Abstract. Sea surface temperature (SST) is one of the critical parameters in marine meteorology and oceanography. The SST datasets are incorporated as conditions for ocean and atmosphere models. The SST needs to be investigated for various scientific phenomenon such as salinity, potential fishing zone, sea level rise, upwelling, eddies, cyclone predictions. On the other hands, high spatial resolution SST maps can illustrate eddies and sea surface currents. Also, near real time producing of SST map is suitable for weather forecasting and fishery applications. Therefore satellite remote sensing with wide coverage of data acquisition capability can use as real time tools for producing SST dataset. Satellite sensor such as AVHRR, MODIS and SeaWIFS are capable of extracting brightness values at different thermal spectral bands. These brightness temperatures are the sole input for the SST retrieval algorithms. Recently, Landsat-8 successfully launched and accessible with two instruments on-board: (1) the Operational Land Imager (OLI) with nine spectral bands in the visual, near infrared, and the shortwave infrared spectral regions; and (2) the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) with two spectral bands in the long wavelength infrared. The two TIRS bands were selected to enable the atmospheric correction of the thermal data using a split window algorithm (SWA). The TIRS instrument is one of the major payloads aboard this satellite which can observe the sea surface by using the split-window thermal infrared channels (CH10: 10.6 μm to 11.2 μm; CH11: 11.5 μm to 12.5 μm) at a resolution of 30 m. The TIRS sensors have three main advantages comparing with other previous sensors. First, the TIRS has two thermal bands in the atmospheric window that provide a new SST retrieval opportunity using the widely used split-window (SW) algorithm rather than the single channel method. Second, the spectral filters of TIRS two bands present narrower bandwidth than that of the thermal band on board on previous Landsat sensors. Third, TIRS is one of the best space born and high spatial resolution with 30 m. in this regards, Landsat-8 can use the Split-Window (SW) algorithm for retrieving SST dataset. Although several SWs have been developed to use with other sensors, some adaptations are required in order to implement them for the TIRS spectral bands. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to develop a SW, adapted for use with Landsat-8 TIRS data, along with its accuracy assessment. In this research, that has been done for modelling SST using thermal Landsat 8-imagery of the Persian Gulf. Therefore, by incorporating contemporary in situ data and SST map estimated from other sensors like MODIS, we examine our proposed method with coefficient of determination (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE) on check point to model SST retrieval for Landsat-8 imagery. Extracted results for implementing different SW's clearly shows superiority of utilized method by R2 = 0.95 and RMSE = 0.24.


Metabolites produced by fiber-fermenting gut bacteria help B cells produce antibodies. When gut bacteria ferment dietary fiber, they produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which are both an energy source for intestinal epithelial cells and important modulators of host physiology and immunity. SCFAs can affect host metabolic pathways, activate G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs), and inhibit histone deacetylases (HDACs). Kim et al. found that SCFAs enhanced the generation of antibody-producing B cells. Feeding mice a high-fiber diet or the SCFA propionate increased the amount of immunoglobulins in the serum and intestinal lumen and boosted the numbers of antibody-secreting B cells in the intestine and the number of immunoglobulin A (IgA)–coated bacteria in the colon. In vitro, the SCFAs acetate, propionate, and butyrate each stimulated the differentiation of naïve mouse or human B cells into antibody-secreting plasma cells, and acetate promoted the production of IgA and IgG and the expression of genes involved in B cell differentiation. Experiments with mouse B cells indicated that these effects were not caused by SCFA-mediated activation of GPCRs. Each of the three SCFAs increased histone acetylation in cultured mouse B cells, and feeding mice propionate or dietary fiber increased histone acetylation in B cells in vivo. SCFAs also increased acetyl-CoA production, glycolysis, mitochondrial respiration, and the production of lipid droplets in primary mouse B cells. These metabolic changes may aid in the energetically costly process of antibody production. Last, dietary fiber and propionate each reduced the susceptibility of mice to Citrobacter rodentium infection and increased the production of antibodies specific to C. rodentium after exposure to this pathogen. Thus, SCFAs act through multiple mechanisms to promote the ability of B cells to produce antibodies. M. Kim, Y. Qie, J. Park, C. H. Kim, Gut microbial metabolites fuel host antibody responses. Cell Host Microbe 20, 202–214 (2016). [PubMed]


Why do so many people volunteer to help others in need in society today? What makes people give up the convenience of driving their car to benefit a better environment? And why are citizens, in general, quite prepared to pay taxes to ensure adequate health care, and support for the elderly and unemployed? These are examples of a more fundamental question addressed in this book: why do people cooperate for the welfare of their community, state, or organization?
Cooperation in Modern Society is a unique collection of contributions from internationally reputed scholars across the social sciences.


The Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology is one of the most authoritative and influential book series in pharmacology. It provides critical and comprehensive discussions of the most significant areas of pharmacological research, written by leading international authorities. Each volume in the series represents the most informative and contemporary account of its subject available, making it an unrivalled reference source. Indexed in PubMed.


Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young's "Numbers Trouble" (which appears on page 88 of this issue) counts men and women in various poetry media to determine gender representation in "innovative" poetry communities. Intrigued by their findings, we decided to look at a medium they did not count, periodicals. Our counting project had two aims: to determine the gender ratios in different types of magazines and to chart the changes in these ratios over time. Accordingly, we looked at the number of men and women in twelve magazines, counting one full year every five years between 1970 and 2005. We examined a range of publications: university-affiliated journals, independent little magazines, and mainstream outlets. With their long runs and contributor rolls, these magazines provide excellent data for charting gender distributions over time. They provide a real-time history of the art: not only by introducing poetry to the public, but by contextualizing, categorizing, and sometimes canonizing it as well. Our results are summarized in the table and graph on pages 227 and 228 and briefly analyzed below. We are extremely grateful for the help of Rachel Weiner, who did the actual counting for this project. The first significant feature of our data is an increase in the percentages of women published through the 1970s and 80s--an increase that occurs (with the exception of the New York Review of Books) in all the magazines, independent of size, affiliation, or (presumed) political or poetical orientation. Around 1990, however, these percentages tend to level off around 37%. The real story of our survey, therefore, may not be the gains of the 70s and 80s so much as the fact that gender inequality persists. Chicago Review, for example, jumps from publishing 11% women in 1980 to 36% in 1990, and remains in the mid-thirties to the present. Paris Review and Poetry display a steadier rise before leveling off in the high thirties around 1990. Meanwhile the mainstream magazines--The New Yorker and The Nation--reach their peak in 1990 and then begin to decline. The one major outlier in the study is the New York Review of Books, which displays neither the initial increase nor the final plateau of the other magazines. In the eight years we surveyed, the NYRB published poems by women four times. (Patricia Storace appeared twice in 1995; April Bernard and Elizabeth Vreeland appeared in 1985.) A full survey of the NYRB from 1970 to 2005 revealed a similar pattern: men appeared 382 times, women thirty-five times (8% women). (1) The data do not tell us anything about the causes of these changes, so what follows is speculative. The increase in the number of women published coincides with an increase in general female employment in the same period--an increase usually attributed to the success of second-wave feminism. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, women composed 38% of the US workforce in 1970 and 46% in 2005. Likewise the American Medical Association reports that in 1970 8% of physicians were women, a number that increased to 24% by 2000. It seems likely, then, that the increase in our numbers reflects broad social changes, which probably had several local effects within poetry communities: editors became aware of their biases, anti-discriminatory practices gained favor, and, most significantly, women gained access to careers in poetry and publishing. Assuming that second-wave feminism is the cause of the increase in our numbers, there are at least two plausible explanations for the graphs plateau, a pattern that also occurs in the general workforce data (where the plateau is 46%). First, we can hypothesize that around 1990 external factors interfered with the steady gains of the previous two decades. (One may speculate about the anti-feminist backlash signalled by the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in 1991.) Second, we could attribute the plateau to structures of inequality that survived the interventions of second-wave feminism. …


A review of the results from two large‐scale field tests and vadose zone monitoring data at two facilities at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) has provided information to support development of a conceptual model of water movement in the highly heterogeneous vadose zone beneath two INEEL facilities. Both of the large‐scale field tests were ponded water infiltration tests that approached the size of the two facilities. An assembly of perched water wells, neutron access tubes, and tensiometers have been used to monitor water movement beneath these sites. Once water has percolated through the surficial sediment at these facilities, the presence of the surficial sediment–basalt interface results in some perching of the percolated water with limited lateral movement. Water movement in basalt formations is mainly gravity‐dominated in preferential fracture pathways and rubble zones and results in rapid vertical flow especially frequently under conditions of positive hydrostatic head. Detection of wetting front advance is typically not sequential with depth and has been shown to vary between episodic infiltration events. At the basalt–sediment interface of the interbeds, perched water is often detected and has resulted in more lateral spreading of recharge than at the surficial sediment–basalt interface. Gaps in the sedimentary interbeds will allow some of the recharge water to bypass the interbeds and rapidly continue toward the aquifer. This complex water movement in the vadose zone beneath the INEEL supports the need to control surface infiltration, identify gaps and the lateral continuity of the interbeds, and investigate the influence of nearby surface water sources on perched water movement beneath these two facilities.


Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is one of the developmental-behavioral disorders whose prevalence is between three to five years of age. There are several ways to cope with this problem. Two common methods for treating this disorder are verbal self-instruction and neurofeedback. This study intended to compare the effect of neurofeedback and verbal selfinstruction on children afflicted with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder using a cognitivebehavioral pproach. To this end, 84 children afflicted with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were selected. They were selected using purposeful sampling, and then they were randomly assigned to three groups of 28. The first two groups were selected as the experimental groups and the third group was selected as the control group. The children in the first group received verbal self-instruction for 16 sessions for sixteen weeks and the children in the second group received neurofeedback training for 32 sessions for sixteen weeks (twice a week). The third group, however, received no treatment whatsoever. Three instruments were used in this study, namely, Child Symptom Inventory-4 (CSI-4), Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV). Having analyzed the data, the researchers found that by controlling for the effect of pretest, there was a significant difference in the posttest scores of the groups. According to the post-hoc analysis, there was a significant decrease in the ADHD symptoms of the two experimental groups. However, the effectiveness of neurofeedback was higher than that of verbal self-instruction.


This paper deals with a new synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processor based on a subspace detector designed for man-made target (MMT) detection. As MMTs are more accurately described by a set of canonical elements than with isotropic points, we develop a new algorithm which aims at using new models, instead of the isotropic point model commonly used in SAR processors. A subspace detector matched to canonical elements is included in the SAR processing. The implementation and the optimization of subspace detector SAR (SDSAR) algorithm is described. Simple examples of MMT detection in simulations and real data with a target hidden in a forest show the power of our approach. The SDSAR algorithm is shown to be the first robust and tractable algorithm relying on realistic scattering assumptions about the target.


Context The use of small incision lenticule extraction (SMILE) for compound myopic astigmatism has been subject to experimentation in the recent years. Furthermore, examination of corneal alterations has revealed conflicting conclusions, which could be attributable to demographic variation. Aims The aim of this study was to measure visual and keratometric efficacy of SMILE and correlate spherical equivalent (SE) decrements to keratometric alterations. Settings and design This was a prospective nonrandomized study. Thirty eyes of 15 patients were included in the study. Preoperative assessment included oculus Pentacam analysis. Patients were followed-up for up to 3 months, after which tomography was repeated. Statistical analysis used Descriptive statistics, t test, and linear regression analysis were carried out. Results There was a statistically significant improvement in postoperative uncorrected distance visual acuity and SE and a statistically significant change in Q value (P<0.001). The mean residual SE postoperatively was −0.14 D. A highly statistically significant negative correlation existed between SE difference and mean K difference with r=−0.980 and P value less than 0.001, and a highly statistically significant positive correlation existed between SE difference and Q value difference, with r=0.787 and P value less than 0.001. Conclusion SMILE is a safe and effective technique to correct cases with myopic astigmatism with an SE of up to −10 D, and a predictable positive correlation could be established between decrements in SE and decrements in anterior corneal steepening.


The role and status of women in South Asian countries like Nepal are widely recognised to be lower than that of men. This gender inequality can be found throughout all levels of society. Our study is about the influence of gender on pregnancy and childbirth, which are very much in the female domain in South Asia, both at home and in health facilities. A mixed-method, qualitative research study was undertaken in two birthing facilities in Kathmandu Valley to examine barriers to women accessing these services from the perspective of hospital staff. Thematic analysis identified seven subthemes related to gender, namely: (1) support from family, autonomy & decision making; (2) women's workload; (3) finances; (4) women wanting female doctor; (5) consent; (6) delivery room; and (7) preference for male offspring. Overall, gender-based roles negatively impacted many stages of the mother's childbirth journey. Some staff recognised gender roles as a barrier to women accessing services but did not recognize themselves or their practices as a potential barrier. Gender issues identified at both birthing facilities generally reflect those of Nepali society as a whole. Raising awareness among maternity-care workers about gender issues and what they can do about it in personal interaction and how they reflect can on it would be the first step to improving the experiences of women of childbearing age.


People with disabilities, and in particular people who are blind or vision impaired, are not embracing computing and Internetrelated technologies at the same rate as the able-bodied population. The purpose of this study was to find the reasons behind this digital divide for people with disabilities and provide solutions. The investigation into this 'disability divide' initially examined the historical significance of the social construction of disability, the developments of computing and Internet-related technologies and the evolution of associated government and corporate policies. In order to gain an understanding of the specific elements in the current disability divide, interviews were conducted with a range of government representatives, multinational information technology developers and online information providers in Australia and the United States of America. In order to gain an understanding of what people with disabilities required from information technology, a national survey was conducted with people who are blind or vision impaired to determine their computing and Internet experiences. This study clearly identified that people with vision disabilities have a high level of computing and Internet expertise and it is specific barriers, rather than lack of will, that has prevented access to computing and Internet-related technologies. These barriers include issues relating to the perception of disability in society, Federal and state government policy, corporate policy, mainstream computing products, assistive technologies, real-time online communication, poverty and a lack of educational opportunities. Addressing the issues in these areas will significantly reduce the impact of the disability divide, allowing people who are blind or vision impaired to participate more effectively in the information age. Comments http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/gladnetcollect/340 This article is available at DigitalCommons@ILR: http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/gladnetcollect/340 Faculty of Media, Society and Culture The Disability Divide: A Study into the Impact of Computing and Internet-related Technologies on People who are Blind or Vision Impaired


In addition to its health and economic implications, COVID-19 has a widespread effect on social relations, stress, livelihood, and on the environment. However, analyses of the effects of COVID-19 tend to focus on the health and economic implications of the pandemic. In recent years well-being is increasingly promoted as a measure to assess the state of countries and citizens, taking into account a broad set of factors such as social relations, the environment, health, and livelihood. Previous work at IIASA has produced a national well-being map, in which the variables that affect both current and future well-being were spelled out, as well as the relations between them. In the current study, we utilize the IIASA national well-being map as a basis for analyzing the effects of COVID-19 on social well-being, focusing on Israel as a case study. Thus, while the indicators used are based on the OECD well-being indicators, they are contextualized to account for both the setting and for the focus on social well-being of current generations (those that are most likely to be affected by COVID-19). However, the approach we suggest can be useful for other cases, and the results may shed light on the COVID-19 effects elsewhere.
To this end, we first identify the direct effects of COVID-19 and the measures undertaken to mitigate the immediate health effects on the variables included in the social well-being map, a modified version of the original national well-being map. These served to identify both the primary and secondary effects of COVID-19. By relating these primary and secondary effects on the variables that affect social well-being, we can identify how COVID-19 affects current social well-being, differentiating these effects by timing. Then we show that there are synergic effects that will lead to long-term implications, also after the pandemic is brought under control.
COVID-19 does not affect all population groups equally. We find that the effects of COVID-19 on employment serve as the stratifying variable that differentiates the effects. Hence, we analyzed the well-being effects of COVID-19 on different groups based on the effects the pandemic has had on employment. This analysis shows that while the well-being of all groups is affected, they are particularly wide and strenuous for those who lose their jobs or businesses. Therefore, job retention and mitigation of the job insecurity effects of COVID-19 are found to be of critical importance, more than income maintenance. These variables are also essential for the maintenance of trust in government, as such trust is crucial when the next wave of the pandemic erupts. However, additional measures that may mitigate the effects on other well-being indicators are also called for. Thus, it is advisable to formulate policy packages that will address the multi-dimensional effects on well-being.


This review work stated that climate changes are recognized as the foremost environmental problem of the twenty-first century and subject of considerable debate and controversy. Alteration between two different periods of time is the major courses of climate change occurred in a specific area. Both natural and anthropogenic activities are affecting the habitat of fish earth's temperature and it's climatic. Additionally climate change is the cusses of fishing mortality, loss of habitat, pollution, disturbance and introducing new species. This review assessed that there is increasing concern over the consequences of climate change for fisheries production and the state of marine ecosystems. Changes in distribution, species composition and habitats will require changes in fishing practices and aquaculture operations, as well as in the location of landing, farming and processing facilities. Most marine and aquatic animals are cold-blooded and their metabolic rates are strongly affected by external environmental conditions (particularly temperature). This result investigated that changed environmental conditions are likely introduced new animal-transmitted diseases and redistributed some existing diseases which are affecting economic resources and human population. The wide range of adaptation potential and mitigation options for fisheries in response to climate change is implementing adaptation and mitigation pathways for communities dependent on fisheries maintain research and monitoring efforts that make sound policy, technology and investment choices.


Background Poor patient understanding of atrial fibrillation (AF) may contribute to underuse of anticoagulation. There are no validated instruments to measure patient knowledge in Asian cohorts. This study aims to validate a disease-specific questionnaire measuring the level of understanding of AF and its treatment among patients with AF in Singapore. Methods A 10-item interviewer-administered questionnaire was created based on previously published questionnaires. Face and content validity were assessed. 165 participants were identified by convenience sampling at cardiology clinics of a tertiary hospital. The questionnaire was administered in either English (n = 53) or Mandarin (n = 112). Exploratory factor analysis was performed using principal component method. Internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Results Face validity was tested by surveying 10 cardiologists who could all identify what the questionnaire was designed to measure. Mean content validity ratio across items was 0.9. Participants were 68.7 (SD 10.5) years old. 55.8% were male. 95.2% were on oral anticoagulation. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure was 0.67 and Bartlett's test of sphericity was significant (p < 0.01). Four factors were retained based on the eigenvalue > 1. These were knowledge of the following: disease characteristics, disease-specific treatment, role of treatment in symptom management and treatment mechanisms. Internal consistency was good (Cronbach's alpha = 0.71). Conclusions A questionnaire on the knowledge of AF and its treatment was validated in a cohort of Asian patients in English and Mandarin. It allows quantification of patient knowledge and may be useful in Asian populations to assess the efficacy of interventions to improve patient understanding of AF.


