Study objectives-To investigate the effects ofpassive exposure to tobacco smoke and gas cooking at home on respiratory symptoms and lung function of non-smoking women. Setting-Evidence on the effects of passive smoking and exposure to nitrogen dioxide from gas cooking on the respiratory health of adults is limited and variable. Over 97% of women in Singapore do not smoke, and a principal source of indoor air pollution for housewives is passive smoking and gas cooking. Design-This was a cross sectional (prevalence) study of a population based sample of 2868 adults aged 20 to 74 years in Singapore. A structured questionnaire administered by trained interviewers was used to collect data on passive smoking, gas cooking, respiratory symptoms, and other relevant variables. Passive smoking was defined as exposure to cigarette smoke from one or more members of the household who had ever smoked. Gas cooking was defined in terms of the weekly frequency of gas cooking, as well as the frequency with which the respondent's kitchen was filled with heavy cooking fumes (rarely, occasionally, often). Forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) was measured by using a portable Microspirometer. Multivariate analyses were used to estimate relative odds of association for respiratory symptoms and FEV1 effect, with adjustment for potential confounding variables. Participants-Ofa total of 1438 women in the sample, 1282 women who had never smoked provided questionnaire data and 1008 women provided acceptable readings of FEV1 for analysis. Main results-Passive smoking was significantly associated with greater relative odds of usual or chronic cough and phlegm, wheezing, and breathlessness on exertion, as well as lower FEV1. Greater relative odds of respiratory symptoms were also associated with the weekly frequency of gas cooking, although these results were statistically insignificant. Chronic cough and phlegm and breathlessness on exertion, however, were significantly associated with the frequency with which the kitchen was filled with heavy cooking fumes. A lower FEV1 was found in women who cooked frequently (more than thrice a week). Conclusion-Domestic exposure to cigarette smoke and gas cooking is associated with increased risks of respiratory symptoms and impairment oflung function in non-smoking


Assessment of twin gestation in the antepartum period has been a problem because most methods either fail to distinguish twins individually or require serial study over several weeks before reaching diagnostic end points. Electronic monitoring of the fetal heart rate (FHR) allows individual focus on each twin with a high degree of specificity and permits immediate status evaluation. In this study 44 sets of twins had simultaneous Doppler monitoring in an outpatient testing center. Transducer position was aided by real-time ultrasonic location of each fetal heart; 198 tests were satisfactory, each patient receiving 3.9 +/- 2.9 (mean +/- SD) studies. The rate of unsatisfactory tests was 15.4%, though each fetus was satisfactorily tested within one week of delivery. Testing was begun at 32.9 +/- 2.9 weeks and delivery occurred at 36.8 +/- 2.6 weeks. Perinatal mortality was 22.7/1,000, significant morbidity 15.9%, and cesarean section rate 18.1%. Reactive (R) patterns were seen in 69 fetuses and nonreactive (NR) in 19. Although there were no significant differences in gestational age at delivery between R and NR groups, (36.9 vs 36.2 wk) NR fetuses had significantly lower birth weights and higher rates of neonatal depression, perinatal mortality, and retarded intrauterine growth. Similarities in FHR patterns within twin pairs were frequently observed (30/44). Twins exhibiting dissimilar patterns had significant differences in birth weight and tended to have separate rather than common placentas. Simultaneous FHR testing of twins appears to be an effective means of providing immediately accessible data on the comparative well-being of each twin.


Cystic ovarian disease (COD) is one of the main causes of infertility in dairy cattle and has a high economic impact on farmers. COD is caused by an endocrine imbalance within the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis preventing the mature Graafian follicle from ovulating. The cause at the molecular level is not well understood. However, the matrix metalloproteinases (MMP) and plasminogen activator/plasmin families of extracellular (ECM) matrix-degrading proteinases are involved in Graafian follicle breakdown and oocyte release in the ovulation process. Our research investigated the possibility of using plasma concentrations of MMP-2 and -9 and their natural tissue inhibitors (TIMP) -1 and -2 as prognostic indicators of COD. Plasma samples from cystic and non-cystic dairy cows were analyzed using ELISA. Although plasma concentrations of MMP-2 and -9 were greater and TIMP-2 was lower in non-cystic compared to cystic cows, no significant differences were observed in MMP-2 and -9 and TIMP-1 and -2 due to cyst status. However, the TIMP-1:MMP-9 and TIMP-2:MMP-2 molar ratios were greater, (P = 0.099) and (P = 0.038), respectively, in cystic compared to non-cystic cows, suggesting a proteolytic insufficiency in cows with COD that may be a contributing factor to the anovulatory pathology. These data may provide the groundwork for future research and development of tools for dairy farmers to selectively choose replacement heifers less likely to develop COD.


In this theoretical paper we explore the use of narrative as a learning tool in informal science settings. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to ex-plore how narrative can be applied to exhibits in the context of science centers to scaffold visitors science learning. In exploring this idea, we analyze the theoretical, structural and epistemological properties of narrative. In the pages that follow, we first discuss the advantages and possibilities for learning that science centers offer alongside challenges and limitations. Next, we discuss the role of narrative in sci-ence, as a tool for supporting science learning. We then continue with an analysis of the structural and epistemological properties of narrative and discuss how those can serve to establish narrative as a learning tool.


The effects of interleukin 7 (IL-7) on the growth and differentiation of murine B cell progenitors has been well characterized using in vitro culture methods. We have investigated the role of IL-7 in vivo using a monoclonal antibody that neutralizes IL-7. We find that treatment of mice with this antibody completely inhibits the development of B cell progenitors from the pro-B cell stage forward. We also provide evidence that all peripheral B cells, including those of the B-1 and conventional lineages, are derived from IL-7-dependent precursors. The results are consistent with the rapid turnover of B cell progenitors in the marrow, but a slow turnover of mature B cells in the periphery. In addition to effects on B cell development, anti-IL-7 treatment substantially reduced thymus cellularity, affecting all major thymic subpopulations.


A 30-year old female patient presented at emergency medicine department at our hospital with the chief complaints of severe body ache and weakness of bilateral upper and lower limbs. She was diagnosed to be suffering from inflammatory myositis based on her investigations by her treating physician. She received 0.4 g/kg Intravenous Immunoglobulin (IVIG) (Total 120 gm given) and 1 gm IV methyl prednisolone once a day over a period of five days. In the reports after 2 days of initiation of IVIG therapy the blood profile showed decrease in the haemoglobin levels and gradual increase in the total bilirubin levels. The patient was diagnosed with haemolytic anaemia due to IVIG by the consulting physician. The patient was transfused with 3 units of whole blood and started with oral prednisolone 1 mg/kg/day as a treatment of haemolytic anaemia. Gradually the haemoglobin level started to rise and went near the baseline level on 34th day of initiation of IVIG therapy. Haemolytic anaemia is a potentially serious and possibly under recognized side effect of IVIG therapy with the incidence of 0.1 to 1%. So, the clinician should be vigilant when the patient is given IVIG therapy and check the warning signs of haemolytic anaemia.


The differences in playing patterns of soccer teams has been, and remains to be, one of the largest areas of post-match performance analysis within association football. Many studies try to encapsulate the multiple facets of play and consequently only provide limited detail in any one area (Low et al., 2002; Hughes Robertson and Nicholson, 1988). This study aimed to provide a more detailed insight into passing during the 2002 World Cup whereby post event analysis of six group matches was undertaken (3 each for a successful and an unsuccessful team, based on qualification through the group stages, Stanhope, 2001). The resulting passes (>4000) were analysed for start and finish positions (for length of pass), whether they were played to a player or space, played first time or after a dribble and some outcome was recorded e.g.possession lost or retained. The coding process was designed and recorded using a computerised notational analysis software package, the Noldus Observer Video-Pro (Noldus Information Technology, 2001). The data was then transferred to SPSS v11.01 (SPSS Inc.) for statistical analysis (Chi Square). Reliability measures were conducted at the level of the subsequent analysis, as suggested by Hughes, Cooper and Nevill (2002). In this respect all defined performance measures provided good reliability estimates (<5% error) with a further assessment of the time coding process (built into the Observer) measuring the time from when the player received the ball to when the pass was made. This resulted in a low average error of 0.08 seconds but a relatively large spread (± 1.08 s). The passing strategy for the successful and unsuccessful teams did not differ (types of pass employed) suggesting that this performance indicator does not easily discriminate teams at this level. The only apparent difference existed in the pre-defensive area of the field (near the halfway line, James, Mellalieu & Holley, 2002) where the unsuccessful team tended to play significantly more passes. This observed difference was thought suggestive of a difference in total possession in this area rather than indicative of a strategy difference. The findings thus suggested that there was no difference in passing ability between the two teams within this study even though they differed markedly in terms of success in the tournament. Consequently it is suggested that either the criteria used were not sensitive enough to detect differences in passing or the teams were of a similar standard and other factors determined match outcomes.


We use an agent-based social simulation to study the effects of role reassignment on resource management in a human organization. As a model organization we use the 446 Force Support Squadron of the United States Air Force. We simulate different role reassignment policies where members of the organization can be reassigned at their request, at the request of the organization, or as a combination of both of these policies. We also consider at what point in an individual's career is the best time to change roles. We conclude that a compromise between organizational needs and individual needs results in higher productivity. In addition we conclude that mid-career reassignment is better for the organization than early or late career reassignment.


