Coral reefs are at risk and human-induced environmental stressors in synergism with microorganisms have been shown to be the key players for their deterioration. Little is known about the dynamics of coral-microbial associations through different life stages of the coral holobiont and virtually nothing is known about coral-microbial partners in Western Australian coral reef systems. This project intended to investigate the presence, diversity, community structure and role of coral-associated microbes in Ningaloo Reef spawning and brooding corals. Different coral life stages were assessed.

To determine 'normal ranges' of coral-associated microbes, three coral species (Acropora tenuis, Pocillopora damicornis and Favites abdita) were tagged and examined over a period of one year, with sampling deployed every three months. One coral species was additionally sampled on Rottnest Island, 1200km south of Ningaloo Reef, to provide comparisons between coral-associated microbes in different geographical areas. The community structure of the coral-associated microorganisms was analysed by phylogenetic analysis of 16S rRNA gene clone libraries. Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that samples grouped according to time and not species, indicating that coral-microbial associations may be a result of environmental drivers such as oceanographic characteristics, benthic community structure and temperature. Tissue samples from Rottnest Island corals revealed similarities in bacteria to the samples at Ningaloo Reef. This study highlights that coral-associated microbial communities are highly diverse; however, the complex interactions that determine the stability of these associations are not necessarily dependant on coral host specificity.
Reproduction plays a crucial role in the survival of species, therefore, data was acquired from three adult coral colonies, Acropora tenuis (broadcast spawner), Pocillopora damicornis (brooder) and Tubastrea faulkneri (ahermatypic), before and after coral mass spawning to determine if and through which drivers coral microbial communities changed through this event. A contemporary 454 sequencing approach was implemented and results revealed distinct bacterial shifts through coral mass spawning for all corals, independently of reproductive activity. Clear changes in bacterial assemblages were also detected for brooders after planulation. This infers that coral-associated microbial communities change through a coral mass spawning event and are likely driven by environmental factors and the respective bacterial community in the seawater, as well as by actual coral reproduction. Differences in coral-microbial communities reflected different life styles between brooding and spawning corals. Most α-Proteobacteria increased in abundance after spawning as well as after planulation, suggesting that specific bacteria are involved in coral reproduction irrespective of reproductive strategies; particularly bacteria affiliated with the Roseobacter clade followed this pattern.

The assessment of seawater collected from the broadcast spawning coral A. tenuis and P. damicornis after spawning and planulation, respectively revealed that adult corals, irrespective of their reproductive strategy release bacteria with their offspring which likely increases the fitness in the following processes involved in settlement and survival. Species affiliated with the genera Roseobacter and Alteromonas appear to play important roles in coral reproduction and early life history in corals.

Isolates from P. damicornis planulae were mainly affiliated with the genera Vibrio and Alteromonas and were found to be similar to bacteria released by the mother colony during planulation.

Finally the establishment of coral-microbial partnerships in coral larval stages and the potential role of these symbiotic relationships were studied. The early onset of bacterial associations in brooding and broadcast spawning corals was visualized, exploring bacterial presence and their location in the coral organism, determining when and how bacteria enter coral tissues and their cycling of nutrients towards the coral-symbiotic algal partners. Nano-scale Second Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) was applied to detect, image and map the uptake and translocation of 15N from bacteria into coral larvae on a sub-cellular level. The study also combined Fluorescent In Situ Hybridisation (FISH) to co-localize the labelled substrate with bacteria and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) to allow for ultra-structural resolution images to provide high resolution images. This study for the first time demonstrated the beneficial role of specific bacteria in translocating nitrogen into the coral holobiont, which is particularly important in the nutrient-poor environments corals live in.


We dissect the impact of liquidity on returns of Latin American firms using a detailed data set of firm characteristics over various market cycles. We find that firm-level liquidity (illiquidity) is positively (negatively) associated with returns. Further analysis reveals that global illiquidity and endogenously determined crisis periods are negatively associated with returns. Our results are in contrast to the majority of the literature on developed markets and indicate that liquidity is less of an important risk factor in Latin America. Our results suggest that improvements in firm-level liquidity will enhance returns and reduce the vulnerability of returns to global illiquidity.


This article presents findings from a longitudinal case study of efforts by a 100-store regional grocery store chain to localize its supply of fresh produce. The study was conducted to better understand the development of collaborative supply chains between farmers and grocery stores, and the broader potential that grocery store chains might play in localizing food systems. Data consists of three years of the chain's local produce purchases via direct-store-delivery from farms to stores; a survey of store managers and farmer-vendors; and interviews with farmers and grocery store and chain-level management. Analysis is structured by a conceptual framework that links collaboration to trust, which undergirds mutual commitment and mutual dependency between supply chain members, and which is dependent upon effective communication and positive prior market exchanges. The study finds that organizational structures constraining single-store autonomy in purchasing and pricing, coupled with supply variability from farms, limits trust-building and the establishment of mutual commitments and dependencies. These constraints, however, do not completely exclude direct-store-delivery as a strategy for food system localization and grower market diversification. Practitioners can support the building of collaborative supply chains through capacity-building and shepherding of early market exchanges between growers and stores, and supporting individual growers or groups of growers to become "preferred vendors" for regional grocery chains.


This paper takes the move from the uncertainty surrounding ecosystem thresholds and addresses the issue of ecosystem-state assessment by means of ecological integrity indicators and 'ecological risk'. The concept of 'ecological risk' gives a measure of the likelihood of ecosystem failure to provide the level of natural ecological goods and services expected/desired by human societies. As a consequence of human pressures (use of resources and discharge into the environment), ecosystem thresholds can be breached thus resulting in major threats to human health, safety and well-being. In this study we apply the concept of 'ecological risk' to two case-studies in the German exclusive economic zone: eutrophication and construction of offshore wind farms. The effects of different future scenarios for single-uses upon ecosystem integrity are analysed as well as the effects of one combined scenario. We conclude that in the short term construction of offshore wind farms can influence some processes to a much larger degree than eutrophication, however, combined impacts deriving from eutrophication and offshore wind farm construction need a more detailed analysis. Due to non-linear ecosystem processes, effects of combined or multiple uses of marine resources in terms of 'ecological risk', cannot be extrapolated from single-use scenarios.


BACKGROUND
Thoracentesis is commonly performed to evaluate pleural effusions. Many medications (warfarin, heparin, clopidogrel) or physiological factors (elevated International Normalized Ratio [INR], thrombocytopenia, uremia) increase the risk for bleeding. Frequently these medications are withheld or transfusions are performed to normalize physiological parameters before a procedure. The safety of performing thoracentesis without correction of these bleeding risks has not been prospectively evaluated.

METHODS
This prospective observational cohort study enrolled 312 patients who underwent thoracentesis. All patients were evaluated for the presence of risk factors for bleeding. Hematocrit levels were obtained pre- and postprocedure, and the occurrence of postprocedural hemothorax was evaluated.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
Thoracenteses were performed in 312 patients, 42% of whom had a risk for bleeding. Elevated INR, secondary to liver disease or warfarin, and renal disease were the two most common etiologies for bleeding risk, although many patients had multiple potential bleeding risks. There was no significant difference in pre- and postprocedural hematocrit levels in patients with a bleeding risk when compared with patients with no bleeding risk. No patient developed a hemothorax as a result of the thoracentesis.

CONCLUSIONS
This single-center, observational study suggests that thoracentesis may be safely performed without prior correction of coagulopathy, thrombocytopenia, or medication-induced bleeding risk. This may reduce the morbidity associated with transfusions or withholding of medications.


Versatility and dexterity in combination with supreme control makes human hands an unmatched tool for interacting with the world around us. Because of our dependence on hands, we are highly challenged in all aspects of our lives when their functionality is compromised. Considering the high incidence rate of partial or total hand function loss, development of suitable solutions for their substitution are of high priority.
The devastating impact of a missing or a dysfunctional upper limb and the need for solutions to these impairments has been recognized centuries ago. Besides the obvious difficulties which it creates in performing everyday activities, it also reflects on the psychological and emotional state, with difficulties in social re-integration. This can lead to severe long-term consequences in everyday life.
So far, commercial prosthetic limbs have failed to provide a solution capable of delivering intuitive and naturally looking control across several driveable joints. Regardless of being body powered or myoelectrically controlled, these systems depend on rather crude driving mechanisms, limiting the effectiveness of the provided solutions. These limitations eventually lead to rejection and abandonment of the technology. Academic research has addressed this challenge in various ways throughout the last 50 years, though a very limited number of solutions have reached the market. This fact indicates the size and the complexity of the problem of translating the laboratory based systems into the real world environment.
The work presented in this thesis aims at addressing the aforementioned issues by enriching the amount of information that can be used for delivering control inputs over different prosthetic solutions. Theoretically, if the entire neural code sent from the brain to the muscles through the spinal cord could be decoded, its interpretation would allow natural and robust control over virtually any kind of prosthetic system. However, this requires the establishment of an interface that can access this detailed information. Here, several successful attempts to improve the control performance of prosthesis by advanced information methods of identification of the properties of the neural drive to muscles have been described and applied to already established prosthetic solutions. Focus has been put on translational potentials of these approaches and challenges which arise when systems initially developed in laboratory environment are further put to test in clinical setting.
First, an in depth re-evaluation of the way in which the functional prosthetic assessment has been performed in academic and clinical studies is presented through a set of experiments. Comparison between the most commonly used offline evaluation technique and several typically applied clinical tests has been performed on a pool of transradial amputees. A poor correlation was found between the two sets of performance metrics, indicating the need of using more meaningful assessment scores in academic research to evaluate novel myoelectric systems. In addition, a kinematic analysis has been made during the execution of selected clinical tests, indicating that even the well-established clinical tools fail to completely evaluate all the aspects of the tested systems.
The second set of experiments focused on advanced myoelectric control for patients who have sustained critical soft tissue injuries. So far, there has not been a suitable solution for recovering function in these severe cases. Here, through a combination of surgical interventions and rehabilitation technics, an interface for accessing myoelectric information sufficient for advanced control of sophisticated prosthetic technology has been established. A case series is presented to prove that surgical and engineering solutions can be combined for solving open clinical challenges through means of bionic reconstruction.
The final set of experiments was designed to test the possibility of providing precise proportional control from motor unit spike trains originating in the spinal cord. The motor unit discharge patterns were decoded from high density surface EMG recordings obtained from reinnervated auxiliary muscles in the proximity of a high level amputation. This approach provides an enhanced prosthetic function across a difficult pool of transhumeral patients.
Results presented here emphasise the importance of clinical testing of myoelectrical systems and provide an insight into the complexity of the translational challenges which arise once laboratory systems are exposed to the reality of clinical environment. The data provided in this thesis support the idea that advanced control approaches can be translated to effective clinical solutions even in cases that were earlier considered beyond the reach of myoelectric technologies. Finally, a new generation of neural interfaces, relying on the decoded neural drive to muscles, has been shown to be able to deliver highly refined control, and thus potentially revolutionize the way the prosthetic devices are driven.