We assess the reliability of space-borne InSAR-derived deformation source parameters for volcanic and seismic events, with special focus on the future L-band data of the proposed Tandem-L mission [1-3]. Using representative simulation cases, the influence of certain characteristics of the InSAR measurements on the source model parameter precision is quantified. The performance drivers are assessed from two aspects: the data acquisition geometry as well as the measurement noise; in particular governed by signal coherence and superposed atmospheric signal. The significance of each these governing noise components is shown to be dependent on the spatial scale of the geophysical signal of interest as well as the deformation source mechanism in question. Here, we estimate the error bounds for the inferred source parameters as a function of the signal coherence and atmospheric signal parameters.


Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) thin film solar cells contain a thin layer of CdS. To avoid toxic heavy-metal-containing waste in the module production the development of a cadmium-free buffer layer is desirable. This thesis considers alternative Cd-free buffer materials deposited by Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD). Conditions of the CIGS surface necessary for ALD growth are investigated and the heterojunction interface is characterized by band alignment studies of ZnO/CIGS and In2S3/CIGS interfaces. The thesis also includes investigations on the surface modification of the CIGS absorber by sulfurization. According to ALD theory the growth process is limited by surface saturated reactions. The ALD growth on CIGS substrates shows nucleation failure and generally suffers from surface contaminations of the CIGS layer. The grade of growth disturbance varies for different ALD precursors. The presence of surface contaminants is related to the substrate age and sodium content. Improved growth behavior is demonstrated by different pretreatment procedures. The alignment of the energy bands in the buffer/absorber interface is an important parameter for minimization of the losses in a solar cell. The valence band and conduction band offsets was determined by in situ X-ray and UV photoelectron spectroscopy during layer by layer formation of buffer material. The conduction band offset (ΔEc) should be small but positive for optimal solar cell electrical performance according to theory. The conduction band offset was determined for the ALD ZnO/CIGS interface (ΔEc = -0.2 eV) and the ALD In2S3/CIGS interface (ΔEc = -0.25 eV). A high temperature process for bandgap grading and a low temperature process for surface passivation by post deposition sulfurization in H2S were investigated. It is concluded that the high temperature sulfurization of CuIn(1-x)GaxSe2 leads to phase separation when x>0. The low temperature process did not result in enhanced device performance.


Advisor: Frederic D. Bushman, PhD. The human body contains large numbers of viral particles (over 1012 per person), largely bacteriophage, but little is known of how these viral communities influence human health and disease. To study the viruses of the human gut (the so-called gut `virome') during a known environmental perturbation we collected stool samples from healthy individuals participating in a controlled diet study. Viral DNA was purified and deepsequenced using 454 and Illumina technologies, yielding over 48 billion bases of viral sequence spread across 28 samples from 12 healthy individuals. Computational analysis of this unprecedentedly large database of viral sequences allowed us to characterize these communities on a genomic level. We found that the vast majority of viruses from the human gut were novel species of bacteriophage, and that only 1 of these 12 individuals contained a known eukaryotic DNA virus. Temporal changes in these viral communities were correlated with experimental manipulation of diet, and parallel deep sequencing of gut bacteria revealed co-variation between bacterial and viral communities, supporting the hypothesis of linked reproduction between these two groups. A large proportion of viral contigs have markers of temperate lifestyle, indicating that there is a significant role of lysogeny in the gut microbiome. Analysis of genetically variable elements within these viral genomes revealed novel classes of diversity-generating retroelements targeting immunoglobulin-superfamily proteins, suggesting a surprising example of convergent evolution with the vertebrate immune system. Optimization of assembly algorithms for these samples improved the recovery of complete and partial genome sequences. While the assembled genomes were highly dissimilar on the nucleotide level, analysis of syntenic proteincoding sequences revealed conserved gene cassettes that display an inferred structural and functional conservation despite a high degree of nucleotide substitution. Through high-throughput shotgun sequencing of viral DNA, we found that the healthy human gut contains a wide variety of extremely diverse bacteriophages encoding novel and unexpected functions. This work sets the stage for thorough genomic analysis of complex viral communities, and presents the intriguing problem of how this immense pool of genetic diversity has evolved and persisted. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Cell & Molecular Biology First Advisor Frederic D. Bushman Second Advisor Ronald Collman This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/552


Increasing use of UAVs in high-precision applications, such as georeferencing and photogrammetry, increases the requirements on the accuracy of the estimated position, velocity and attitude of the vehicle. Commercial systems that utilize magnetometers in the heading estimates are cheap, but are affected by disturbances from both the vehicle itself, nearby metal structures and variations in the Earth's magnetic field. On the other side, commercial dual-antenna satellite navigation systems can provide the required accuracy, but are expensive. This paper explores the use of a low-cost setup using two independent GNSS receivers, aiding an inertial navigation system by using pseudorange, Doppler frequency and carrier phase measurements from two longitudinally separated receivers on a fixed-wing UAV. The sensor integration was based on a multiplicative extended Kalman filter (MEKF). The main contribution of this paper is the derivation of measurement models for the raw GNSS measurements based on the MEKF error state, taking into account antenna lever arms and explicitly including the difference in measurement time between the receivers in the measurement model for double differenced carrier phase. The proposed method is verified using data collected from a UAV flight.


A simple, rapid and inexpensive method using programmed temperature vaporization-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (PTV-GC-MS) was developed for the simultaneous trace level determination of organometallic compounds of mercury (monomethylmercury, MMM), lead (trimethyllead, TML and triethyllead, TEL) and tin (monobutyltin, MBT; dibutyltin, DBT and tributyltin, TBT). Inorganic tin, mercury and lead species were also determined in the same chromatographic run. Prior to chromatographic separation and detection, a one-step micro liquid–liquid extraction (MLLE) after derivatization was carried out with sodium tetrapropylborate (NaBPr4) in the presence of a small volume of isooctane. Injection conditions were optimized by applying experimental designs (Plackett–Burman design (PBD) and central composite design (CCD)) using an injection volume of 25 μL. PBD was chosen to screen variables affecting the vaporization efficiency (injector heating rate, injection speed, split vent flow, injector isothermal time, injector initial temperature, oven isothermal time, oven initial temperature, and splitless time). Then, the optimum values of the significant factors (injector isothermal time, oven isothermal time and splitless time) were obtained by a CCD. The figures of merit were achieved using selective ion monitoring (SIM) and full scan modes. The instrumental detection and quantification limits were in the range of few μg L−1. Repeatability and intermediate precision in the range of 1.3–20% were achieved for most compounds studied. The accuracy of the method (average analytical recovery percentages) was satisfactory.


Plasmids belonging to various incompatibility (Inc) groups were introduced into the efficiently root-colonizing strain Pseudomonas fluorescens WCS365, and their stabilities in complex and minimal media and in the rhizospheres of tomato, wheat, and potato plants grown under gnotobiotic conditions without selection pressure were tested. The IncP plasmid was found to be highly unstable under all conditions tested, whereas the IncQ and IncW plasmids showed intermediate stabilities and the plasmids pVSP41 and pWTT2081, for which the Inc group is unknown, both containing the origin of replication (rep) and stability (sta) regions of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa pVS1 replicon, were stably maintained under all conditions tested. Growth experiments in which cells of strain WCS365 carrying the plasmid pWTT2081 were grown in the presence of WCS365 without the plasmid showed that the presence of pWTT2081 acts as a burden. We conclude that pVSP41 and pWTT2081 are valuable as stable vectors for the functional analysis of genes involved in root colonization, provided that control cells carry the empty vector.