Significant numbers of homes within the UK remain at risk of flooding despite significant investment on community=level flood protection schemes. Although community level flood protection schemes are the first line of defence for mitigating flood risk, not all properties are protectable. Property-Level Flood Protection (PLFP) provides those unprotected homeowners with an approach for protecting their homes from flooding. Although the level of take-up of such measures seems to have increased over the years, significant barriers still seem to exist preventing wider adoption. Government incentives have been identified as an effective method of encouraging property owners to adapt their properties and introduce flood resilience and resistance measures to their properties. The study seeks to discuss how such incentives have contributed towards property-level flood resilience and resistance measures being introduced by property-owners. Community perception of incentives and the likelihood of adapting if suitable incentives are available will also be investigated. An exploratory case study was undertaken to this end by conducting a survey of flood victims and at-risk residents in Worcestershire.


In this Article we use game theory to argue that perceptions of widespread corruption in the judicial processes in developing countries create ex ante incentives to act corruptly. It is rational (though not moral) to preemptively act corruptly when litigating in the courts of many developing nations. The upshot of this analysis is to highlight that, contrary to judicial narratives in individual cases — such as the (in)famous Chevron–Ecuador dispute used herein as an illustration — the problem of corruption in transnational litigation is structural and as such calls for structural solutions. The article offers one such solution: the establishment of an international court of civil justice.


This thesis explores translating well-written sequential programs in a subset of the Eiffel programming language - without syntactic or semantic extensions - into parallelised programs for execution on a distributed architecture. The main focus is on constructing two object-oriented models: a theoretical self-contained model of concurrency which enables a simplified second model for implementing the compiling process. There is a further presentation of principles that, if followed, maximise the potential levels of parallelism. Model of Concurrency. The concurrency model is designed to be a straightforward target for mapping sequential programs onto, thus making them parallel. It aids the compilation process by providing a high level of abstraction, including a useful model of parallel behaviour which enables easy incorporation of message interchange, locking, and synchronization of objects. Further, the model is sufficient such that a compiler can and has been practically built. Model of Compilation. The compilation-model's structure is based upon an object-oriented view of grammar descriptions and capitalises on both a recursive-descent style of processing and abstract syntax trees to perform the parsing. A composite-object view with an attribute grammar style of processing is used to extract sufficient semantic information for the parallelisation (i.e. code-generation) phase. Programming Principles. The set of principles presented are based upon information hiding, sharing and containment of objects and the dividing up of methods on the basis of a command/query division. When followed, the level of potential parallelism within the presented concurrency model is maximised. Further, these principles naturally arise from good programming practice. Summary. In summary this thesis shows that it is possible to compile well-written programs, written in a subset of Eiffel, into parallel programs without any syntactic additions or semantic alterations to Eiffel: i.e. no parallel primitives are added, and the parallel program is modelled to execute with equivalent semantics to the sequential version. If the programming principles are followed, a parallelised program achieves the maximum level of potential parallelisation within the concurrency model.


By means of a particle-in-cell simulation we study the effect of time-dependent tunneling ionization in the harmonics generated during the formation of a plasma when a laser field impinges on a solid slab. The comparison of our results with preionized plasma calculations and with a simple propagation model, in which the dynamics of ionized charges is neglected, shows the crucial role of the ionization even when the ionization time is a relatively small fraction of the pulse duration. The mechanism for which the harmonics are generated owing to ionization is investigated by means of a moving-mirror model extended to take into account the time-dependent reflectivity.


Sweetgale (Myrica gale), rhodora (Rhododendron canadense), and catberry (Ilex mucronata) are shrubs of eastern North America that may have potential for broader use in horticultural landscapes. Because information on their vegetative propagation is scarce, we conducted experiments over 2 years to evaluate the effects of cutting collection date, wounding, substrate composition, and the concentration of applied potassium salt of indole-3-butyric acid (K-IBA) on rooting of each species. In 2015, we collected cuttings of each species on three dates to obtain both softwood and semihardwood cuttings. Cuttings were unwounded or wounded with a razor blade, and treated by dipping into water containing K-IBA at concentrations ranging from 0 to 15,000 mg·L−1, after which they were inserted into a substrate of 3:1 perlite:peat (by volume) and placed under intermittent mist. In 2016, semihardwood cuttings of each species were all wounded, treated with K-IBA from 0 to 15,000 mg·L−1, and inserted into substrates of 100%, 75%, or 50% perlite, with the remaining volume occupied by peat. In both years, the greatest percentage of sweetgale cuttings rooted when no K-IBA was applied. K-IBA application also reduced root ratings, root dry weights, and root lengths of sweetgale. For rhodora and catberry, maximal responses for all measures of rooting occurred when 5000 to 15,000 mg·L−1 K-IBA was applied. We recommend that growers use no exogenous auxin to propagate sweetgale, and 5000 to 10,000 mg·L−1 K-IBA to propagate rhodora and catberry. Cuttings of all three species can be collected from softwood or semihardwood shoots. Finally, sweetgale can be rooted in perlite alone, whereas rhodora and catberry required the addition of peatmoss for satisfactory root development.


Emerging pervasive wireless networks, pocket switched networks, Internet of things, vehicular networks and even sensor networks present very challenging communication circumstances. They might involve up to several hundreds of wireless devices with mobility and intermittent connectivity. Centralized coordination in such networks is practically unfeasible. We deal with these challenge using two potential technologies: WIFI and Ultra Wide Band (UWB) Impulse Radio (IR) for medium and short communication range, respectively. Our main goal is to improve the communication performance and to make these networks sustainable in the absence of a centralized coordination. With WIFI, the goal is to design an environment-oblivious data dissemination protocol that holds in highly dynamic unpredictable wireless ad-hoc networks. To this end, we propose a complete design for a scope limited, multi-hop broadcast middleware, which is adapted to the variability of the ad-hoc environment and works in unlimited ad-hoc networks such as a crowd in a city, or car passengers in a busy highway system. We address practical problems posed by: the impossibility of setting the TTL correctly at all times, the poor performance of multiple access protocols in broadcast mode, flow control when there is no acknowledgment and scheduling of multiple concurrent broadcasts. Our design, called "Self Limiting Epidemic Forwarding" (SLEF), automatically adapts its behavior from single hop MAC layer broadcast to epidemic forwarding when the environment changes from being extremely dense to sparse, sporadically connected. A main feature of SLEF is a non-classical manipulation of the TTL field, which combines the usual decrement-when-sending to many very small decrements when receiving. Then, we identify vulnerabilities that are specific to epidemic forwarding. We address broadcast applications over wireless ad-hoc networks. Epidemic forwarding employs several mechanisms such as forwarding factor control and spread control, and each of them can be implemented using alternative methods. Thus, the existence of vulnerabilities is highly dependent on the methods used. We examine the links between them. We classify vulnerabilities into two categories: malicious and rational. We examine the effect of the attacks according to the number of attackers and the different network settings such as density, mobility and congestion. We show that malicious attacks are hard to achieve and their effects are scenario-dependent. In contrast, rational attackers always obtain a significant benefit. The evaluation is carried out using detailed realistic simulations over networks with up to 1000 nodes. We consider static scenarios, as well as vehicular networks. In order to validate our simulation results, we build a solid and widely adaptable experimental testbed for wireless networks. It is composed of 57 mobile wireless nodes equipped with WIFI interface. The adopted platform is OpenWrt, a Linux-like firmware, which makes the testbed robust and easily configurable. With UWB IR, the main problem we deal with is the presence of uncontrolled interference. Indeed, similarly to Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, signal acquisition with UWB IR signaling requires power control in the presence of interferers, which is very expensive in an uncoordinated system. We solve this problem through a cross-layer optimization: We propose a new signal acquisition method that is independent of the received signal power and we adapt the MAC layer accordingly. Our signal acquisition method is designed to solve the IUI (Inter-User Interference) that occurs in some ad-hoc networks where concurrent transmissions are allowed with heterogeneous power levels. In such scenarios, the conventional detection method, which is based on correlating the received IR signal with a Template Pulse Train (TPT), does not always perform well. The complexity of our proposal is similar to that of the conventional method. We evaluate its performance with the Line Of Sight (LOS) and the Non-LOS (NLOS) office indoor-channel models proposed by the IEEE P802.15.4a study group and find that the improvement is significant. We also investigate the particular case where the concurrent transmissions have the same time-hopping code, and we show that it does not result in collision, such scenarios appear in ad-hoc networks that employ a common code for control or broadcast purposes. At the MAC level, we focus only on one component of a MAC layer, which is the sleeping mode that could be added to any MAC layer proposal adequate to UWB IR. We are motivated by the low power consumption constraint required by the potential applications. We identify the design elements that should be taken into account for an optimal design for a sleeping protocol for UWB-IR such as the possibility of transmitting concurrently without collision and the power consumption model of the hardware behind which is completely different than with the narrow-band signaling. Then, we design two sleeping protocols for centralized and decentralized ad-hoc networks, respectively. We evaluate their performance analytically with the adopted metric being the average life-time of the wireless nodes.


Based on the data of 35 major cities in China, this paper examines the impact of the rising housing prices on the innovation activities of Chinese A-share listed companies. We find that the increase in housing prices significantly inhibit the number of patent applications and the proportion of R&D expenditure of listed corporations. In addition, we further consider the ownership structure, and find that the impact of housing price on corporate innovation is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises. This paper reveals the negative impact of a booming real estate market on the real economy from the perspective of innovation in China. JEL classification numbersi¼sE44 G31 O32Keywords: real estate markets, innovation, hosing price


On September 28, 2001, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago hosted a conference titled "Are Central Cities Coming Back? The Case of Chicago." The one-day symposium brought together researchers and real estate business leaders to discuss trends in central city growth. Recently released 2000 census data indicate that population decline in most large central cities of the Northeast and Midwest has slowed and in some cases reversed. This marks a significant change from the trend in the 1970s and 1980s. This Chicago Fed Letter summarizes the presentations at the conference.


