ABSTRACT Serial measurement of antibodies has not been used to provide evidence of active viral replication of human papillomavirus (HPV). Serum specimens from sequential study visits contributed by 642 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive and 116 HIV-negative participants enrolled in the Women's Interagency HIV Study were used to detect significant rises in HPV type 16 (HPV-16) antibody levels. Factors associated with a significant rise were identified using multivariable logistic regression models with generalized estimating equations. Among HIV-positive women, 8.3% of 1,997 pairs showed antibody rises, compared to 6.1% of 361 pairs among HIV-negative women (P = 0.191). For HIV-positive women, rises were associated with current (odds ratio [OR], 23.4; P < 0.001) or past (OR, 8.9; P < 0.001) HPV-16 infection relative to never being HPV-16 infected and with CD4+ cell counts (OR per 100-cell increase, 0.8; P < 0.001) but not with sexual behavior. For HIV-negative women, rises were associated with past (OR, 10.9; P = 0.033) HPV-16 infection relative to no HPV-16, current cigarette smoking (OR, 5.0; P = 0.029) relative to no smoking history, and having 6 to 10 lifetime sexual partners compared to 0 to 5 partners (OR, 9.9; P = 0.036). Serial measurement of HPV-16 serum antibodies is a useful tool for identifying active HPV-16 viral replication. Rises among HIV-positive women may more often result from reactivation of a latent HPV infection in the context of HIV-induced immunosuppression, while rises among HIV-negative women may more often result from reinfection with HPV.


The prenatal diagnosis of most cases of congenital pulmonary malformations (CPMs) has revolutionised our view of these malformations. Before it became possible to diagnose these malformations prenatally, they were generally discovered as a result of complications. With the increasing rate of prenatal diagnosis, it has become clear that the vast majority of CPMs are actually asymptomatic. Most surgical teams initially insisted on the systematic surgical removal of these asymptomatic CPMs to prevent complications in the short or long term. These complications, such as infection, bleeding and malignant transformation, were considered to be sufficiently frequent and/or severe to justify preventive surgical excision. However, the advent of prenatal diagnosis also made it possible to evaluate outcome in a series of children with CPM, including asymptomatic cases, improving our understanding of the natural course of CPM and calling into question the systematic recourse to surgery. The paper by Cook et al 1 in this issue further extends our knowledge. It describes the outcome of 119 children with prenatally diagnosed CPM followed at a single centre for a median of 9.9 years. Most of the results for this series confirm those reported in previous publications. First, severe neonatal complications are rare, with only 7% of the children in this series requiring emergency surgery during the neonatal period, a value very close to the 6% reported in the multicentre study by Ruchonnet-Metrailler et al .2 Second, postnatal disappearance of the CPM occurs …


Media can be a good representation of dominant ideologies in society. The analysis of such discourse can shed light on the mental and social structures of people in society. Adopting van Dijk's (1995) layout of discourse ideology and his (2000) practical and general outline of ideological analysis, this study analyzes the Iranian movie A Separation, the winner of the 84th Annual Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film. The data are transcribed, modified and then translated into English. What is of particular interest to the authors is to examine the discourse of the movie based on van Dijk's (1995) layout of discourse ideology which tries to approach ideology by ensuring the triangulation of society, cognition, and discourse. The authors are more interested in analyzing people's simple daily ideological behaviors which are rooted in their cognition and dominate their social activities. Having mapped these specific terrains, the authors attempt an examination of the ideologies of the film on levels of meaning, forms, and action and interaction.


Dabbling ducks were studied on a eutrophic mid-flyway staging site in spring. Six species made up a temporary guild, in order of decreasing abundance they were: Teal (Anas crecca), Shoveler (A. clypeata), Mallard (A. platyrhynchos), Wigeon (A. penelope), Pintail (A. acuta), and Garganey (A. querquedula). Species richness and total abundance peaked around 20 April, whereas guild evenness was highest after the staging peak. Time use during the staging peak differed between the sexes in Mallard, but not in the other species. Mallard spent the least time foraging, whereas Shoveler and Teal foraged the most. Foraging behavior differed among species; i.e. Wigeon was mainly on land, Shoveler mainly fed from the water surface, whilst Mallard and Teal were more generalist. For the guild as a whole, shallow inshore areas were overused compared to offshore habitats. Microhabitat use of foraging birds differed among species; Pintail and Shoveler mainly fed in the offshore end of the habitat gradient, whereas Teal, Garganey, female Mallard, and especially Wigeon used shallow microhabitats. Teal and female Mallard had the highest overlap in microhabitat use, Shoveler and Wigeon had the least. Abundance of invertebrate prey was low during the staging peak, but increased sharply thereafter. This study indicates that eutrophic mid-flyway sites may offer less food to staging birds than do breeding lakes to which many of them are headed.


[1] During the SAFARI 2000 field campaign, both smoke aerosols from savanna fires and haze aerosols in the boundary layer and in the free troposphere were collected from an aircraft in southern Africa. These aerosol samples were analyzed for their water-soluble chemical components, particularly the organic species. A novel technique, electrospray ionization-ion trap mass spectrometry, was used concurrently with an ion chromatography system to analyze for carbohydrate species. Seven carbohydrates, seven organic acids, five metallic elements, and three inorganic anions were identified and quantified. On the average, these 22 species comprised 36% and 27% of the total aerosol mass in haze and smoke aerosols, respectively. For the smoke aerosols, levoglucosan was the most abundant carbohydrate species, while gluconic acid was tentatively identified as the most abundant organic acid. The mass abundance and possible source of each class of identified species are discussed, along with their possible formation pathways. The combustion phase of a fire had an impact on the chemical composition of the emitted aerosols. Secondary formation of sulfate, nitrate, levoglucosan, and several organic acids occurred during the initial aging of smoke aerosols. It is likely that under certain conditions, some carbohydrate species in smoke aerosols, such as levoglucosan, were converted to organic acids during upward transport.


Using a micro-scale urban simulation program, we examined the sensitivity of air tem- perature and mean radiant temperature (MRT) of built-up urban cores to urban-area geometry (the density of buildings), thermal properties of human-made surfaces (albedo) and green cover (street trees), in 2 warm-climate cities: Pettah, Colombo (Sri Lanka) and downtown Phoenix, Arizona (USA). Air temperature and MRT are indicative of human thermal comfort, and their rural/urban gradients signify the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Although high albedo values lead to low daytime temper- atures in both cities, the best thermal comfort, quantified by both the air temperature and MRT, was found in high-density development. Thus, density enhancement is a viable UHI mitigation option in built-up areas of warm climate cities. Manipulation of thermal properties is an alternative strategy, but the practical utility of high albedo surfaces is questionable. Additionally, some UHI mitigation options are more likely to bring improvements in MRT than in air temperature. Urban designers should use mitigation options that are based on human comfort, which is determined by both MRT and air temperature, rather than simply attempting to control air temperature alone.


Introductions: Hydatid cyst is caused by the tapeworm. It is common in sheep and cattle rearing communities. Liver is the most common affected organ. There are various methods of surgical approaches for hydatid cyst.
Methods: This was a retrospective descriptive study of patients operated for intra-abdominal hydatid cysts from July 2012 to June 2018 at Patan Hospital, Patan Academy of Health Sciences, Nepal. Ethical approval from institutional review committee was obtained. Patient files with incomplete data were excluded. Variables analyzed were, age, gender, site and numbers of cyst, methods of surgery, complications and mortality. Data were descriptively analyzed.
Results: There were 19 patients of abdominal hydatid cysts who underwent surgery during the study period. Five records files could not be accessed and were excluded. In remaining 14, male were 6 (42.85%), female 8 (57.15%), mean age 39.57±17.35 years (14-70), cyst size 11±4.22 cm (5-21), complain of abdominal pain in 10 (71%). Open surgery for liver cyst was done in 11 and laparoscopic in one, and open splenectomy for two splenic cysts. One patient developed superficial wound infection. Four had cystobiliary communication of which one underwent ERCP. Post ERCP patient developed acute severe pancreatitis and expired.Mean hospital was 8.57±2.24 days (6-14).
Conclusions: Liver was the main organ involved, abdominal pain and lump were main presenting complaints. Surgery had successful outcome. Open surgery was the mainstay of treatment.


—Proposing a multi-objective method is a common part of the process of supporting the decision-making process in population problems. This with the goal of motivating the selection of projects that help the population sector that has scarce water and drainage services at home. The method should provide a set of solutions that reflect the urgency to attend this population sector. Each solution is a set of geographical zone partitions formed by geographical units that fulfill the geometric compactness and homogeneity criteria, this homogeneity is given by the variable named "private houses without tap water, drainage network nor electricity services". We present basic theoretical aspects about the multi-objective methodology and a method supported on the order theory to find the Pareto Frontier. Given that the problem solves a kind of partitioning that optimizes two quality measures, the approximation to the optimal solution is made with variable neighborhood search (VNS). Once we obtained the set of partitions, understood as non-dominated solutions, we can analyze the results to show the relationship between the variables that must be attended in the population sectors with limited tap water and drainage network services. The study case that we deal with corresponds to the Metropolitan Zone of the Toluca Valley (ZMVT) considering its socio-economic data (Agebs) product of a census.