In 1992, the U.S. Agency for International Development, (AID), launched a $15-million program to consolidate democracy in Zambia. The aid program followed multiparty elections which ended the 28-year reign of Kenneth Kaunda and the United National Independence Party, (UNIP). For 17 of those 28 years, Zambia had operated a single-party state, with UNIP serving as the sole, legitimate party (Bratton, 1992). The defeat of Kaunda and UNIP at the 1991 general elections, and the victory of former trade union leader, Frederick Chiluba, and his Movement for Multiparty Democracy, (MMD), was seen by many as an opportunity to consolidate democratic pluralism in Zambia (Bratton, op.cit.). It was this vision of democratic pluralism that led the U.S. government, acting through its Agency for International Development, (AID), to embark on a bold initiative it termed the Democratic Governance Project (DGP). The central objective of this initiative was to render "public decision making more accessible and effective."(USAID Project Paper, 1992).1 Five years after the launching of the project, AID is scaling it down, uncertain about the future of democracy in Zambia. Part of the pessimism stems from the performance of the Chiluba government and the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, (MMD), in the post single-party government era. Dogged by charges of corruption, economic mismanagement, and political intolerance throughout much of its first term, critics of the MMD government say that its record so far has been just as bad as that of the Kaunda regime it succeeded (Bratton and Liatto-Katundu, 1994). Others point to more systemic problems. According to Ihonvbere (1995), Zambia is "caught in the contradiction of nurturing and consolidating plural democracy under very difficult socioeconomic conditions" (Ihonvbere, 1995:23). The controversies over freedom of the press, and the failure to conduct free and fair elections at the end of Chiluba's first term in office, are perhaps the most significant emblems of this failure at consolidating democratic pluralism in Zambia. For example, Chiluba's entire first term was marked by several tussles with the press, particularly the private-enterprise press. Notwithstanding the shortcomings of the private-enterprise independent press, those supporting transition to democratic pluralism argue that the frequent tussle with the press over critical and sensational stories against members of the Chiluba government did not help with the image of progress toward democracy.2 As for constitutional reforms, the government's failure at compromise with the opposition over several issues, including proposals for an independent judiciary, the need for an independent electoral commission, the procedure for adopting the constitution, and plans to include a Bill of Rights in the main constitution, seriously undermined the legitimacy of the constitution.5 Worse still, the refusal to rescind a clause in the new constitution which forbade former president, Kenneth Kaunda, from contesting the elections as a presidential candidate because his parents were not of Zambian origin, seriously compromised the integrity of the democratic process . The subsequent boycott of the elections by Kaunda's UNIP, and the denunciation of the 1996 elections by several groups as unfair, and undemocratic, was one by-product of the failure at constitutional reforms. Significantly, two of the key components of the U.S. Agency for International Development's democratic assistance plan for Zambia dealt with freedom of the press and constitutional reforms. Is-ow that Zambia is under attack on both of these scores, it is not surprising that AID is scaling back its commitments to assist Zambia in achieving democratic consolidation. This paper examines AID's media assistance plan under the Democratic Governance Project initiative, with particular emphasis on three aspects: (a.) the attempt at policy reforms that were intended to protect freedom of the press and ensure the privatization of mass media institutions in Zambia; (b. …


ABSTRACT The newly discovered Upper Miocene to Upper Pliocene San Gregorio assemblage of the Purisima Formation in Central California has yielded a diverse collection of 34 marine vertebrate taxa, including eight sharks, two bony fish, three marine birds (described in a previous study), and 21 marine mammals. Pinnipeds include the walrus Dusignathus sp., cf. D. seftoni, the fur seal Callorhinus sp., cf. C. gilmorei, and indeterminate otariid bones. Baleen whales include dwarf mysticetes (Herpetocetus bramblei Whitmore & Barnes, 2008, Herpetocetus sp.), two right whales (cf. Eubalaena sp. 1, cf. Eubalaena sp. 2), at least three balaenopterids ("Balaenoptera" cortesi "var." portisi Sacco, 1890, cf. Balaenoptera, Balaenopteridae gen. et sp. indet.) and a new species of rorqual (Balaenoptera bertae n. sp.) that exhibits a number of derived features that place it within the genus Balaenoptera. This new species of Balaenoptera is relatively small (estimated 61 cm bizygomatic width) and exhibits a comparatively narrow vertex, an obliquely (but precipitously) sloping frontal adjacent to vertex, anteriorly directed and short zygomatic processes, and squamosal creases. Fossil odontocetes include the lipotid "river dolphin" Parapontoporia sternbergi (Gregory & Kellogg, 1927), four true porpoises including a bizarre new genus also known from other strata (Phocoenidae indet., Phocoenidae unnamed genera 1 and 2, and cf. Phocoena), an indeterminate delphinid (Delphinidae indet.) a pilot whale-like delphinid (cf. Globicephalinae indet.), an undetermined sperm whale (cf. Physeteroidea indet.), and an indeterminate odontocete. The new record of Parapontoporia sternbergi is noteworthy as it represents the first association of any earbones (petrosal, tympanic bulla, malleus, and incus) for the extinct genus. Discovery and description of a complete marine mammal assemblage permits faunal comparisons with other published Pliocene marine mammal assemblages from around the globe. The aggregate Pliocene marine mammal assemblage from eastern North Pacific (ENP) shares little in common with the modern fauna, and is mostly composed of extinct genera; notably, phocoenids and odobenids were more diverse than in the ENP today. This indicates that the modern fauna of the ENP did not emerge until after the end of the Pliocene, and probably sometime during the Early Pleistocene. The Pliocene ENP assemblage is similar to that of Japan, and the North Pacific in general shares little with south Pacific, Mediterranean, or North Atlantic marine mammal assemblages, indicating the North Pacific hosted a provincial marine mammal fauna that evolved in isolation from the modern marine mammal fauna, which had already appeared in the North Atlantic by the Early Pliocene.


Captures of IP traffic contain much information on very different kinds of activities like file transfers, users interacting with remote systems, automatic backups, or distributed computations. Identifying such activities is crucial for an appropriate analysis, modeling and monitoring of the traffic. We propose here a notion of density that captures both temporal and structural features of interactions, and generalizes the classical notion of clustering coefficient. We use it to point out important differences between distinct parts of the traffic, and to identify interesting nodes and groups of nodes in terms of roles in the network.


Accurate streamflow forecasting is of great importance for the effective management of water resources systems. In this study, an improved streamflow forecasting approach using the optimal rain gauge network-based input to artificial neural network (ANN) models is proposed and demonstrated through a case study (the Middle Yarra River catchment in Victoria, Australia). First, the optimal rain gauge network is established based on the current rain gauge network in the catchment. Rainfall data from the optimal and current rain gauge networks together with streamflow observations are used as the input to train the ANN. Then, the best subset of significant input variables relating to streamflow at the catchment outlet is identified by the trained ANN. Finally, one-day-ahead streamflow forecasting is carried out using ANN models formulated based on the selected input variables for each rain gauge network. The results indicate that the optimal rain gauge network-based input to ANN models gives the best streamflow forecasting results for the training, validation and testing phases in terms of various performance evaluation measures. Overall, the study concludes that the proposed approach is highly effective to achieve the enhanced streamflow forecasting and could be a viable option for streamflow forecasting in other catchments.


With the flood of information available today the question how to deal with high dimensional data/signals, which are cumbersome to handle, to calculate with and to store, is highly important. One approach to reducing this flood is to find sparse signal representations, as a signal that is the linear combination of a few elements from a pool of building blocks, can be reduced to the few coefficients of this representation. If these building blocks form a basis, finding the sparse representation poses no problem but unfortunately not many signal classes are sparse in a basis. Taking more building blocks, i.e. a redundant dictionary, increases the chances of having sparse representations, but actually finding them becomes very hard. This led to the development of numerous strategies and algorithms for finding sparse representations, with varying complexity and success rate. The first part of the thesis deals with two of those algorithms, Thresholding and Matching Pursuit, from a more theoretical point of view. It is shown that both those greedy algorithms can be improved with a little trick, that does not increase their complexity, and that when considering their average instead of their worst case performance they perform quite well in comparison to more complex methods. The second part of thesis treats questions concerning the whole dictionary and its properties. First it gives more evidence that sparsity is useful by extending the concept of compressed sensing to signals that are sparse not in a basis but in a redundant dictionary. Thus to record a sparse signal it is not necessary to make as many measurements as the dimension of the signal but only a multiple of the number of dictionary elements used to represent it. Next we show that dictionaries cannot only provide sparse representations but that their geometric properties can also be exploited to model data structures. Here we explain how to model different subclasses of a class of signals by incoherent subspaces, present an algorithm to learn a dictionary made out of these subspaces and then use it for classification of faces. Finally we turn back to the sparse representation problem and study the fundamental question how to find a dictionary providing sparse representations. We pick up the idea to learn a dictionary via minimisation of a continuous cost function and provide conditions, guaranteeing that the decomposition of a collection of training signals into a dictionary and a coefficient matrix constitutes a local minimum. We also analyse statistically when these conditions are fulfilled with high probability.


The talk will attempt to explore the nature of the division or cut implied, also etymologically, in the term "sex". It will attempt to develop a concept of division that does not imply any pre-existing whole, but rather exists as a self-standing entity, endowed by a reality of its own. What if the division implied in "sex" is not simply that between two sexes (or more), but rather something that marks the unrest of sexuality itself? How could this be related to the contemporary feminist struggle, and what kind of concept of universality would it imply?
Author(s): Alenka Zupancic
Title (English): Sex in the Cut (Transcript of a talk at the school authorized by Alenka Zupancic )
Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020)
Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje
Page Range: 20-26
Page Count: 7
Citation (English): Alenka Zupancic, "Sex in the Cut," Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020): 20-26.
Author Biography
Alenka Zupancic, Institute of Philosophy, Scientific Research Center of the Slovene Academy of Sciences
Alenka Zupancic is a Slovene philosopher and social theorist. She works as research advisor at the Institute of Philosophy, Scientific Research Center of the Slovene Academy of Sciences. She is also professor at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. Notable for her work on the intersection of philosophy and psychoanalysis, she is the author of numerous articles and books, including Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan; The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two; Why Psychoanalysis: Three Interventions; The Odd One In: On Comedy; and, most recently, What Is Sex?