Maps offer a familiar way to present geographic data (continents, countries), and additional information (topography, geology), can be displayed with the help of contours and heat-map overlays. In this paper we consider visualizing large-scale dynamic relational data by taking advantage of the geographic map metaphor. We describe a system that visualizes user traffic on the Internet radio station last.fm and address challenges in mental map preservation, as well as issues in animated map-based visualization.12


Here we report on two field experiments from Lake Alpnach (surface area: 4.8 km(2); maximum depth: 34 m) that were designed to study the process of boundary mixing and to estimate its efficiency, the ratio between the turbulent kinetic energy converted into potential energy and dissipated into heat, for diapycnal tracer transport. Lake Alpnach is particularly suited for this purpose because it is known from earlier experiments that (1) its currents follow a regular oscillatory pattern, associated with basin-wide standing internal waves (seiches, period similar to 0.5 days and 1 day, respectively), and (2) diapycnal tracer transport is mainly caused by boundary mixing. During one of the experiments reported here, strong seiches were excited regularly and damped on a timescale of the order of 3 days; during the other experiment seiching motion was comparably weak. If seiching is excited regularly, we find a persistent well-mixed bottom layer of 4-5 m height at the deepest part of the lake. In the absence of regular seiching the layer disappears within 10-20 days. On the sloping bottom boundaries the well-mixed layers (1) are of much more transient nature, (2) exhibit different thermal structure, and (3) decrease in thickness toward shallower depth inversely proportionally to the stability at the same depth in the lake interior. Their reduced thickness is possibly the result of repeatedly occurring intrusions of boundary mixed water masses that are observed to extend horizontally similar to 100-200 m into the lake interior. As a consequence of repeated generation of intrusions, mixing on the sloping boundaries is expected to be considerably more efficient compared to mixing over flat bottom boundaries. The observed mixing efficiency, the ratio of the rate of change of potential energy below depth z caused by turbulence to the energy loss by bottom friction below depth z, increases indeed from 0.01 +/- 0.01 in the deepest well-mixed layers to 0.15 +/- 0.04 in the upper pycnocline.


The main purpose of this thesis is to test whether the quality of earnings improves the usefulness of accounting information in the decision making process. This is particularly important because the Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB) considers the usefulness of accounting information as the primary objective of financial statements (FASB, 1978). To achieve this purpse, the thesis examines two interrelated subjects. The first subject of the study "The qualitative characteristics of accounting earnings and stock return" (Chaoter 3) assesses the impact of earnings quality on stock returns as a representative for the usefulness of earnings information. The research also attempts to extend the concept of earnings quality and its constructs based on the primary qualitative characteristics of accounting information from the FASB's viewpoint. Therefore, the study defines earnings quality as the extent to which reported earnings capture both dimensions of the qualitative characteristics of accounting information, relevance and reliability. Eight earnings quality attributes are characterized as either 'relevance-based' or 'reliability-based' to capture earnings information quality. Moreover, associations between earnings quality attricutes and stock returns are considered to test whether earnings quality information is reflected in the investors' decision-making process. The result indicates that all earnings quality attributes but one are associated with the returns of stock in the predicted way; the exception is conservatism. This finding suggests that the earnings quality attributes make accounting information useful for decision making, which is consostent with the FASB's assertion. In addition, comparisons of incremental explanatory power show that relevance-based earnings quality attributes explain more of the stock returns variation than do reliability-based earnings quality attributes.

The second subject of the thesis, 'The effect of earnings quality on the value-relevance of accounting information' (Chapter 4), aims to link earnings quality constructs with the equity valuation model by assessing their effect on the relative desirability between the value-relevance of earnings and book value of equity. In this respect, the study investigated whether earnings quality constructs, systematized in the first topic of this study, are reflected in the equity valuation prcoess. This is an important issue, as the incorporation of earnings quality attributes into equity valuation models may provide more realistic estimates of the firm's value. The study conducts factor analysis on eight earnings quality attributes to construct an index of each earnings quality dimension for each firm-year. The results indicate that in portfolios of firms with high quality earnings (HH), the value-relevance of earnings and book value are respectively higher and lower than in portfolios of firms with low quality earnings (LL). Moreover, the study finds that the ability of earnings and book value jointly to explain stock price is significatnly higher in firms with high quality earnings information compared to firms with low quality earnings information. This finding confirms that earnings quality constructs provide relevant information in the valuation process.


ABSTRACT A floristic survey of Crowders Mountain State Park, located in Gaston and Cleveland Counties in North Carolina, was conducted from 2010–2011 to document prairie-relict species. In addition, 1-m2 quadrats (n = 200) were sampled from four remnant power line rights-of-way/roadside prairie communities in the park to assess community structure. Cover and frequency values were assessed for species within the quadrats and species were also placed into guild groupings. A total of 143 prairie-relict species from 37 plant families were identified for the entire park, 69 (48%) of which were also found in the sampled quadrats. Eighty-three (58%) species were previously undocumented for the park. Summer forbs represented the largest guild at 66 (46%) with several rare and uncommon species for North Carolina, including the North Carolina Rare Symphyotrichum georgianum (Georgia aster) and Echinacea purpurea (eastern purple coneflower). The communities had a combined Floristic Quality Assessment Index (FQAI) of 48.8 and a mean C-value of 4.2. Evidence from this study further suggests that prior to fire suppression prairie/savanna communities were likely once more prevalent in what is now Crowders Mountain State Park.


OBJECTIVE
High smoking rates in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and nicotine's amelioration of ADHD suggest that effective ADHD treatment might facilitate abstinence in smokers with ADHD. The present study evaluated if using osmotic-release oral system methylphenidate (OROS-MPH) to treat ADHD enhances response to smoking cessation treatment in smokers with ADHD.

METHOD
A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, 11-week trial with a 1-month follow-up was conducted at 6 clinical sites between December 2005 and January 2008. Adults (aged 18-55 years) meeting DSM-IV criteria for ADHD and interested in quitting smoking were randomly assigned to OROS-MPH titrated to 72 mg/d (n = 127) or placebo (n = 128). All participants received brief weekly individual smoking cessation counseling for 11 weeks and 21 mg/d nicotine patches starting on the smoking quit day (day 27) through study week 11. Outcome measures included prolonged smoking abstinence and DSM-IV ADHD Rating Scale (ADHD-RS) score.

RESULTS
Of 255 randomly assigned participants, 204 (80%) completed the trial. Prolonged abstinence rates, 43.3% and 42.2%, for the OROS-MPH and placebo groups, respectively, did not differ significantly (OR = 1.1; 95% CI, 0.63-1.79; P = .81). Relative to placebo, OROS-MPH evidenced a greater reduction in DSM-IV ADHD-RS score (P < .0001) and in cigarettes per day during the post-quit phase (P = .016). Relative to placebo, OROS-MPH increased blood pressure and heart rate to a statistically, but not clinically, significant degree (P < .05); medication discontinuation did not differ significantly between treatments.

CONCLUSIONS
Treatment for ADHD did not improve smoking cessation success; OROS-MPH, relative to placebo, effectively treated ADHD and was safe and generally well tolerated in this healthy sample of adult ADHD smokers.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinical trials.gov Identifier: NCT00253747.


Virtual-build-to-order (VBTO) is a form of order fulfilment system in which the producer has the ability to search across the entire pipeline of finished stock, products in production, and those in the production plan, in order to find the best product for a customer. It is a system design that is attractive to Mass Customizers, such as those in the automotive sector, whose manufacturing lead time exceeds their customers' tolerable waiting times, and for whom the holding of partly finished stocks at a fixed decoupling point is unattractive or unworkable. This paper describes and develops the operational concepts that underpin VBTO, in particular the concepts of reconfiguration flexibility and customer aversion to waiting. Reconfiguration is the process of changing a product's specification at any point along the order fulfilment pipeline. The extent to which an order fulfilment system is flexible or inflexible reveals itself in the reconfiguration cost curve, of which there are four basic types. The operational features of the generic VBTO system are described and simulation is used to study its behaviour and performance. The concepts of reconfiguration flexibility and floating decoupling point are introduced and discussed.