This paper discusses poverty and unemployment in Argentina, beginning with the turbulent years since 1980. Argentina suffered a 25 percent reduction in per capita income, two bouts of hyperinflation and a sharp rise in poverty during the 1980s. In 1990, the Menem government began a profound restructuring of Argentine economy. A centerpiece of the new program was a plan designed to control inflation once and for all. Other elements of the program were a control of the government deficit, privatization, reduction in tariff barriers, and a reform of social spending. What was the effect of all these changes on the level of poverty, employment and social equity? These are the questions the authors address in this paper. The work is divided into three parts. In the first one, they examine movements in poverty and distribution, and their causes. In the second, the labor market is examined. In final one the authors draw some conclusions on Argentina's experience for the general debate on how to create a sustainable growth strategy that can reduce poverty and unemployment without hyperinflation.


Proper formulation of stress-strain relations, particularly in tension-compression situations for isotropic biomodulus materials, is an unresolved problem. Ambartsumyan's model [8] and Jones' weighted compliance matrix model [9] do not satisfy the principle of coordinate invariance. Shapiro's first stress invariant model [10] is too simple a model to describe the behavior of real materials. In fact, Rigbi [13] has raised a question about the compatibility of bimodularity with isotropy in a solid. Medri [2] has opined that linear principal strain-principal stress relations are fictitious, and warned that the bilinear approximation of uniaxial stress-strain behavior leads to ill-working bimodulus material model under combined loading. In the present work, a general bilinear constitutive model has been presented and described in biaxial principal stress plane with zonewise linear principal strain-principal stress relations. Elastic coefficients in the model are characterized based on the signs of (i) principal stresses, (ii) principal strains, and (iii) on the value of strain energy component ratio ER greater than or less than unity. The last criterion is used in tension-compression and compression-tension situations to account for different shear moduli in pure shear stress and pure shear strain states as well as unequal cross compliances.


These unpublished writings of Beatrice Potter on the history of English economy and on Karl Marx's economic theory represent the first phase of her elaboration of a new science of society, in the face of the crisis of individualism and laissez faire. They are the first steps of an intellectual and political path that at the end of the Victorian age will lead her to become the patroness of British sociology and a leader of Fabian socialism. Her peculiar critique of political economy is also an essential contribution to the history of English and European political thought. Potter casts here the foundations of a different socialist doctrine that, starting from Fabian Society's reformism, will produce a conception of State and civilization that re-elaborates Marxian thought on the ethical and social level.


This conceptual paper addresses previous calls for the development of new theoretical frameworks to better account for the multi–agency emergency management coordination required in complex events. It uses, as a departure point, a teamwork model that includes four phases: situation assessment; plan formulation, plan execution and team learning. The thesis put forward here is that we need to move the focus of analysis beyond the team to one of multi–layered multiple team and multiple organisation systems. To further develop this research framework indicators from multi–organisational literature are added to those found in the individual and teamwork literature to develop a more comprehensive account of multi–team multi–organisational coordination. The paper identifies key anchor points for future use in data collection.


Child sexual abuse is a worldwide problem. Although most studies on the longterm consequences of child sexual abuse have focused on women, sexual abuse of both boys and girls is common. Peer sexual abuse in schools was an often overlooked problem that contributes to a hostile school environment: one major study found that 85% of girls and 76% of boys reported experiencing some form of sexual abuse in school. 85% of child sexual abuse is committed by relatives, close family friend or an adult that the child knows and trusts. The childhood sexual abuse variables taken into account are commonly age of onset, duration, abuse forms and relationship between the child and the perpetrator. The objective of this study was to gather information or opinion about sexual abuse concept, methods and media of the elementary students, parents, teachers and experts. A qualitative study, involving one to one interviews, was conducted with 7 experts, focus group discussion with 40 elementary students, and with 40 parents in Yogyakarta district about child sexual abuse issues. Data were analysed according to Miles and Huberman's data reduction, data display and conclusion verification process. These findings strongly indicate that boys and girls are vulnerable to this form of childhood sexual abuse ; the similarity in the likelihood for multiple behavioral, mental and social outcomes among men and women suggest the need to identify and treat all adults affected by child sexual abuse. Themes related to the child sexual abuse were: paperwork design, good facilitator, guidelines for students, parents and teachers. Students prefer media that can help them understand concept with komik paperwork as media for early prevention. Parents, teachers and experts prefer that this prevention program can run as soon. With careful paperwork design and evaluation of prevention program, the success of program implementation can be enhanced.


This thesis argues that the representations of Venice found in the works of John Ruskin and Ezra Pound can only fully be understood in the light of historico-political contexts such as the Austrian occupation of Venice, the rise of revolutionary Nationalism and Fascist uses of Venetian history. In contrast to critical approaches that concentrate on the construction of Venice as aestheticised fantasy, this project draws on a range of archival materials to place these two modern literary visions of Venice within their respective historical 'moments'. The first chapter examines a range of cultural representations of Venice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using examples from Ernest Hemingway, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Thomas Mann, it argues against the prevailing myth of the 'Dream' of Venice and proposes that literary and other representations of the city should be understood in relation to specific historical events and political anxieties. The second chapter focuses on Ruskin and demonstrates how his text The Stones of Venice can be seen as a counter to the nineteenth-century myth of the 'dark legend' of Venice as propagated by historians like Pierre Daru. The third chapter then demonstrates how Ruskin's Venetian works can be situated within a spectrum of European Nationalist concerns, particularly examining how the 1848 Venice revolution and its aftermath creates an atmosphere of political tension in The Stones of Venice. The following two chapters on Ezra Pound place Pound's Venetian engagement against the backdrop of early twentieth-century Italian Nationalism. Beginning by discussing the cultural uses of Venetian history under the Fascist regime, these chapters show how Pound's engagement with the idea of a 'renewed' Venice proposed by Nationalist writers such as D'Annunzio, along with Pound's own Fascist commitment, provide contexts for his visions of Venice in the Cantos. Thus the representations of the city in both writers are seen to be crucially connected to the political concerns of Nationalism and the Nationalistic use of Venetian history.


Purpose: The goal of the paper was to perform a literature study, to determine the state of the theory and practice of investment valuation in the countries of the European Union which should be the starting point for further research. Design/Methodology/Approach: In this paper, an analysis of literature sources was carried out about assessing the effectiveness of investments in European Union countries. The conducted review and description of the found scientific sources is aimed at determining the current state of investment valuation practice, a description of the research carried out so far, which will allow us to determine the starting point for a new study. Findings: During preliminary research found it profoundly surprising that despite the huge potential impact of better capital allocation, there are two main problems regarding investment appraisal practices in European companies. First and foremost, a large part of even the largest European corporations do not use advanced investment appraisal techniques or apply them only to a limited extent. Secondly, yet there has not been a research into practical applications of investment appraisal methodologies that would cover the entire Single Market, i.e., the European Economic Area and Switzerland. Practical Implications: Obtained conclusions allowed us to recommend a study of the relationship between investment appraisal practice and company performance for all the countries of the European Single Market. Originality/value: Further research should identify the differences regarding the use of investment appraisal methods between countries as well as sectors. It is expected that the conclusions from projected future research will considerably broaden the knowledge about a particularly important area of corporate activity – making decisions regarding resource allocation.


Probabilistic reasoning is a distinct type of reasoning which previous evidence has found to be particularly difficult for both naive and expert participants in laboratory research. The current study looked at probabilistic reasoning performance in the light of dual- process theories of thinking and reasoning, using thinking style measures to investigate whether normative reasoning is indeed most often associated with a tendency to reason analytically, rather than heuristically. The tasks were presented both as probabilities, requiring participants to think of the chance of a given event happening once and as frequencies, requiring participants to imagine a large number of times or people, and suggesting what number of these might involve the given event. The latter is believed to prime the analytical process of reasoning, particularly when natural, rather than normalised, frequencies are used. Two age groups were used in order to examine the relationship between cognitive ageing and probabilistic reasoning, and to provide greater variability in a range of individual differences. Using samples of young participants (18-32 years) and older participants (>60 years) the studies reported in this thesis did find a consistent effect of format, whereby those in the frequency format showed both fewer fundamental reasoning fallacies on conjunctive and disjunctive tasks, and lower levels of error, as measured by absolute distance from the normatively correct answer. The format of the tasks - whether probability or frequency - was also an effective predictor of responses to two different Bayesian tasks. Many of the findings regarding the format of the tasks were consistent with dual process theories of reasoning. There was no effect of age on reasoning performance, despite predictions that older individuals would show less analytical reasoning than the younger group. There was however an interaction effect between the format of the tasks and age group, whereby older participants' performance did not benefit from the frequency wording, indicating that they were either not primed to reason analytically, or that they were primed to do so but were unable to do so to the extent that they could obtain the normatively correct response. More surprisingly, there was no consistent relationship between thinking styles and reasoning performance. 7 parison between current results and previous literature continues to highlight the . que nature of probabilistic reasoning, and the above findings are considered as providing continued support for dual process theories of reasoning. Future research in this area may need to find more accurate ways of assessing an individual's preferred thinking styles, as well as further investigating the nature of the differences between the processes used in completing inclusive and exclusive disjunctive tasks. The measure of reasoning error developed in this current research would also benefit from greater application and further investigation of possible refinements in order to continue to increase our knowledge of how people reason with probabilities.


