hat the integrated approach to mitigation measures for PM2.5 and O3 pollution should be considered within a framework of the SLCPs (short-lived climate pollutants) co-control policy.hat the integrated approach to mitigation measures for PM2.5 and O3 pollution should be considered within a framework of the SLCPs (short-lived climate pollutants) co-control policy.hat the integrated approach to mitigation measures for PM2.5 and O3 pollution should be considered within a framework of the SLCPs (short-lived climate pollutants) co-control policy.


Lab-on-a-chip devices are in strong demand as versatile and robust pumping techniques. Here, we present a cavitation based technique, which is able to pump a volume of 4000 mm within 75 ms against an estimated pressure head of 3 bar. The single cavitation event is created by focusing a laser pulse in a conventional PDMS microfluidic chip close to the channel opening. High-speed photography at 1 million frames s resolves the flow in the supply channel, pump channel, and close to the cavity. The elasticity of the material affects the overall fluid flow. Continuous pumping at repetition rates of up to 5 Hz through 6 mm long square channels of 20 mm width is shown. A parameter study reveals the key-parameters for operation: the distance between the laser focus and the channel, the maximum bubble size, and the chamber geometry.


The areal extent of freely floating aquatic vegetation (FFAV), treated annually with herbicides in Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimmee River, was compiled, and preliminary estimates were made of the amounts of detritus produced and total nitrogen (N) and total phosphorus (P) released. On average, over the 24-yr period of record for Lake Okeechobee from 1975 through 1998, 14,281 ± 1,544 metric tons (m.t.) of detritus was produced, and 285 ± 31 m.t. of N and 74 ± 8 m.t. of P were returned to the water column. Nutrients released in the lake by treated FFAV were estimated to have a molar N to P ratio of 9:1, and to have ranged minimally from 1 to 17 percent and from 4 to 49 percent of its external annual N and P loads, respectively. In Lake Okeechobee, treated FFAV was heterogeneously distributed, and occurred primarily in the southern and western near-shore regions. Fisheating Bay received the largest amount of this treated material. Treatable FFAV was positively correlated with lake stage. In the Kissimmee River, Lake Okeechobee's main inflow, on average, over its 16-yr period of record from 1983 through 1998, 4,427 ± 593 m.t. of detritus was produced, and 88 ± 12 m.t. of N and 23 ± 3 m.t. of P were returned to the water column. Some of these nutrients and detritus likely reach Lake Okeechobee and contribute to its external N, P and detrital loads. Treated FFAV has substantially increased the amount of, and temporally and spatially altered, both detritus production in, and the internal N and P loading to, both Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimmee River. These nutrient and detrital additions only further exacerbate the already ongoing processes of cultural eutrophication within these waterbodies.


Sediment-water interactions play an important role in influencing the water quality of aquatic systems. Water quality management of freshwater systems needs to take into account this behaviour, which depends largely on early diagenetic processes that condition the physical and biogeochemical properties of the sediment. Among these processes, the redox transformations resulting from the oxidation of organic matter by the microbial activity have a major influence on the biogeochemical properties of sediments. In particular, these reactions condition the vertical profiles of nutrient concentrations, pH and metals along the sedimentary column. This paper presents a method which couples both experimental and modelling approaches in order to characterise and analyse the biogeochemistry of freshwater sediments. The modelling approach is based on a coupling between biogeochemical processes and interstitial diffusion. As pore water pH influences the behaviour of the biogeochemical species, we have extended these models to allow for the calculation of pH by taking into account the inventory of protons consumed or produced by different biogeochemical reactions. In parallel, an analytical protocol has been developed to obtain vertical distributions of the main physicochemical parameters in natural sediments cores. To illustrate this approach, we apply our method to sediments cores sampled in the Durance, a river in the south-east of France.


Human beings are born with a remarkable visual apparatus, but even if all the parts – lens, retina, optic nerve, and so on – are present in working order, seeing remains at least in large part a learned skill. This is reflected in the fact that some people can see and understand things that others find meaningless or even fail to notice. One striking example is the radiology education of medical students and residents, who over the course of their training move from not knowing what they are looking at to quickly making complex diagnoses. In this session, we consider how seeing is learned and weigh the respective contributions of science, technology, and the arts in cultivating this remarkable human capacity.


With this White Paper, the current state of scientific knowledge on human disorders related to gluten and wheat is presented, with reference to other grains such as spelt, barley, rye, and oats. Backgrounds are described of coeliac disease (gluten intolerance), wheat allergies and any kind of wheat sensitivity, followed by strategies that are suggested to reduce disease prevalence and to mitigate symptoms. Research is proposed that focuses on the possibilities to modify raw materials and process technologies for the development of products that may give rise to reduced intolerance and sensitivity reactions to wheat proteins and related components. These strategies can be implemented at short, medium or long term and are of interest to the food sector, in particular the bakery, pasta and breakfast cereal segments.


Hierarchical Zn-doped SnO2 nano-urchins decorated on RGO nanosheets were fabricated for supercapacitor applications. In this study, SnO2 nanospheres were doped with Zn2+ to tailor their electrical and morphological properties. Zn2+ doping of the SnO2 nanospheres prevented Sn clustering and thereby reduced the particle size leading to the formation of urchin-like nanostructures. These urchins with a high surface area and short transport paths can offer high capacitive performance by assembling with RGO nanosheets. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction analyses confirmed the presence of SnO2 crystal planes and successful doping of the Zn2+. The incorporation of the RGO nanosheets augmented the coulombic efficiency, specific capacitance, and cycling performance. The enhancement of the capacitive behavior resulted from the synergistic effects owing to the combined properties of pseudocapacitance and double layer capacitance. The composite electrode material offered a specific capacitance of 635 F g−1 at a current density of 1 A g−1 and has a high cycling stability up to 5000 cycles with a capacitance retention of 78.4%.