The objective of this article is to elucidate how justice in general and distributive justice in particular are given sense to and made sense of in postmerger integration. Drawing on a longitudinal real-time analysis of a recent merger, we identify a pattern in which focus moved from equality to equity to less emphasis on distributive justice. To understand the dynamics involved, we develop a process model that explains how actors reconcile pressures of value creation and sociopolitical concerns in dialogical "sensegiving" and "sensemaking" processes that lead to the enactment of specific norms of justice. This analysis adds to research on mergers and acquisitions by facilitating understanding of the crucial role that norms of justice play in postmerger integration, of the way in which they change over time as integration processes unfold, and of the intergroup dynamics through which these norms of justice are enacted. By uncovering the microdynamics of dialogical sensegiving and sensemaking processes, we also contribute to research on organizational justice, sensemaking, and process studies.


For better or for worse, in recent times the rapid growth of international economic exchange has changed our lives. But when did this process of globalization begin, and what effects did it have on economies and societies? Pim de Zwart and Jan Luiten van Zanden argue that the networks of trade established after the voyages of Columbus and Da Gama of the late fifteenth century had transformative effects inaugurating the first era of globalization. The global flows of ships, people, money and commodities between 1500 and 1800 were substantial, and the re-alignment of production and distribution resulting from these connections had important consequences for demography, well-being, state formation and the long-term economic growth prospects of the societies involved in the newly created global economy. Whether early globalization had benign or malignant effects differed by region, but the world economy as we now know it originated in these changes in the early modern period.


While the work of several early African American women poets who published book-length collections has been recovered by literary historians (Joan Sherman pre-eminent among them), many pre-20th-century Black women who published occasional poetry in periodicals remain ignored or simply unknown. If Frances Smith Foster's crucial discovery of the serialized novels of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper did not already do so, Mitch Kachun's stunning identification of Julia C. Collins's serialized Christian Recorder novel The Curse of Caste (1865) should push us beyond the covers of physical books in our search for a fuller sense of early Black women's writing and so cause us to question our assumptions about early African American literary culture. Because, as scholars like Foster and Kachun have shown, Black-operated periodicals often offered key conduits between Black authors and Black readers--and sometimes even encouraged those readers to become writers themselves--a full-scale canvassing, cataloging, and analysis of literary work in early Black periodicals that is both more accessible and more integrated into our research and classrooms than the Black Periodical Literature Project remains desperately needed. This study offers a small piece of such bibliographical and historical research: it introduces 35 Black women who published poetry in the Christian Recorder between 1855 and 1865, a decade that culminated in the Recorder's publication of Collins's novel (and, more broadly, the conclusion of the Civil War). Specifically, it provides a set of sample poems from this group, basic biographical data on 26 Recorder poets who were African American women, and more limited information on nine others who published poems in the Recorder and who either self-identified as or probably were African American. Three of these 35--Harper, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and Susan Paul Vashon--were well-known activists. The others--most of whom published only a poem or two in the Recorder (and a few of whom wrote in groups to create single published poems)--represent what might have been a larger group of antebellum African American women who wrote occasionally, used literature to help themselves through daily life, did not aspire to professional poethood, and have been almost totally ignored in our history. Notable patterns emerge from what we know of these women's lives. Almost all, it seems, were active readers of the Christian Recorder; some even donated to the Recorder's on-going fundraising campaigns in the post-war period. This involvement, of course, marks their ties to the AME Church, but it also speaks to their geographical location, their class status, and their education. Their residences--mostly in Pennsylvania (especially Philadelphia) and New Jersey, but also in areas like Buffalo, New York, where sometime-Recorder writer and AME stalwart Daniel Payne was active--give us a sense of the regional circulation of the Recorder. Most were clearly of the middling classes: their fathers and spouses were often professionals and/or shop owners (a minister, a grocer, barbers, shoemakers, a baker, a whitewasher, and so on). Many of the women worked outside of their homes--generally as domestics, laundresses, and dressmakers--in part because of the fragility of the Black middle class in the ante-bellum North. At least one, Esther Palmer, owned her own trimmings business. At least three--Vashon, Sarah Daffin, and Estellena Johnson--were teachers; Daffin made important contributions as one of the early Black teachers of freedpeople. Daffin and Johnson came to teaching through shared learning: both were graduates of Philadelphia's Institute for Colored Youth. Cary and Harper, of course, were active as writers and speakers; Cary also did important editorial work. Daffin and Lizzie Hart also wrote fairly extensively--in the form of letters to the Recorder. Four others--Daffin, Ellen Johnson, Estellena Johnson, and Angeline Demby--left a record of public lectures or readings. …


This paper puts forward the proposition that relationship-building public relations could facilitate a more genuine engagement between Members of Parliament and their constituents. Much has been written about Grunig and Hunt's (1984) two-way symmetric public relations and its role in establishing, building and maintaining a sense of community between an organisation and its publics. Previous work has extended the relationship management paradigm to various sub contexts such as the non-for profit sector. However, the majority of literature provides an organisation centric perspective. This paper takes the Grunigian notion of symbiotic relationship building and applies it to the political context. This study focuses its observations and analysis within the political microcosm at democracy's interface between the local Member of Parliament and their constituents. The objective of this study was to evaluate how public relations is currently used at electorate level and to suggest how it could be improved. In doing so, the researcher spent a year in a marginal seat leading up to the 2007 Federal Election and gained rare insight into the mind of the incumbent, the Party machine and the critical role of PR in the democratic process.


INTRODUCTION On April 24, 2007, Avery Doninger referred to officials at her high school as "douchebags" on her private blog. (1) Finding little humor in the reference, the school officials responded by barring Doninger's run for a position on the student council. (2) Doninger challenged the school's decision, alleging that the First Amendment protected her speech and limited the extent of her punishment. (3) The U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut rejected both claims after finding that the school could suppress her "uncivil and offensive" speech (4) and that the "scope of ... punishment lay within [the school's] discretion." (5) In a panel opinion joined by then-Judge Sotomayor, the Second Circuit upheld the lower court's ruling that the speech was unprotected but declined to address the scope of the school officials' discretion to punish Doninger. (6) Instead, the court noted that, "given the posture of this case, we have no occasion to consider whether a different, more serious consequence than disqualification from student office would raise constitutional concerns." (7) The "constitutional concerns" referenced in the Second Circuit's opinion present novel questions about the First Amendment's application to student speech. Although the Supreme Court has emphasized consistently that school officials deserve deference in regulating student speech, (8) the Court has not decided whether deference extends to a school's choice of punishment. Supreme Court cases evaluating student speech under the First Amendment have risen and fallen on the suppression issue; that is, the Court has ended its inquiry after determining whether the speech was protected or not. (9) Recent Court of Appeals decisions, including Doninger, have gone beyond the Supreme Court's precedent and created uncertainty about whether courts can use the First Amendment to limit the extent to which schools punish students for their unprotected speech. (10) These cases not only signal an unprecedented level of judicial scrutiny, but also invite a reexamination of the degree of deference courts owe school officials. Punishment implicates First Amendment values when it induces self-censorship. (11) Unwanted deterrence of valid speech grows when the scope of First Amendment protection is unclear, as is often the case in school settings where the margin of protected speech is particularly blurred. (12) Although the Supreme Court has not examined the issue of punishment in the context of student speech, it has engaged in analogous inquiries in two other areas of First Amendment jurisprudence: defamation and obscenity. In defamation actions, the Court has held that the First Amendment bars the imposition of punitive damages in some circumstances because an award of punitive damages may cause media self-censorship. (13) In obscenity actions, however, the Court has declined to use the First Amendment to limit liability. (14) It remains to be seen where the Court will place student speech between the divergent, yet not necessarily conflicting, strands of defamation and obscenity cases. This Note argues that courts should follow the Supreme Court's reasoning in obscenity cases by refusing to scrutinize the extent of school punishment of unprotected speech. Part I examines the two lines of cases--defamation and obscenity--in which courts have assessed whether the First Amendment limits the magnitude of punishment of unprotected speech. This Part then highlights recent lower court decisions that note the constitutional concerns associated with punishment of student speech. Part II considers whether courts should adopt intermediate scrutiny or a form of rational basis review in examining school disciplinary measures under the First Amendment. Finally, Part III argues that courts should not construe the First Amendment to limit the extent to which a school may punish unprotected student speech. I. THE FIRST AMENDMENT FRAMEWORK FOR PUNISHMENT A. …


ABSTRACT Aspergillus fumigatus causes life-threatening infections, especially in immunocompromised patients. Common drugs for therapy of aspergillosis are polyenes, azoles, and echinocandins. However, despite in vitro efficacy of these antifungals, treatment failure is frequently observed. In this study, we established bioluminescence imaging to monitor drug efficacy under in vitro and in vivo conditions. In vitro assays confirmed the effectiveness of liposomal amphotericin B, voriconazole, and anidulafungin. Liposomal amphotericin B and voriconazole were fungicidal, whereas anidulafungin allowed initial germination of conidia that stopped elongation but allowed the conidia to remain viable. In vivo studies were performed with a leukopenic murine model. Mice were challenged by intranasal instillation with a bioluminescent reporter strain (5 × 105 and 2.5 × 105 conidia), and therapy efficacies of liposomal amphotericin B, voriconazole, and anidulafungin were monitored. For monotherapy, the highest treatment efficacy was observed with liposomal amphotericin B, whereas the efficacies of voriconazole and anidulafungin were strongly dependent on the infectious dose. When therapy efficacy was studied with different drug combinations, all combinations improved the rate of treatment success compared to that with monotherapy. One hundred percent survival was obtained for treatment with a combination of liposomal amphotericin B and anidulafungin, which prevented not only pulmonary infections but also infections of the sinus. In conclusion, combination therapy increases treatment success, at least in the murine infection model. In addition, our novel approach based on real-time imaging enables in vivo monitoring of drug efficacy in different organs during therapy of invasive aspergillosis.