Materials for the components of advanced nuclear reactors are expected to undergo harsh operational conditions, in which high temperature levels (of the order of 650°C or higher) and severe mechanical stresses provide conditions for creep deformation to be significant as to become a key factor limiting the lifetime of the material. At the same time, components in nuclear power plants are subject to cycles of start-up and shut-down, due to operations of maintenance, refuelling, variations in demand and emergency stops. These conditions, characterized by removal of mechanical loads only or both mechanical loads and temperature, trigger a time-dependent recovery of the plastic strain accumulated during creep deformation, known as anelasticity.

The studies herein presented were aimed at investigations on the creep performance and on the impact of stress transients on the creep behaviour of the materials, due to the anelastic response. These transient tests, carried out by imposing stages of load removal, were concentrated at simulating the in-service conditions. Specific goals were set for each material. For the 316H, the anelastic response under partial unloading conditions was investigated, in an effort to determine the magnitude of the back stress, which is the driving force for anelastic recovery, stemming from basic physical mechanisms within the crystalline domains. The Oxide Dispersion Strengthened (ODS) 316L steel had its mechanical properties characterised, with particular focus on the creep response, analysed under the scope of performance requirements established by structural integrity code for materials in nuclear applications. And, finally, the behaviour in full load removal transients was characterised for the MA956 ferritic ODS steel, in order to study its anelastic response.

It was observed that, for the 316H, partial unloading stages produce the same recovery effect on the microstructure, provided that the drop in stress is accompanied by change in the dominant creep mechanism from dislocation-based to diffusion-controlled. Moreover, the heterogeneous dislocation arrangement model of back stress was successfully applied for calculating the intragranular stresses and, along with neutron diffraction measurements of intergranular stresses, found good correspondence with the anelastic behaviour of the material. As for the ODS 316L, creep properties at 650°C were found to comply with the RCC MR code for the stress levels tested, but its creep performance fell short of a conventional 316L. HR TEM surveys on the oxides and a pilot diffusion-bonding study showed the effects of particle growth and how they influence the mechanical response of this alloy. And, in the case of the MA956, the investigations suggested that anelasticity is absent in this ODS steel. Although a more detailed approach is required, all the results obtained provided evidence that most of the grains in this material are resisting creep deformation.

The outcomes of the investigations are the deepening of the understanding of the potential for recovery of steels subject to creep deformation, in terms of the basic microstructural features, and how they influence the creep response. From these studies, better materials assessment procedures may be envisaged.


Studies were conducted at three locations in North Carolina in 2004 to evaluate density-dependent effects of glufosinate-resistant (GUR) corn on GUR cotton growth and lint yield. GUR corn was taller than GUR cotton as early as 11 d after planting, depending on location. A GUR corn density of 5.25 plant/m of crop row reduced late-season cotton height by 38, 43, and 43% at Clayton, Lewiston-Woodville, and Rocky Mount, NC, respectively, compared with weed-free cotton height. GUR corn dry biomass per meter of crop row and GUR corn seed biomass per meter of crop row decreased linearly with increasing GUR corn density at all locations. The relationship between GUR corn density and GUR cotton yield loss was described by the rectangular hyperbola model with the asymptote (a) constrained to 100% maximum yield loss. The estimated coefficient i (yield loss per unit density as density approaches zero) was 7, 5, and 6 at Clayton, Lewiston-Woodville, and Rocky Mount, respectively. Percentage of GUR cotton lint yield loss increased 4, 5, and 8 percentage points at Clayton, Lewiston-Woodville, and Rocky Mount, respectively, with each 500 g increase in weed biomass/m of crop row. The examined GUR corn densities had a significant effect on cotton yield but not as significant as many other problematic grass and broadleaf weeds. Nomenclature: Glufosinate, corn, Zea mays L. 'Pioneer 34A55LL' ZEAMX, cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L., 'FM 958LL'


Accurate determination of lattice parameters from X-ray diffraction requires that the diffraction angles be measured very precisely, and significant errors result if the sample–detector separation differs from that assumed. Transmission diffraction from bones, which have a complex cross section and must be left intact, is a situation where this separation is difficult to measure and it may differ from position to position across the specimen. This article describes a method for eliminating the effect of variable sample cross section. Diffraction patterns for each position on the specimen are collected before and after 180° rotation about an axis normal to the cross section of interest. This places the centroid of the diffracting mass at the center of rotation and provides the absolute lattice parameters from the average apparent lattice parameters at the two rotation angles. Diffraction patterns were collected across the cross section of three specimens: a 3D-printed elliptical cylinder of Hyperelastic Bone (HB), which is composed primarily of synthetic hydroxyapatite (hAp), a 3D-printed HB model of the second metacarpal bone (Mc2), and a modern human Mc2 containing nanocrystalline carbonated apatite (cAp). Rietveld refinement was used to determine precise unit-cell parameters a
 apparent and c
 apparent for each pattern of each scan, and these values determined the actual average 〈a〉 and 〈c〉 for each sample. The results indicate that the 0°/180° rotation method works well enough to uncover variations approaching 1 × 10−3 Å in cAp unit-cell parameters in intact bones with irregular cross sections.


The key point of marine search and rescue is to find out and recognize the distress objects. At present, the visual search method is usually adopted to detect the ships in distress, and this method can only be used at good sea condition and visibility. In this paper, a new target detection and recognition system is proposed. The parameters of radar transmitter and echo graphics and the invariant moments of radar images are extracted as the system's recognition features, and the system's target classifier is based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). The developed recognition classifier has been tested using three kinds of target Images, the target's features are used as the inputs of trained CNN and the outputs of networks are target classification. Sea experimental results show that the proposed method is well-clustering and with high classified accuracy.


This paper analyzes the macroeconomic impact of Chinas 2009-2010 fiscal stimulus package by simulating a dynamic general equilibrium multi-country model of the world economy, showing that the effects on Chinas economic activity are sizeable: absent fiscal stimulus Chinas GDP would be 2.6 and 0.6 percentage points lower in 2009 and 2010, respectively. The effects are stronger under a US dollar peg because of the imported loose monetary policy stance from the United States. Higher Chinese aggregate demand stimulates higher (gross and net) imports from other regions, in particular from Japan and the rest of the world, and, only to a lesser extent, from the United States and the euro area. However, the overall GDP impact of the Chinese stimulus on the rest of the world is limited. These results warn that a fiscal policydriven increase in Chinas domestic aggregate demand associated with a more flexible exchange rate regime have only a limited potential to contribute to an orderly resolution of global trade and financial imbalances.


This book provides the first truly comprehensive treatment of three topics that have traditionally been treated separately: teamwork, leadership, and communication. Teamwork has become central to the operation of the modern organization. People from diverse backgrounds culturally, professionally, and demographically must work together to develop the well-rounded decision making needed for organizations to survive in our modern economy. Leadership, and relatedly management, have more traditionally been the focus of organizational operations.

 While it is easy to rule by dicta, it is much more difficult to establish a framework in which true teamwork is possible. Teamwork is a very fragile thing. The minute managers start becoming too directive a slippery slope is started in which one's followers, perhaps better cast as team members, constantly look to them for direction and approval rather than acting on their own best instincts. Communication plays a central role in resolving these tensions. Messaging is central to traditional management functions, while providing a communication network structure that enables action is a more subtle, but longer lasting function of leaders. All three processes, teaming, leading, and communicating, must act in concert for the many benefits of teamwork to be realized.


This thesis consists of three empirical essays on the Value-at-Risk (VaR) estimates. The first empirical study (Chapter 2) evaluates the performance of bank VaRs. The second empirical study (Chapter 3) investigates the predictive power of various VaR models using bank data. The third empirical study (Chapter 4) explores VaR estimates with high-frequency data. The first study examines the performance of VaR estimates at seven international banks from 2001 to 2012. Using statistical tests, we find that bank VaRs were conservatively estimated in pre-crisis and post-crisis periods. During financial crisis, while some banks continued to overstate their VaRs, the others significantly underestimated their risk. The potential causes of the poor performance of bank VaRs are also discussed. The second study investigates the predictive power of various VaR models using bank data. We find that the GARCH-based models are superior in estimating bank VaRs in both normal and crisis periods. We conclude that good VaR estimates at banks can be obtained using simple, accessible models rather than the complicated approach or banks' internal model. Thus, we argue that VaR should not be blamed for misleading risk estimates during financial crisis. The third study evaluates VaR estimates using 5-minute sampling data of WTI Futures. First, we acknowledge the value of high-frequency data on the measure of volatility to characterize the quantile forecast of asset returns. Second, we find that quantile combination can improve the forecast accuracy. With the VaR implication, we show that VaR combination provides more accurate and robust results than individual VaR estimates.


N-Substituted naphthalene diimides (NDIs) were explored as purely organic room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) materials based on the strategy of intramolecular charge-transfer (ICT) mediation. A series of NDIs were designed and investigated for their luminescence properties. All emissive NDIs exhibited similar red RTP (emission range from ~600 to ~800 nm) in solid state media; the quantum yield (QY) of the obtained RTP relies heavily on the N-substitution. From poor to moderate to strong donor moieties, the QY increases but suddenly disappears. First-principle calculations reveal that a "sweet spot" for strong NDI RTP exists: while a suitable charge-transfer state can enhance RTP, a strong donor may cause total triplet quenching through the photo-induced electron transfer (PET) mechanism. Furthermore, combining NDI aggregation effects, we realized the reddest RTP ever reported for purely organic materials (Max emission = 675 nm, QY = 21.7%). Given the red emission, respectable QY and oxygen sensitive properties for some of the NDIs, they were tested as imaging agents for in vivo imaging studies.