Recent developments in the natural sciences make a renewed dialogue with the humanities possible. Previously, humanists resisted transferring scientific paradigms into fields like history, fearing materialism and determinism would deprive experience of its meaning and people of their freedom. At the same time, scientists were realizing that deterministic materialism made understanding phenomena like life virtually impossible. Scientists escaped the irony of describing a nature to which they did not belong by also discovering that their knowledge can never be complete and that descriptions of nature at the subatomic level were essentially random. These developments, as Monod said, weakened the "Modern" paradigm sufficiently to make life scientifically possible. To understand how life might actually exist, however, scientists had to move beyond laments about observations losing information and concentrate on how nature creates information. Nature creates information in the process of reducing thermodynamic gradients and stores created information in self-organized systems. Nature thus becomes historical, for it is defined by qualitative changes accumulating over time because of unpredictable contingencies. This paper will explore the possibility that the patterned processes by which nature changes apply in the human realm, where interactions can change people and created information can be stored in self-organized societies. Values, Ethics and Morals (VEMs) are the qualitatively new information stored in social systems. VEMs script the actions structuring societies, demonstrating there is meaning in history and solving the problem of how sequences of events –"chronicles"–become narratives. Moreover, when societies compete, their system-structuring information is tested in the same way natural selection tests DNA. Thus, the succession of social systems suggests there is a meaning of history. The meaning of history need be no more transcendental or intended than Darwinian evolution. But if organs and traits can have biological value without implying design, socially constructed attributes like morality, consciousness, and freedom can be valued without supposing history has an ultimate or eternal purpose. Aspiring to show how the cacophony of historical events becomes a cosmos, a "well-ordered" context in which changes become meaningful, this sketch suggests a new understanding of nature may provide a basis for ethics.


ABSTRACT Following Pawson and Tilley's principles of realist evaluation and the context–mechanism–outcome (CMO) framework, this paper conducts a process evaluation of an environmental social marketing intervention in a heritage tourism organisation. Social marketing and employee environmental interventions have received relatively scant attention in tourism. Additionally, prior literature mostly focused on the evaluation of intervention outcomes (i.e. how far the intervention produces precise targeted outcomes) and ignores the importance of process evaluation (i.e. identifying what works, for whom, under which circumstances and how, plus issues of intervention maintenance). This paper fills this literature gap using realist evaluation theory and academic perspectives, as well as via the reflections of practitioners involved in intervention design and delivery. Findings suggest that a good understanding of the tourism and organisational context (regarding the dimensions of structure, culture, agency and relations) and the use of tailored, action-focused mechanisms (for each context dimension) are critical to achieving transformational outcomes in environmental interventions in cultural heritage organisations. Based on these findings, it is concluded that the CMO is a useful framework for assessing environmental social marketing interventions in tourism (both for heritage and other tourism organisations). Implications for tourism practice and further research directions are also discussed.


Objective: Prevalence estimates for mood and anxiety disorders in Canada are available, but various methodological approaches have produced inconsistent results. Simulation studies involve careful examination of available data by an expert modelling team working together with subject matter experts. Simulation can integrate datasets and literature-based estimates from various sources into a coherent mathematical representation of the underlying total population epidemiology. Methods: Supported by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, a simulation modelling project for mental disorders in Canada was recently undertaken. The modelling was carried out by RiskAnalytica using their Life at Risk platform. Specification and calibration of the model occurred in consultation with national and international experts. Results: To reconcile estimates of incidence and prevalence, recall bias needed to be represented in the model. This suggests that the population prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders has been underestimated by population surveys and may explain a discrepancy observed in the age-specific prevalence in population surveys as compared with studies using administrative data. The number of Canadians with mood and anxiety disorders is projected to increase in upcoming decades as a result of population growth, but, based on conservative assumptions, an increased prevalence proportion is not anticipated. Conclusions: Simulation models can act as a platform for economic analyses and epidemiologic projections and can support the rapid exploration of what-if scenarios, thereby informing policy decisions. This first national-level simulation provides a high level overview of mood and anxiety disorder epidemiology in Canada.


The use of technology and learning management systems (LMS) has significantly advanced program assessment in higher education. Accreditors and researchers have affirmed that systematic approaches to program assessment are paramount for improving student learning and making strategic decisions in academic units. These structured approaches contribute to providing consistent and reliable data that can be used to make more informed decisions for planning and determining resource allocations. One of the challenges institutions face is creating a system that is adaptable and can be used across academic units and accrediting bodies. Another challenge is finding new ways to encourage or incentivize faculty to actively engage in assessment related activities. This study focusses on the development and implementation of an assessment framework for three construction related degree programs. The system was designed to be adaptable to accommodate the reporting needs of multiple accrediting bodies and to encourage faculty engagement in the process. The framework has been implemented and used in writing an accreditation self-study. The system has undergone a complete implementation cycle with most courses in the curriculum and this study can be viewed as ongoing in nature.


As a staple food crop, rice is important for the food security of Sri Lanka; but yield is affected by many factors. Crop clinics are a supportive tool to the existing agricultural extension system which can deliver quality advice to farmers. The present study evaluated crop clinic data on the diagnosis of rice plant health problems as well as plant protection advices for farmers in Sri Lanka. A total of 1,032 crop clinic queries, as captured in the database of the Plant-wise Online Management System were analysed for the period between June 2012 and August 2016. The validity of diagnosis based on symptom descriptions made for crop samples brought by farmers to the clinics were evaluated. More than 60% of the queries were correctly diagnosed. More than 50% of valid recommendations were observed and it was not significant over the time. To assess the relationship between correct diagnosis and valid recommendations with Plant Doctor's extension experience, regression analyses were used. There was no significant trend of correct diagnosis and valid recommendations with growing agricultural extension experience. The study recommends advanced training for Plant Doctors to improve symptoms description and quality of recommendations.


In this technical note, we study temporal logic properties of trajectories of discrete-time piecewise affine (PWA) systems. Specifically, given a PWA system and a linear temporal logic formula over regions in its state space, we attempt to find the largest region of initial states from which all trajectories of the system satisfy the formula. Our method is based on the iterative computation and model checking of finite quotients. We illustrate our method by analyzing PWA models of two synthetic gene networks.