A number of large current experiments aim to detect the signatures of the cosmic reionization at redshifts z > 6. Their success depends crucially on understanding the character of the reionization process and its observable consequences and designing the best strategies to use. We use large-scale simulations of cosmic reionization to evaluate the reionization signatures at redshifted 21-cm and small-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies in the best current model for the background universe, with fundamental cosmological parameters given by Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe three-year results. We find that the optimal frequency range for observing the `global step of the 21-cm emission is 120150 MHz, while statistical studies should aim at 140160 MHz, observable by GMRT. Some strongly non-Gaussian brightness features should be detectable at frequencies up to ~190 MHz. In terms of sensitivity-signal trade-off relatively low resolutions, corresponding to beams of at least a few arcminutes, are preferable. The CMB anisotropy signal from the kinetic SunyaevZel'dovich effect from reionized patches peaks at tens of K at arcminute scales and has an rms of ~1 K, and should be observable by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the South Pole Telescope. We discuss the various observational issues and the uncertainties involved, mostly related to the poorly known reionization parameters and, to a lesser extend, to the uncertainties in the background cosmology.


High-throughput sequencing (HTS) of metagenomes is proving essential in understanding the environment and diseases. State-of-the-art methods for discovering the species and their abundances in an HTS metagenomic sample are based on genome-specific markers, which can lead to skewed results, especially at species level. We present MetaFlow, the first method based on coverage analysis across entire genomes that also scales to HTS samples. We formulated this problem as an NP-hard matching problem in a bipartite graph, which we solved in practice by min-cost flows. On synthetic data sets of varying complexity and similarity, MetaFlow is more precise and sensitive than popular tools such as MetaPhlAn, mOTU, GSMer and BLAST, and its abundance estimations at species level are two to four times better in terms of ℓ1-norm. On a real human stool data set, MetaFlow identifies B.uniformis as most predominant, in line with previous human gut studies, whereas marker-based methods report it as rare. MetaFlow is freely available at http://cs.helsinki.fi/gsa/metaflow


Mission to America:A History of Saint Vincent Archabbey, the First Benedictine Monastery in the United States. By Jerome Oetgen. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. 2000. Pp. xiii, 607. $39.95.) Benedictine monks contributed to the civilization and the Christianization of Europe through their scholarship, involvement in education, and by spreading the Gospel message and the spirit of Benedict's Rule. The Benedictines, however, did suffer some serious setbacks throughout their history. The reformers in the sixteenth century poured scorn on monasticism and supported the dissolution of the monasteries in their countries. The policy of Napoleon succeeded for a time in eradicating Benedictinism from parts of Europe, but following his defeat, Benedictine monasticism reappeared. An important element within the Benedictine tradition, which survived the upheavals of the centuries, was the urge to undertake missionary work. In 1846, a young monk, Boniface Wimmer, from the recently restored abbey of St. Michael's at Metten, Bavaria, arrived in New York City with eighteen candidates to establish monasticism in America. That foundation, Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, currently numbers over 180 monks, and Jerome Oetgen's book chronicles the development of this monastery and its influence on American religious history. Wimmer (1809-1887) is the star of this story. Nicknamed Projektenmacber, that is, a visionary, he successfully enlisted the support of Ludwig I of Bavaria and the Ludwig Missionsverein for his American dream of educating Germanspeaking immigrants. Oetgen skillfully describes the difficulties of the early years at Saint Vincent,Wimmer's relations with the Bishop of Pittsburgh and Roman authorities, the impact of the Civil War, the establishment of a college, seminary, and parishes, and the foundation of other monasteries in this country. Some, however, might disagree with the author's treatment of Wimmer's dealings with the Benedictine sisters in America. Because of his determination, Saint Vincent quickly achieved stability and exerted an influence in church affairs: it became an abbey in 1855 and an archabbey in 1892. Oetgen's chronological narrative continues with a discussion of Wimmer's successor, Andrew Hintenach, and concludes in 1963 with the election of Rembert Weakland, the current Archbishop of Milwaukee, as superior. The characteristics and policies of each archabbot clearly emerge, and the author shows how these superiors influenced the monastery's history throughout the twentieth century. The growth of the college, prep school, and seminary, building projects on the monastery grounds, the two world wars, the effect of the Great Depression on monastic life, and Saint Vincent's mission to China and the financial and legal problems associated with this enterprise receive adequate attention. …


The notebook interface, which blends text and graphics, has been in use for a number of years in commercial mathematical software and is now finding more widespread usage in scientific Python with the availability browser- based front-ends like the Sage and IPython notebooks. This paper describes a new open-source Python project, GraphTerm, that takes a slightly different approach to blending text and graphics to create a notebook-like interface. Rather than operating at the application level, it works at the unix shell level by extending the command line interface to incorporate elements of the graphical user interface. The XTerm terminal escape sequences are augmented to allow any program to interactively display inline graphics (or other HTML content) simply by writing to standard output. GraphTerm is designed to be a drop-in replacement for the standard unix terminal, with additional features for multiplexing sessions and easy deployment in the cloud. The interface aims to be tablet-friendly, with features like click- able/tappable directory listings for navigating folders etc. The user can switch, as needed, between standard line-at-a-time shell mode and the notebook mode, where multiple lines of code are entered in cells, allowing for in-place editing and re-execution. Multiple users can share terminal sessions for collaborative computing. GraphTerm is implemented in Python, using the Tornado web framework for the server component and HTML+Javascript for the browser client. This paper discusses the architecture and capabilities of GraphTerm, and provides usage examples such as inline data visualization using matplotlib and the notebook mode.


This paper documents developments in public sector pensions in Australia, and reports estimated unfunded liabilities associated with benefits promised to public sector employees. Australia's experience with public sector pensions is unusual – currently, the defense forces and the judiciary apart, all new entrants to public sector schemes confront defined contribution (DC) plans. The transition from defined benefit (DB) to DC has taken place over the last 20 years. We argue that an important driver for this relatively rapid transition of public sector pensions is the broader retirement policy framework in Australia, in which the only nationally mandated earnings related retirement financing is based upon a compulsory DC contributory plan. While legacy costs from the now-closed public sector plans are significant at 15% of GDP, it is projected that this will fall to zero over the next 30 years, both through natural attrition and a series of initiatives designed to pay off the pension debt.


This article presents an energy management of an electric hybrid vehicle using a fuel cell (FC) as the primary energy source and an ultracapacitor (UC) as the auxiliary source. Both energy sources are characterized by a low voltage which is generally not sufficient to be exploited on electrical vehicle. Consequently, using a power converter is required to interface the energy source to the DC bus. For the energy management strategy, it is used to determine the converter current of each source so as to share accurately the power between the two electrical sources, according to the requested power (Traction or braking) and the state of charge of supercapacitor. The proposed method has the capability to minimize the hydrogen consumption and increase the fuel cell time. The suggested algorithm is applied to for the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) and. implemented in dspace controller. Simulation and experimental results prove the significant reduction of the hydrogen.


Aim/Purpose: The main aim of this study was modeling a collaborative process for knowledge visualization, via the creation of infographics.

Background: As an effective method for visualizing complex information, creating infographics requires learners to generate and cultivate a deep knowledge of content and enables them to concisely visualize and share this knowledge. This study investigates creating infographics as a knowledge visualization process for collaborative learning situations by integrating the infographic design model into the team-based and technology-mediated Bridge21 learning model.

Methodology: This study was carried out using an educational design perspective by conducting three main cycles comprised of three micro cycles: analysis and exploration; design and construction; evaluation and reflection. The process and the scaffolding were developed and enhanced from cycle to cycle based on both qualitative and quantitative methods by using the infographic design rubric and researcher observations acquired during implementation. Respectively, twenty-three, twenty-four, and twenty-four secondary school students participated in the infographic creation process cycles.

Contribution: This research proposes an extensive step-by-step process model for creating infographics as a method of visualization for learning. It is particularly relevant for working with complex information, in that it enables collaborative knowledge construction and sharing of condensed knowledge.

Findings: Creating infographics can be an effective method for collaborative learning situations by enabling knowledge construction, visualization and sharing. The Bridge21 activity model constituted the spine of the infographic creation process. The content generation, draft generation, and visual and digital design generation components of the infographic design model matched with the investigate, plan and create phases of the Bridge21 activity model respectively. Improvements on infographic design results from cycle to cycle suggest that the revisions on the process model succeeded in their aims. The rise in each category was found to be significant, but the advance in visual design generation was particularly large.

Recommendations for Practitioners: The effectiveness of the creation process and the quality of the results can be boosted by using relevant activities based on learner prior knowledge and skills. While infographic creation can lead to a focus on visual elements, the importance of wording must be emphasized. Being a multidimensional process, groups need guidance to ensure effective collaboration.

Recommendation for Researchers: The proposed collaborative infographic creation process could be structured and evaluated for online learning environments, which will improve interaction and achievement by enhancing collaborative knowledge creation.

Impact on Society: In order to be knowledge constructors, innovative designers, creative communicators and global collaborators, learners need to be surrounded by adequate learning environments. The infographic creation process offers them a multidimensional learning situation. They must understand the problem, find an effective way to collect information, investigate their data, develop creative and innovative perspectives for visual design and be comfortable for using digital creation tools.

Future Research: The infographic creation process could be investigated in terms of required learner prior knowledge and skills, and could be enhanced by developing pre-practices and scaffolding.