The complex pattern of horsts and grabens in the Sirte Basin may have developed when Mesozoic drift of the African plate put north-central Libya over a fixed mantle hotspot in Early Cretaceous time (140 to 100 m.y. ago). Significant change in the motion of the plate during the prolonged residence above a hypothetical Cameroon plume may have produced stress that fragmented thinned and weakened lithosphere. Successive uplift and subsidence along a reconstructed track of the plume, as well as in the Sirte Basin, are compatible with predicted effects of the drift of northern Africa over a fixed mantle hotspot. This speculation suggests a plausible alternative to the possibility that rifting throughout northern Africa in Early Cretaceous time may have been produced along a wide zone of extension between two African plates when they were at rest relative to underlying plumes.


OBJECTIVE
We aimed to investigate the prevalence of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) using the C-14 urea-breath test (C14UBT) and to determine whether there is an association between H. pylori infection and the severity of COPD. This is the first report in the literature of the use of C14UBT to investigate the prevalence of H. pylori in patients with COPD.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Fifty subjects with COPD (38 males and 12 females, aged 61±10 years) and 20 control subjects (10 males and 10 females, aged 55±11 years) were evaluated. C14UBT was used to determine H. pylori infection.

RESULTS
The prevalences of H. pylori infection in subjects with COPD and in controls were 72% and 65%, respectively (p=0.56). Forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC) values were significantly higher in the H. pylori-infected subjects with COPD than in the uninfected subjects (p=0.008 and p=0.006, respectively).

CONCLUSION
The presence of H. pylori infection in COPD patients affects pulmonary functions, but the effects of H. pylori infection on the respiratory system and COPD are not clear.


This paper examines the impact of two pieces of transparency legislation: the UK Freedom of Information Act 2005 and the Indian Right to Information Act 2005. It looks at the origins and composition of the laws before examining how the two pieces of legislation function. Both laws have led to transparency and accountability by exposure and raising of 'fire alarms', with information disclosure used to bring about accountability as well as, to a more limited extent, reform and behaviour change. Of the two laws, the Indian RTI has proved more 'politicised' and more capable of initiating political participation. Yet the 'transformative' powers of such reforms are limited by poor implementation and resistance. Moreover, the effectiveness of such laws is shaped by context, with India in particular facing deep and complex socio-political obstacles that may prevent the laws having the 'revolutionary' effects advocates hoped.


The best performing Binary Neural Networks (BNNs) are usually attained using Adam optimization and its multi-step training variants. However, to the best of our knowledge, few studies explore the fundamental reasons why Adam is superior to other optimizers like SGD for BNN optimization or provide analytical explanations that support specific training strategies. To address this, in this paper we first investigate the trajectories of gradients and weights in BNNs during the training process. We show the regularization effect of second-order momentum in Adam is crucial to revitalize the weights that are dead due to the activation saturation in BNNs. We find that Adam, through its adaptive learning rate strategy, is better equipped to handle the rugged loss surface of BNNs and reaches a better optimum with higher generalization ability. Furthermore, we inspect the intriguing role of the real-valued weights in binary networks, and reveal the effect of weight decay on the stability and sluggishness of BNN optimization. Through extensive experiments and analysis, we derive a simple training scheme, building on existing Adam-based optimization, which achieves 70.5% top-1 accuracy on the ImageNet dataset using the same architecture as the state-of-the-art ReActNet while achieving 1.1% higher accuracy. Code and models are available at https://github.com/liuzechun/AdamBNN.


The short wavelength infrared channels recorded by the Landsat Thematic Mapper make this instrument more suitable than the Landsat Multispectral Scanner for lithological mapping using enhanced imagery. The weathering mineralogy of igneous rocks causes absorption features in their reflectance spectra which are particularly characteristic in the near infrared. A Landsat Thematic Mapper band 7,5,4 red, green, blue false colour composite of part of the Oman ophiolite confirms much of the previous mapping and indicates certain hitherto unrecorded features. These include a new mafic-ultramafic late-intrusive complex and differences between deeper and near-crustal levels in the mantle sequence, which may be related to the environment in which serpentinization took place. Decorrelation stretching is an excellent means of accentuating colour variations within an image as an aid to visual interpretation.


This article takes a broad view of the evolution of collecting behaviors in a network environment and suggests some future directions based on various simple models. The authors look at the changing dynamics of print collections, at the greater engagement with research and learning behaviors, and at trends in scholarly communication. The goal is to provide context within which libraries can discuss changing patterns of investment across collection categories. The authors argue that the network is reconfiguring not only individual academic libraries but also the whole library system, as reduced transaction costs facilitate the unbundling of functions and their consolidation in network platforms and with other external service providers.


Model-based Geostatistics for Global Public Health: Methods and Applications provides an introductory account of model-based geostatistics, its implementation in open-source software and its application in public health research. In the public health problems that are the focus of this book, the authors describe and explain the pattern of spatial variation in a health outcome or exposure measurement of interest. Model-based geostatistics uses explicit probability models and established principles of statistical inference to address questions of this kind. Features: Presents state-of-the-art methods in model-based geostatistics. Discusses the application these methods some of the most challenging global public health problems including disease mapping, exposure mapping and environmental epidemiology. Describes exploratory methods for analysing geostatistical data, including: diagnostic checking of residuals standard linear and generalized linear models; variogram analysis; Gaussian process models and geostatistical design issues. Includes a range of more complex geostatistical problems where research is ongoing. All of the results in the book are reproducible using publicly available R code and data-sets, as well as a dedicated R package. This book has been written to be accessible not only to statisticians but also to students and researchers in the public health sciences.


A distinctive feature of modern capitalist societies is the tendency of the market to take over the production, maintenance, and distribution of goods that were previously produced, maintained, and distributed by nonmarket means. Yet, there is a wide range of disagreement regarding the proper extent of the market in providing many goods. Labor has been treated as a commodity since the advent of capitalism, but not without significant and continuing challenges to this arrangement. Other goods whose production for and distribution on the market are currently the subject of dispute include sexual intercourse, human blood, and human body parts such as kidneys. How can we determine which goods are properly subjects of market transactions and which are not? The purpose of this article is to propose a theory of what makes economic goods differ from other kinds of goods, which can help to answer this question.


The paper analyses the impact that European Union (EU) farmers' and rural population's awareness of biotechnology innovations and access to/trust in information on these issues (amongst other a priori determinants) have on their perceptions of risks and benefits of the applications of biotechnology innovations, and attitudes towards their implementation in practice. We employ structural equation models (SEM) with observed and latent variables. SEM is a statistical technique for testing and estimating relationships amongst variables, using a combination of statistical data and qualitative causal assumptions. We use an Eurobarometer dataset (2010) about awareness/acceptance of biotechnology innovations and run SEM models for ten EU countries, which include older and newer Member States. The variables included are socio-demographics, access to biotechnology information, trust in information sources on biotechnology innovations, attitudes towards the importance and impact of science and technology on society, perceptions of the risks and benefits of the applications of biotechnology innovations and attitudes towards their implementation in practice. Results between the different EU countries are comparable and, alongside other determinants, trust in information sources will significantly impact perceptions of risks and benefits of the applications of biotechnology innovations, and attitudes towards their implementation in practice. This underlines the importance of information and knowledge to acceptance of biotechnology innovations, which should be a key point on policy-makers' agenda of developing the economic and environmental efficiency in the agricultural sector and rural sustainability in Europe. Increasing awareness of biotechnology innovations that safeguard people and the environment in order to enable informed debate and decisions will help enhance sustainability of rural areas.


Pasteurization of liquid food - guava juice and soymilk by continuous ohmic heating within a temperature range of 30-90 0C, was performed in a 3-D non – axisymmetric ohmic heater. (Three stripe electrodes positioned along the walls and oriented 1200 to the axis of the pipe), using 3-phase 50-60 Hz alternative voltages, with Delta connection.
A mathematical model describing the flow and thermal behavior of guava juice and soymilk solution in a continuous ohmic heating unit was developed. The equations for conservation of mass, momentum and energy and electric field distributions including temperature dependent electrical conductivities, thermo physical and rheological properties were solved using a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software package (FLUENT 6.1) which was based on finite volume method of analysis. User defined functions (UDF's)employed in the original platform (FLUENT 6.1), were used for the solution of scalar equations - electrical field model.
Thermo-physical and rheological properties of soymilk and guava juice were measured. Soymilk was found to be Newtonian and guava juice a Non Newtonian (power law n = 0.0.5978 and k = 0.117 Pa sn). Measurements of electrical conductivities at various temperatures for guava juice and soymilk were carried out. These properties were then used as inputs for the CFD modelling.
The numerical calculation results have provided reasonable information for optimizing the design of ohmic heating cell geometry to improve the uniformity of the electrical and thermal fields across the heating cell in order to avoid over and under-processing of liquid foods.
The heating rate of soymilk was found to be higher than that of guava juice. The current density of both guava juice and soymilk was found to exceed the critical value. However, experimentally the soymilk, a protein solution, was found to rapidly deposit on the surface of the electrodes. No ohmic heating was conducted thereafter with the soymilk.
Temperature, flow pattern, electrical field distribution and the slowest heating zone (SHZ) during ohmic heating of both liquid foods (3D) were predicted. Experimental and simulated temperatures were in good agreement at different locations along the ohmic heating axis for guava juice, thus validating the CFD model and simulation.
The pasteurization calculations were done for guava juice (3.8 0brix) and soymilk (7.8±0.02 0brix) using the pathline of the highest velocity simulated from the CFD, and pasteurisation was adequately and rapidly achieved.