Mitochondria ubiquitin ligase 1 (Mul1) is a mitochondrial protein located on the outer mitochondrial membrane of the organelle. Mul1 consists of 352 amino acids, has two putative transmembrane domains (at the N- (called here TM1) and C-terminus (TM2) respectively), as well as a C-terminal RING domain. Mul1 has been previously reported to have E3 ligase activity, while a role has been suggested in modifying mitochondrial dynamics. Furthermore, Mul1 was originally identified from a genomic screen as a putative activator of the prototypic inflammatory transcription factor, NFκB, which indicates a possible role in the innate immunity. Attention in this project is focused on the role of Mul1 in regulating RIG-I-like Receptors (RLRs) mediated antiviral responses. RLRs consist of RIG-I and MDA5, which are cytoplasmic pathogen recognition receptors that recognise viral RNA species during viral infection and transmit downstream signalling via a mitochondrial adaptor protein known as MAVS, resulting in the expression of proinflammatory and antiviral genes such as NFκB and Type I interferon. Excessive inflammation and activation of antiviral response can be detrimental to the host and clinically manifests as chronic inflammation or death. Therefore, the activation of RLRs and its downstream signalling require tight regulations to avoid excessive inflammation. In my research, I have demonstrated that Mul1 colocalises with MAVS on the mitochondria by immunocytochemical staining and confocal imaging. Furthermore, Mul1 was found to interact with the constitutively active forms of both RIG-I and MDA5 in coimmunoprecipitation studies. Previous reports have shown that RIG-I and MDA5 require polyubiquitination for activation and signal transduction. In the presence of Mul1, I found that there was enhanced SUMOylation of the RLRs, and reduced polyubiquitination of these receptors. These findings suggest that Mul1 may antagonise the polyubiquitination, and thus the activation status, of RLRs by regulating the post-translational modification of these receptors. To understand the role of Mul1 in RIG-I and MDA5 mediated antiviral responses, Mul1 siRNA depletion was performed in primary human lung fibroblasts, resulting in potentiated antiviral response following stimulation with Sendai virus, influenza A virus and transfected poly(I:C), which activate the RLRs. Together, these studies suggest a role for Mul1 as a negative regulator of RLR mediated antiviral signalling. This thesis also presents the first ever characterisation of a Mul1 gene-deficient mouse model. The Mul1 expressing gene in this mouse model is replaced with the gene expressing a LacZ reporter under the control of the natural Mul1 promoter, allowing for the assessment of endogenous Mul1 expression levels in a range of tissues using LacZ reporter assays. Mul1-/- mice exhibit significantly smaller body weight (22%) compared to wild type mice. Quantitative RT-PCR and LacZ reporter assay revealed that Mul1 is highly expressed in the brain, heart and testes. Intriguingly, preliminary studies using transmission electron micrographs of liver tissues from a Mul1-/- mouse demonstrated that although the mitochondrial morphology is normal, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) displayed abnormal morphology. This finding, although inconclusive at present, provides clues suggesting that although Mul1 is a mitochondrial protein, it may have a more crucial function in maintaining ER morphology and the interaction between ER and mitochondria. Critically, in vivo influenza A infection of Mul1-/- mice further corroborated the results from the in vitro infection experiments, in which Mul1-/- mice demonstrated potentiated antiviral response after infection. Since Mul1 is a mitochondrial protein, I have also investigated the structural determinants required for the targeting of Mul1 to the mitochondria. Using immunocytochemical staining and confocal imaging, with the ectopic expression of Mul1 (and mutants with deletions with respect to TM1 and TM2), I have shown that TM1 appears to be more important for Mul1 targeting to the mitochondria compared to TM2. Critically, Mul1 expression at high levels was associated with fragmented mitochondrial morphology, suggesting that Mul1 may alter mitochondrial morphology only when present at high levels. Significantly, mitochondrial morphology did not differ between wild type and Mul1-/- MEFs. Hence, Mul1 may not be essential in maintaining the processes governing mitochondrial morphology under normal circumstances, but possibly under conditions of increased expression in yet to be identified conditions. Overall, the findings from my research support the hypothesis that Mul1 is a negative regulator of RLR antiviral signalling. Mul1 appears to alter RLR activation by means of regulating the post-translational modification of these receptors. In vivo experiments provided further clues on the biological role of Mul1 beyond the regulation of RLR signalling. Furthermore, the possible role of Mul1 in maintaining ER morphology and ER-mitochondrial interaction may also contribute to the regulation of essential metabolic and physiological functions where Mul1 is highly expressed, such as the brain, heart and testes. In conclusion, this thesis has provided the first crucial insight of the biological role of Mul1, a novel mitochondrial protein, and provides the basis for further studies in elucidating the role of Mul1 in cellular function. Ultimately, understanding the regulation of inflammation pathways will provide greater insights into disease progression and development, leading to opportunities of therapeutic intervention.


Local government in South Africa is no longer simply an extension of the national and provincial spheres of government; it has become an independent sphere in its own right. Steady progress has been made in the delivery of services since the advent of a democratic and developmental state in 1994. The 1996 South African Constitution positions local government as an independent sphere of the government, interrelated to and interdependent with the national and provincial governments. To give it a collective voice, local government speaks from a position of strength through organised local government, as embodied in the South African Local Government Association (hereafter referred to as SALGA). The government is aware of the challenges facing local government service delivery, particularly in the rural areas, where progress in service delivery has been slow. During the former Presidential Izimbizo's, the gap between the government's delivery efforts and communities' ability to benefit from that delivery was repeatedly highlighted. The introduction of community development workers (CDWs) is to assist the three spheres of government to ensure that service delivery reaches the intended recipients effectively and efficiently (IDASA, 2006: On- Line). It was against this background that community development workers (CDWs) were introduced as a link between the government and communities. CDWs are defined as participatory change agents who work in the community in which the live, and to whom they have to answer for their activities. They are required to help members of the community to improve their living standards and change circumstances. To do this, CDWs are expected to make the poor aware of their constitutional rights such as their right to basic service delivery including social grants and assist community members to understand how they can participate in the development plans for their communities. CDWs are expected to facilitate community participation in policy-making, implementation and in service delivery (Republic of South Africa. Grassroots Innovation, 2007). In this article, the role of community development workers in enhancing service delivery within the Bitou Local Municipality is discussed. The article concludes with recommendations based on an empirical survey to establish the extent to which CDWs play a role in improving service delivery and enhancing the accessibility of government services to communities. Keywords: Bitou Local Municipality, local governance, community development workers, participation, ward committees Disciplines: Public Management and Administration, social science research methodology, development studies


In this article, it is argued that the ESOL context provides an excellent opportunity for challenging homophobic social representations and for enabling some students to explore alternative representations regarding sexuality and sexual orientation. First, an integrative theoretical framework from social psychology is presented as a means of understanding and predicting responses to discussions around LGB identities. Second, a case study on the identities and experiences of British Asians is provided to elucidate the underpinnings of homophobia. Third, some speculative observations are made about the potential implications of sexuality-based discussions in the ESOL classroom for students and teachers. A key argument is that the topic of sexuality should be introduced in the ESOL classroom in ways that do not threaten culturally and psychologically valued identities.