The role of lipid‐bound second messengers in the regulation of neurotransmitter secretion is an important but poorly understood subject. Both bovine adrenal Chromaffin cells and rat phoeochromocytoma (PC12) cells, two widely studied models of neuronal function, respond to bradykinin by generating phosphatidic acid (PA). This putative second messenger may be produced by two receptor‐linked pathways: sequential action of phospholipase C (PLC) and diacylglycerol kinase(DAG kinase), or directly by phospholipase D (PLD). Here we show that bradykinin stimulation of Chromaffin cells prelabelled (24 h) with 32P1 leads to production of [32P]PA which is not affected by 50 mM butanol. However, bradykinin stimulation of PC12 cells leads to [32P]PA formation, all of which is converted to phosphatidylbutanol in the presence of butanol. When Chromaffin cells prelabelled with [3H]choline were stimulated with bradykinin there was no enhancement of formation of water soluble products of phosphatidylcholine hydrolysis. When chromaffin cells were permeabilised with pneumolysin and incubated in the presence of [γ‐32P]ATP, the formation of [32P]PA was still stimulated by bradykinin. These results show that, although both neuronal models synthesize PA in response to bradykinin, they do so by quite different routes: PLC/DAG kinase for chromaffin cells and PLD for PC12 cells. The observation that neither bradykinin nor tetradecanoyl phorbol acetate stimulate PLD in chromaffin cells suggests that these cells lack PLD activity. The conservation of PA formation, albeit by different routes, may indicate an essential role of PA in the regulation of cellular events by bradykinin.


Polycystic ovary syndrome is the most common endocrine disorder and main cause of infertility due to anovulation in reproductive aged women.With regard to the important role of insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia in the pathophysiology of this syndrome and the role of zinc in structure and function of insulin hormone, as zinc dishomeostasis has adverse effect on the synthesis and secretion of insulin that lead to exacerbation of insulin resistance condition therefore the aim of this study was to assess serum zinc and insulin concentrations in women with polycystic ovary syndrome.

Material & Methods: Sixty-five women with polycystic ovary syndrome who were referred to infertility and midwifery Clinic of Alzahra Women's Hospital in Tabriz city, enrolled in this cross-sectional study. Serum zinc concentration was determined by flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Serum insulin level was measured with ELISA method and serum glucose level was measured by enzymatic glucose-oxidaze method. Statistical analyses were performed with descriptive-analytical methods. P-value < 0.05 was considered significant.

Results: In this study means of body mass index, waist circumference, fasting serum zinc, glucose, and insulin levels and mean intake of dietary zinc were: 29.39±1.65kg/m2, 97.24±6.42cm, 77.18±5.41µg/dl, 94.40±6.86 mg/dl, 18.33±8.24 µU/ml, 5.45±0.8 mg/day, respectively. There were significant negative relationships between serum zinc and serum insulin, insulin resistance index in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (r = -0.44, P= 0.001).

Conclusion: We recommend the nutritional-metabolic importance of zinc in polycystic ovary syndrome, and encourage the patients in consumption of zinc contents foods like marine meals and nuts.


The research presented in this paper is related to an ongoing program in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada involving members of an urban Aboriginal street gang. Gang members recently released from prison have for a variety of reasons become interested in leaving behind the criminal part of their gang involvement, and developing lifestyles less likely to bring them into conflict with the law. For the men in this study, desistance from crime did not necessarily mean a departure from the gang itself. Rather, they see themselves as having taken a conscious decision not to be involved in criminal activity, but not to leave the gang. The scheme works with them on learning carpentry skills as part of an urban housing renovation project. A major part of the program is the encouragement of pro-social values through traditional Aboriginal cultural teachings. Use of the `gang' ethic builds teamwork and commitment not to reoffend among members.


Abstract  Until recently, FK 506 was used only for rescue therapy after pancreas transplantation. We report our initial experience with FK 506 for 67 pancreas recipients (treated between 1 May 1993 and 30 April 1995). Of these recipients, 49 (73 %) received FK.506 for induction and maintenance therapy, 12 (18 %) for rescue or antirejection therapy, and 6 (9 %) for reasons other than rescue or antirejection therapy. In our induction and maintenance therapy group, 32 recipients (65 %) underwent a simultaneous pancreas‐kidney transplant (SPK), 8 (16 %) a pancreas transplant alone (PTA), and 9 (19 %) a pancreas after previous kidney transplant (PAK). Quadruple immunosuppression was used for induction; the median FK 506 starting dose was 4 mg/day p. 0. and target levels were 10–20 ng/ ml. The most common side effects were nephrotoxicity (16 %) and neurotoxicity (14 %); transient episodes of hyperglycemia were also noted (12 %), in particular in the presence of concurrent rejection and infection episodes. A matched‐pair analysis was done to compare graft outcome with FK506 versus cyclosporin A (CsA). For SPK recipients, pancreas graft survival at 6 months was 79 % with FK506 versus 65 % with CsA (P= 0.04), for PTA, 100 % versus 63 % (P > 0.35), and for PAK, 88 % versus 33 % (P > 0.01). Pancreas graft loss due to rejection at 6 months posttransplant was lower with FK 506 versus CsA. Two FK506 recipients died from B‐cell lymphomas (Epstein‐Barr virus positive) at 6 and 7 months post‐transplant. In our rescue or anti‐rejection group, 5 recipients underwent SPK, 3 PTA, and 4 PAK. The mean average FK506 dose was 10 mg/day p. o. and the mean average FK506 blood level was 11 ng/ml. The most common side effects were nephrotoxicity (33 %) and neurotoxicity (16 %). Two recipients developed hyperglycemic episodes, of whom 1 has remained on insulin with good exocrine pancreas graft function. Graft survival at 6 months after conversion was 75 % for SPK, 67 % for PTA, and 50 % for PAK. Only one graft was lost due to chronic rejection. Our single‐center experience shows that FK 506 after pancreas transplantation is associated with: (1) a low rate of graft loss due to rejection when used for induction, in particular for solitary pancreas transplants, (2) a high rate of graft salvage when used for rescue, (3) a 1 % rate of new‐onset insulin‐dependent diabetes mellitus, and (4) a 3 % rate of posttransplant lymphoma. Further studies are necessary to analyze the long‐term impact of FK 506 on pancreas transplant outcome.


A large grid of deep-imaging, marine seismic reflection data has been acquired in the Gulf of Guinea. The data show that the architecture of old Atlantic igneous oceanic crust and upper mantle is highly variable, particularly if reflection Moho is taken to be the base of the crust. Most abrupt changes in oceanic basement thickness and depth to Moho can be correlated with fracture- zone crossings, but significant variations can occur between fracture zones and along flow lines, especially near the ocean-continent transition. Reflection Moho is usually continuous from ocean to continent and does not display any systematic changes in character, continuity, or reflection time even beneath the innermost shelf areas. There are several varieties of intra-crustal reflectors, including those that mark different levels within the oceanic gabbroic complex and events that diagonally link the top of oceanic seismic layer 2 and Moho. Different types of sub-Moho dipping reflections also are observed. Some are associated with fracture zones, some originate within continental crust and dip toward the ocean, dissecting Moho without offsetting it, and still others originate at the oceanic Moho and dip toward the continent. The transition from oceanic to continental crust is generally quite sharp north of lat 1°S, but the exact nature of the transition ranges from rift-block geology to abrupt juxtapositions of oceanic and continental crustal rocks. South of about lat 1°S, the transition to continental crust is more gradual, involving a progressive thickening of oceanic crust toward land. This difference may relate to the occurrence of much more oblique initial rifting north of 1°S.


This paper reviews the performance of ASEAN countries over the two decades since the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, as well as the countries' vulnerabilities to the U.S.-China trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic. It argues that these turbulences indicate that the world has reached an inflection point, requiring fundamental change in development thinking and approaches. This message is particularly relevant for Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, which made impressive economic achievements before the COVID-19 outbreak. As all ASEAN countries have established aspirational goals for their development journeys over the next two to three decades, it is imperative that each country undertake decisive fundamental reforms and strategic shifts in order to be highly prepared, competitive, and resilient in the future development landscape. Furthermore, ASEAN will be much stronger if it can position itself as an integrated market and a well-coordinated community, in which each country endeavors to enhance not only its own fitness, but also the fitness of the region in the post-COVID-19 global economic evolution.


Fortune's Fool tells the story of how the music industry has met its worst crisis, the Internet Age. When Edgar Bronfman, Jr, bought Warner Music Group from Time Warner, his track record consisted of dissembling the family business, Seagram. The resulting Universal-vivendi deal collapsed in less than two years, taking much of the Bronfman fortune with it. When he and his equity partners bought Warner, they turned a profit in just 14 months, but their problems, like those of the business as a whole, were just beginning. As soon as Edgar Jr. went to work at Seagram, he began move the company into entertainment business, financed by his sale of Seagram's 150 million shares of Dupont. That decision ruptured the board and the Seagram family, ended the 75 year history of Seagram. When Edgar Jr bought MCA from Masushita and then merged disastrously with Vivendi, and lost $3 billion, the failure nearly ended his business career. But in the fall-out of the Time/AOL merger, Bronfman was able to rescue the once storied Warner Record Group and reinvent its flagging Atlantic Records as the industry's most successful Internet label. At the same time, CD retailers were disappearing, and though Warner made aggressive deals with technology companies, there was no workable mass solution. By 2007 Warner's stock, which once traded at $30, was at $7 and falling. With access to not only Bronfman, but all the major players, Fred Goodman shows through this revelatory history and analysis that the labels' long strategy of rewarding chart success and market share turned out to be innately destructive when it came time transform the business model. Edgar Jr , the Warner labels and the industry face a final challenge from the Internet that will either save them or make them extinct: developing a recording product or service that is superior to what is already available for free.