There are many methods available for nondestructive measurement of volumetric water content. However, no current method can monitor rapidly to great depths with high spatial resolution over large sample volumes and with minimal need for medium‐specific calibration. Borehole ground penetrating radar (BPGR) may provide this capability. It is well established that BGPR can make rapid measurements to great depth. Like time domain reflectometry (TDR), BGPR infers the water content from dielectric permittivity measurements, which show a robust correlation with volumetric water content. The goal of this investigation was to determine whether BGPR water content measurements made with a vertical sampling interval that is smaller than the antenna length could be used to measure the water content profile with high spatial resolution. Repeat water content profiles measured with BGPR during a pumping test and under static conditions 1 yr later are presented. The results show that BGPR measurements are highly repeatable, allowing for differencing of profiles to determine the water content change profile. However, this high repeatability required calibration over a depth range below the water table due to instrument drift and operator inconsistencies. Although critical refractions obscure the water content profile near the ground surface, there is no evidence that refracted waves have deleterious effects on travel time profiles collected across the water table, allowing for determination of the maximum depth of drainage from the water content change profiles. There is good agreement between the patterns of maximum depth of drainage and water table depth during pumping and recovery. However, the maximum depth of drainage, referenced to the middle of the BGPR antennae, is consistently 50 cm deeper than the water table. The results demonstrate that the primary limitation on the achievable resolution of water content monitoring with BGPR is the user‐selected measurement sample interval, which can be much smaller than the antenna length. However, the cause of the near constant downward offset of the BGPR measurements compared with the water table depth must be studied further to allow for direct use of BGPR to track water movement during pumping and recovery.


The discovery of calcification inside present-day cyanobacteria raises questions about their geologic record. Many organisms precipitate minerals (1), and sometimes the reasons appear obvious. Humans, for example, rely on biominerals to provide vital skeletal support. But interpreting biomineralization can also be challenging. On page 459 in this issue, Couradeau et al. (2) show that the cyanobacterium Candidatus Gloeomargarita lithophora from Alchichica, an alkaline lake in Mexico, produces the amorphous mineral benstonite. This rare carbonate has a more complicated composition than common calcium carbonate minerals such as calcite. Furthermore, the particular variety of benstonite produced by the bacterium contains almost as much barium, magnesium, and strontium as calcium. But the point that focuses attention is that the benstonite occurs inside the bacterial cells.


Abstract Background The longitudinal antigen-specific immunity in COVID-19 convalescents is crucial for long-term protection upon individual re-exposure to SARS-CoV-2, and even more pivotal for ultimately achieving population-level immunity. To better understand the features of immune memory in individuals with different disease severities at one year post-disease onset we conducted this cohort study. Methods We conducted a systematic antigen-specific immune evaluation in 101 COVID-19 convalescents, who had asymptomatic, mild, moderate, or severe disease, through two visits at months 6 and 12 post-disease onset. The SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies, comprising NAb, IgG, and IgM, were assessed by mutually corroborated assays, i.e. neutralization, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and microparticle chemiluminescence immunoassay (MCLIA). Meanwhile, the T-cell memory against SARS-CoV-2 spike, membrane and nucleocapsid proteins was tested through enzyme-linked immunospot assay (ELISpot), intracellular cytokine staining (ICS), and tetramer staining-based flow cytometry, respectively. Results SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG antibodies, and also NAb can persist among over 95% COVID-19 convalescents from 6 months to 12 months after disease onset. At least 19/71 (26%) of COVID-19 convalescents (double positive in ELISA and MCLIA) had detectable circulating IgM antibody against SARS-CoV-2 at 12m post-disease onset. Notably, the percentages of convalescents with positive SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell responses (at least one of the SARS-CoV-2 antigen S1, S2, M and N protein) were 71/76 (93%) and 67/73 (92%) at 6m and 12m, respectively. Furthermore, both antibody and T-cell memory levels of the convalescents were positively associated with their disease severity. Conclusions SARS-CoV-2-specific cellular and humoral immunities are durable at least until one year after disease onset.


: MyGeoHub is a science gateway for researchers working with geospatial data. Based on the HUBzero cyberinfrastructure framework, it provides general-purpose software modules enabling geospatial data management, processing and visualization. Termed "GABBs" (Geospatial Data Analysis Building Blocks), these modules can be leveraged to build geospatial data driven tools with minimal programming and construct dynamic workflows chaining both local and remote tools and data sources. We will present examples of such end-to-end workflows demonstrating the underlying software building blocks that have also found use beyond the MyGeoHub gateway in other science domains.


Changes to regulatory regimes at the federal and provincial levels have recently transformed the way that energy resource projects will be considered and approved. The federal Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 and amended National Energy Board Act , along with the Alberta Responsible Energy Development Act , have taken decision-making power away from the regulators to government in an effort to align regulatory decisions with broader government policies. This article examines a number of the effects of the new regimes including the impact that the changes might have on the role of the regulator, the functioning of regulatory processes, and the development of Canada's natural resources.


The Roberts Court has developed a reputation for being a "pro-business" court. This article, prepared for the 2009 Santa Clara Law Review symposium on "Big Business and the Roberts Court," seeks to offer a preliminary assessment of this claim with reference to the Roberts Court's decisions in environmental cases. Reviewing the environmental law decisions of the Roberts Court to date reveals no evidence of a "pro-business" bias. This does not disprove the claim that the Roberts Court is pro-business, but it may suggest the need to refine conventional descriptions of the Roberts Court. The lack of a pro-business orientation in the environmental context does not mean the Court is not more business-friendly in other areas, such as preemption or securities litigation. Yet while there are no signs of a business-friendly approach to environmental cases, there are signs the Court tends to side with the government. Thus far in the Roberts Court, governmental interests have prevailed in environmental cases with greater frequency than business interests. This is only a preliminary assessment because the Roberts Court has only decided fourteen environmental law cases to date, and several more are pending. Nonetheless, if this pattern continues, then whether the Court hands down business-friendly decisions may depend on whether the political branches are or continue to be receptive to business interests.


ABSTRACTA 63-year-old man who diagnosed with lung cancer had worked for 13.5 years (1999–2013) as a spray painter. The Occupational Lung Diseases Institute conducted retrospective exposure assessment to examine whether a spray painter job he had performed could be associated with the development of lung cancer. We investigated lung cancer carcinogens in his work environment. The safety data sheet of six powder coating products showed that powder coatings contained 1–10% of hexavalent chromium. In addition, our quantitative analysis of powder coating samples also showed that the hexavalent chromium contents quantified in the yellow-green and red powder coating samples were 0.27% and 0.95%, respectively. In order to estimate his exposure level of hexavalent chromium, we measured a personal exposure level of hexavalent chromium for a spray painter in accordance with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health #7605 method. The results showed that the spray painter was exposed to the high level of hexavalent chromium (216.9 µg m–3). Furthermore, we estimated that he was likely exposed to several lung cancer carcinogens such as crystalline silica or asbestos over the approximately 24 years at various construction sites prior to assuming a job as a spray painter. Therefore, we concluded that his lung cancer was caused by substantial exposure to several lung cancer carcinogens over approximately 37.5 years. Particularly, exposure characteristic to hexavalent chromium could substantially contribute to the development of lung cancer, despite of the sole case of exposure assessment.


In this paper, a new notion, called TM-algebra, which is a generalization of the idea of Q/BCH/BCI/BCK/BCC-algebra, is introduced. Some theorems discussed in Q-and BCK algebras are generalized. Definition of TM-algebra along with various propositions are stipulated and presented with their respective proofs. The relation between TM-algebra and other algebra has been investigated and detailed in the paper. Also ideal, p-radical, p-semi simple are discussed.


A hydrogel template assisted synthesis was employed to prepare CdS quantum dots (QDs) in poly(methyl methacrylate-co-acrylic acid), p(MMA-co-AAc), for the ultimate formation of a nanocomposite. The copolymer hydrogelates in an aqueous solution of precursor reagents and acts as a template for the absorption of Cd2+ ions, which is followed by CdS QD formation. The CdS QDs are positioned inside the core of the micelles in the copolymer hydrogel. The ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) absorption and band edge emission of the composite solution are blue shifted relative to bulk CdS. The composition of acrylic acid (AAc) in the copolymer has an influence on the size as well as on the surface effect of the CdS QDs, which is reflected in the photoluminescence (PL) of the composite. The copolymer is capable of passivating CdS QDs for intense band edge emission with weak defect state emission. The z-scan technique gives an exhibition of the nonlinear refraction and absorption of the composite, which are determined by the AAc content and thus the size of the CdS QDs present in the composite. The composites show self defocusing phenomena for their negative nonlinear refraction. The magnitude of nonlinear refractive index increases with the CdS QD size. The copolymer with a large number of AAc units forms a CdS QD composite with reverse saturable absorption (RSA) near the focus and saturable absorption (SA) at the focus. The RSA behavior of the composites shows that they can be used in optical limiting devices.


The conditions under which social upgrading, i.e., the process of improvements in the rights and entitlements of workers as social actors by enhancing the quality of their employment, takes place in global production networks [GPNs] have not been sufficiently explored. This research addresses the following research questions: how is social upgrading defined? Under which conditions does social upgrading occur? How does economic upgrading influence social upgrading? How does the local and global social and institutional context influence social upgrading opportunities? First, the thesis establishes a definition and categorisation of social upgrading. Then, it answers these questions by analysing the empirical case study of the garment industry in Morocco. The analysis of key informant interviews, semi-structured interviews with factory managers and focus group discussions with workers shows that participation in GPNs can deliver opportunities as well as challenges for developing country workers. The main argument and contribution of the thesis to the existing literature is that the attainment of social upgrading is hindered by the tension existing between commercial embeddedness and social embeddedness of GPNs. All actors in GPNs find themselves caught in between commercial dynamics and the subsequent need for competitiveness, and the need of considering workers as social agents with rights. In particular, supplier firms in developing countries have to respond to international buyers' pressures to lower costs, increase quality and productivity, as well as deliver products on short notice and with great flexibility. At the same time, they have to comply to labour standards set by national and international regulations and by private buyers' codes of conduct. These pressures are contradictory and create a critical dilemma for suppliers. Struggling to reconcile buyers' requirements and faced with this tension, they attempt to mitigate it by employing two types of workers: regular workers who guarantee high quality and continuity, and are the recipient of social upgrading; and irregular workers, who ensure low costs and a high degree of flexibility, and are largely excluded from social upgrading opportunities and are often socially downgraded. Therefore, participation in GPNs delivers a mix of social upgrading and downgrading depending on the type of worker under consideration.