We address the learning of trust based on past observations and context information. We argue that from the truster's point of view trust is best expressed as one of several relations that exist between the agent to be trusted (trustee) and the state of the environment. Besides attributes expressing trustworthiness, additional relations might describe commitments made by the trustee with regard to the current situation, like: a seller offers a certain price for a specific product. We show how to implement and learn contextsensitive trust using statistical relational learning in form of the Infinite Hidden Relational Trust Model (IHRTM). The practicability and effectiveness of our approach is evaluated empirically on user-ratings gathered from eBay. Our results suggest that (i) the inherent clustering achieved in the algorithm allows the truster to characterize the structure of a trust-situation and provides meaningful trust assessments; (ii) utilizing the collaborative filtering effect associated with relational data does improve trust assessment performance; (iii) by learning faster and transferring knowledge more effectively we improve cold start performance and can cope better with dynamic behavior in open multiagent systems. The later is demonstrated with interactions recorded from a strategic two-player negotiation scenario.


The primary focus of this article was to review the current understanding of motor imagery (MI) as a cognitive process and thereby explore correlated biosignals for devising advanced brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) helping toward overcoming the limitations of current systems.To this end, the article first outlines the process of performing MI, ensuring kinesthetic experiences, and explores the literature to ascertain main brain areas that are activated during MI. Mental chronometry as a conventional method of assessing MI is then discussed, and its main limitation of not being able to measure MI vividness is highlighted. Neurophysiology and neuroelectrophysiology of MI are then analyzed to explain the phenomena of event-related desynchronization and event-related synchronization occurring in the sensorimotor rhythms, used as the principal feature in electroencephalogram-based BCIs.The current understanding on the effect of MI on regional cerebral blood flow and neural metabolism is then reviewed with the objective of explaining how functional magnetic resonance imaging and near infrared spectroscopy can be used to devise a metabolic BCI system.The literature is then reviewed to explore the current understanding on the effect of MI on peripheral nervous system causing variations in autonomic responses. Most importantly, the review identifies a range of biosignals including oxygen consumption, respiratory rate, heart rate, and skin resistance, which have strong potential for developing enhanced BCI devices either alone or in combination with other signals including electroencephalogram and near-infrared spectroscopy, through multisensor integration.


Preparing teachers to teach computing is more than a matter of re-purposing existing courses for computer science majors. The tasks, knowledge, and skills of a computing teacher in primary or secondary school are dramatically different than that of a software developer. Computing teachers need pedagogical content knowledge, which includes awareness of common misconceptions, methods for diagnosing those misconceptions, and interventions to help students develop more robust conceptions. The job of a software developer requires knowledge and skills that are irrelevant for a computing teacher. To meet the worldwide need for computing teachers, we must design new kinds of learning opportunities that address the requirements of teachers.
 In this talk, I will present the findings from our studies of the best practices of successful computing teachers, and describe our efforts in finding new ways to support teacher learning about computing. We find that our most successful teachers read and comment code all the time, but almost never write code. The most successful teachers know the content, but also know the most common misconceptions for that content. We find that on-line learning is challenging for teachers to fit into their lives, but we can make learning opportunities that teachers will stick with if we emphasize activities that are lower-cognitive than just writing code on a blank sheet of paper.


A growing body of literature has shown that one perceptual modality can be systematically associated with sensation in another. However, the cross-modal relationship between linguistic sounds and motions (i.e., motion-sound symbolism) is an extremely understudied area of research. Against this background, this paper examines the cross-modal correspondences between categories of consonants on one hand and different acceleration profiles of motion stimuli on the other. In the two experiments that we conducted, we mechanically manipulated the acceleration profiles of the stimuli while holding the trajectory paths constant, thus distinguishing the effect of acceleration profiles from that of motion path shapes. The results show that different acceleration profiles can be associated with different types of consonants; in particular, movements with acceleration and deceleration tend to be associated with a class of sounds called obstruents, whereas movements without much acceleration tend to be associated with a class of sounds called sonorants. Moreover, the current experiments show that this sort of cross-modal correspondence arises even when the stimuli are not presented visually, namely, when the participants' hands were moved passively by a manipulandum. In conclusion, the present study adds an additional piece of evidence demonstrating that bodily action-based information, i.e., proprioception as a very feasible candidate, could lead to sound symbolic patterns.


With challenges from global climate change, it is imperative to enhance food production using climate-smart technologies and maximize farm efficiency. Fifty-six households in Rudhiapada and Badamahulidiha, Odisha, India were selected to evaluate farmers' efficiency using conservation agriculture (CA) cropping system practices. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) and regression analysis were used to estimate farmer efficiency and the determinants of yield. Conventional tillage with the local maize cultivar was compared to reduced tillage with improved maize cultivar and maize intercropped with cowpea. Badamahulidiha outperformed Rudhiapada in yields for all cropping systems. This could be attributed to lower input use and exposure to NGO training. The current efficiency level of farmers' productivity was between 0.4 and 0.7. Inputs such as labor, seed, and fertilizers were found to be significant in increasing yield except for female labor and phosphate. This finding suggests conservation agriculture cropping system is female friendly. The conservation agriculture cropping systems improved maize yields by 60% to 70% when compared to conventional farming system. Combining conservation agriculture practices with improving efficiency of farmers in optimal use of the inputs can contribute substantially to productivity, thus enhancing food security and nutrition in the face of climate change in India and other tropical areas.