This article reports on the impact of a school based father and son, "rites of passage" program on its participants in two Australian Catholic boys' schools. The author conducted a mixed methodology study investigating quantitative differences between 15- to 17-year-old adolescent participants and non-participants in how they rated their "father relationships" and the impact that specific program elements (the "rite of passage," planned conversations, and public acknowledgements) had on both program participants. The research found evidence to support the program's positive impact on father-son relationships. As a result of planned conversations with their fathers in the program, participants reported feeling "older" and more mature.


The efficient and sustainable use of water is becoming standard practice in water scarce regions and pro-active policy initiatives are taken to increase supply reliability considering the local context. The aim of this paper is to evaluate farmers' acceptance of policy strategies to increase water supply reliability in a water scarce river basin in the south east of Spain. Results from a choice experiment study suggest that farmers are willing to pay double water prices to ensure water supply reliability, through government supply guaranteed programs. However, they are averse to any other institutional changes that could assist the government to achieve increased water supply.


We study a possibly integrable model of abelian gauge fields on a two-dimensional surface M , with volume form μ . It has the same phase space as ideal hydrodynamics, a coadjoint orbit of the volume-preserving diffeomorphism group of M . Gauge field Poisson brackets differ from the Heisenberg algebra, but are reminiscent of Yang-Mills theory on a null surface. Enstrophy invariants are Casimirs of the Poisson algebra of gauge invariant observables. Some symplectic leaves of the Poisson manifold are identified. The Hamiltonian is a magnetic energy, similar to that of electrodynamics, and depends on a metric whose volume element is not a multiple of μ . The magnetic field evolves by a quadratically non-linear 'Euler' equation, which may also be regarded as describing geodesic flow on SDiff(M,μ). Static solutions are obtained. For uniform μ , an infinite sequence of local conserved charges beginning with the hamiltonian are found. The charges are shown to be in involution, suggesting integrability. Besides being a theory of a novel kind of ideal flow, this is a toy-model for Yang-Mills theory and matrix field theories, whose gauge-invariant phase space is conjectured to be a coadjoint orbit of the diffeomorphism group of a non-commutative space.


Promoting critical thinking skill through the teaching of literature is to improve the thinking skills of the students in which the students learn what to think and how to think through the subject (Norman, 1990; Clement & Lochhead, 1989 cited in Schafersman, 1991). This study aims the existing scenarios in today's classroom pertaining to the teaching of literature. Literature subject is seen as a difficult subject; therefore, the students are spoonfed. The focus of the study was to investigate whether the teaching of literature promotes critical thinking of the students. Thus the study determined the teachers' feedback on the subject, methodologies, literary texts and critical thinking skill. The benefits of the teaching of literature can be in the three forms; personal and emotional gains, learning gains and language gains. Apart from reading for enjoyment, literature promotes critical thinking skills when involves exploration of the texts. 36 teachers of six selected schools were the sample of this study. They were given a set of questionnaire to give their feedback. Three classes involved in the observation and six teachers were interviewed. Based on the findings, it was found out teachers are the best agents in teaching the subject as well as promoting critical thinking skill through the subject to the students. It was also found out that most of the teachers agreed that the teaching of literature is important and that the components contribute to the holistic development of the students. However the success of the implementation depended on the students' abilities. The study also determined that methodologies such as questioning, discussion and brainstorming techniques played important roles in ensuring the success of the subject in promoting critical thinking skills. The study demonstrated that the literature subject using the methods and techniques were capable in widening knowledge and broadening viewpoint of the students. It was also determined that the literary texts selected were relevant. It was also found that by using the literary texts selected and applying the best methods and techniques, critical thinking skills can be promoted in the teaching of literature.


The aim of our study was to estimate the case fatality of a severe exacerbation from long-term survival data presented in the literature. A literature search identified studies reporting ≥1.5 yr survival after a severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbation resulting in hospitalisation. The survival curve of each study was divided into a critical and a stable period. Mortality during the stable period was then estimated by extrapolating the survival curve during the stable period back to the time of exacerbation onset. Case fatality was defined as the excess mortality that results from an exacerbation and was calculated as 1 minus the (backwardly) extrapolated survival during the stable period at the time of exacerbation onset. The 95% confidence intervals (CI) of the estimated case fatalities were obtained by bootstrapping. A random effect model was used to combine all estimates into a weighted average with 95% CI. The meta-analysis based on six studies that fulfilled the inclusion criteria resulted in a weighted average case-fatality rate of 15.6% (95% CI 10.9–20.3), ranging from 11.4% to 19.0% for the individual studies. A severe COPD exacerbation requiring hospitalisation not only results in higher mortality risks during hospitalisation, but also in the time-period after discharge and contributes substantially to total COPD mortality.


- The only text to provide a fresh, contemporary perspective on energy and sustainability for an undergraduate audience

- Includes extensive coverage of the important concepts and issues underpinning modern energy production

- Gives detailed descriptions of the main methods used to produce energy today

- Lavishly illustrated with full-colour photographs and diagrams

- Boxes throughout the text present in-depth case studies and further explanation of more advanced topics

- Written by an experienced and authoritative course team at the Open University

Today energy and sustainability are areas of primary concern. Energy Systems and Sustainability provides a thorough introduction to the economic, social, environmental and policy issues raised by current systems of energy use, as well as describing their key physical and engineering features.

The book begins with an introductory account of the present world energy situation. This is followed by chapters explaining basic energy concepts and describing the magnitudes and patterns of human energy needs.

The central part of the book deals with the historical evolution and present status of the conventional fossil and nuclear fuelled energy systems that, along with hydropower and traditional biofuels, currently supply the majority of the world's commercial energy needs. A section on economics describes the basic methods by which the monetary costs of energy are calculated, and discusses the issue of the 'external' costs of energy production.

The concluding sections then deal with the sustainability problems associated with both fossil and nuclear fuel use, and ways in which these might be ameliorated by various technological developments.

The interdisciplinary approach of the book will appeal not only to specialists but also to non-specialist readers who wish to improve their understanding of these complex and increasingly important issues.

This book will be an ideal companion to the forthcoming second edition of Renewable Energy by Godfrey Boyle, which deals with the different forms of renewable energy and how these can be utilised.

Readership:

Undergraduates and postgraduates taking courses in energy, sustainable development, environmental subjects and architecture. Also suitable for non-specialists.

Contents:

1. Introductory Overview , Godfrey Boyle

2. Primary Energy , Janet Ramage

3. Energy Needs , Bob Everett and Janet Ramage

4. Forms of Energy , Janet Ramage

5. Coal , Janet Ramage

6. Heat to Motive Power , Janet Ramage and Bob Everett

7. Oil and Gas , David Crabbe

8. Engines and Turbines , Janet Ramage, Bob Everett, David Crabbe

9. The Rise of Electric Power , Janet Ramage and Bob Everett

10. Principles of Nuclear Power , Janet Ramage

11. The Future of Nuclear Power , David Elliott

12. Principles of Energy Costing , Bob Everett

13. Penalties , Janet Ramage, Bob Everett, Stephen Peake, Godfrey Boyle

14. Remedies , Godfrey Boyle


Lime has been extensively used to improve the strength of finegrained soils. The presence of sulphate in soils causes abnormal volume changes in lime stabilized soil. The addition of lime converts the soil to a rigid soil mass, the particles of which are strongly bound by pozzolanic cementitious compounds formed by reactions with soil silica and lime in the presence of water. In this study, lime, silica fume, and lime-silica fume have been used for stabilizing and considering their effects on the soft clay soil. A grey-colored densified silica fume (SF) is used. It is a pozzolanic material which has a high content of amorphous silicon dioxide and consists of very fine spherical particles. Lime reacts with soft clay to produce decreased plasticity, increased workability, and increased strength. Three percentages are used for lime (2%,4% and 6%) and three percentages are used for SF (2.5%, 5%, 10%) and the optimum percentage of SF is mixed with the percentages of lime. Several tests are made to investigate the soil behavior after adding the L or SF. The curves of grain size distribution are shifted significantly to the coarser side as the lime and SF percentage increases; the soil becomes more granular. From the unconfined compression test, the optimum percent of L-SF was 4% L and 5% SF. There is an optimum lime content beyond which the strength gain may be marginal. Also, in certain cases the strength gain may be too slow to meet the requirements.


The colorful appearance of a physical painting is determined by the distribution of paint pigments across the canvas, which we model as a per-pixel mixture of a small number of pigments with multispectral absorption and scattering coefficients. We present an algorithm to efficiently recover this structure from an RGB image, yielding a plausible set of pigments and a low RGB reconstruction error. We show that under certain circumstances we are able to recover pigments that are close to ground truth, while in all cases our results are always plausible. Using our decomposition, we repose standard digital image editing operations as operations in pigment space rather than RGB, with interestingly novel results. We demonstrate tonal adjustments, selection masking, cut-copy-paste, recoloring, palette summarization, and edge enhancement.


In March 2005 I visited the Robert Kroetsch Fonds in the University
of Calgary Special Collections. This consists of almost twenty linear
meters of material, including letters to Kroetsch from writers, publishers
and academics, letters to and from family members, multiple drafts of
his major works and unpublished works, print-outs of e-mails he sent
and received, plane and train ticket receipts, conference outlines and
drafts of papers, photographs, course outlines, pizza menus, notes written
on the backs of postcards, and more.1 Sifting through this material, I felt
a mixture of excitement, voyeurism, frustration, and embarrassment.
Dry academic correspondence sat beside intimate notes, which nestled
next to what in other circumstances would be considered junk mail. In
the first few days I tried to take it all in and to be as comprehensive as
possible, close reading letters and poring over drafts. When running out
of time, I developed a more ruthless, utilitarian approach, dismissing
potentially interesting, intimate details if they did not seem immediately
relevant, acutely aware of the time limit I had. I became conscious of my
role as selector and producer—attempting to turn the exciting chaos
into coherent stories, stifling the excess of the archive.