The usage of smartphones instead of simple mobile phones increases sharply in our era, especially among young people, because they do multiple tasks with single equipment. This study mainly focuses on smartphone satisfaction by combining hand measurements, smartphone users' survey results, and hand dexterity levels of corresponding users acquired from Minnesota Manual Dexterity Test (MMDT). Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is used as a statistical tool to discover the potential direct and indirect relations among user satisfaction, hand dimensions, and dexterity scores. Results indicates that thumb length, hand length, and dexterity level of the users have notable effects on users' satisfaction with smartphones. Based on the results, a new approach that includes both gross motor skills and physical measurements is suggested to see hidden indirect relations with satisfaction.


The Archer Daniels Midland litigation and its aftermath highlighted the oddity of the continued use of the refunding clause in bond covenants, despite its legal ineffectiveness. This Note suggests three reasons for why the refunding clause might have retained value despite judicial curtailment of its legal reach: investor ignorance of the legal details of bond indentures, discounted but residual legal value, and extra-judicial reputation-based enforcement. The reputation-based hypothesis construes the refunding clause as a division of benefits between issuers and investors, where issuers retain the right to call -bonds for "legitimate" business purposes, but investors are promised all gains from market interest rate movements. In this view, the refunding clause is an implicit pledge by issuers not to appropriate bondholders' market gains. As this line is too fine for courts to police, the understood pact is enforced via investor retaliation against future bond issues and other reputation effects. Initial empirical observations yield mixed results: There is support for the preconditions of the reputation-based hypothesis as to investors, but observations of bond issuances are less supportive, suggesting that the use of the refunding clause, while still done by some companies, decreased sharply following the Archer Daniels Midland decision. These observations also suggest, however, that many other factors were at work and that this drop in use might be the result of changes aside from the clause's legal value.


In this paper, we propose a novel text promptable surgical instrument segmentation approach to overcome challenges associated with diversity and differentiation of surgical instruments in minimally invasive surgeries. We redefine the task as text promptable, thereby enabling a more nuanced comprehension of surgical instruments and adaptability to new instrument types. Inspired by recent advancements in vision-language models, we leverage pretrained image and text encoders as our model backbone and design a text promptable mask decoder consisting of attention- and convolution-based prompting schemes for surgical instrument segmentation prediction. Our model leverages multiple text prompts for each surgical instrument through a new mixture of prompts mechanism, resulting in enhanced segmentation performance. Additionally, we introduce a hard instrument area reinforcement module to improve image feature comprehension and segmentation precision. Extensive experiments on several surgical instrument segmentation datasets demonstrate our model's superior performance and promising generalization capability. To our knowledge, this is the first implementation of a promptable approach to surgical instrument segmentation, offering significant potential for practical application in the field of robotic-assisted surgery.


The paper concentrates on the question whether the low level of productivity in East Germany can be explained by deficits in the stock of human capital. It is shown that figures on ?formal? qualifications yield a too optimistic view on human capital endowments; in fact, the effective stock on human capital in East Germany is lower than in West Germany when differences in job activities are taken into account. One reason is the dominance of non human capitalintensive industries as a consequence of locational decisions in the past. Another reason is a low human capital intensity within the different branches which is a consequence of specialization within affiliated firms. In the next years human capital endowment of the East German economy will further deteriorate as a result of selective migration and unfavorable educational attendance of the younger cohorts. This impedes a fast convergence in productivity between East and West Germany.


The other or otherness is the ability to objectify a part of self, another person, and/or a group of people that results in an imbalance of power. The human ability to other allows for detachment to happen in social and personal relationship, which affects the self-perception and identity. Hegel argues in the Phenomenology of Spirit the very nature of an interdependent relationship, which expresses identity through the Lord and bondsman. I will argue how extreme detachment and disassociation between human beings has created a complex phenomenon and has redefined what it means to be human in relation to social superstructures. Social superstructures have defined and created norms and morality of societies and cultures, which then creates a division of those who fit these standards and those who do not. Traditionally philosophy and other forms of academic scholarship have focused upon the inequality of power and privilege and examined the relationship of the oppressed to their oppressor. Oppressed groups then have organized to articulate their collective experience, developed academic theory, and social movements to further identify the reality of otherness they experience. I will further explore this through the scholarship of Patricia HillCollins, Peg O'Connor, and Iris Young. This paradigm as power and oppression is also referenced to as political identity; however, I believe this method stratifies the multifaceted nature of the human self and needs to be restructured to uncover a richer sense of authenticity. In this paper I will argue how paradigms of otherness can be used to positively cultivate the multifaceted parts of the self. As an example of someone who lived out of her multifaceted nature of self, I will examine the life of Gloria Anzaldua. The two primary aspects of social superstructure influences on the self are societal and relational. I will explore how societal influences are the social groups in which an individual identifies based upon social position and life experience. The multifaceted social parts of the self include: class, race, gender, sexuality, physically and psychologically ability, religion/spirituality, age. Relational influences are the intimate relationships, which influence and shape an individual's identity and perception of self. These multifaceted relational parts include: family and friends. Living towards one's authentic self is complete balance and interaction of all multifaceted parts of the self that make up identity in the pursuit of answering the life long question of, "who am I?" The authentic self is one who can identify the social impositions, which oppress or privilege oneself and recognize the balance of all social roles in relation to personal experience and formation. The authentic self is never completely autonomous but conscious of social barriers or privileges that make up one's personal identity, and is an expression of genuine balance. I believe that Anzaldua expresses this in her life experiences, as a Chicana Lesbian, and so I will reference her experiences to further examine these


Enhancement of company competitiveness and profitability demands continuous, high quality and trouble free production. Technical specifications and the condition of a wind turbine depend on the quality and condition of its significant components, which usually have the biggest impact on production continuity, - cost per KW and the environment. These necessitate intelligent technologies for maintaining the quality of significant components. Thus, it would be mandatory to select the most informative condition monitoring (CM) system and most cost-effective maintenance policy. In this paper, wind turbine problems are specified and described, available maintenance and CM techniques are discussed, and a maintenance solution with clearly specified objectives are suggested, discussed and the potential results are outlined in the end.


Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) and dementia are the greatest disease burdens of our time, carrying an enormous personal, societal, and economic burden. Although NDDs are often thought of as individual entities in their clinical presentation, there is increasing evidence of considerable overlap of their aetiology and pathogenesis. This has led to the discovery of overlapping biological processes underlying disease mechanisms, including protein misfolding, endoplasmic reticulum stress, cellular transport, mitochondrial dysfunction, and inflammation. These biological processes ultimately result in neuronal death and attendant disease symptomology, but pathogenesis of NDDs is orchestrated by an intimate interaction of both neuronal and non-neuronal cells. We are now moving into an era where we have new human cellular models, novel genetic manipulation tools, and high-throughput single-cell analysis techniques that allow interrogation of this commonality and complexity, married to an aspiration to develop novel therapeutic strategies to delay, slow, or reverse neurodegeneration. This chapter provides a brief summary of these evolving ideas.


The purpose of the study was to examine the experiences of both people with disabilities and elderly people and to identify their perceptions of quality as it relates to living in a service or being supported by a service to live in the community. The study was naturalistic in design and used a phenomenological approach and inductive analysis. It involved immersion in living services for a two year period, in-depth interviews with people living and working in services and participant observation. Fifty service users between the ages of twenty-one and ninety-six, and twenty-six service workers between the ages of twenty-six and fifty-four were informants in the study. The study comprised of three phases. The first phase involved repeated in-depth interviews with service users in two disability and two aged care living services to examine the experiences of people living in services and their perceptions of quality. As a result of the consistency with which relationships with key staff members emerged in the context of quality experiences, selected service workers who were named by service users were also interviewed. The findings in this phase indicated that relationships experienced by service users in their encounters with service workers were more significant in service users' evaluation of quality than tangible acts of physical and environmental care. Relational experiences of people living in services were variable. Some informants experienced consistent validation and socio-emotional support, whilst others experienced role distancing and negative communication experiences. Service workers who were interviewed as a result of being identified by service users in the context of quality, attached importance to the relational domain in the acts and behaviours of providing a service. They also attached personal meaning to their roles as ii service workers and shared the view that their role as service worker was underpinned by an ethos of communality. The second phase of the study involvt:d accessing another five disability and five aged care services to collect further data to support or refute the findings from phase one. As a result a large data bank was established to confinn the consistency with which relational experiences in living services were linked to perceptions of quality by both service users and service providers. Acts and behaviours which were consistently present in the context of quality were also identified and the need for emotional support in the living context was further confirmed. The third phase of the study involved an in-depth analysis and identification of commonly experienced categories of relationships between service users and workers. Relationships were categorised into ethical and technical living service experiences and exemplars used to illustrate findings. Data analysis indicated that service experiences lie on a continuum, with mutually supportive relationships between service users and workers at one end, and physical and psychological abuse at the other. Experiences were variable in singular service contexts. This highlighted the individual nature of service relationships between service users and workers and the need to articulate human service as relationship. It also highlighted the inadequacies of using standard measures to evaluate quality in living services.