This research aim to study growth of fundamental crop Agathis alba at various model agroforestry and study the condition economic social of society with existence of model agroforestry.
This research is executed in Countryside of Bendosari, RPH Kedung Rejo BKPH Pujon KPH Malang, where program of PHBM with system of agroforestry have been done by forest countryside society. Research place determined intentionally (purposive), that at forest areal produce A. alba. Execution of research started by 15 - 27 September 2008.
Research object is forest area in Countryside of Bendosari, managed RPH Kedung Rejo with system of agroforestry, while subjek which is meant in this research is countryside society around direct forest in concerned in development of agroforestry and enlist as Group Farmer Forest member ( KTH).
Equipments used for research to cover : stationery write, gauge, phi-ban, christenmeter, pole, compass, camera, map of location, sheet note perception (tallysheet), calculator, sheet of quisioner and string.
Method to be used for the intake of example of object the checked is systematic of sampling of with start random with sampling intensity 2,5 %. In this method, unity of sampling is check measure in form of is foursquare of length of the size 25 m x 40 m used for representing areal for the width of 4 hectare (Simon, 1993).
From result of research concluded that RPH Kedung Rejo in check 29 B have fundamental crop of strightened A. alba thereunder cultivated with crop agriculture of vegetable as well as cultivated with crop coffee and bulrush, at model of agroforestry Agathis - coffee, crop of Agathis owning of mean high 21,16 m mean diameter and 0,22 m, while at model of agroforestry Agathis - bulrush of mean high of Agathis 19,95 m mean diameter and 0,19 m. Earnings of farmer coffee mean equal to Rp 8.414.040,- and earnings of farmer of bulrush mean of Rp 4.142.980,-. Value of B/C ratio at model of agroforestry Agathis - coffee is 5,2 indicating that model of agroforestry the have advantage of economics to value and farmer of B/C ratio at model of agroforestry Agathis - bulrush is 5,9 meaning that model of agroforestry the economical profit farmer.


Basic English Grammar: A Guide for New and Prospective ESL Teachers covers all the essential grammar that teachers at the start of their careers need to know before entering the classroom. With clear, concise, accurate explanations as well as relevant examples, this book will give you the knowledge necessary to begin teaching ESL grammar with confidence and to give competent lessons. Topics covered include tenses, relative clauses, conditionals, reported speech, modal verbs, comparative adjectives, the passive voice and many other important structures. This grammar book is now updated with 11 new chapters.


Particulate matter is one of the main atmospheric pollutants, with a great chemical-environmental relevance. Improving knowledge of the sources of particulate matter and of their apportionment is needed to handle and fulfill the legislation regarding this pollutant, to support further development of air policy as well as air pollution management.
Various instruments have been used to understand the sources of particulate matter and atmospheric radiotracers at the site of Mt. Cimone (44.18° N, 10.7° E, 2165 m asl), hosting a global WMO-GAW station. Thanks to its characteristics, this location is suitable investigate the regional and long-range transport of polluted air masses on the background Southern-Europe free-troposphere.
In particular, PM10 data sampled at the station in the period 1998-2011 were analyzed in the framework of the main meteorological and territorial features. A receptor model based on back trajectories was applied to study the source regions of particulate matter.
Simultaneous measurements of atmospheric radionuclides Pb-210 and Be-7 acquired together with PM10 have also been analysed to acquire a better understanding of vertical and horizontal transports able to affect atmospheric composition. Seasonal variations of atmospheric radiotracers have been studied both analysing the long-term time series acquired at the measurement site as well as by means of a state-of-the-art global 3-D chemistry and transport model.
Advection patterns characterizing the circulation at the site have been identified by means of clusters of back-trajectories. Finally, the results of a source apportionment study of particulate matter carried on in a midsize town of the Po Valley (actually recognised as one of the most polluted European regions) are reported. An approach exploiting different techniques, and in particular different kinds of models, successfully achieved a characterization of the processes/sources of particulate matter at the two sites, and of atmospheric radiotracers at the site of Mt. Cimone.


Assertion of ethnic and religious identities, forcible merger of former princely states, perceived sense of neglect, disaffection towards the government and pervasive underdevelopment have been instrumental in fomenting insurgencies and terrorism in India. India's attempts at dealing with these issues have met only with limited success. It has been variously argued that the lack of a sound counter-insurgency and counterterrorism strategy has been the main reason. Moreover, vested interests, petty politicking, and nexus between politicians, government officials and insurgents are seen as preventing the formulation of such a strategy. Given the enormous international security challenges these twin problems pose, it is imperative that India develops a comprehensive strategy to deal with them. Elements of such a strategy should include concerted efforts to counter the ideological narratives of the insurgent and terrorist groups and highlight the inclusiveness of Indian democracy; effective communication of the government's developmental measures to uplift the socio-economic profile of the affected people; adherence to the principle of judicious use of force.


HEINLE'S NEWBURY HOUSE DICTIONARY focuses on what English language learners need and want to know. To help students build their vocabulary and increase their reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, HEINLE'S NEWBURY HOUSE DICTIONARY includes: 1) a Learner's Dictionary, 2) an Integrated Thesaurus, 3) a Brief Writer's Handbook, 4) a Built-in Activity Guide, and 5) an Interactive Pronouncing CD-ROM.


In unconsolidated, heterogeneous aquifer systems, low rates of pore-pressure diffusion of applied effective stresses due to the drainage of thick, low-permeability, clay-rich layers with time constants of decades to centuries cause delayed, residual permanent compaction and land subsidence. Current application of satellite differential radar interferometry (DInSAR—differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar) to estimate aquifer hydraulic properties (compressibility and/or storage) in these systems is limited by the temporal availability of synthetic aperture radar data (1992–present). In this paper we study the degree of aquifer compaction due to water extraction using DInSAR through an example in southeast Spain. Ground deformation data indicate large-scale deformation and in particular the discovery of the highest rates of groundwater-related land subsidence recorded in Europe (>10 cm/yr), affecting the Guadalentin River basin (>200 km 2 ), the largest tributary of the Segura River. Modeling of the ground surface time series of the Guadalentin Basin indicates that deformation is mainly driven by nonlinear time-delayed flow processes in the underlying aquifer. After a drought period (1990–1995), the aquifer responded with an exponential decay of the land subsidence (lasting ∼8 yr), suggesting transient groundwater pore-pressure flow. We show that multitemporal satellite radar interferometry analysis and its modeling can be a stimulating way to study nonlinear soil mechanics and groundwater flows at aquifers. A deeper understanding of such processes could help the management of water resources and land subsidence of unconsolidated coastal and Quaternary alluvial aquifers in a highly evolving climate region (the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere).