Animal communication is a complex behavior that is influenced by abiotic and biotic factors of the environment. Glassy‐winged sharpshooters (GWSS), Homalodisca vitripennis (Germar) (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae), primarily use vibrational signaling for courtship communication. Because GWSS is a major pest, transmitting the plant pathogenic bacterium Xylella fastidiosa Wells et al., interruption of communication is a possible avenue for control. Playback of white noise, pre‐recorded female signals, and artificial female noise (continuously overlapping female signals) significantly reduced mating of GWSS when compared to silent control mating trials. Furthermore, to begin to determine the mechanism underlying playback control, female signaling activity was recorded in the presence of stimuli. In response to playback of female signals, females signaled (duet‐like) more often than females tested in the absence of playback. After the first playback, almost two‐thirds of females signaled a response within 3 s. Additionally, one‐third of the females signaled within 1 s after cessation of white noise, and significantly more in the time periods following noise termination. Results highlight how GWSS responds to differing competitive disturbances in the environment and lays important ground work that possibly could be used to develop pesticide‐free control methods.


It is challenging to test data analytics software because a test oracle might not be available. This study reports our experience of applying metamorphic testing to Adobe's data analytics software that is used for anomaly detection in a set of time series data. We make use of geometric transformations to build metamorphic relations and generate simple time series data as the source test cases. The results of this study show that metamorphic testing is highly effective for both verification and validation purposes. An investigation of the issues detected during metamorphic testing revealed three bugs in the software under test.


The molecule known as SF2575 from Streptomyces sp. is a tetracycline polyketide natural product that displays antitumor activity against murine leukemia P388 in vivo. In the SF2575 biosynthetic pathway, SsfS6 has been implicated as the crucial C-glycosyltransferase (C-GT) that forms the CC glycosidic bond between the sugar and the SF2575 tetracycline-like scaffold. Here, we report the crystal structure of SsfS6 in the free form and in complex with TDP, both at 2.4 Å resolution. The structures reveal SsfS6 to adopt a GT-B fold wherein the TDP and docked putative aglycon are consistent with the overall C-glycosylation reaction. As one of only a few existing structures for C-glycosyltransferases, the structures described herein may serve as a guide to better understand and engineer C-glycosylation.


ABSTRACT In response to the unhealthy, threatening living arrangements separated children seeking asylum were provided with in Ireland in the early 2000s, the Social Work Team for Separated Children committed itself to replacing the inadequate care with care that truly meets the needs of children. However, the transition to the level of service provided today has only been achieved after years of criticism and a slow, steady commitment to transparency. Increased levels of discretion afforded to the social workers has led to an evolving definition of the best interest of the child and given rise to a child-protection service that provides safe environments for children to thrive and grow. This report serves to briefly sketch the history of the service, outline several distinctive features of the service, and place the service in a broader European context.


Ahstract- This paper deals with the small-signal stability analysis of converter control modes in low-inertia power systems. For this purpose, a detailed differential-algebraic equation model of the voltage source converter and its control scheme is developed. Both grid-forming and grid-feeding concepts have been considered, as well as different active power controllers based on traditional droop and virtual inertia emulation. An eigenvalue analysis of the linearized state-space system is conducted and the performance of different control configurations is compared. Furthermore, various bifurcation studies have been completed and conclusions on stability margins have been drawn with respect to control sensitivity and robustness.


To the Editor:—We read with interest the case report by Sala-Blanch et al. The authors describe an unorthodox but interesting treatment for patients undergoing continuous sciatic nerve block that raises several concerns. In short, using computed tomographic imaging without clear clinical indication, the authors documented that nerve stimulator–guided needle placement during sciatic nerve block through the anterior approach resulted in an intraneural needle placement. The authors then inserted the catheter and administered local anesthetics. Conventional wisdom suggests that intraneural needle placement and catheter insertion should be avoided because intraneural application of local anesthetics has been shown to result in neurologic injury in animal models. However, despite the documented intraneural needle and catheter placement—although it is not clear whether the stimulating needle lies between fascia and epineurium or between epineurium and perineurium—the patients did not have neurologic injury. Therefore, this case report suggests that not all intraneural injections lead to neurologic injury. It also suggests that nerve stimulators may not be reliable in avoiding intraneural needle or catheter placement. Finally, a better definition of what constitutes an intraneural versus an intraepineural sheath injection during blockade of peripheral nerves and plexuses is needed for more meaningful discussion of this matter. Some experts may view the patient treatment in report by Sala-Blanch et al. unusual or even potentially hazardous. However, their findings should be welcomed because they clearly pose some important questions. At the least, they suggest that future research should continue to focus on developing more reliable and objective tools of nerve localization and injection monitoring techniques to help avoid intraneural injection and reduce the risk of consequent neurologic injury. In any case, it is recommended to withdraw the needle or the catheter if one has any doubt that its position is too close to the nerve, for the safety of regional anesthesia.


When considering how safety systems fulfil drivers' needs, leading to an evaluation of overall benefit, it is important to understand the overall functionality of the system, take into account as many design parameters as possible and consider previous evaluation work. The objective of this research is to provide an inventory of in-vehicle technological systems that are present on current production models, using a standard template. A catalogue listing details such as the aim of the system, the functions covered by the system, phase of the accident upon which the system is acting, the level of intervention, technical specifications and previous evaluations is developed for 31 active, passive and integrated safety systems and the example of the Adaptive Cruise Control system is presented in this paper. Moreover, a review of existing identification procedures related to safety systems is carried out, aiming to underline the available information sources that could be used to gather data on safety equipment using a common format, review the variable level of quality and the feasibility and length of time that it would take to collect the data. Results revealed that although there are many different implementations of safety systems with different performance parameters, the development of a safety systems inventory can become a useful tool for analysts to establish a feel for a generic system, project the functionality of such a system onto available accident data and importantly to evaluate if the system really meets drivers' needs. The use of an assembled standard template can further act as a central register, in which analysts can quickly acquire detailed information on the system along with web links to vehicle manufacturer, governmental, safety and research organization websites. Furthermore, two main safety systems data collection methods were identified through the review of different data sources, either using the make/model/ variant approach or the VIN number method, demonstrating the feasibility of recording all active, passive and integrated safety systems implemented within a vehicle to a European wide database. This work has been undertaken in the EC funded DaCoTA project.


In this study we analyze environmental impact associated with installation of submarine power cables and telecommunication lines between the islands and mainland of the North Puget Sound region. Using information from permit applications, routing plans, and biological assessments, installation techniques were evaluated for their degree of nearshore habitat disturbance. Nearly 25% of the cable projects approved between 1990 and 2000 had a negative impact to nearshore habitat with over 70% having unknown impacts. The extent of disturbances ranged from geomorphic alterations with complete loss of seagrass (Zostera marina L.) cover to no apparent damage. Large hydraulic trenching devices caused the most severe nearshore damage. Directional drilling and the use of existing conduit produced the least amount of impact while the technique of laying the cable on the sea bottom resulted in unknown environmental impacts. Each installation method described in this study had unique environmental concerns with implications that need further examination.


Summary Preeclampsia (PE) is characterized by hypertension and proteinuria after the 20th gestational week (GW). It is a significant cause of maternal and fetal perinatal morbidity and mortality during pregnancy. There is increasing evidence suggesting that PE is due to an impaired balance between maternal placental angiogenic and antiangiogenic factors that harm maternal vascular endothelium. The study aimed to assess the clinical and financial aspects of introducing into practice the soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase (sFlt-1) to placental growth factor (PlGF) ratio test to improve the management of preeclampsia and adverse pregnancy outcome, intrauterine growth retardation, iatrogenic prematurity, and placental abruption. We report a case study in which we used the sFlt-1/PlGF ratio in the management of a high-risk pregnancy. Unnecessary hospitalization was avoided, and the patient was managed appropriately.


Aligning lyrics to audio has a wide range of applications such as the automatic generation of karaoke scores, song-browsing by lyrics, and the generation of audio thumbnails. Existing methods are restricted to using only lyrics and match them to phoneme features extracted from the audio (usually mel-frequency cepstral coefficients). Our novel idea is to integrate the textual chord information provided in the paired chords-lyrics format known from song books and Internet sites into the inference procedure. We propose two novel methods that implement this idea: First, assuming that all chords of a song are known, we extend a hidden Markov model (HMM) framework by including chord changes in the Markov chain and an additional audio feature (chroma) in the emission vector; second, for the more realistic case in which some chord information is missing, we present a method that recovers the missing chord information by exploiting repetition in the song. We conducted experiments with five changing parameters and show that with accuracies of 87.5% and 76.7%, respectively, both methods perform better than the baseline with statistical significance. We introduce the new accompaniment interface Song Prompter, which uses the automatically aligned lyrics to guide musicians through a song. It demonstrates that the automatic alignment is accurate enough to be used in a musical performance.