The rapid progress of wireless communication and embedded microsensing MEMS technologies has made wireless sensor networks possible. In light of storage in sensors, a sensor network can be considered as a distributed database, in which one can conduct in-network data processing. An important issue of wireless sensor networks is object tracking, which typically involves two basic operations: update and query. This issue has been intensively studied in other areas, such as cellular networks. However, the in-network processing characteristic of sensor networks has posed new challenges to this issue. In this paper, we develop several tree structures for in-network object tracking which take the physical topology of the sensor network into consideration. The optimization process has two stages. The first stage tries to reduce the location update cost based on a deviation-avoidance principle and a highest-weight-first principle. The second stage further adjusts the tree obtained in the first stage to reduce the query cost. The way we model this problem allows us to analytically formulate the cost of object tracking given the update and query rates of objects. Extensive simulations are conducted, which show a significant improvement over existing solutions


Regulatory writing for the veterinary pharmaceutical industry is in many ways similar to other types of regulatory writing, but there are also clear differences. This article outlines the veterinary regulatory structure in Europe and, in particular, dossier content, competent regulatory authorities, as well as registration procedures. Adjacent fields of regulatory writing are addressed and an overview of typical documents is given. Furthermore, specific veterinary regulatory information sources for medical writers are provided.


This paper reviews the history of the risk management challenges faced by many countries and regions of the world which have had cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) from 1986 to the present. The paper first summarises the nature of prion diseases from a scientific perspective, and then presents an overview of the findings of an extensive set of country case studies, devoting special attention to the Canadian case. It derives from these studies the need to reconstruct the frameworks which have been guiding risk management decision making, using forma schemata based on a step-by-step approach. The paper presents and illustrates a revised format for an integrated risk management framework, including a set of specific and explicit objectives that should guide the use of this framework in practice, and concludes by raising policy issues that are currently outstanding with respect to the management of prion disease risks.


This paper investigates trading behaviour among Thai retail investors in 2016. Using detailed survey data from 491 investors, we examine the characteristics and behavioural patterns that lead to investor bias. Empirical results in the behavioural finance literature indicate that retail investors may not behave reasonably. Behavioural biases may influence investor decisions and affect financial markets. These studies, however, are limited to subsamples of the overall investor groups studied and mainly focus on developed markets. We find that biases are common among investors and that men are more overconfident than women. Moreover, we discover that investors with more experience in trading are less likely to hold their stocks for long periods of time. Further, investors aged 45 and younger hold more diversified portfolios. Another finding is that participants with an income of more than 50,000 Baht a month and/or who employ a number of brokers hold more diversified portfolios. This evidence is consistent with the findings that have been reported for Turkey, India, and Vietnam, indicating that demographic factors are useful for distinguishing between investors in terms of the level of overconfidence bias they exhibit. This result confirms that demographic factors play a role in differentiating and classifying retail investors and should motivate future researchers to consider these factors in their research.


Often used but little understood, the word 'sustainability' is potent in its ability to evoke a better world based on economic, social, and environmental justice. The concept of sustainability, however, has been strikingly under-theorized. Sustainability and the Civil Commons provides what has been lacking since the publication of the Brundtland Report - a firm foundation and a clear vision of alternatives. Using rural communities as her reference-point, Jennifer Sumner exposes the unsustainable impacts of corporate globalization, and develops a framework to explain why current definitions of sustainability are profoundly inadequate. From this foundation, she allies sustainability with the concept of the civil commons - including universal healthcare, environmental protocols, workplace safety regulations, and public education - demonstrating how globalizing the civil commons, not corporate-sponsored trade treaties, opens the way for truly 'sustainable globalization'. Sustainability and the Civil Commons moves beyond rural roots through Antonio Gramsci's model of hegemony, Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action, and John McMurtry's life-value ethics to build a comprehensive understanding of sustainability that combines global reach with local focus. It will be an invaluable resource for scholars and practitioners interested in sustainability, globalization, community development, and rural studies.


Background Delayed cerebral ischaemia (DCI) is frequent after poor grade aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH). Owing to the limited accuracy of clinical examination, DCI diagnosis is often based on multimodal monitoring. We examined the value of cerebral microdialysis (CMD) in this setting. Methods 20 comatose SAH participants underwent CMD monitoring—for hourly sampling of cerebral extracellular lactate/pyruvate ratio (LPR) and glucose—and brain perfusion CT (PCT). Patients were categorised as DCI when PCT (8±3 days after SAH) showed cerebral hypoperfusion, defined as cerebral blood flow <32.5 mL/100 g/min with a mean transit time >5.7 s. Clinicians were blinded to CMD data; for the purpose of the study, only patients who developed cerebral hypoperfusion in anterior and/or middle cerebral arteries were analysed. Results DCI (n=9/20 patients) was associated with higher CMD LPR (51±36 vs 31±10 in patients without DCI, p=0.0007) and lower CMD glucose (0.64±0.34 vs 1.22±1.05, p=0.0005). In patients with DCI, CMD changes over the 18 hours preceding PCT diagnosis revealed a pattern of CMD LPR increase (coefficient +2.96 (95% CI 0.13 to 5.79), p=0.04) with simultaneous CMD glucose decrease (coefficient −0.06 (95% CI −0.08 to −0.01), p=0.03, mixed-effects multilevel regression model). No significant CMD changes were noted in patients without DCI. Conclusions In comatose patients with SAH, delayed cerebral hypoperfusion correlates with a CMD pattern of lactate increase and simultaneous glucose decrease. CMD abnormalities became apparent in the hours preceding PCT, thereby suggesting that CMD monitoring may anticipate targeted therapeutic interventions.


The modern concept of crimes against humanity is a product of the scale and horror of the crimes committed in the two world wars as well as a growing consensus in the international community that certain crimes committed within national borders are legitimate subjects of international law and adjudication. Unlike war crimes and genocide, crimes against humanity are not codified in an international convention. Instead, the law of crimes against humanity has primarily developed through the evolution of customary international law. Although the statutes of most international and internationalized tribunals contain definitions of these crimes, there are significant differences among those definitions. Furthermore, the evolution of the definition of crimes against humanity in these international instruments has not been entirely linear: Later definitions are sometimes more expansive and sometimes narrower than their predecessors. As a result, the content of the norm prohibiting crimes against humanity remains subject to greater controversy than the norms prescribing genocide and war crimes. The primary challenge in defining crimes against humanity is to identify the precise elements that distinguish these offenses from crimes subject exclusively to national laws. The contours of the definition not only determine the scope of international jurisdiction, but also give rise to a number of additional important consequences. First, unlike most domestic crimes, crimes against humanity are generally considered outside the purview of statutes of limitations. Second, the immunities that often shield State representatives from criminal responsibility are not available for crimes against humanity, at least when trials are held before international tribunals. Third, although the concept of universal jurisdiction – the theory that certain crimes are subject to the jurisdiction of all States – remains controversial; proponents of universal jurisdiction invariably include crimes against humanity within its scope. This means, for example, that while the crime of murder generally can only be tried in a court with a jurisdictional link to the act, a murder committed as a crime against humanity arguably can be tried in any criminal court in the world. Finally, the prohibition of crimes against humanity is a jus cogens norm of international law, which means that derogation is not permitted under any circumstances. As a result of this status, some authorities assert that States have an international law obligation either to prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity or to extradite them to States intending to pursue prosecutions. In light of the very serious legal consequences of designating an offense a crime against humanity as well as the heightened moral condemnation the label entails, the importance of understanding the exact contours of these offenses cannot be underestimated. This chapter provides a brief historical sketch of the evolution of the norm prohibiting crimes against humanity, assesses the current state of the definition with respect to each potential element of the chapeau and some the constitutive crimes, and argues that a normative framework should be adopted to resolve the remaining uncertainties surrounding this category of international crimes.


Granulocyte‐macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM‐CSF) is a cytokine that controls the production and function of myeloid cells by interaction with a cell surface receptor composed of a specific ligand‐binding α‐chain (hGMRα) and a shared signal‐transducing β‐chain (βc). Co‐expression of human GMR α‐chain and wild‐type human βc in two murine leukaemic cell lines (M1 and WEHI‐3B D+) conferred the ability to terminally differentiate into macrophages when stimulated with human GM‐CSF. Analysis of cytoplasmic truncation mutants of βc showed that residues to amino acid 783 (numbering from the first amino acid of the leader sequence) were sufficient for the GM‐CSF‐dependent induction of all aspects of differentiation in both cell types. However, shorter truncations selectively lost, in a cell‐specific manner, first the capacity to induce macrophage migration in agar and then cell surface differentiation antigens and clonal suppression of proliferative potential. The data suggest that different aspects of the differentiated phenotype can be dissociated with the required signalling pathways originating from distinct regions of the receptor cytoplasmic domain and cooperating to produce a fully differentiated macrophage. The cooperativity of these pathways and limiting cell signalling intermediate pool sizes could explain the observed cell line differences and may have implications for normal haemopoiesis.