We use a decade of daily survey data from Gallup to study how monetary policy influences households' beliefs about economic conditions. We first document that public confidence in the state of the economy reacts instantaneously to certain types of macroeconomic news. Next, we show that surprises to the Federal Funds target rate are among the news that have statistically significant and instantaneous effects on economic confidence. Specifically, we find that a surprise increase in the target rate robustly leads to an immediate decline in household confidence, at odds with previous findings that suggest consumers are largely inattentive to economic developments. Monetary policy news about forward guidance and asset purchases does not have similarly clear and robust immediate effects on household beliefs. We document heterogeneity across demographics in the responsiveness of macroeconomic beliefs to aggregate news, and we relate our findings to existing evidence on informational rigidities.


In this paper we ask the question, how can we define cheating in Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs)? It is important to clarify immediately that what is at stake here is the way we study the phenomenon of cheating, how we conceptualise it and how we research it in MMORPGs. In particular, the focus is the difference between defining, or reducing, a phenomenon to its essential traits as opposed to defining it on the basis of the process that has generated it (see for discussions Latour, 1987 and 2005; Lash, 2002; DeLanda, 2002 and 2006). The rationale behind the opening research question is that much of the literature has defined cheating in online games via a restricted set of essential traits: in particular, as the player(s) actions that modify the game to obtain unfair advantages over other players. On the contrary, we propose that cheating should be conceptualised as what unfolds – the result(s) – from the empirical interrelations of several elements that compose MMORPGs, and not just from player behaviour. We provide a new perspective on cheating in MMORPGs, which suggests that cheating is the result of a dynamic process and interrelations between a range of elements.

In this paper, we study cheating by using the concept of assemblage as proposed by DeLanda (2002 and 2006), following Deleuze and Guattari (1987). This concept takes a realist stance emphasising that social and natural phenomena should be conceptualised as the dynamic result of the empirical and historical relations among empirical elements, rather than thorough listing their essential traits or making timeless classifications. In this paper we analyse the following elements of MMORPGs and their relationships (but we are aware that the list is not necessarily conclusive): the game architecture, the game code and the game legal documents. Moreover, we focus on how these elements are interleaved with players, games companies and also companies offering cheating solutions. For us, cheating in MMORPGs possesses a mobile and permeable boundary where these different elements, and the players and companies strategies embedded in them, compete and / or cooperate – always in some form of relations with each other – in the process of stabilising or destabilising what is cheating in MMORPGs. We support this proposition by mainly providing empirical examples from ongoing research of the online game Tibia (http://www.tibia.com), a 2D, medieval fantasy MMORPG developed and distributed by CipSoft, since 1997. Tibia has an estimated 300,000 players and is played on more than 70 servers in Germany and the USA.


Incidents of date rape are increasing, especially on college campuses. As with any issue of this magnitude, there are bound to be differing attitudes toward the rape victims. The study was conducted to assess the attitudes of college students toward rape victims using Ward's (1988) Attitudes Toward Rape Victims Scale (ARVS). Subjects for the study consisted of a stratified random sample of 400 undergraduate students attending a large research institution in the south. Gender, class, and ethnicity differences were studied. While no significant differences were found by class and ethnicity, a significant difference was found by gender. Men reported a higher score than women, denoting more unfavorable attitudes toward rape victims. Studies on rape have indicated that at least one-sixth, perhaps as many as one-half of college undergraduates have faced a dating partner's physical aggression (Thompson, 1991). Due to the increase in incidents of date rape, awareness programming for date rape also has increased. Rape, the crime of forced,nonconcentual sexual intercourse with a person, occurs every five minutes (Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States, 1991). In terms of numbers, one in five women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. In one study, one in four college women had experienced rape or attempted rape, and 84 percent knew their attacker (Koss, Gidycz, & Wisniewski, 1987). In a study by Baier, Rosenzweig, and Whipple (1991), "nearly one in five female students had been a victim of rape or an attempted rape" (p. 317) at the time of their study. They sampled 1,650 students out of a total of 16,500 at a large, public residential university. In cases in which the victim knows her attacker, this crime is referred to as acquaintance or date rape. As stated by Adams and Abarbanel (1988)," The most prevalent form of rape on college campuses is acquaintance rape. The acquaintance may be a date or boyfriend of the victim, or someone the victim knows only casually, from her dorm, a class, or through mutual friends". (p. 7) People sometimes envision rape as a situation where a deranged male leaps from a dark corner or from behind a bush to force sex upon an unsuspecting woman. While stranger rape of this type does occur, the recent literature documents the more alarming incidence rate of rape that involves acquainted individuals. (Snell & Godwin, 1993, pp. 599 - 600) "A growing body of research on violence in intimate relationships reveals that physical aggression in dating relationships is as extensive a social problem as marital violence" (Thompson, 1991, p. 261). In addition to rape and acquaintance rape, use of rohypnol, a sedative prescribed as sleeping pills in about 80 countries, but not the United States (Pascua, 1996), has now become a serious problem. Rohypnol, also known as "roofie," "is colorless, odorless, and quickly dissolves in a can of Diet Coke" (Rapists, February 16, 1996). Within 10 minutes, a drunk-like effect is created that lasts eight hours. The effects of alcohol are enhanced, causing loss of inhibition, extreme sleepiness, relaxation, and amnesia (Rapists, 1996). The victims do not recall anything about the incident the next day. "In Broward County, Florida, 10 men have been arrested on roofie-rape charges in the past year" (Rapists, 1996), and other incidents have been cited across the country. Regardless of how rape occurs, women are being victimized -- taken advantage of against their will. Unfortunately, rape victims are often perceived negatively by members of society. Because of this, most women do not report the rape incident. As stated by Burling (1993), "sexual assault, including acquaintance rape, is a serious but often unreported crime on college campuses." (p. 1) In one study, only 1 in 20 notified the police (Koss, Gidycz, & Wisniewski, 1987), and more than half of rape victims tell no one of their victimization. According to Korn (1993): Victims/survivors of sexual aggression are often silent about their attack for several reasons: accepting responsibility and blame for the incident; not understanding a rape occurred, and instead framing it as rougher-than-normal sex; and shame. …