Abstract. Owing to their important roles in biogeochemical cycles, phytoplankton functional types (PFTs) have been the aim of an increasing number of ocean color algorithms. Yet, none of the existing methods are based on phytoplankton carbon (C) biomass, which is a fundamental biogeochemical and ecological variable and the "unit of accounting" in Earth system models. We present a novel bio-optical algorithm to retrieve size-partitioned phytoplankton carbon from ocean color satellite data. The algorithm is based on existing methods to estimate particle volume from a power-law particle size distribution (PSD). Volume is converted to carbon concentrations using a compilation of allometric relationships. We quantify absolute and fractional biomass in three PFTs based on size – picophytoplankton (0.5–2 µm in diameter), nanophytoplankton (2–20 µm) and microphytoplankton (20–50 µm). The mean spatial distributions of total phytoplankton C biomass and individual PFTs, derived from global SeaWiFS monthly ocean color data, are consistent with current understanding of oceanic ecosystems, i.e., oligotrophic regions are characterized by low biomass and dominance of picoplankton, whereas eutrophic regions have high biomass to which nanoplankton and microplankton contribute relatively larger fractions. Global climatological, spatially integrated phytoplankton carbon biomass standing stock estimates using our PSD-based approach yield  ∼  0.25 Gt of C, consistent with analogous estimates from two other ocean color algorithms and several state-of-the-art Earth system models. Satisfactory in situ closure observed between PSD and POC measurements lends support to the theoretical basis of the PSD-based algorithm. Uncertainty budget analyses indicate that absolute carbon concentration uncertainties are driven by the PSD parameter No which determines particle number concentration to first order, while uncertainties in PFTs' fractional contributions to total C biomass are mostly due to the allometric coefficients. The C algorithm presented here, which is not empirically constrained a priori, partitions biomass in size classes and introduces improvement over the assumptions of the other approaches. However, the range of phytoplankton C biomass spatial variability globally is larger than estimated by any other models considered here, which suggests an empirical correction to the No parameter is needed, based on PSD validation statistics. These corrected absolute carbon biomass concentrations validate well against in situ POC observations.


One of the shortcomings of the original theory of the geomorphologic unit hydrograph (GUH) is that it assumes that runoff is generated uniformly from the entire catchment area. It is now recognized that in many catchments much of the runoff during storm events is produced on partial areas which usually form on narrow bands along the stream network. A storm response model that includes runoff generation on partial areas by both Hortonian and Dunne mechanisms was recently developed by the authors. In this paper a methodology for integrating this partial area runoff generation model with the GUH-based runoff routing model is presented; this leads to a generalized GUH. The generalized GUH and the storm response model are then used to estimate physically based flood frequency distributions. In most previous work the initial moisture state of the catchment had been assumed to be constant for all the storms. In this paper we relax this assumption and allow the initial moisture conditions to vary between storms. The resulting flood frequency distributions are cast in a scaled dimensionless framework where issues such as catchment scale and similarity can be conveniently addressed. A number of experiments are performed to study the sensitivity of the flood frequency response to some of the "similarity" parameters identified in this formulation. The results indicate that one of the most important components of the derived flood frequency model relates to the specification of processes within the runoff generation model; specifically the inclusion of both saturation excess (Dunne) and Horton infiltration excess runoff production mechanisms. The dominance of these mechanisms over different return periods of the flood frequency distribution can significantly affect the distributional shape and confidence limits about the distribution. Comparisons with observed flood distributions seem to indicate that such mixed runoff production mechanisms influence flood distribution shape. The sensitivity analysis also indicated that the incorporation of basin and rainfall storm scale also greatly influences the distributional shape of the flood frequency curve.


The concepts of consonance and dissonance broadly understood can provide structural models for creators of visual music. The application of words such as 'harmony' across both music and visual arts indicates potential correspondences not just between sensory elements such as pitch and colour but also with the manipulation of tension and resolution, anticipation and stability in visual music. Concepts of harmony have a long history in proportions of space, colour and motion as well as music that artists can now exploit with new technologies. I will offer examples from my own work as well as techniques from artists such as Oskar Fischinger and John Whitney.


Irradiation with high-energy photons (10.2–11.8 eV) was applied to small diamondoids isolated in solid rare gas matrices at low temperature. The photoproducts were traced via UV absorption spectroscopy. We found that upon ionization the smallest of these species lose a peripheral H atom to form a stable closed-shell cation. This process is also likely to occur under astrophysical conditions for gas phase diamondoids and it opens the possibility of detecting diamond-like molecules using their rotational spectrum since the dehydrogenated cations possess strong permanent dipole moments. The lowest-energy electronic features of these species in the UV were found to be rather broad, shifting to longer wavelengths with increasing molecular size. Calculations using time-dependent density functional theory support our experimental findings and extend the absorption curves further into the vacuum ultraviolet. The complete σ–σ ∗ spectrum displays surprisingly strong similarities to meteoritic nanodiamonds containing 50 times more C atoms.


OBJECTIVE
Fetal surgery for myelomeningocele has become an established treatment that offers less risk of requiring a ventricular shunt and improved functional outcomes for patients. An increasing body of literature has suggested that social determinants of health have a profound influence on health outcomes. The authors sought to determine the socioeconomic and racial and ethnic backgrounds of patients who were treated with fetal surgery versus those who underwent postnatal repair.

METHODS
Demographic data, the method of myelomeningocele repair, insurance status, and zip code data for patients entered into the National Spina Bifida Patient Registry (NSBPR) from Children's Wisconsin were collected. The zip code was used to determine the Distressed Communities Index (DCI) score, a composite socioeconomic ranking with scores ranging from 0 (no distress) to 100 (severe distress). The zip code was also used to determine the median household income for each patient based on the US Census Bureau 2013-2017 American Community Survey 5-year estimates.

RESULTS
A total of 205 patients were identified with zip code and insurance data. There were 23 patients in the fetal surgery group and 182 patients in the postnatal surgery group. All patients were born between 2000 and 2019. Patients in the fetal surgery group were more likely to have commercial insurance (100% vs 52.2%, p < 0.001). Fetal surgery patients were also more likely to be non-Hispanic White (95.7% vs 68.7%, p = 0.058), just missing the level of statistical significance. Patients who underwent fetal surgery tended to reside in zip codes with a higher median household income (mean $66,507 vs $59,133, p = 0.122) and less-distressed communities (mean DCI score 31.3 vs 38.5, p = 0.289); however, these differences did not reach statistical significance.

CONCLUSIONS
Patients treated with fetal surgery were more likely to have commercial insurance and have a non-Hispanic White racial and ethnic background. The preliminary data suggest that socioeconomic and racial and ethnic disparities may exist regarding access to fetal surgery, and investigation of a larger population of spina bifida patients is warranted.


The protective Ag of Shigella, the Gram-negative enteroinvasive bacterium causing bacillary dysentery, or shigellosis, is its O-specific polysaccharide (O-SP) domain of the LPS, the major bacterial surface component. As an alternative to the development of detoxified LPS-based conjugate vaccines, recent effort was put into the investigation of neoglycoproteins encompassing synthetic oligosaccharides mimicking the protective Ags of the O-SP. We previously reported that when coupled to tetanus toxoid via single point attachment, a synthetic pentadecasaccharide representing three biological repeating units of the O-SP of Shigella flexneri 2a (SF2a), one of the most common Shigella serotypes, elicits a better serum anti-LPS 2a Ab response in mice than shorter synthetic O-SP sequences. In this study, we show that the pentadecasaccharide-induced anti-LPS 2a Abs protect passively administered naive mice from Shigella infection. Therefore, this three repeating units sequence, which is recognized by anti-SF2a sera from infected patients, acts as a functional mimic of the native polysaccharide Ag. Analyses of parameters influencing immunogenicity revealed that an investigational SF2a vaccine displaying a pentadecasaccharide:tetanus toxoid molar loading of 14:1 triggers a high and sustained anti-LPS Ab response, without inducing anti-linker Ab, when administered four times at a dose corresponding to 1 μg of carbohydrate. In addition, the profile of the anti-LPS Ab response, dominated by IgG1 production (Th2-type response), mimics that observed in human upon natural SF2a infection. This synthetic carbohydrate-based conjugate may be a candidate for a SF2a vaccine.


Even though women represent more than 50% of the total Latin American population, they face a set of barriers that do not allow them to be in equal conditions with respect to their male peers. The ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) field is not an exception. The possibility to access and use the Internet is not evenly distributed between men and women (Gray, Gainous, & Wagner, 2016)and factors such as education, employment or discrimination could play a fundamental role in explaining gender differences in ICT use (Robinson et al., 2015). However, the existing literature about this topic is scarce, especially in Latin America; moreover, such an analysis becomes more challenging when attempting to include all the different dimensions that ICT use involve). In this sense, our research analyzes the factors that determine the gender ICT use gap, integrating the different dimensions that ICT use involve. The main results indicate that in Paraguay and Argentina factors like occupation, education or age play a more important role in explaining the ICT use gender gap. In contrast, unobserved factors do so in Peru and Guatemala.


This thesis presents the findings of a research project that investigated the impact of teacher training for lecturers in post-compulsory education on engagement with continuing professional development (CPD). The majority of colleges and universities operating in the UK now ensure that all teaching staff are given access to training in skills for learning and teaching. This training can take many different forms and this research explores the potential differences in outcome and influence on engagement with CPD and lifelong learning of graduates from these programmes. For the study, nineteen lecturers from two different further education (FE) colleges (one large multi-campus college in Scotland and another in Wales) took part in semi-structured interviews and provided accounts of their professional background, training and qualifications prior to initial lecturer training, and their route into teaching in FE. Respondents talked about their experiences in lecturer training and ongoing engagement with CPD and further learning post-training. The findings indicate that respondents feel insufficient emphasis is placed on vocational skills training, meeting special educational needs and classroom management techniques. Lecturers agree that CPD in learning and teaching is very important but the research data show lack of meaningful engagement with the training options currently available. A disconnection between training and working life is becoming apparent as teacher education course providers face difficulties in meeting the pedagogic requirements of the FE sector in times of reduced funding and lack of remitted time for training. The thesis concludes with discussions focussing on the potential benefits for colleges of increasing the practical and vocational focus and content of teacher training for lecturers, whilst acknowledging the importance of recognising novice practitioner status. The requirement for access to high-quality, valid and targeted CPD is highlighted, with lecturers acknowledging the importance of training and expressing the desire to engage with relevant courses in learning and teaching.