Teaching is a profession that needs specialist knowledge and skill. Because of this, education of teachers is crucial process. In Turkey, new strategies to educate teachers put on the educational practice. Educating the teacher candidates is beginning from the secondary schools in new system. The aim of this study was to determine the motivational levels and motivational supplies for candidate teachers in the secondary teacher training schools. The population of the study was selected from five secondary teacher training schools in five cities. Totally 509 students as a sampling group was selected with randomly. Data were collected by the ―Motivation Scale‖ and analyzed by using ANOVA and t-test. The results of the study indicated that, secondary teacher training schools students had been most affected from the self-confidence and future anxiety sources. Finally suggestions were included for motivating to teaching in secondary teacher training schools.


We examine how a firm's formal organizational structure affects its ability to cope with interdependent decisions. An agent-based simulation, in which firms struggle to discover good sets of decisions, allows us to examine four coordinating mechanisms that have rarely been analyzed jointly: the grouping of related decisions under a single subordinate, a vertical hierarchy that reviews proposals from subordinates, firm-level incentives, and managers who are able to process more information. We find that organizational structure affects long-term performance by influencing the number and nature of "sticking points" - configurations of choices the organization will not change. We identify each of the four coordinating mechanisms as a force that either encourages firms to explore a broad set of alternatives or stabilizes firms around existing choices. Successful firms strike a balance between exploration and stability. The need to balance exploration and stability generates interdependencies among the coordinating mechanisms. As a result, firms sometimes benefit from seemingly harmful features: avoidable decision interdependence between departments, a passive CEO, or subordinates of limited ability. We further examine how appropriate organizational design depends on the underlying pattern of interaction among decisions. When interactions are pervasive, successful organizations employ coordinating mechanisms that promote broad exploration.


What is the complexity of computing equilibria for physically implementable analog networks (Hopfield 1984; Sejnowski 1981) with arbitrary connectivity? We show that if the amplifiers are piecewise 1' inear, then such networks are instances of a game-theoretic model known as poZymatrix games. In contrast with the usual gradient descent methods for symmetric networks, equilibria for polymatrix games may be computed by vertex pivoting algorithms similar to the simplex method for linear programming. Like the simplex method, these algorithms have characteristic low order polynomial behavior in virtually all practical cases, though not certain theoretical ones. While these algorithms cannot be applied to models requiring evolution from an initial point, they are applicable to "clamping" models whose input is expressed purely as a bias. Thus we have an a priori indication that such models are computationally tractable.


Anna Bonifazi suggests that the Homeric text we have now would have enabled ancient audiences to enjoy the evocative power of even minimal linguistic elements. The multiple functions served by these elements are associated not only with the variety of narrative contexts in which they occur but also with overarching poetic strategies. The findings relate to two strategies in particular: unfolding the narrative by signaling the upcoming content with au- adverbs and particles, and letting the complexity of Odysseus' identity resonate through the ambiguous use of third-person pronouns. The words' evocative power springs from the deliberate merging of distinct meanings, which prompts multifaceted interpretations. The text allows the incorporation of different viewpoints, just as an iridescent fabric allows the simultaneous perception of different colors.


Evidence increasingly demonstrates that prediabetes is a toxic state, as well as a risk factor for diabetes, and is associated with pathophysiological changes in several tissues and organs. Unfortunately, use of available evidence-based treatments for prediabetes is low. This review seeks to explain why prediabetes must be viewed and treated as a serious pathological entity in its own right. It offers an overview of the pathophysiology and complications of prediabetes and describes how this condition can be reversed if all treatment avenues are deployed early in its course.


Salbutamol is a
short-acting β2-adrenergic
receptor agonist used for the relief of bronchospasm such as asthma and chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It is mostly taken through an inhaler
device. The comparative toxicity assessment between two salbutamol sulfate
preparations containing hydrofluoroalkane (HFA) metered dose inhalers with 100 μg
per puff was evaluated in selected patients with asthma and COPD after prescribing. An open label, non-randomized, non-interventional observational study was
designed. A large cohort of patients with asthma or related respiratory disorder
of the general population from Dhaka and Chittagong of Bangladesh were
recruited and treated with prescribed generic preparation Azmasol inhaler and
brand preparation Ventolin Evohaler. Total 508 patients with asthma and minor
obstructive airway disease were selected by the general medical practitioners
in Bangladesh those who visited out patient consultation center in hospitals
and physicians' chambers and reported any
adverse side effects of inhaled medications. There were no significant
differences between the metered dose generic preparation Azmasol inhaler
and Ventolon Evohaler among the patients
treated with the medicines in asthma
and related respiratory diseases in terms of adverse effects like immune
system problem,dizziness,tremor,headache,nervousness,diarrhea,nausea,vomiting,heartburn,palpitation,skin rash,hypertension and
taste feeling. It is concluded that Azmasol Inhaler, the generic salbutamol
sulphate metered dose preparation containing HFA was as safe as the Ventolin
Evohaler,a salbutamol sulfate brand
preparation containing HFA when given to the patients in primary care after
their physicians' visits. Both the preparations have shown the similar safety
profiles after regular use.


This paper uses national household survey data to examine changes in real per capita incomes in South Africa between 1993 and 2008; the start and the end of the first fifteen years of post-apartheid South Africa. These data show an increase in average per capita real incomes across the distribution. Over this period growth has been shared, albeit unequally, across almost the entire spectrum of incomes. However, kernel density estimations make clear that these real income changes are not dramatic and inequality has increased. We conduct a series of semi-parametric decompositions in order to understand the role of endowments and changes in the returns to these endowments in driving these observed changes in the income distribution. This analysis highlights the positive role played by changes in endowments such as access to education and social services over the period. If these endowment changes were all that changed in South Africa over the post-apartheid period, we would have seen a pervasive rightward shift of the distribution of per capita real incomes. In the rest of the paper we explore why this did not happen.


Large-scale language models show promising text generation capabilities, but users cannot easily control particular aspects of the generated text. We release CTRL, a 1.63 billion-parameter conditional transformer language model, trained to condition on control codes that govern style, content, and task-specific behavior. Control codes were derived from structure that naturally co-occurs with raw text, preserving the advantages of unsupervised learning while providing more explicit control over text generation. These codes also allow CTRL to predict which parts of the training data are most likely given a sequence. This provides a potential method for analyzing large amounts of data via model-based source attribution. We have released multiple full-sized, pretrained versions of CTRL at this https URL.


Objective Leak around the face mask is a common problem during neonatal resuscitation. A newly designed face mask using a suction system to enhance contact between the mask and the infant's face might reduce leak and improve neonatal resuscitation. The aim of the study is to determine whether leak is reduced using the suction mask (Resusi-sure mask) compared with a conventional mask (Laerdal Silicone mask) in a manikin model. Methods Sixty participants from different professional categories (neonatal consultants, fellows, registrars, nurses, midwives and students) used each face mask in a random order to deliver 2 min of positive pressure ventilation to a manikin. Delivered airway pressures were measured using a pressure line. Inspiratory and expiratory flows were measured using a flow sensor, and expiratory tidal volumes and mask leaks were derived from these values. Results A median (IQR) leak of 12.1 (0.6–39.0)% was found with the conventional mask compared with 0.7 (0.2–4.6)% using the suction mask (p=0.002). 50% of the participants preferred to use the suction mask and 38% preferred to use the conventional mask. There was no correlation between leak and operator experience. Conclusions A new neonatal face mask based on the suction system reduced leak in a manikin model. Clinical studies to test the safety and effectiveness of this mask are needed.


This thesis is a study of free people of colour during the era of emancipation in Barbados, with a particular focus on their relationships with and attitudes towards slaves. It examines the period between the 1816 slave rebellion and the 1854 cholera epidemic, encompassing the apprenticeship period of 1834-1838. The thesis argues that differences of class, political ideology, gender and the specific nature of their relationships with slaves determined emancipation's impact on free people of colour. At the same time, the thesis illustrates that pre-emancipation free people of colour as a group remained economically and politically marginal after emancipation, much as they had been during slavery. Reforms to the island's slave laws during the 1820s and early 1830s undermined the legal distinction between free people of colour and slaves. The abolitionism debate and increasing racial tension in the island led free non-whites to challenge openly the principle of racial subordination for the first time. After 1834, elite free people of colour forged a sense of "race consciousness", and adopted emancipation as the key to their battle against racial inequality, asserting themselves as the legitimate protectors of ex-slaves' interests. However class differences and disagreements over emancipation policy led to political factionalism among people of colour. The absence of fundamental change in the distribution of land and wealth after emancipation left most pre-1834 free people of colour and ex-slaves with little hope of political enfranchisement or socio-economic betterment. By the early 1850s, many came to see emigration as the solution to their difficulties. This thesis is the first study of pre-1834 free people of colour in post-emancipation Barbados, and one of few to examine both the periods of slavery and postemancipation. By focussing on the intricate relations between free people of colour and slaves/ex-slaves, this thesis shows how emancipation transformed many aspects of social relations in Barbados ― particularly with regard to race, class, labour and gender.