Recent economic and societal developments have led to an increasing emphasis on organizational environmental performance. At the same time, demographic trends are resulting in increasingly aging labor forces in many industrialized nations. Commonly held stereotypes suggest that older workers are less likely to be environmentally responsible than younger workers. To evaluate the degree to which such age differences are present, we meta-analyzed 132 independent correlations and 336 d-values based on 4676 professional workers from 22 samples in 11 countries. Contrary to popular stereotypes, age showed small positive relationships with pro-environmental behaviors, suggesting that older adults engaged in these workplace behaviors slightly more frequently. Relationships with age appeared to be linear for overall, Conserving, Avoiding Harm, and Taking Initiative pro-environmental behaviors, but non-linear trends were observed for Transforming and Influencing Others behaviors.


T follicular helper (Tfh) cells in germinal centers of secondary lymphoid organs are pivotal for B and T cell interactions required for induction of humoral immunity. It has long been debated whether Tfh cells exit from lymph nodes into the blood as circulating Tfh cells. In this issue of the JCI, Vella et al. have taken the bull by the horns and applied considerable technical muscle to answer this question. By analyzing phenotype, transcriptome, epigenetic profile, and T cell receptor clonotype, the authors provide evidence that a subset of cTfh cells do indeed originate in lymph nodes and traffic into the blood via the thoracic duct.


We describe an attempt to generate complete arcade games using the Video Game Description Language (VGDL) and the General Video Game Playing environment (GVG-AI). Games are generated by an evolutionary algorithm working on genotypes represented as VGDL descriptions. In order to direct evolution towards good games, we need an evaluation function that accurately estimates game quality. The evaluation function used here is based on the differential performance of several game-playing algorithms, or Relative Algorithm Performance Profiles (RAPP): it is assumed that good games allow good players to play better than bad players. For the purpose of such evaluations, we introduce two new game tree search algorithms, DeepSearch and Explorer; these perform very well on benchmark games and constitute a substantial subsidiary contribution of the paper. In the end, the attempt to generate arcade games is only partially successful, as some of the games have interesting design features but are barely playable as generated. An analysis of these shortcomings yields several suggestions to guide future attempts at arcade game generation.


Carcinoembroyic antigen-related cell adhesion molecule 1 (CEACAM1) is a highly glycosylated cell adhesion receptor molecule. It is expressed on hematopoietic cells, epithelia and angiogenicly activated endothelia. CEACAM1 plays an important role in cell morphogenesis, tumorigenesis, insulin metabolism, T-cell regulation and neovascularisation. It is a member of the immunoglobulin superfamily and consists of one N-terminal V-like Ig domain, followed by three C2-like Ig domains (N-A1-B1-A2) and shows a molecular weight of 120-160 kDa. In human urine we found a variant of CEACAM1 with a molecular weight of 72 kDa. Epitope mapping based on sandwich-ELISA and western blotting using mono-specific antibodies for the N-domain (#18/20), the A2 domain (8G5), the linker between the B1-A2 domains (4D1C2) and the cytoplasmic part (CC1-cyt) revealed that this novel CEACAM1 form was lacking the N-domain and at least part of the A2 domain.Analyzing the putative origin of the truncated CEACAM1 revealed that cells expressing CEACAM1 endogenously (A549, T102/3) and those transfected with CEACAM1 (Hela-CEACAM1) contained the native as well as the truncated form of CEACAM1. Interestingly, studies using cortex endothelial cell line (AS-M.5) revealed a truncated CEACAM1 variant with a significantly higher molecular weight of 95 kDa. Further studies showed that the truncated CEACAM1 appeared not due to differences in deglycosylation or apoptosis. Furthermore, studies utilizing A549 epithelia cells, a cell type loosing its entire endogenous CEACAM1 expression by entering the proliferative stage, revealed that truncated CEACAM1 becomes not generated when full length CEACAM1 expression is down-regulated in epithelial cells entering cell proliferation. However, studies revealed that when cells were kept in the contact inhibition state a significant accumulation of truncated CEACAM1 appeared in the cell lysates and in the supernatant. The present data suggest that truncated CEACAM1 found in urine is generated during molecular turnover processes in epithelial and endothelial cells. Thus, this study leads to a better understanding of CEACAM1 turnover processes and the mechanism involved in the production of functionally, an inactive CEACAM1 form since this truncated CEACAM1 lacks the ligand binding N-domain and the signal transducing cytoplasmic domain. Similar turnover processes and mechanism involved may be applicable to other adhesion receptors such as cadherins, selectins, and integrins.
In summary, we demonstrate here for the first time a novel truncated form of CEACAM1 in human urine, which might serve as new diagnostic tool for inflammation or cancer.


The Historic Cities project is examining the potential impacts of transport demand management strategies on several case study 'historic' cities in England. These cities are York, Cambridge and Norwich, all of which have the following characteristics;

they are cities which pre-date motorised transport, and thus tend to have city centres dominated by narrow streets;

- they are all members of the Historic Towns Forum; - they have a high architectural and historic heritage, and attract many tourists each year;

- they have severe congestion and congestion related problems;

- the city authorities are faced with the problems of maintaining the environmental quality of the city, while allowing the most efficient use of the transport infrastructure.

The Historic Cities project is examining how transport restraint policies, particularly parking, pricing and road-space reallocation, can contribute to the last bullet above. It is examining this via a series of surveys and modelling of the city traffic patterns under different policies. The main 'tasks' (work packages) are as follows;

1 Travel choices; using a stated preference experiment on mode choices from various traffic demand policies;

2 Traffic effects; Modelling of policies in the various cities using network traffic models;

3 Environmental effects; using the outputs from (2)

4 Urban economy effects; using a survey of businesses

5 Public attitudes; using a survey of resident's attitudes and anticipated responses;

Task 4 in the Historic Cities project is examining the perceived and predicted effects on the urban economy from four transport instruments that attempt to restrain car use. It is thought that a major barrier to the implementation of these projects is their detrimental impacts on the local economy. This task examines whether this hypothesis is correct by examining the impacts on, and attitudes of, businesses in the case study cities.