We present findings from a deployment of SketchStorm, a tool for designers that supports sketch in a central canvas, whilst streaming images relating to a search query around the periphery. Our overarching goal was to explore the potential for combining sketching and use of examples, two activities that are associated with design ideation. Initial interviews with designers suggested that a tool that supports encounters with non-designerly content, that supports awareness of what has already been collected, and that allows this content to be laid out, manipulated, and integrated into the process of working out of ideas, would be of value. A month-long deployment allowed us to examine these ideas in more depth, through 'research through prototypes in practice' (Keller et al., 2009). Our findings highlight two ways in which web-based images can be utilised. On the one hand, they can serve as examples and, where this is the case, encounters with them should be rich and memorable, and tools should support a range of actions such as triaging, annotation, and manipulation. On the other hand, images can be used to create a backdrop to on-going activity, so as to underpin serendipitous encounters. Where this is the case, enabling designers to engineer these encounters, so that they are framed by moments of idleness and latent goals, is key.


We introduce large-scale asset purchases (LSAPs) as a monetary policy tool within a macroeconomic model.We allow for purchases of both long-term government bonds and securities with some private risks. We argue that LSAPs should be thought of as central bank intermediation that can affect the economy to the extent there exist limits to arbitrage in private intermediation. We then build a model with limits to arbitrage in banking that vary countercyclically and where the frictions are greater for private securities than for government bonds. We use the framework to study the impact of LSAPs that have the broad features of the different quantitative easing (QE) programs the Federal Reserve pursued over the course of the crisis. We find that (i) LSAPs work in the model in a way mostly consistent with the evidence; (ii) purchases of securities with some private risk have stronger effects than purchases of government bonds; (iii) the effects of the LSAPs depend heavily on whether the zero lower bound is binding. Our model does not rely on the central bank having a more efficient intermediation technology than the private sector: We assume the opposite.


The time-varying correlation between oil prices returns and European industrial sector indices returns, considering the origin of the oil price shock, is investigated. A time-varying multivariate heteroskedastic framework is employed to test the above hypothesis based on data from 10 European sectors. The contemporaneous correlations suggest that the relationship between sector indices and oil prices change over time and they are industry specific. In addition, the supply-side oil price shocks result in low to moderate positive correlation levels, the precautionary demand oil price shocks lead to almost zero correlation levels, whereas the aggregate demand oil price shocks generate significant changes in the correlation levels (either positive or negative). Both the origin of the oil price shock and the type of industry are important determinants of the correlation level between industrial sectors' returns and oil prices. Prominent among the results is the fact that during the financial crisis of 2008 some sectors were providing diversification opportunities to investors dealing with the crude oil market.


The McBride Basalt Province covers approximately 5500 km2 and is one of 11 discontinuous regions of Cenozoic volcanic rocks in north Queensland. These provinces are the northernmost part of a chain of volcanics that extend down the entire eastern coast of Australia, from the Torres Strait to southern Tasmania. These volcanics can be subdivided into central volcano provinces, lava field provinces and lesser leucitite provinces. The central volcano and leucitite provinces contain some felsic volcanics and form hotspot trails, whereas the lava field provinces are entirely mafic and do not have a well defined age-latitude relationship. All of the north Queensland provinces are of the lava field type and are centred around the Great Divide, suggesting a genetic relationship between the divide and the volcanic provinces.

164 eruption centres have been identified within the McBride Basalt Province. The majority of flows are less than 3 Ma, with the youngest volcano (Kinrara) being less than 50,000 y. Remnants of older flows of around 8 Ma occur in the southwest. A hiatus in eruptions is evident from 8 Ma to 3 Ma.

Lavas from the 190,000 year old Undara volcano, cover about 1550 km2. Undara crater is nearly circular with a diameter of around 330 m and is about 60 m deep. It forms the highest point of the McBride Basalt Province, at 1020 m a.s.l., although its low rim rises only 20 m above the surrounding lava field. Unusually for the McBride Province, the Undara vent does not have associated pyroclastic material.

The longest of the Undara flows is some 160 km, with an average gradient of just 0.3°. Thermal insulation provided by the solidification of the crust above the actively flowing lava is required to produce flows of such length. In the distal regions, the confinement of the initial flows within pre-existing drainage channels also assists the development of such long flows. Lava tube caves occur up to 30 km from Undara crater, where the gradient is > 0.6°. Up to five successive flow units, demarcated by pahoehoe surfaces, can be seen in the walls of some caves. The caves developed by erosion through the lower units. Entrance to the caves is by steep collapse structures.

Lava inflation features, such as lava-rise ridges and lava-rise pits, are common in the Undara flows. A particularly long lava-rise ridge, known as "The Wall", extends for some 40 km. It is up to 20 high, and around 200 m wide. Formation was due to the inflation of a flow in a confined channel. Where a section of a flow solidifies, it is not underlain by actively flowing lava, so can not inflate. Where the surrounding region may undergo inflation, a depression is left at the level of the pre-inflation surface. Such lava inflation pits have more gently sloping sides than lava tube collapses and may contain pahoehoe floors that continue up their flanks. A series of lava-rise pits occur in close alignment to the main lava tube lines at Undara. In places, lava tubes head towards a depression, then are deflected around the solidified obstruction.


The recipe behind the success of deep learning has been the combination of neural networks and gradient-based optimization. Understanding the behavior of gradient descent however, and particularly its instability, has lagged behind its empirical success. To add to the theoretical tools available to study gradient descent we propose the principal flow (PF), a continuous time flow that approximates gradient descent dynamics. To our knowledge, the PF is the only continuous flow that captures the divergent and oscillatory behaviors of gradient descent, including escaping local minima and saddle points. Through its dependence on the eigendecomposition of the Hessian the PF sheds light on the recently observed edge of stability phenomena in deep learning. Using our new understanding of instability we propose a learning rate adaptation method which enables us to control the trade-off between training stability and test set evaluation performance.


Electronic patient records provide a valuable source of information for detecting adverse drug events. In this paper, we explore two different but complementary approaches to extracting useful information from electronic patient records with the goal of identifying candidate drugs, or combinations of drugs, to be further investigated for suspected adverse drug events. We propose a novel filter-and-refine approach that combines sequential pattern mining and disproportionality analysis. The proposed method is expected to identify groups of possibly interacting drugs suspected for causing certain adverse drug events. We perform an empirical investigation of the proposed method using a subset of the Stockholm electronic patient record corpus. The data used in this study consists of all diagnoses and medications for a group of patients diagnoses with at least one heart related diagnosis during the period 2008--2010. The study shows that the method indeed is able to detect combinations of drugs that occur more frequently for patients with cardiovascular diseases than for patients in a control group, providing opportunities for finding candidate drugs that cause adverse drug effects through interaction.


Person-to-person evaluations are prevalent in all kinds of discourse and important for establishing reputations, building social bonds, and shaping public opinion. Such evaluations can be analyzed separately using signed social networks and textual sentiment analysis, but this misses the rich interactions between language and social context. To capture such interactions, we develop a model that predicts individual A's opinion of individual B by synthesizing information from the signed social network in which A and B are embedded with sentiment analysis of the evaluative texts relating A to B. We prove that this problem is NP-hard but can be relaxed to an efficiently solvable hinge-loss Markov random field, and we show that this implementation outperforms text-only and network-only versions in two very different datasets involving community-level decision-making: the Wikipedia Requests for Adminship corpus and the Convote U.S. Congressional speech corpus.


How has the EU's economic crisis affected the development of economic law in the Union? This book contributes to the debate by examining EU economic law from a contextual and policy-oriented perspective. The expert authors explore areas such as the EMU and the internal market, and emphasize the important fields of public procurement, taxation, and intellectual property rights. The investigation proceeds along themes such as harmonization, institutional interplay, non-economic values, and international actions. The authors conclude that, during the crisis, the attention of the Barroso Commission focused quite narrowly on the most urgent problems, failing to consider longer-term issues to spark off bold policy endeavours, and break inter-institutional blockages.


Real-time graphics hardware continues to offer improved resources for programmable vertex and fragment shaders. However, shader programmers continue to write shaders that require more resources than are available in the hardware. One way to virtualize the resources necessary to run complex shaders is to partition the shaders into multiple rendering passes. This problem, called the "Multi-Pass Partitioning Problem" (MPP), and a solution for the problem, Recursive Dominator Split (RDS), have been presented by Eric Chan et al. The O(n3) RDS algorithm and its heuristic-based O(n2) cousin, RDSh, are robust in that they can efficiently partition shaders for many architectures with varying resources. However, RDS's high runtime cost and inability to handle multiple outputs per pass make it less desirable for real-time use on today's latest graphics hardware. This paper redefines the MPP as a scheduling problem and uses scheduling algorithms that allow incremental resource estimation and pass computation in O(n log n) time. Our scheduling algorithm, Mio, is experimentally compared to RDS and shown to have better run-time scaling and produce comparable partitions for emerging hardware architectures.