In January 2003, SGI announced the SGI® Altix® 3000 family of servers. As announced, the SGI Altix 3000 system supported up to 64 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors and 512 GB of main memory in a single Linux® image. Altix now supports up to 256 processors in a single Linux system, and we have a few early-adopter customers who are running 512 processors in a single Linux system; others are running with as much as 4 terabytes of memory. This paper continues the work reported on in our 2003 OLS paper by describing the changes necessary to get Linux to efficiently run high-performance computing workloads on such large systems.


We study maximum principles for a class of linear, degenerate elliptic differential operators of the second order. The Weak and Strong Maximum Principles are shown to hold for this class of operators in bounded domains, as well as a Hopf type lemma, under suitable hypotheses on the principal part and on the degeneracy set of the operator. We prove a Poincare inequality, which then allows to define the functional setting where to study weak solutions for equations and inequalities involving this class of operators. A good example of such an operator is the Grushin operator, to which we devote particular attention. As an application of these tools in the degenerate elliptic setting, we prove a partial symmetry result for classical solutions of semilinear problems on bounded, symmetric and suitably convex domains and a nonexistence result for classical solutions of semilinear equations with subcritical growth defined on the whole space. We use here the method of moving planes, implemented just in the directions parallel to the degeneracy set of the Grushin operator.


This document proposes a mechanism for finding a URI associated with a
solicitation class keyword, which is defined in RFC 3865, the No
Soliciting SMTP Service Extension. Solicitation class keywords are
simple labels consisting of a domain name that has been reversed, such
as "org.example.adv". These solicitation class keywords are inserted
in selected header fields or used in the ESMTP service extension,
including a new \%"No-Solicit:" header, which can contain one or more
solicitation class keywords inserted by the sender. This document
specifies an application based on the Dynamic Delegation Discovery
System (DDDS) described in RFC 3401 and related documents. An
algorithm is specified to associate a solicitation class keyword with
a URI which contains further information about the meaning and usage
of that solicitation class keyword. For example, the registrant of the
"example.org" domain could use this mechanism to create a URI which
contains detailed information about the "org.example.adv" solicitation
class keyword. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


Most companies today place their job advertisements online and frequently require that applications for jobs be submitted online. Unfortunately, many online employment Web sites are inaccessible to users with disabilities, preventing these individuals from even applying for jobs online. Previous studies have used automated tools or expert reviews to evaluate the accessibility of online employment applications. This study involved 16 blind, screen-reader users, attempting to apply for jobs online. Two applications were submitted to each of 16 companies in the southeastern United States, for a total of 32 applications submitted. Many of the online employment application processes were inaccessible to blind users, and users repeatedly asked for assistance from the researchers when they faced accessibility problems. Only 9/32 (28.1%) of application attempts could be completed independently without any assistance. This report details the problems discovered during the usability testing and discusses the most common problems for blind users, as well as problems related to general usability. It also provides suggestions for improvement, including providing accessible feedback, unique and clear hyperlink text, properly structured layout, logical grouping of questions, clearly identified data format and required form fields, and conducting regular accessibility evaluations. It is essential that companies ensure that their online employment applications are accessible and usable for all individuals, including individuals with disabilities.


When lawmakers enacted 778 plain language laws across the United States, no one noticed. Apart from a handful, these laws went untracked and unstudied. Without study, large questions remain about these laws' effects and utility, and about how they inform the adoption or rejection of plain language. This Article creates a conceptual framework for plain language laws to set the stage for future empirical research and normative discussions on the value of plain language. It unveils the first nationwide empirical survey of plain language laws to reveal their locations, coverages, and standards. In doing so, the Article creates a systematic method to find these laws. Then it coins categories and terminology to describe their coverage and standards, thus creating a timely launchpad for future scholarship on domestic and international plain language laws. Along the way, the Article exposes the previously unknown scope of these laws—from election ballots and insurance contracts to veterans housing and consumer contracts to regulatory drafting and governor reports. That scope underscores the pervasive influence of plain language across public and private sectors, and over lawyers and non-lawyers alike. More, the survey reveals significant intrastate and interstate variations and trends in coverages and standards. With this knowledge, for the first-time empirical research can more precisely measure the benefits and costs of plain language laws while controlling for variables. Plus, the Article sets the stage for a forthcoming series of normative assessments on the role and design of plain language laws. Ultimately, the Article reignites a lively discourse on plain language amongst lawmakers, practitioners, and academics.


This paper presents work-in-progress investigating whether the emergence of the English plural morpheme in formal Vietnamese learners of EFL is a result of the developmental morphophonemic interface in the learners' L2. The investigation follows the research findings of (i) Dao's (2007) cross-sectional study on the acquisition order of the morpheme conducted in a Processability Theory (PT) framework, and (ii) Hansen's (2004) longitudinal study on the production of English codas by two Vietnamese learners of English. Dao (2007) found that contrary to what PT predicts, Vietnamese learners of EFL acquire the phrasal nominal plural marker before the lexical nominal plural marker and the inter-phrasal verbal marker . In an explanatory account of Dao's (2007) findings, Charters, Dao & Jansen (2011), attribute the reverse emergence order of the English nominal plural morpheme in Vietnamese learners of EFL to probable differences between L1 and L2 conceptual structure and concomitant links to lexical structure and form. Hansen (2004) on the other hand suggests that the emergence sequence of English bi-morphemic plural in her Vietnamese learners is constrained by phonological developmental effects and grammatical conditioning, as well as L1 transfer effects. The paper presents results from a morpho-phonological analysis of the speech production data of 6 of Dao's (2007) 36 adolescent, formal Vietnamese learners of EFL, using PRAAT phonetic analysis software. The aim of the analyses is to ascertain whether Hansen's (2004) suggestions are further supported by Dao's data. (240 words)


This work examines closely the possibilities for errors, mistakes and uncertainties in sensing sys tems. We identify and suggest techniques for modeling, analyzing, and recovering these uncertainties. This work concentrates on uncertainties in visual sensing to recover 3-D structure and motion char acteristics of the scene under observation, however, we conjecture that the approaches described here are suitable for other sensors and parameters to be recovered. The computed uncertainties are utilized for reconstructing the scene under observation.


Mutator phenotypes have been described in laboratory-evolved bacteria, as well as in natural isolates. Several genes can be impacted, each of them being associated with a typical mutational spectrum. By studying one of the oldest strains available, the ancestral Escherich strain, we were able to identify its mutator status leading to tremendous genetic diversity among the isolates from various collections and allowing us to reconstruct the phylogeographic history of the strain. This mutator phenotype was probably acquired during the storage of the strain, promoting adaptation to a specific environment. Other mutations in rpoS and efflux pump- and porin-encoding genes highlight the acclimatization of the strain through self-preservation and nutritional competence regulation. This strain history can be viewed as unintentional experimental evolution in culture collections all over the word since 1885, mimicking the long-term experimental evolution of E. coli of Lenski et al. (O. Tenaillon, J. E. Barrick, N. Ribeck, D. E. Deatherage, J. L. Blanchard, A. Dasgupta, G. C. Wu, S. Wielgoss, S. Cruveiller, C. Médigue, D. Schneider, and R. E. Lenski, Nature 536:165–170, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18959) that shares numerous molecular features. ABSTRACT More than a century ago, Theodor Escherich isolated the bacterium that was to become Escherichia coli, one of the most studied organisms. Not long after, the strain began an odyssey and landed in many laboratories across the world. As laboratory culture conditions could be responsible for major changes in bacterial strains, we conducted a genome analysis of isolates of this emblematic strain from different culture collections (England, France, the United States, Germany). Strikingly, many discrepancies between the isolates were observed, as revealed by multilocus sequence typing (MLST), the presence of virulence-associated genes, core genome MLST, and single nucleotide polymorphism/indel analyses. These differences are correlated with the phylogeographic history of the strain and were due to an unprecedented number of mutations in coding DNA repair functions such as mismatch repair (MutL) and oxidized guanine nucleotide pool cleaning (MutT), conferring a specific mutational spectrum and leading to a mutator phenotype. The mutator phenotype was probably acquired during subculturing and corresponded to second-order selection. Furthermore, all of the isolates exhibited hypersusceptibility to antibiotics due to mutations in efflux pump- and porin-encoding genes, as well as a specific mutation in the sigma factor-encoding gene rpoS. These defects reflect a self-preservation and nutritional competence tradeoff allowing survival under the starvation conditions imposed by storage. From a clinical point of view, dealing with such mutator strains can lead microbiologists to draw false conclusions about isolate relatedness and may impact therapeutic effectiveness. IMPORTANCE Mutator phenotypes have been described in laboratory-evolved bacteria, as well as in natural isolates. Several genes can be impacted, each of them being associated with a typical mutational spectrum. By studying one of the oldest strains available, the ancestral Escherich strain, we were able to identify its mutator status leading to tremendous genetic diversity among the isolates from various collections and allowing us to reconstruct the phylogeographic history of the strain. This mutator phenotype was probably acquired during the storage of the strain, promoting adaptation to a specific environment. Other mutations in rpoS and efflux pump- and porin-encoding genes highlight the acclimatization of the strain through self-preservation and nutritional competence regulation. This strain history can be viewed as unintentional experimental evolution in culture collections all over the word since 1885, mimicking the long-term experimental evolution of E. coli of Lenski et al. (O. Tenaillon, J. E. Barrick, N. Ribeck, D. E. Deatherage, J. L. Blanchard, A. Dasgupta, G. C. Wu, S. Wielgoss, S. Cruveiller, C. Médigue, D. Schneider, and R. E. Lenski, Nature 536:165–170, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18959) that shares numerous molecular features.