Interpretations of McKean are generally based on the large amount of data recovered from sites in the northern United States. McKean sites have also been identified throughout the Canadian Plains, but at present many of the studies associated with these sites have yet to be published. Of particular importance are detailed analyses of assemblages from a number of multi-component sites such as Redtail, Thundercloud, and EgNo-23 in Saskatchewan. Data from these and a number of similar sites are summarized to update the McKean record on the Canadian Plains. These studies offer new information with regard to McKean cultural adaptations, providing new insight into interpretations of McKean subsistence, settlement patterns, origins, and expansion. Furthermore, strong evidence exists for the stratigraphic and temporal separation of the lanceolate and stemmed projectile point varieties commonly associated with McKean. In light of such evidence, McKean is no longer representative of an archaeological complex and a taxonomic designation of archaeological series is preferred. This research provides an important first-step towards the re-examination of McKean and will have an impact on future interpretations of the McKean series throughout the Northern Plains.


Background
Up to 20% of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) who are refractory to thiopurine therapy preferentially produce 6-methylmercaptopurine (6-MMP) at the expense of 6-thioguanine nucleotides (6-TGN), resulting in a high 6-MMP:6-TGN ratio (>20). The objective of this study was to evaluate whether genetic variability in guanine monophosphate synthetase (GMPS) contributes to preferential 6-MMP metabolizer phenotype.

Methods
Exome sequencing was performed in a cohort of IBD patients with 6-MMP:6-TGN ratios of >100 to identify nonsynonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNPs). In vitro assays were performed to measure GMPS activity associated with these nsSNPs. Frequency of the nsSNPs was measured in a cohort of 530 Caucasian IBD patients.

Results
Two nsSNPs in GMPS (rs747629729, rs61750370) were detected in 11 patients with very high 6-MMP:6-TGN ratios. The 2 nsSNPs were predicted to be damaging by in silico analysis. In vitro assays demonstrated that both nsSNPs resulted in a significant reduction in GMPS activity (P < 0.05). The SNP rs61750370 was significantly associated with 6-MMP:6-TGN ratios ≥100 (odds ratio, 5.64; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-25.12; P < 0.031) in a subset of 264 Caucasian IBD patients.

Conclusions
The GMPS SNP rs61750370 may be a reliable risk factor for extreme 6MMP preferential metabolism.


The phenomenon of time-dependent polarization loss in poled ferroelectric capacitors, also known as retention, represents one of the most important reliability issues for ferroelectric nonvolatile memories. In a number of publications different ways to control retention by varying ferroelectric material composition or processing have been proposed, but no quantitative physical model of this phenomenon is available so far. The goal of the present work is to fill this gap by proposing a retention model that describes the polarization loss as a function of time and temperature. This model considers polarization switching to be driven by the depolarization field occurring in a poled ferroelectric film capacitor. For this purpose the earlier-proposed nucleation-limited switching concept was extended to enable the description of polarization reversal versus temperature, time, and voltage. Temperature-dependent performance of ferroelectric nonvolatile memories is another important issue. The proposed approach employs the same concept for modeling the temperature dependence of polarization switching and retention loss. The theoretical predictions were verified using experimental data measured on Pb(Zr,TiO)(3) ferroelectric film capacitors. Based on the proposed model we formulate a device-oriented algorithm that enables the following important predictions for the ferroelectric film capacitors based on relatively fast and simple tests: (a) Prediction of switching curves characterizing the reversed polarization versus time at different temperatures, based on room-temperature data only. (b) Prediction of retention properties for long periods up to ten years extrapolated from short 24-h test results. (c) Prediction of retention properties at elevated temperatures based on the room-temperature results, or, alternatively, use of the accelerated test at high temperature for characterization of the retention performance at room temperature. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.


As Queer Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) becomes an established part of the larger field, both in terms of research on and with queer populations and in terms of employing queering theories and methods, the role of queer researchers has become a timely topic of discussion. However, these discussions have largely centered around member-researcher status and positionality when working with queer populations. Based on insights gathered at multiple ACM events over the past year, we identified two pressing issues: (1) we need to better support queer people doing HCI research not specific to queer populations, and (2) we need to identify how to best support member-researchers in leading Queer HCI while including collaborators beyond the queer community. This Special Interest Group (SIG) aims to directly address these challenges by convening a broad community of queer researchers and allies, working not only on explicitly-queer topics but across a broad range of HCI topics.


Typical approaches to defining regions, districts or neighborhoods within a city often focus on place instances of a similar type that are grouped together. For example, most cities have at least one bar district defined as such by the clustering of bars within a few city blocks. In reality, it is not the presence of spatial locations labeled as bars that contribute to a bar region, but rather the popularity of the bars themselves. Following the principle that places, and by extension, place-type regions exist via the people that have given space meaning, we explore user-contributed content as a way of extracting this meaning. Kernel density estimation models of place-based social check-ins are compared to spatially tagged social posts with the goal of identifying thematic regions within the city of Los Angeles, CA. Dynamic human activity patterns, represented as temporal signatures, are included in this analysis to demonstrate how regions change over time.


A battle is under way to decide the intellectual property law for half the world's population. A trade agreement that hopes to create a free trade area even larger than that forged by Genghis Khan will define intellectual property rules across much of Asia and the Pacific. The sixteen countries negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) include China, India, Japan, and South Korea, and stretch to Australia and New Zealand. A review of a leaked draft reveals a struggle largely between India on one side and South Korea and Japan on the other over the intellectual property rules that will govern much of the world. The result of this struggle will affect not only access to innovation in the Asia-Pacific, but also across Africa and other parts of the world that depend on generic medicines from India, which has been called the "pharmacy to the developing world." Surprisingly, the agreement that includes China as a pillar may result in stricter intellectual property rights than those mandated by the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Perhaps even more surprisingly, such TRIPS-plus rights will be available in the RCEP states to the United States and European companies equally by somewhat recondite provisions in TRIPS. In sum, the RCEP draft erodes access to medicines and education across much of the world.


We are currently developing a multilayer avalanche photodiode (APD)-based detector for use in positron emission tomography (PET), which utilizes thin continuous crystals. In this paper, we developed a Monte Carlo-based simulation to aid in the design of such detectors. We measured the performance of a detector comprising a single thin continuous crystal (3.1 mm times 9.5 mm times 9.5 mm) of lutetium yttrium ortho-silicate (LYSO) and an APD array (4times4) elements; each element 1.6 mm2 and on a 2.3 mm pitch. We showed that a spatial resolution of better than 2.12 mm is achievable throughout the crystal provided that we adopt a Statistics Based Positioning (SBP) Algorithm. We then used Monte Carlo simulation to model the behavior of the detector. The accuracy of the Monte Carlo simulation was verified by comparing measured and simulated parent datasets (PDS) for the SBP algorithm. These datasets consisted of data for point sources at 49 positions uniformly distributed over the detector area. We also calculated the noise in the detector circuit and verified this value by measurement. The noise value was included in the simulation. We show that the performance of the simulation closely matches the measured performance. The simulations were extended to investigate the effect of different noise levels on positioning accuracy. This paper showed that if modest improvements could be made in the circuit noise then positioning accuracy would be greatly improved. In summary, we have developed a model that can be used to simulate the performance of a variety of APD-based continuous crystal PET detectors


Since the high time and space complexity, most existing ontology matching systems are not well scalable to solve the large ontology matching problem. Moreover, the popular divide-and-conquer matching solution faces two disadvantages: First, partitioning ontology is a complicate process; Second, it will lead to loss of semantic information during matching. To avoid these drawbacks, this paper presents an efficient large ontology matching system Lily-LOM, which uses a non-partitioned method. Lily-LOM is based on two kinds of reduction anchors, i.e. positive and negative reduction anchors, to reduce the time complexity problem. Some empirical strategies for reducing the space complexity are also discussed. The experiments show that Lily-LOM is effective.


Plastic soil-cement is a type of soil stabilization used for the treatment of natural soil to improve its engineering properties. It is a hardened material prepared by mixing soil and Portland cement at a water content higher than optimum, usually near the liquid limit, without compaction at optimum water content to maximum dry density. In Bulgaria, this soil stabilization technique has been applied in foundation works in collapsible loess ground in order to replace a part of the collapsible layer, to increase the bearing capacity of the soil base and/or to isolate the geoenvironment from migration of pollutants.
The aim of the current paper is to examine the effect of the clay content of the loess soil on the strength and permeability of plastic loess-cement. Results from the investigation indicate that the mechanical and hydraulic properties of the plastic loess-cement highly depend on the presence of clay fraction.


MRG15 is a conserved chromodomain protein that associates with histone deacetylases (HDACs) and Tip60‐containing histone acetyltransferase (HAT) complexes. Here we further characterize MRG15‐containing complexes and show a functional link between MRG15 and histone H3K4 demethylase activity in mammalian cells. MRG15 was predominantly localized to discrete nuclear subdomains enriched for Ser2‐phosphorylated RNA polymerase II, suggesting it is involved specifically with active transcription. Protein analysis of the MRG15‐containing complexes led to the identification of RBP2, a JmjC domain‐containing protein. Remarkably, over‐expression of RBP2 greatly reduced the H3K4 methylation in culture human cells in vivo, and recombinant RBP2 efficiently removed H3K4 methylation of histone tails in vitro. Knockdown of RBP2 resulted in increased H3K4 methylation levels within transcribed regions of active genes. Our findings demonstrate that RBP2 associated with MRG15 complex to maintain reduced H3K4 methylation at transcribed regions, which may ensure the transcriptional elongation state.