The crystal structure of furongite, Al 4 [(UO 2 ) 4 (PO 4 ) 6 ](OH) 2 (H 2 O) 19.5 , from the Kobokobo pegmatite, Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, was solved for the first time. Furongite is triclinic, the space group P 1 ¯ , Z = 2, a = 12.1685(8), b = 14.1579(6), c = 17.7884(6) A, α = 79.822(3), β = 77.637(4), γ = 67.293(2)°, and V = 2746.2(2) A 3 . The crystal structure was refined from single-crystal X-ray diffraction data to R 1 = 0.0733 for 7716 unique observed reflections, and to wR 2 = 0.2081 for all 12,538 unique reflections. The structure of furongite contains infinite uranyl phosphate sheets of composition [(UO 2 ) 4 (PO 4 ) 6 ] 10− which are parallel to (1 0 1). The sheets are constituted by Ur O 5 pentagonal bipyramids and PO 4 tetrahedra which share edges and vertices, and adjacent sheets are linked by a dense network of hydrogen bonds. Running through the sheets and connected mainly to the free apical oxygen atom of PO 4 tetrahedra are Al octahedra connected together to form remarkable Al 2 O 5 (OH)(H 2 O) 5 and Al 4 O 8 (OH) 2 (H 2 O) 10 clusters. These Al clusters are only bonded to one sheet, and do not connect two adjacent sheets together. The topology of the uranyl phosphate sheets is related to the uranophane anion topology, and can be described as a new geometrical isomer of the uranophane group. Furongite is the first uranyl phosphate reported in nature with a U:P ratio of 2:3.


Geographic routing uses the physical locations of devices for routing purposes instead of the conventional routing protocols which make use of logical addressing schemes representing an abstract hierarchy. Greedy geographic routing is a popular method favoured for its efficiency and its simplicity that considers only one hop neighbours. Greedy routing needs only minimal network information and as such is resilient to change and dynamic behaviour. Recent advances have seen the development of location prediction algorithms that use a variety of methods to determine a node's future location based on their previous movements. Such prediction schemes can potentially benefit greedy geographic routing by allowing nodes to make routing decisions based on where a node will go rather than where it was according to the last update. The use of location prediction algorithms therefore allows geographic routing protocols to make decisions that are more intelligent, thus not only improving routing performance but providing a crucial step towards fully autonomous computer communications. The main contribution of this paper is the implementation and analysis of two existing location prediction schemes on top of the existing Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR) protocol ran in greedy mode.


This video contains the keynote speech for the 2018 University of North Texas Equity and Diversity Conference featuring Rosa Clemente, 2008 Green Party Vice Presidential candidate, community organizer, and journalist. From Harvard to prisons, Rosa has spent her life dedicated to scholar activism. She is the president and founder of Know Thy Self Productions, which has produced four major community activism tours and consults on issues such as Hip-Hope activism, media justice, voter engagement among youth of color, third party politics, intercultural relations between Black and Latinx, immigrants' rights as an extension of human rights, and universal healthcare. During her keynote session, Clemente addresses identity intersectionality as a bridge to inclusion.


Summary

1. Large-bodied species are especially vulnerable to fishing in mixed fisheries. Their effective conservation requires predictions of sensitivity and exposure to fishing mortality, but such predictions are hard to make when the population dynamics of most of these species have not been described.

2. We present a method for assessing sensitivity and conservation management reference points using widely available life-history data. The method allows the sensitivity of all fish species in a community to be assessed in relation to conservation- and yield-based fishery reference points.

3. Knowledge of sensitivity is used to (i) rank species by sensitivity, (ii) conduct a risk assessment to identify species potentially vulnerable to current fishing pressure and (iii) examine potential trade-offs between fishery catches and the conservation status of sensitive species.

4. The method is applied to the Celtic Sea bottom-dwelling fish community. For the species present, conservation threshold fishing mortalities ranged from 0·05 per year for the most sensitive large elasmobranchs to over 1 per year for small teleosts. The assessment predicts that current levels of fishing mortality may place all the elasmobranchs and over a quarter of the teleosts below conservation reference points.

5. Depending on the relative mortality rates affecting commercially targeted species and species of conservation concern, up to 65% of the potential yield-per-recruit of commercially important species may have to be forgone to reduce fishing mortality below conservation limit reference points for the most sensitive species.

6. Synthesis and applications. The method presented provides a clear objective procedure to construct ranked species sensitivity lists that can inform management, monitoring and research. The Celtic Sea case study demonstrated that limiting fishing pressure on key commercial stocks to meet fisheries production targets may be insufficient to guarantee the persistence of more sensitive species. Management actions that effectively decouple the mortality rates on commercial species and 'conservation' species are likely to be required to make progress in relation to conservation objectives. The method would support rapid assessment of sensitivity to fishing in many regions around the world as only taxonomic lists and estimates of body size are required.


Introduction: Non-adherence to treatment is a common problem in diabetic patients. Nurse-led Telephone follow-up by nurses can be effective in maintaining consistent care to these patients and improving their knowledge and performance. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of nurse-led telephone follow-up on adherence to treatment in patients with type 2 diabetes. Materials and Methods: The present quasi-experimental study was conducted on 60 patients with type 2 diabetes, admitted to a diabetes clinic in Aligudarz, Iran. Samples were selected using the convenience sampling method and randomly divided into the experimental and control groups. All participants first received 3 days of diabetes self-care training, and the experimental groups had twelve weeks of telephone follow-ups. Data on the patients' glycosylated hemoglobin and treatment adherence were collected at baseline and again 12 weeks after the intervention. Results: Results obtained showed a significant increase in the mean scores of treatment adherence and reduction of 1.39% in the mean glycosylated hemoglobin levels of the experimental group (p<0.001). Conclusion: Findings of the present study showed nurse-led telephone follow up is an effective method for improving glycemic control and adherence to treatment in patients with type 2 diabetes.


This work includes some new aspects of motion estimation by the optic flow method in scale spaces. The usual techniques for motion estimation are limited to the application of coarse to fine strategies. The coarse to fine strategies can be successful only if there is enough information in every scale. In this work we investigate the motion estimation in the scale space more basically. The wavelet choice for scale space decomposition of image sequences is discussed in the first part of this work. We make use of the continuous wavelet transform with rotationally symmetric wavelets. Bandpass decomposed sequences allow the replacement of the structure tensor by the phase invariant energy operator. The structure tensor is computationally more expensive because of its spatial or spatio-temporal averaging. The energy operator needs in general no further averaging. The numerical accuracy of the motion estimation with the energy operator is compared to the results of usual techniques, based on the structure tensor. The comparison tests are performed on synthetic and real life sequences. Another practical contribution is the accuracy measurement for motion estimation by adaptive smoothed tensor fields. The adaptive smoothing relies on nonlinear anisotropic diffusion with discontinuity and curvature preservation. We reached an accuracy gain under properly chosen parameters for the diffusion filter. A theoretical contribution from mathematical point of view is a new discontinuity and curvature preserving regularization for motion estimation. The convergence of solutions for the isotropic case of the nonlocal partial differential equation is shown. For large displacements between two consecutive frames the optic flow method is systematically corrupted because of the violence of the sampling theorem. We developed a new method for motion analysis by scale decomposition, which allows to circumvent the systematic corruption without using the coarse to fine strategy. The underlying assumption is, that in a certain neighborhood the grey value undergoes the same displacement. If this is fulfilled, then the same optic flow should be measured in all scales. If there arise inconsistencies in a pixel across the scale space, so they can be detected and the scales containing this inconsistencies are not taken into account.


In the Pomeranian marginal zone of the last Pleistocene glaciation specific morphometric features are found. They represent indicators of surging events affecting the individual outlet glacier lobes of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet margin. They are assumed to have been active during the climate warming of the Weichselian glaciation decay. Many tunnel valleys deep-rooted in the proximal slopes of the terminal moraine ridge with incised gorges and wide extramarginal sandur fans spread from the mouths to the forefield. The relatively low relief intensity factor, the fluvioglacial sediments covering distal slopes of the terminal moraines and 'washed out' older forms may be considered as indirect evidence of outburst floods caused by a re-canalization of the subglacial drainage system. The morphometry of the palaeochannels in the gorge profiles are used to calculate estimates of extreme discharges ( c . 5 × 103–105m3s–1).


We previously proposed a method to find the cluster structure in home videos based on statistical models of visual and temporal features of video segments and sequential binary Bayesian classification. In this paper, we present analysis and improved results on two key issues: feature selection and performance evaluation, using a ten-hour database (30 video clips, 1,075,000 frames). From multiple features and similarity measures, visual features are selected in order to minimize the empirical probability of misclassification. Temporal features are chosen to reflect the patterns existing in both shot and cluster duration and adjacency. Finally, we describe a detailed performance evaluation procedure that includes cluster detection, individual shot-cluster labeling, and prior selection.


In high-dimensional data, structured noise caused by observed and unobserved factors affecting multiple target variables simultaneously, imposes a serious challenge for modeling, by masking the often weak signal. Therefore, (1) explaining away the structured noise in multiple-output regression is of paramount importance. Additionally, (2) assumptions about the correlation structure of the regression weights are needed. We note that both can be formulated in a natural way in a latent variable model, in which both the interesting signal and the noise are mediated through the same latent factors. Under this assumption, the signal model then borrows strength from the noise model by encouraging similar effects on correlated targets. We introduce a hyperparameter for the latent signal-to-noise ratio which turns out to be important for modelling weak signals, and an ordered infinite-dimensional shrinkage prior that resolves the rotational unidentifiability in reduced-rank regression models. Simulations and prediction experiments with metabolite, gene expression, FMRI measurement, and macroeconomic time series data show that our model equals or exceeds the state-of-the-art performance and, in particular, outperforms the standard approach of assuming independent noise and signal models.