A prevalent view of working memory is that visual information is actively maintained in the form of perceptually integrated objects. Such a reliance on object-based representations would lead one to expect that after an object is fully encoded into working memory, all features of that object would need to be maintained as a coherent unit. Here, we evaluated the predictions of this object-based account by testing whether observers can prioritize specific features of an object, after that object is fully encoded in working memory. On each trial, participants were presented with two sample gratings that varied in color and orientation (700 ms), followed by a mask array (100 ms) after a 200-ms interval. Both features were equally relevant at this encoding stage. Critically, at 500 ms into the retention period, participants either received a feature cue that indicated with 80% validity which feature dimension was most likely to be subsequently probed, or a neutral cue that provided no information, requiring maintenance of all the encoded features. Following the cue onset, participants maintained the features for a variable duration (2-4s) until they were asked to report either color or orientation of one of the items by adjusting the feature appearance of a probe stimulus. We used a mixture model (Zhang & Luck, 2008) to separately estimate the number and precision of successfully remembered features. Compared with the neutral cue, the feature cue led to improved memory precision for the cued feature, as well as a rapid increase of memory failure for the uncued feature. Our results demonstrate that working memory resources can be redeployed across features of objects during maintenance, conferring enhanced precision and temporal stability to the prioritized features. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


An experimental study was conducted in a room resembling an office in a laboratory environment. The study involved investigating the ability of corner-placed stratum ventilation in order to evaluate the ventilation's effectiveness and local thermal comfort. At fixed positions, the air temperature, air velocity, turbulence intensity, and tracer gas decay measurements were carried out. The results show that corner-placed stratum ventilation behaves very similar to a mixing ventilation system when considering air change effectiveness. The performance of the system was better at lower supply air flow rates for heat removal effectiveness. For the heating cases, the draught rates were all very low, with the maximum measured value of 12%. However, for the cooling cases, the maximum draught rate was 20% and occurred at ankle level in the middle of the room.


maintenance, repair, and overhaul involves fixing any sort of mechanical, plumbing or electrical device should it become out of order or broken (known as repair, unscheduled, or casualty maintenance). It also includes performing routine actions which keep the device in working order (known as scheduled maintenance) or prevent trouble from arising (preventive maintenance). MRO may be defined as, "All actions which have the objective of retaining or restoring an item in or to a state in which it can perform its required function. The actions include the combination of all technical and corresponding administrative, managerial, and supervision actions." [2]


ABSTRACT Litter decomposition, a key process by which recently fixed carbon is lost from ecosystems, is a function of environmental conditions and plant community characteristics. In ice-rich peatlands, permafrost thaw introduces high variability in both abiotic and biotic factors, both of which may affect litter decomposition rates in different ways. Can the existing conceptual frameworks of litter decomposition and its controls be applied across a structurally heterogeneous thaw gradient? We investigated the variability in litter decomposition and its predictors at the Stordalen subarctic peatland in northern Sweden. We measured in situ decomposition of representative litter and environments using litter bags throughout two years. We found highly variable litter decomposition rates with turnover times ranging from five months to four years. Surface elevation was a strong correlate of litter decomposition across the landscape, likely as it integrates multiple environmental and plant community changes brought about by thaw. There was faster decomposition but also more mass remaining after two years in thawed areas relative to permafrost areas, suggesting faster initial loss of carbon but more storage into the slow-decomposing carbon pool. Our results highlight mechanisms and predictors of carbon cycle changes in ice-rich peatlands following permafrost thaw.


Interoperability remains a challenging and growing problem within distributed systems. A range of heterogeneous network and middleware protocols which cannot interact with one another are now widely used, for example, the set of remote method invocation protocols, and the set of service discovery protocols. In environments where systems and services are composed dynamically, e.g. pervasive computing and systems-of-systems, the protocols used by two systems wishing to interact is unknown until runtime and hence interoperability cannot be guaranteed. In such situations, dynamic solutions are required to identify the differences between heterogeneous protocols and generate middleware connectors (or bridges) that will allow the systems to inter operate. In this paper, we present the Starlink middleware, a general framework into which runtime generated interoperability logic (in the form of higher level models) can be deployed to connect two heterogeneous protocols. For this, it provides: i) an abstract representation of network messages with a corresponding generic parser and composer, ii) an engine to execute coloured automata that represent the required interoperability behaviour between protocols, and iii) translation logic to describe the exchange of message content from one protocol to another. We show through case-study based evaluation that Starlink can bridge heterogeneous protocol types. Starlink is also compared against base-line protocol benchmarks to show that acceptable performance can still be achieved in spite of the high-level nature of the solution.


Despite the well-established power of the media to shape public perceptions of social problems, compassion fatigue is believed to remain prevalent. So what does it take for someone to be compelled to act after reading a story or seeing an image of a prominent issue? This study, a 3-by-2 between subjects experiment, examined the effects of two journalistic techniques — shocking audiences into action with offensive stories or inspiring them to act with solution-based stories – in the context of sex trafficking. Results revealed that neither shock nor solutions stories led to increased empathy for trafficked individuals, greater understanding of the issue, increased desire to share the story or increased desire to act, but that readers of solutions stories felt more positive and were more likely to read similar stories about the issue. This suggests that solution-focused news stories might be at least somewhat more engaging than shocking and offensive stories.


This study investigates the impact of exercises, coffee intakes, and physical trainings on fuel utilization in rats. Ninety-six rats were fed a control diet with either water (C) or coffee (CF; 0.12 g freeze-dried instant coffee/100 g body weight/d). Additionally, the animals go through physical training (TC and TCF) or no training (NTC and NTCF) for 4 weeks. For physical training, animals have to exercise on treadmills for 30 minutes (5 d per week, 15° incline, 0.5-0.8 km/h). At the end of week 4, the animals in each group were subdivided into three exercise groups: before exercise (BE), during exercise (DE), and after exercise (AE). The DE rats exercised on treadmills for 1 hour immediately before being sacrificed. Hemoglobin, hematocrit, glucose, glycogen, protein, triglyceride (TG), and free fatty acid (FFA) levels in the plasma, liver, and skeletal muscle of the rats were compared accordingly. Organ weights were also measured. Coffee-training interaction had a significant impact on heart weight, visceral fat, hemoglobin, hematocrit, liver glycogen in DE and AE, and liver triglyceride in DE and AE. Exercise (meaning exercised on a treadmill for 1 hour immediately before being sacrificed) training interaction was significant in liver glycogen, muscle glycogen in control diet and control diet with coffee, FFA and muscle TG levels at control diet with coffee group. Exercise-coffee interactions significantly influenced the FFA with no training groups. Exercise-coffee-training interaction significantly effects on FFA, Liver TG and Muscle TG. Coffee intakes can increase lipolysis during exercising but coffee consumptions delay the recovery of liver glycogen levels in trained rats after exercising. Coffee intakes can increase lipolysis during exercising but coffee consumptions delay the recovery of liver glycogen levels in trained rats after exercising. Coffee can be an effective ergogenic aid during exercise for physically trained rats.


"Avatar. Inception. Jurassic Park. Lord of the Rings. Ratatouille." Not only are these some of the highest-grossing films of all time, they are also prime examples of how digital visual effects have transformed Hollywood filmmaking. Some critics, however, fear that this digital revolution marks a radical break with cinematic tradition, heralding the death of serious realistic movies in favor of computer-generated pure spectacle. "Digital Visual Effects in Cinema" counters this alarmist reading, by showing how digital effects-driven films should be understood as a continuation of the narrative and stylistic traditions that have defined American cinema for decades. Stephen Prince argues for an understanding of digital technologies as an expanded toolbox, available to enhance both realist films and cinematic fantasies. He offers a detailed exploration of each of these tools, from lighting technologies to image capture to stereoscopic 3D. Integrating aesthetic, historical, and theoretical analyses of digital visual effects, "Digital Visual Effects in Cinema" is an essential guide for understanding movie-making today.


To improve efficiency and gain competitive advantage many organizations consider, knowledge management activities imperative. This research considers seven factorsincludingstructure, inner processes, technology, culture, human resources, measurement and leadership to investigate and survey knowledge management implementation possibility in four different colleges in Iran. Research results shows that all surveyed centersdo not have suitable infrastructure to implement knowledge management. We find thatMeasurement, Leadership, Human Resource, Inner Processes, Culture, Technology and Structure are the most important obstacles in implementation of knowledge management at these institutions that should be improved


Background: Primary dysmenorrhea (PD) is characterized by painful cramps of lower abdomen without abnormal pelvic pathology. PD begins some hours before or simultaneously with the onset of menstrual bleeding. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of separate and concurrent supplementation of fish oils (FO) containing n-3 fatty acids and Rosa Damascena extract (RDE) on PD symptoms. Methods: In this double blind clinical trial in 2015, through convenience sampling, 105 university students with primary menstrual pain in most recent years, without abnormal pathology, and with moderate/severe dysmenorrheal symptoms according to visual analogue scale (VAS) were randomly assigned into one of four groups: 1. FO 1000 mg/day (n=26), 2. RDE 1000 mg/day (n=27), 3. FO and RDE concurrently, with the same dose (n=27), and 4. Control group (n=25). All measurements were performed three times, at the beginning, 30 th day, and 60 th day. Symptoms including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, bloating, cramp, low back pain, headache, fatigue, anxiety, sweat, weakness, dizziness, drowsiness, and feeling cold were measured by VAS. Results: After 2-month treatment, supplementation with RDE significantly reduced severity of bloating (p<0.001) and sweat (p<0.001), but FO supplementation had no significant effect on PD symptoms. The concurrent use of FO and RDE significantly decreased severity of diarrhea (p=0.038), weakness (p<0.001), dizziness (p=0.003), and feeling cold (p=0.049). Conclusion: Our results suggest that the concurrent supplementation of omega-3 fatty acids and RDE could be more effective than their separate use in decreasing PD symptoms; however, larger trials are warranted to confirm these preliminary findings.