This paper presents background information on the cities, building up a business profile of each. The data sources are mostly published information, although city specific business databases were analysed to obtain a cross classification of the business profile.

This is the first of a series of Working Papers on Task 4. The next Working Paper will outline the survey of firms that was undertaken, its initial results. It will use the business sector profile to determine how generally representative the samples are of the cities business sectors.


Light verbs constructions like *give a sigh* and *take a shower* have always been analyzed as involving a process of complex predicate formation, where the verb and its complement combine to form a single predicate. In contrast, I argue that light verb constructions are just regular verb-complement combinations. The verb has its usual argument structure and interpretation (which is often quite unspecified), while its complement has the same interpretation it has elsewhere. We only need two things to account for light verb constructions: the fact that NPs can be eventive; and control into NPs. Both of these are needed anyway, outside of light verb constructions. We can therefore dispense with *light verb* as a grammatical category, and do without processes of complex predicate formation in our models of grammar. This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/ vol22/iss1/7 Light Verbs are Just Regular Verbs


Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series (Part I and Part II) Built by the decree of Constantine, rebuilt by some of the most distinguished architects in Renaissance Italy, emulated by Hitler's architect in his vision for Germania, immortalized on film by Fellini, and fictionalized by a modern American bestseller, St. Peter's is the most easily recognizable church in the world. This book is a cultural history of one of the most significant structures in the West. It bears the imprint of Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini, and Canova. For Grand Tourists of the eighteenth century, St. Peter's exemplified the sublime. It continues to fascinate visitors today and appears globally as a familiar symbol of the papacy and of the Catholic Church itself. The church was first built in the fourth century on what is thought to be the tomb of Peter--the rock upon which Christ decreed his church shall be built. After twelve hundred years, the church was largely demolished and rebuilt in the sixteenth century when it came to acquire its present-day form. St. Peter's awes the visitor by its gigantic proportions, creating a city within itself. It is the mother church, the womb from which churches around the world have taken inspiration. This book covers the social, political, and architectural history of the church from the fourth century to the present. From the threshold, to the subterranean Roman necropolis, to the dizzying heights of the dome, this book provides rare perspectives and contexts for understanding the shape and significance of the most illustrious church in the world.


Segmentation and landmarking of computed tomographic (CT) images of pediatric patients are important and useful in computer-aided diagnosis (CAD), treatment planning, and objective analysis of normal as well as pathological regions. Identification and segmentation of organs and tissues in the presence of tumors are difficult. Automatic segmentation of the primary tumor mass in neuroblastoma could facilitate reproducible and objective analysis of the tumor's tissue composition, shape, and size. However, due to the heterogeneous tissue composition of the neuroblastic tumor, ranging from low-attenuation necrosis to high-attenuation calcification, segmentation of the tumor mass is a challenging problem. In this context, methods are described in this book for identification and segmentation of several abdominal and thoracic landmarks to assist in the segmentation of neuroblastic tumors in pediatric CT images. Methods to identify and segment automatically the peripheral artifacts and tissu s, the rib structure, the vertebral column, the spinal canal, the diaphragm, and the pelvic surface are described. Techniques are also presented to evaluate quantitatively the results of segmentation of the vertebral column, the spinal canal, the diaphragm, and the pelvic girdle by comparing with the results of independent manual segmentation performed by a radiologist. The use of the landmarks and removal of several tissues and organs are shown to assist in limiting the scope of the tumor segmentation process to the abdomen, to lead to the reduction of the false-positive error, and to improve the result of segmentation of neuroblastic tumors. Table of Contents: Introduction to Medical Image Analysis / Image Segmentation / Experimental Design and Database / Ribs, Vertebral Column, and Spinal Canal / Delineation of the Diaphragm / Delineation of the Pelvic Girdle / Application of Landmarking / Concluding Remarks


The prokaryotic tubulin homolog protein FtsZ assembles into the Z-ring at mid-cell to provide contractile force during bacterial cell division. Here, by tracing the status of FtsZ in living E. coli cells, we unexpectedly revealed a cytosolic organelle-like structure containing the FtsZ protein that is solely formed in non-growing/non-dividing late stationary-phase cells and is located at the cell poles. This structure, which we named the quiescent body, contains selected essential proteins involved in cell growth and division, and its formation depends on the operation of the cellular respiratory chain. The quiescent bodies start to disassemble to release the important proteins that will resume functioning upon cell re-growth/re-division under permissive growth conditions, while those cells containing intact quiescent bodies do not re-grow/re-divide. Meanwhile, the quiescent bodies endow the cells with a higher antibiotic resistance capacity by inhibiting cell recovery. Our discoveries reported here strongly suggest that the quiescent bodies sequester proteins important for cell growth/division and thus maintain the cells in a quiescent state. These findings also implicate that bacterial pathogens might be effectively killed by antibiotics that only target growing cells by blocking the assembly or promoting the disassembly of quiescent bodies.


Big Tech is on a buying spree. Companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon are gobbling up smaller companies at an unprecedented pace. But the law of competition isn't ready for Big Tech's endless appetite. Today's antitrust law is controlled by the Chicago School of law and economics. The Chicago School's ideological frame is toothless when a dominant firm purchases a start-up that could be a future competitor. Under the "potential competition" doctrine, the Chicago School is impotent to face the anti-competitive thread of big tech.

This Article shows how the Chicago School of law and economics hobbles antitrust law and policy on potential competition mergers. It illustrates this problem with a close study of public information regarding Facebook. The article assembles a database of Facebook's completed acquisitions—ninety in all— and shows how the "potential competition" doctrine renders competition law entirely impotent to protect the consumer interest in this space. What is true for Facebook applies to the market generally. While we offer no opinion on any particular merger, protecting the consumer against the ravenous appetite of Big Tech requires rejecting the potential competition test and adopting the empirically tractable structural approach to potential competition mergers.