Individuals typically experience changes in physical health and cognitive ability across the life span. Although these constructs dynamically relate to one another, the temporal ordering of dynamic changes in physical health and cognitive ability is not well-established. Therefore, we examined the temporal ordering of the dynamic, bidirectional relationship between physical health and memory across ages 50-87 with Bivariate Dual Change Score Models (BDCSM). Employing a model-comparison approach, we tested whether inclusion of specific directional coupling parameters resulted in a meaningful improvement in model fit, controlling for education, gender, and race. The current sample included 9,103 individuals who participated in Waves 4-11 (1998-2012) of the Health and Retirement Study. Results indicated that both memory and physical health declined across ages 50-87. Furthermore, level of memory at a given time point was positively associated with subsequent change in physical health, meaning higher memory was linked to less decline in physical health by the subsequent time point. The opposite effect, namely physical health predicting memory, was much weaker. Age differences were also evident in the bidirectional coupling model, indicating that old-old individuals (i.e., ages 75-87) exhibited a much stronger coupling effect from memory to change in physical health than younger individuals (i.e., ages 50-74). In conclusion, memory buffers decline in physical health across mid-to-later life, and this effect is especially strong at older ages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).


Introduction: PSC is viewed as basic for acknowledging human potential. A competitor with unsatisfied self-perception may encounter more prominent competition anxiety than his peers who have fulfilled self-perceptions or take part in non-aesthetic games because of the apparent risk of their unacceptable build.
Aim: To determine the effect of physical self-concept on competition anxiety of young wrestlers.
Materials and Methods: Physical Self Perception Profile (PSPP) and Sports Competition Anxiety Test (SCAT) were administered on a total of 123 young wrestlers who participated in the "7th All India Chandgiram gold cup wrestling tournaments in March 17-18, 2018". Pearson correlation coefficient was used to measure the significance relationship.
Results: The average age of wrestlers was 22 years. The relationship between Physical Self-concept and competition anxiety was negative, strong in strength and statistically significant (p-value 0.05).
Conclusion: Wrestler's competition anxiety diminishes with the increase of Physical Self-concept. Such data will help wrestlers themselves, just as coaches and sport psychology advisors.


Starting with 4, 7-dichloroquinoline and on treatment with hydrazine hydrate we obtained the hydrazine derivative 1. Compound 1 reacted with dithioacetal to give compounds 2a, b, respectively. Compound 2a reacted with formamide and formic acid to give compounds 3 and 4. The imidoformate derivative 5 obtained through the reaction of compound 2a with trimethyl orthoformate in presence of acetic anhydride. The imino derivatives 6a-c was obtained upon reacting of 5 with hydrazine hydrate and appropriate primary amines. The chloroquinoline derivative 7 was subjected to react with glycine, anthranilic acid, hydrazine hydrate and appropriate primary amines affording compounds 8, 9, 10a-d, respectively Also compound 10a was allowed to react sodium azide and acetohydrazid affording fused quinolone derivatives 11and 12. Compounds 2a and 2b were allowed to react with aryl sulfonylchloride, namely benzene sulfonylchloride, p-toluene sulfonylchloride p-chlorosulfonylchloride and p-bromo benzene sulfonylchloride to give the corresponding 13a-d, 14a-d derivatives, respectively. All structures of the newly synthesized compounds were elucidated by their correct values in elemental analysis and spectral data.


The absorption spectra of thirteen sintered trivalent lanthanide oxides (La to Lu) and six actinide dioxides (Th to Cm) have been measured by photoacoustic spectroscopy. Though both series of elements have in common successive filling of the 4f and 5f shells, respectively, the absorption spectra of the two classes of oxides are very different. While absorption spectra of the thirteen trivalent lanthanide oxides show narrow weak absorption bands and lines in the uv, visible, and near-IR wavelength ranges due to internal 4f n → 4f n transitions between the numerous energy levels of the Xe 4f n configuration, the absorption spectra of the actinide oxides display very intense and broad absorption bands extending from the ultraviolet to the visible and sometimes to the infrared. In the absorption spectra of the lanthanide oxides of higher valencies, such as Tb4O7 or Pr6O11, the sharp absorption lines cannot be detected, as the much stronger 4f n → 4fn–15d transitions overlap the weak 4f n → 4f n transitions. The conclusion is that the 5f n electrons in the actinide oxides are not as well localized as the 4f n electrons of the lanthanide sesquioxides. The 5f electrons probably participate in bonding, e.g., in electron transfer processes from a molecular oxygen orbital to a partly filled or empty 5f electron state of the oxidizing central atom which gives rise to intensive broad absorption bands in the ultraviolet and visible.


This paper reviews the progress to date of the Canterbury Water Management Strategy and identifies key developments and emerging issues. The paper examines the provision of storage, water use efficiency, environmental flow adjustments, nutrients from land use intensification, biodiversity enhancements and kaitiakitanga. The collaborative process has led to some more sustainable changes. One is the use of off-river storage and tributary storage as alternatives to mainstem storage. A second is improved environmental flow regimes by increasing minimum flows and reducing allocations at low flows; but enabling access to allocations at higher flows and providing time to adjust to new requirements. The parallel achievement of reduced nitrate loads and increased irrigation areas is proving problematic. Water use efficiency is advancing on some fronts – piped distribution replacing canal distribution and ongoing conversions to spray irrigation – but not on others – soil moisture demand irrigation and reallocation of surface and groundwater use to enhance recharge. Biodiversity enhancements and incorporating kaitiakitanga in water management are showing positive progress. Some of the key emerging issues include the allocation of nitrate capacity between existing and new users, and, the need for increased capacity for predictive modelling and field measurement to improve management of the use of scarce water and the cumulative effects of its use.


This study determined the influence of socioeconomic factors to the adoption of mobile phones in the farming community of Tanzania. Currently, a series of well-established models (such as the TAM, UTAUT and the Social Capital Model) provide inadequate consideration toward socioeconomic factors, by ignoring them, or putting them under the same cluster, regardless of their differences in impacting the technology use. Methodologically, a survey strategy was adopted, with a sample of 116 respondents. The study involved farmers along Pangani River Basin, found in Kilimanjaro and Tanga Regions of Tanzania. Data was analyzed using advanced quantitative methods such as the ANOVA, Multiple Regression and Chi-Square models. The following results were observed: The user experience and the peer influence determined the perception of farmers on benefits of mobile phones in agriculture; the perceived benefits, peer influence and the purchasing power determined the intention to use the mobile phones in agriculture; and the intention to use mobile phones determined the rate of use. The use of mobile phones  demands showed insignificant relationships with both the intention and the rate of use.


Free radicals and non-radical reactive molecules as well as several cytokines (e.g. tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin family) and transcription factors (e.g. nuclear factor-κB and activator protein-1) are now known to take part in the pathogenesis of cyclophosphamide (CP) and ifosfamide (IF) induced hemorrhagic cystitis (HC). When these molecular factors are taken into account pathogenesis of bladder toxicity can be summarized in three steps: (1) acrolein rapidly enters into the uroepithelial cells, (2) activates intracellular ROS and NO production (directly or through transcription factors) leading to peroxynitrite production, and (3) finally the elevated peroxynitrite level basically damages lipids (lipid peroxidation), proteins (protein oxidation) and DNA (strand breaks) leading to PARP activation, a DNA repair enzyme. DNA damage causes PARP overactivation, resulting in the depletion of oxidized nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and consequently in necrotic cell death.
There is no doubt that for an effective prevention against CP- and IF-cystitis all pathophysiological mechanisms must be taken into consideration. Experimental works reporting beneficial effects of antioxidants, iNOS inhibitors, cytokine blockers or hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) treatment, against CP- and/or IF-induced HC exist in literature. In this article, we discussed the possible mechanisms and effectiveness of agents used in addition to mesna to prevent CP- and IF-cystitis. In conclusion, antioxidants, iNOS inhibitors, peroxynitrite scavengers, anti-inflammatory agents, as well as HBO therapy may be added to mesna administration in clinical trials in order to obtain the best protocol to improve quality of patients comfort.


We present here a high resolution surface water pH dataset obtained in the Northwest European shelf seas in summer 2011. This is the first time that pH has been measured at such a high spatial resolution (10 measurements h–1) in this region. The aim of our paper is to investigate the carbonate chemistry dynamics of the surface water using pH and ancillary data. The main processes controlling the pH distribution along the ship's transect, and their relative importance, were determined using a statistical approach. The study highlights the impact of biological activity, temperature and riverine inputs on the carbonate chemistry dynamics of the shelf seas surface water. For this summer cruise, the biological activity formed the main control of the pH distribution along the cruise transect. Variations in chlorophyll and nutrients explained 29% of the pH variance along the full transect and as much as 68% in the northern part of the transect. In contrast, the temperature distribution explained ca. 50% of the pH variation in the Skagerrak region. Riverine inputs were evidenced by high dissolved organic carbon (DOC) levels in the Strait of Moyle (northern Irish Sea) and the southern North Sea with consequent remineralisation processes and a reduction in pH. The DOC distribution described 15% of the pH variance along the full transect. This study highlights the high spatial variability of the surface water pH in shelf seawaters where a range of processes simultaneously impacts the carbonate chemistry.


Issues about city utility services reported by citizens can provide unprecedented insights into the various aspects of such services. Analysis of these issues can improve living quality through evidence-based decision making. However, these issues are complex, because of the involvement of spatial and temporal components, in addition to having multi-dimensional and multivariate natures. Consequently, exploring utility service problems and creating visual representations are difficult. To analyze these issues, we propose a visual analytics process based on the main tasks of utility service management. We also propose an aggregate method that transforms numerous issues into legible events and provide visualizations for events. In addition, we provide a set of tools and interaction techniques to explore such issues. Our approach enables administrators to make more informed decisions.