'A firework display of technique, versatility and passion.' Independent on Sunday 'The crafted sincerity of this potent, lyrical collection, in which an absolutely contemporary voice concisely expresses common concerns, is everything that poetry should be.' Times Literary Supplement 'The first poet of serious artistic intent since Philip Larkin to have achieved popularity . . . it is possible that he will attain the sort of proverbial status Larkin now occupies.' Sean O'Brien, The Deregulated Muse


ABSTRACT As wider social and societal changes have led to moves towards equality as a response to a better understanding of inequalities, ethical considerations in research are now more consciously focussed on power dynamics. As a consequence, participatory research methods have gained traction. Simultaneously, artistic and creative methods are used within such projects to such an extent that arts-based, creative research has become equated with participatory research. In this article, I draw on three case studies to pursue three arguments: Firstly, I argue that the current understanding of community-based participatory action research is not the only potential for participatory methods, and indeed should not be. Depending on the design participatory research needs to be seen as a continuum from being minimally participatory to being fully egalitarian, whereby realistically most participatory research designs are situated somewhere in between the two with the level of participation changing throughout the process. Secondly, I argue that the employment of arts-based methods for data collection or dissemination does not automatically translate into a participatory research design. Thirdly, I argue that for ethical reasons researchers should not aim for fully egalitarian research to maintain participants' interests and wellbeing.


Providing complex (resource-intensive) network services is challenging because the resources they need and the resources that are available can vary significantly from request to request. To address this issue, we have proposed a flexible mechanism, called active frames, that provides a basis for selecting a set of available distributed computing resources, and then mapping tasks onto those resources. As a proof of concept, we have used active frames to build a remote visualization service, called Dv, that allows users to visualize the contents of scientific datasets stored at remote locations. We evaluate the performance of active frames, in the context of Dv. In particular, we address the following two questions: (1) what performance penalty do we pay for the flexibility of the active frames mechanism? (2) can the throughput of a service based on active frames be predicted with reasonable accuracy from micro-benchmarks? The results of the evaluation suggest that the overhead imposed by active frames is reasonable (roughly 5%), and that simple models based on micro-benchmarks can conservatively predict measured throughput with reasonable accuracy (at most 20%).


This document defines a Management Information Base (MIB) module for
use with network management protocols in TCP/IP-based internets. This
document defines an extension to the Interfaces Group MIB with a set
of common objects for managing multi-pair bonded Digital Subscriber
Line (xDSL) interfaces, as defined in ITU-T Recommendations G.998.1,
G.998.2, and G.998.3. The textual conventions defining the bonding
schemes are contained in a separate MIB module maintained by Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The MIB modules specific to each
bonding technology are defined in G9981-MIB, G9982-MIB, and G9983-MIB,
respectively.


Treatment resistant major depression (TRMD) is a common problem with significant consequences in terms of bio-psycho-social disability and economic impact for the individual, family and community. A 2014 survey of San Francisco bay area community resources confirms that nurse practitioners (NPs) are under represented in the advanced management of TRMD using electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and ketamine infusion therapy (KIT). An expansion in the role of the NP in the management of TRMD is indicated. The purpose of this project was to develop and implement an education course that prepares a cohort of NPs to demonstrate mastery of advanced clinical techniques through direct provision of safe, tolerable and efficacious care to TRMD populations using ECT, TMS and KIT. Five NPs participated in a continuing education program that included four hours of didactic and twelve hours of bedside clinical continuing education in the advanced management of TRMD. Implementation of this quality improvement project resulted in a high level of satisfaction among NP participants and patient. Upon completion of the training, a considerable increase was evident in self-efficacy in the management of TRMD (95%), ketamine infusion therapy (90%), electroconvulsive therapy (85%), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (80%), relative to pre-training levels. In the 60- day follow-up period, all five NP participants directly managed an average of 8.6 patients with TRMD using advanced techniques.


Medawar's mutation accumulation hypothesis explains aging by the declining force of natural selection with age: Slightly deleterious germline mutations expressed in old age can drift to fixation and thereby lead to aging‐related phenotypes. Although widely cited, empirical evidence for this hypothesis has remained limited. Here, we test one of its predictions that genes relatively highly expressed in old adults should be under weaker purifying selection than genes relatively highly expressed in young adults. Combining 66 transcriptome datasets (including 16 tissues from five mammalian species) with sequence conservation estimates across mammals, here we report that the overall conservation level of expressed genes is lower at old age compared to young adulthood. This age‐related decrease in transcriptome conservation (ADICT) is systematically observed in diverse mammalian tissues, including the brain, liver, lung, and artery, but not in others, most notably in the muscle and heart. Where observed, ADICT is driven partly by poorly conserved genes being up‐regulated during aging. In general, the more often a gene is found up‐regulated with age among tissues and species, the lower its evolutionary conservation. Poorly conserved and up‐regulated genes have overlapping functional properties that include responses to age‐associated tissue damage, such as apoptosis and inflammation. Meanwhile, these genes do not appear to be under positive selection. Hence, genes contributing to old age phenotypes are found to harbor an excess of slightly deleterious alleles, at least in certain tissues. This supports the notion that genetic drift shapes aging in multicellular organisms, consistent with Medawar's mutation accumulation hypothesis.


ABSTRACT:This special issue of Nova Religio brings together four articles that examine particular intersections of new religious movements and food. Dan McKanan examines spiritual food practices within the loose network of spiritual movements associated with Anthroposophy, the turn of the century "spiritual science" developed by Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) that continues to have resonance today. Susannah Crockford contributes an article on fasting traditions in the contemporary New Age movement, based on her ethnographic fieldwork in Sedona, Arizona. Dusty Hoesly writes on the countercultural California group the Brotherhood of the Sun, which operated a series of highly successful food businesses in the 1970s and 1980s, and which he situates within a tradition of mindful food production and consumption. Constance Elsberg's study of food practices and food entrepreneurship in Yogi Bhajan's (1929–2004) Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization (3HO) movement uses the lens of food to examine the group's growth, institutionalization, and subsequent struggles. This introduction contextualizes these four movements, and other new religious movements, in terms of their engagement with food, using the lenses of social, cultural, economic, and structural factors.


In this paper, we examine the feasibility of incorporating network calculus based models in simulating TCP/IP networks. By exploiting network calculus properties, we characterize how TCP congestion control - additive increase and multiplicative decrease (AIMD), together with the queue management strategy used in routers, regulates TCP flows. We first divide the time axis into intervals (each of which consists of multiple round-trip times), and derive a TCP AIMD throughput model which derives the attainable throughput of a TCP flow, given the number of collisions in an interval. Then based on the derived throughput model, we define a set of network calculus based theorems that give upper and lower bounds on the attainable TCP throughput in each interval. Finally, we implement network calculus (NC) based simulation in ns-2, conduct simulation in both the packet mode and the network calculus-based mode, and measure the performance gain (in terms of the execution time thus reduced) and the error discrepancy (in terms of the discrepancy between NC-based simulation results and packet-level simulation results). The simulation results indicate an order of magnitude or more (maximally 30 times) improvement in execution time and the performance improvement becomes more pronounced as the network size increases (in perspective of network capacities and number of flows). The error discrepancy between NC-based simulation and packet-level simulation, on the other hand, is minimally 1-2% and maximally 8-12% in a wide spectrum of network topologies and traffic loads employed in this study. The simulation results also indicate the superiority of NC-based simulation over fluid model based simulation (the latter realized using the time stepped hybrid simulation).


Given the role of fire in shaping ecosystems, especially grasslands and savannas, it is important to understand its broader impact on these systems. Post-fire stimulation of plant nutrients is thought to benefit grazing mammals and explain their preference for burned areas. However, fire also reduces vegetation height and increases visibility, thereby potentially reducing predation risk. Consequently, fire may be more beneficial to smaller herbivores, with higher nutritional needs and greater risks of predation. We tested the impacts of burning on different sized herbivores' habitat preference in Serengeti National Park, as mediated by burning's effects on vegetation height, live : dead biomass ratio and leaf nutrients. Burning caused a less than 4 month increase in leaf nitrogen (N), and leaf non-N nutrients [copper (Cu), potassium (K), and magnesium (Mg)] and a decrease in vegetation height and live : dead biomass. During this period, total herbivore counts were higher on burned areas. Generally, smaller herbivores preferred burned areas more strongly than larger herbivores. Unfortunately, it was not possible to determine the vegetation characteristics that explained burned area preference for each of the herbivore species observed. However, total herbivore abundance and impala (Aepyceros melampus) preference for burned areas was due to the increases in non-N nutrients caused by burning. These findings suggest that burned area attractiveness to herbivores is mainly driven by changes to forage quality and not potential decreases in predation risk caused by reductions in vegetation height.