We report a computer-simulation study of the absolute rate of homogeneous gas–liquid nucleation in a Lennard-Jones system. The height of the barrier has been computed using umbrella sampling, whereas the kinetic prefactor is calculated using molecular dynamics simulations. The simulations show that the nucleation process is highly diffusive. We find that the kinetic prefactor is a factor of 10 larger than predicted by classical nucleation theory.


An increasing number of agricultural transition initiatives are taking place, seeking more autonomy and resilience on the farms. This undeniably reshapes the landscape and the delivery of ecosystem services (ES). To date, little research includes the knowledge and perceptions of local communities on rural landscapes in agricultural transition. Yet, farmers shape the landscape and ES delivery, and local inhabitants are directly impacted. The present work aims at assessing the extent to which locals (local inhabitants and farmers) appreciate and view landscapes undergoing agricultural transitions. To do so, questionnaires were submitted to locals enquiring about appreciation and ES perceptions of transitioning landscapes. These landscapes were shown in manipulated photographs simulating an agroecological landscape, a conventional agriculture landscape, and landscapes including each isolated agroecological practice (resulting in six 'scenarios'). In order to put locals' perceptions in perspective, the same questionnaire was submitted to 'ES experts', and ES perceptions were compared to field-based ES measurements in agroecological and conventional parcels of the same study region. The results show that locals and ES experts appreciate and perceive these scenarios similarly. The agroecological scenario was seen as the most appreciated and the one delivering the most ES, while the conventional one was the least appreciated and seen as the one delivering the least ES. These perceptions of ES delivery partially correspond to the ES field measurements, which showed a similar productivity within agroecological and conventional parcels and more regulating ES in agroecological parcels. We discuss how our results call for the assessment of the multi-performance of agricultural systems in terms of ES rather than focusing on yield only, and how future research addressing agroecological transition should rely on integrated valuations and mixed methods to better embrace the complexity of such transitioning systems.


Background The Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) programme was established by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to help prevent occupational traumatic fatalities by funding states to conduct targeted fatality investigations within cause-specific focus areas and associated prevention efforts. Purpose To investigate the impact of the state-based FACE programme on two previous focus areas. Methods A longitudinal time-series analysis spanning 22 years compared state fatality rates for occupational falls and electrocutions before and after FACE programme funding with states not receiving FACE programme funding. Lag periods were utilised to allow time for the programme to have an effect, and rates were adjusted for a variety of covariates. Separate analyses were conducted for each injury outcome. Results A reduction in fall fatality rates that was of borderline significance (1-year lag adjRR=0.92 (0.84 to 1.00)) and a non-significant reduction in electrocution fatality rates (3-year lag adjRR=0.92 (0.82 to 1.03)) were observed in states with FACE programme funding, Best-fit models presented two separate lag periods. Conclusions While it is challenging to quantitatively evaluate effectiveness of programmes such as FACE, the data suggest the FACE programme may be effective in preventing occupational injury deaths within its outcome focus areas throughout the state. It is important to look for ways to measure intermediate effects more precisely, as well as ways to maintain effects over time.


Inquiry's place in rhetorical studies has long been contentious. Critics argue that academic professionalism and the rise of criticism and theory have diminished rhetoric as a pragmatic art. The recent trend in higher education toward greater restrictions on academic inquiry poses new problems for rhetorical studies, particularly where those restrictions exacerbate existing educational inequities. In the effort to address those inequities, a distinction needs to be made between old concerns with inquiry and the new issues any reorganization of inquiry will present. The generic support for inquiry that universities provide benefits rhetorical studies by lending structure to inquiry processes fraught with uncertainty and marked by impermanency. That support allows for the kind of careful engagement with possibility that rhetorical invention requires. The 2009 documentary film Naturally Obsessed: The Making of a Scientist illustrates the value to inquiry of professional conventions and other forms of generic support. Those same conventions serve rhetorical studies in similar ways.


PURPOSE
To determine the prognostic value of FOXO1, GATA3 and Annexin-1 expression in breast cancer.

METHODS
Tissue microarray and individual paraffin tissue slides from 131 patients were used for the study. The association of FOXO1, GATA3 and Annexin-1 expression with clinicopathological features of breast cancer and disease outcome was examined in retrospective samples. Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Cox regression with multivariate analysis were used for assessing the relative risk (RR) and disease-free survival (DFS). The expression of FOXO1, GATA3 and Annexin-1 were determined by immunohistochemistry and the association among the three proteins was analyzed by Logistic regression analysis.

RESULTS
The nuclear expression of FOXO1 was observed in most of the normal breast tissues and 51.3% of the malignant breast tissues. GATA3 and Annexin-1 were expressed at 73% and 24.6% respectively in breast cancer tissues. The expression of FOXO1, GATA3 and Annexin-1 were all inversely correlated with lymph node-positive tumors. Both FOXO1 and Annexin-1 expression were also inversely associated with HER2-overexpressing tumors. FOXO1 expression was significantly associated with both GATA3 and Annexin-1 expression. In addition, Multivariate analyses confirm that only FOXO1 levels independently predict DFS.

CONCLUSION
FOXO1 expression in breast cancer is regulated by the PI3K/Akt pathway. The expression of FOXO1 is also associated with GATA3 and/or Annexin-1. Restoring or targeting FOXO1 to the cell nucleus in breast cancer tissues may improve response to therapy and disease outcome. Further clinical studies are warranted to test this hypothesis.


While determining an appropriate tempo is crucial to music performers, composers and listeners, few empirical studies have investigated the musical factors affecting tempo choices. In two experiments we examined how aspects of musical pitch affect tempo choice, by asking participants (musically trained and untrained) to adjust the tempi of melodic sequences varying in pitch register and pitch direction, as well as sequences typically associated with specific registers in common period music. In Experiment 1, faster tempi were assigned to higher registers. Specific melodic direction (rise vs. fall) did not affect tempo preferences; nevertheless, pitch change in both directions elicited faster tempi than a repeating, unchanging pitch. The effect of register on tempo preference was stronger for participants with music training, and also (unexpectedly) for female participants. In Experiment 2, melodic figures typically related to lower and higher parts in common-period music were associated with slower and faster tempi, respectively. Results support a "holistic" notion of musical tempo, viewing the choice of proper tempo as determined by interactions among diverse musical dimensions, including aspects of pitch structure, rather than by rhythmic considerations alone. The experimental design presented here can be further applied to explore the effects of other musical parameters on tempo preferences.


The Molecular Sciences Software Institute's (MolSSI) Quantum Chemistry Archive (QCArchive) project is an umbrella name that covers both a central server hosted by MolSSI for community data and the Python‐based software infrastructure that powers automated computation and storage of quantum chemistry (QC) results. The MolSSI‐hosted central server provides the computational molecular sciences community a location to freely access tens of millions of QC computations for machine learning, methodology assessment, force‐field fitting, and more through a Python interface. Facile, user‐friendly mining of the centrally archived quantum chemical data also can be achieved through web applications found at https://qcarchive.molssi.org. The software infrastructure can be used as a standalone platform to compute, structure, and distribute hundreds of millions of QC computations for individuals or groups of researchers at any scale. The QCArchive Infrastructure is open‐source (BSD‐3C), code repositories can be found at https://github.com/MolSSI, and releases can be downloaded via PyPI and Conda.


A technique was recently developed for the fabrication of microfluidic devices that involves using thermally sacrificial polymeric materials in conjunction with other conventional microelectronic processes. This method provides more versatility and choice for construction materials than other current techniques, and it enables the integration of higher levels of functionality into microfluidic systems (i.e., fully integrated multilevel fluidic systems with functional valves, pumping systems, other microelectromechanical system components, and microelectronic devices). This article describes recent results related to the development of photodefinable polycarbonates with improved properties for thermally sacrificial polymer applications. Results of the synthesis and characterization of a polycarbonate that can be directly patterned with the use of photoacid generators via acid-catalyzed thermolysis of polycarbonates are presented.


Npr2 and TORC1 regulate the ability of yeast to synthesize and utilize glutamine when the cells are grown on a nonfermentable carbon source. This Podcast features an interview with Benjamin Tu, author of a Research Article that appears in the 16 December 2014 issue of Science Signaling, about metabolic rewiring that enables cells to survive nutrient limitation. Under nutrient-replete conditions, signaling through the target of rapamycin complex 1 (TORC1) promotes protein synthesis and cell growth. Inhibition of TORC1 signaling under nutrient-limiting conditions promotes autophagy, a set of processes through which cells can break down nonessential or damaged cellular components to recycle their chemical constituents. In yeast, a complex containing Npr2 mediates TORC1 inhibition when nutrients are limiting to promote autophagy. Knocking out npr2 prevents yeast from initiating autophagy under nutrient-limiting conditions, yet yeast lacking Npr2 actually proliferate faster than normal cells under nutrient-limiting conditions. Laxman et al. found that, when grown on a nonfermentable carbon source instead of glucose, npr2-deficient cells synthesized glutamine and used it as a nitrogen donor to make nitrogen-containing metabolites. These cells also had increased abundance of S-adenosyl methionine (SAM), which drives cell growth.


Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) contain considerable amounts of cash and process sensitive customer data to perform cash transactions and banking operations. In the past, criminals mainly focused on physical attacks to gain access to cash inside an ATM's safe. For example, they captured customer data on the magnetic strip of an ATM card with skimming devices during insertion of the card. These days, criminals increasingly use logical attacks to manipulate an ATM's software in order to withdraw cash or to capture customer data. To understand the risks that arise from such logical attacks, we have conducted a risk assessment of an ATM platform. This ATM platform is running in a real bank environment and is built on the CEN/XFS specification. The result of this assessment has revealed the main issues that are responsible for vulnerabilities of an ATM platform. The risk assessment has identified effective countermeasures and has additionally provided a prioritization of activities for ATM manu-


In situ soil moisture measurements play a key role for a variety of large‐scale applications. A deep understanding of their quality, especially in terms of spatial representativeness, is crucial for reliably using them as reference data. This study assesses random errors in the coarse‐scale representation of in situ soil moisture measurements from more than 1400 globally distributed stations, drawn from the International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN), using the triple collocation method. The method was applied on the original measurements as well as on soil moisture anomalies. Error estimates were summarized for different networks, depths, and measurement principles and furthermore related to the respective climate class, soil type, average soil moisture condition, and soil moisture variability to find possible relationships between measurement errors and local properties. The average network error varies from about 0.02 to 0.06 m3m−3 with generally increasing error variability with increasing average error. Trends of (i) decreasing errors with increasing measurement depth and of (ii) increasing errors with increasing average soil moisture conditions and soil moisture variability were found for most networks and sensor types. The errors when looking into anomalies are in general lower than for absolute values. No statistically reliable trends for climate‐ and soil texture classes were found. These results highlighted the necessity of developing a comprehensive quality control process for in situ measurements to reliably exploit existing data sets and to select representative sites and sensors most appropriate for the requirements of a particular larger‐scale application.


To download this article, click here . This article examines the relationships between the three South Caucasus states, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and the European Union (EU) with regard to the implementation of EU external governance through the Eastern Partnership (EaP) and within the context of geostrategic competition between the EU and Russia. I argue that the EU is facing momentous challenges in implementing external governance in the South Caucasus states owing to four major factors: a rival form of governance provided by Russia, a scalable asymmetry of partnership between the EU and the three South Caucasus states, the energy conundrum, and frozen conflicts in the region. Moreover, the increasing antagonism between two regional powers – the EU and Russia – shapes and reshapes the domestic political landscape in the South Caucasus, rendering the region vulnerable to external power competition. This, in turn, undermines the effectiveness of the implementation of external governance.


This paper presents improvements in flow detection by electrical cross-correlation spectroscopy. This new technique detects molecular number fluctuations of electrochemically active analyte molecules as they are transported by liquid flow through a nanochannel. The fluctuations are used as a marker of liquid flow as their time of flight in between two consecutive transducers is determined, thereby allowing for the measurement of liquid flow rates in the picoliter-per-minute regime. Here we show an enhanced record-low sensitivity below 1 pL/min by capitalizing on improved electrical instrumentation, an optimized sensor geometry and a smaller channel cross section. We further discuss the impact of sensor geometry on the cross-correlation functions.


Surface water samples were collected along the west coast of Taiwan during two expedition cruises which represent periods of different regional climatic patterns. Information on hydrochemical parameters such as salinity, nutrients, suspended particulate matter (SPM), and Chlorophyll a concentrations were obtained, and dissolved and particulate trace metal (Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn) concentrations were determined. Spatial variations were observed and the differences were attributed to (1) influence of varying extents of terrestrial inputs from the mountainous rivers of Taiwan to the coast, and (2) urbanization and industrialization in different parts of the island. Geochemical processes such as desorption (Cd) and adsorption to sinking particles (Pb) also contributed to the variability of trace metal distributions in coastal waters. Results showed temporal variations in chemical characteristics in coastal waters as a consequence of prevailing monsoons. During the wet season when river discharges were higher, the transport of particulate metals was elevated due to increased sediment loads. During the dry season, lower river discharges resulted in a lesser extent of estuarine dilution effect for chemicals of anthropogenic sources, indicated by higher dissolved concentrations present in coastal waters associated with slightly higher salinity.


Objectives Sickness absence after mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is frequent due to postconcussive symptoms. We examined labour market attachment following mTBI up to 5 years postinjury. Design and setting Nationwide cohort study with register follow-up. Participants Patients between 18 and 60 years with mTBI (International Classification of Diseases, version 10 diagnosis S06.0) were extracted from the Danish National Patient Register (n=19 732). Controls were matched on sex, age and municipality (n=18 640). Patients with spinal cord and column injuries, traumatic brain injury and concussions 5 years preinjury or as secondary diagnosis to the concussion in the inclusion period were excluded. Primary and secondary outcome measures Data were extracted from the Danish Register for Evaluation of Marginalization. Primary outcome was 'not attending ordinary work' defined as receiving any social transfer payment. Secondary outcomes were health-related benefits, limited attachment to the labour market, permanent lack of attachment to the labour market and death. Results 5 years after diagnosis, 43% of patients were not attending ordinary work. The odds increased from 6 months (OR 1.30, 95% CI 1.24 to 1.36) to 5 years (OR 1.54, 95% CI 1.45 to 1.63). The odds of health-related benefits were 32% (OR 1.32, 95% CI 1.22 to 1.42) at 6 months and 22% (OR 1.22, 95% CI 1.12 to 1.33) at 5 years. Limited attachment to the labour market showed increased odds at 5 years (OR 1.38, 95% CI 1.27 to 1.51) and the odds of permanent lack of attachment to the labour market were higher for patients compared with controls (OR 2.59, 95% CI 2.30 to 2.92). Death was more than two times higher at 5 years postinjury (OR 2.62, 95% CI 2.10 to 3.26). Conclusions 43% of concussed patients were not attending ordinary work 5 years postinjury and received health and social transfer benefits. We conclude that mTBI has a long-term impact on labour market attachment. Prevention and treatment of persisting postconcussive symptoms should be considered. Trial registration number NCT03214432; Results


The flight performance of animals depends greatly on the efficacy with which they generate aerodynamic forces. Accordingly, maximum range, load-lifting capacity and peak accelerations during manoeuvres are all constrained by the efficiency of momentum transfer to the wake. Here, we use high-speed particle image velocimetry (1 kHz) to record flow velocities in the near wake of desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria, Forskål). We use the measured flow fields to calculate time-varying span efficiency throughout the wing stroke cycle. The locusts are found to operate at a maximum span efficiency of 79 per cent, typically at a plateau of about 60 per cent for the majority of the downstroke, but at lower values during the upstroke. Moreover, the calculated span efficiencies are highest when the largest lift forces are being generated (90% of the total lift is generated during the plateau of span efficiency) suggesting that the combination of wing kinematics and morphology in locust flight perform most efficiently when doing the most work.


A novel all-optical method for ultra-wideband (UWB) monocycle pulses generation based on cross polarization modulation (CPM) effect in highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber is proposed and demonstrated. Due to the CPM effect between the probe light and the pump pulse, a pair of polarity-reversed Gaussian pulses is produced. After proper differential delay, an UWB monocycle pulse with 84-ps width and the fractional bandwidth of 153% is generated after photodetection.


In race and sex discrimination class actions, if a defendant employer makes a Rule 68 offer of judgment to the named plaintiffs, courts routinely refuse to dismiss the class claims. In stark contrast, in collective actions for failure to pay lawful wages, if a defendant employer makes a Rule 68 offer of judgment, courts will often dismiss the entire collective action as having been mooted by the named plaintiffs' recovery. The outcome of such a dichotomy is that low-wage workers are increasingly unable to challenge unlawful wage violations successfully because the aggregation mechanism is too easily defeated. Without an ability to group wage and hour claims in an aggregate action, multitudes of wage violations will go unheard because individual wage claims do not attract the attention of plaintiff's attorneys. This failure to protect an underprivileged group of low-wage workers the laws are explicitly trying to protect is striking and effectively subverts the statutory protections in place since the 1930s to combat wage theft by employers. By most accounts, the civil rights movement of the 1960s was successful in addressing discriminatory practices through not only substantive, statutory rights, but also procedural mechanisms by which those rights could be easily and appropriately vindicated through access to the courts. In contrast, the right of low-wage workers to receive what they lawfully earn has a long-standing statutory remedy but an antiquated procedural mechanism. That procedural mechanism both diminishes their ability to fully vindicate their rights and is also now being cited as the structural difference that allows other procedural rules (i.e., Rule 68) to deny standing in federal court at the outset. This article examines this rising phenomenon by first outlining the pressing societal need for collective litigation to ensure that adequate and available legal remedies remain for under-represented groups, such as low-wage workers. It also compares the procedural mechanisms for bringing aggregate litigation, Rule 23 class actions and section 216(b) collective actions, and examines how Rule 68 has both intended and unintended consequences when used by defendants to battle collective actions. Lastly, the article identifies the inconsistencies apparent in the federal case law denying the applicability of Rule 68 in the class context but more often dismissing collective claims when Rule 68 offers are made against collective action plaintiffs