There is much interest in the development of personal health technologies, but many health technologies involve the capture and use of deeply personal and sensitive data, particularly in the space of mental health. For many years, technology researchers have examined concepts such as acceptability and acceptance, but we argue that these are even more important in the health domain, as the possible intrusiveness of technologies could lead to users refusing to even try a technology. During the design process of technology and in formative and summative evaluation, researchers may wish to explicitly address and measure acceptability and related constructs, as well as at different points in the user experience (before use, on first use, after some period of usage). While a range of definitions have been offered independently, many researchers conflate related terms and may benefit both from a coherent set of definitions, and associated approaches to measurement. In this paper, we describe a systematic review of the usage of acceptance, acceptability, and adoption within the mobile health literature, and present a preliminary analysis of the most recent literature.


Blazars, a subclass of active galactic nuclei in which the jet is aligned very close to our line of sight, can accelerate charged particles to relativistic energies in the jet.
Electromagnetic emission from this class of sources can be observed from radio up to TeV energies.
The MAGIC telescope is an Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope with a 17-m diameter dish, located on the Canary Island of La Palma, in operation for exploring a new window of very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray bands, above 50 GeV.

Searching for new VHE gamma-ray blazars, BL Lacertae was observed with the MAGIC telescope in 2005 and 2006. A VHE gamma-ray signal was discovered with a 5.1 sigma excess in the 2005 data. This discovery established a new class of VHE gamma-ray emitters, "low-frequency peaked BL Lac objects".
On the other hand, the 2006 data showed no significant excess. This drop in flux followed the observed trend in the optical activity.

The MAGIC telescope continuously observed the bright known blazars Mkn501, 1ES1959+650 and Mkn421. In particular, extensive simultaneous multiwavelength observations with the MAGIC telescope and the X-ray Satellite Suzaku were carried out for Mkn501 in July 2006 and for 1ES1959+650 in May 2006. VHE gamma-ray signals from about 100 GeV to a few TeV were clearly detected.
For the first time, the VHE gamma-ray spectra were simultaneously obtained with the X-ray spectra during their low states of activity.
Long term observations of Mkn421 in 2006 showed a strong variability in VHE gamma-ray emission.

The spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of these four blazars could be well explained by a homogeneous one-zone synchrotron self-Compton model. This model suggests that the variation of the injected electron population in the jet is responsible for observed variations of the SEDs of the blazars. For all sources, the derived magnetic field strength in the jet and the Doppler beaming factor showed similar values.

A contribution on the hardware sector is also presented in this thesis.
For further lowering energy threshold in the MAGIC project, a new type of photosensor, "HPDs with an 18-mm diameter GaAsP photocathode", were developed. A quantum efficiency of the photocathode could reach over 50 %.
Compared to the PMTs currently used in MAGIC, the new photosensors would improve the overall Cherenkov photon conversion efficiency by a factor of 2.
Other performance values including lifetime also fulfilled the requirements of photosensors to be used in the MAGIC telescope.


The Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011 (Cth) aims
to improve the protection of human rights in Australia. It does
so by requiring federal Bills and legislative instruments to be
accompanied by a statement as to their compatibility with a number
of international human rights conventions. The Parliamentary Joint
Committee on Human Rights, also constituted by the Act, examines
such statements and makes recommendations on the human rights
compatibility of Bills. In this model of human rights scrutiny, there is
no scope for Bills or regulations to be interpreted conformably with
rights, or declared invalid, by courts. This article uses empirical
analysis to explore whether this model has led to greater discussion
about, and protection of, human rights in Australia. While the
regime has contributed to the dialogue between lawmakers about
the human rights impacts of proposed legislation, the model is failing
to deliver better substantive human rights outcomes in federal Bills
and legislative instruments. If Australia is committed to enhancing
human rights protection, the scrutiny regime should be reinforced,
or other measures, such as a charter of rights, must be contemplated.


Vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC) is a major challenge in optical-see through augmented reality (AR) system. To resolve this conflict, many approaches are proposed, for instance, by means of adjustment of the projected virtual image to coincide with the surroundings, called image registration, which is more often referred to as varifocal function. In this paper, a varifocal AR system is demonstrated by adopting electrically tunable liquid crystal (LC) plane-parallel plates to solve VAC problem. The LC plates provide electrically tunable optical paths when the directors of LC molecules are re-orientated with applied voltages, which leads to a corresponding change of light speed for an extraordinary wave. To provide a sufficient tunable optical path, three pieces of multiple-layered LC structures are used with the total thickness of the active LC layers (∼510 μm). In experiments, the projected virtual image can be adjusted from 1.4 m to 2.1 m away from the AR system, while the thickness of LC plane-parallel plates are only less than 3 mm without any mechanical moving part. When light propagates in the uniaxial LC layers, the wave vector and the Poynting vector are different. The longitudinal displacement of the image plane is determined by Poynting vectors rather than wave vectors. As a result, the analysis of the AR system should be based on Poynting vectors during geometrical optical analysis. Surprisingly, the tunable range of the longitudinal displacement of Poynting vectors is 2-fold larger than the tunable range of the wave vectors. Moreover, the virtual image shifts in opposite directions with respect to the Poynting vectors and wave vectors. The proposed AR system is not only simple but also thin, and it exhibits a large clear aperture. The investigation here paves the way to a simple solution of the VAC problem for augmented reality systems.


Background
A "seek-test-treat" intervention (ARISTOTLE) was implemented in response to an outbreak of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection among persons who inject drugs (PWID) in Athens. We assess trends in HIV incidence, prevalence, risk behaviors and access to prevention/treatment.

Methods
Methods included behavioral data collection, provision of injection equipment, HIV testing, linkage to opioid substitution treatment (OST) programs and HIV care during 5 rounds of respondent-driven sampling (2012-2013). HIV incidence was estimated from observed seroconversions.

Results
Estimated coverage of the target population was 88% (71%-100%; 7113 questionnaires/blood samples from 3320 PWID). The prevalence of HIV infection was 16.5%. The incidence per 100 person-years decreased from 7.8 (95% confidence interval, 4.6-13.1) (2012) to 1.7 (0.55-5.31) (2013; P for trend = .001). Risk factors for seroconversion were frequency of injection, homelessness, and history of imprisonment. Injection at least once daily declined from 45.2% to 18.8% (P < .001) and from 36.8% to 26.0% (P = .007) for sharing syringes, and the proportion of undiagnosed HIV infection declined from 84.3% to 15.0% (P < .001). Current OST increased from 12.2% to 27.7% (P < .001), and 48.4% of unlinked seropositive participants were linked to HIV care through 2013. Repeat participants reported higher rates of adequate syringe coverage, linkage to HIV care and OST.

Conclusions
Multiple evidence-based interventions delivered through rapid recruitment in a large proportion of the population of PWID are likely to have helped mitigate this HIV outbreak.


As a member of the Yale community, you are expected to abide by Yale Policies [1]. Familiarize yourself with these policies, as well as the student code of conduct in your school, to avoid academic, and potentially legal, repercussions. Even innocent violations of the law could have serious consequences for your immigration status. Get to know the Yale's policies governing intellectual property and plagiarism, copyright infringement, the consumption of alcoholic beverages, drug use, sexual harassment, and domestic disputes.


Objective Contactin-associated protein-like2 (CNTNAP2) is one of the risk markers in the pathogenesis of language impairment and thought disturbance, such as autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. Although recent neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that CNTNAP2 polymorphisms affect left-hemispheric function of language processing, no study has investigated the influence of these polymorphisms on right-hemispheric function involved in human voice perception, and handedness. We investigated whether CNTNAP2 polymorphisms (rs7794745 and rs2710102) affect voice-specific brain function and handedness. Method One hundred and eight healthy Japanese volunteers (74 right-handed and 34 non-right-handed) had their brain function examined while they were passively listening to reverse sentences (rSEN), identifiable non-vocal sounds (SND), and sentences (SEN). The study protocol was approved by Ethics Committee. After complete explanation of the study, written informed consent was obtained from all subjects. Data analysis of fMRI was performed with statistical parametric mapping software SPM8. Genomic DNA samples were extracted from peripheral blood using standard procedures. Since these SNPs are known as biological high-risk markers for ASD, epilepsy, mental retardation, schizophrenia, and cognitive impairment, we investigated the genotype of brain function in these 2 SNPs: (rs7794745 and rs2710102) in CNTNAP2. The genotyping of all subjects was determined in comparison with control DNA confirmed by sequencing in the SNP pattern. Genotype of rs7794745 is A/A, A/T, and T/T; that of rs2710102 is G/G, G/A, A/A. The genotypes were classified into A/A and A/T in rs7794745, and G/G and A carriers (G/A and A/A) in rs2710102, respectively. Results In full factorial design analysis, rs7794745 (A/A or A/T) × rs2710102 (G/G or A carrier (A/G and A/A)) × voice-specific response (rSEN or SND), the main effect of rs7794745 (A/A or A/T) was significantly revealed at the right middle frontal gyrus (MTG) and bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STG). This result suggests that rs7794745 genotype impacts on voice-specific brain function. Furthermore, interaction effect was significantly observed among MTG-STG activations by human voice perception, rs7794745 (A/A or A/T), and handedness. Conclusion CNTNAP2 polymorphisms could be one of the remarkable biomarkers verifying genetic influence in voice-specific brain function and handedness in psychiatric disorders.