Do labor unions have a future? This Article considers the role and importance of labor union structures, in particular the degree of centralization in collective bargaining, to the future of labor unions. Centralization refers primarily to the level at which collective bargaining takes place: whether at the plant, firm, industry, or national level. The Article examines the historical origins of different structures of bargaining in the United States and Europe, the important implications that centralization has for economic productivity, and the ways that various labor law rules reinforce or reflect different bargaining structures. Most critically, the Article contends that greater centralization of collective bargaining entails a broader, more "universal" representation of worker interests, has a stronger impact on unions' ability to lower income inequality, and, through its positive effects on economic productivity, reduces employer opposition to unionization in the long run. Although centralized bargaining is a medium- to long-term goal, the Article proposes ways that unions can change their own organizational structures, bargaining objectives, and organizing tactics to position themselves for future changes in bargaining structure and to avoid the pitfalls of the decentralized bargaining structures of the past.


New literacies in reading research demand for the study of comprehension skills using multiple modalities, through a more complex, multi-platform view of reading. Taking into account the robust roll of technology in our daily lives, research suggests that educators need activities to connect students' lack of reading skills with their growing multimodal literacy.
During the post-reading phase of a directed reading activity (DRA), students were engaged in digital storytelling, where they created digital videos and slideshows based on information text read during DRA. Previous studies highlighting the use of digital storytelling have been limited to narrative formats and the influence that participation in this activity has on self-esteem and identity. This activity has been widely recommended for improving writing among teachers and in teaching journals, but it has not been empirically studied in the classroom as a comprehension activity.
The theoretical framework that supported this study was Vygotsky's Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). The researcher used the CHAT framework and Burke's Pentad of Analysis (1969) to study the nature of student interactions.
Research questions for this study were answered through both quantitative and qualitative methods. The questions being asked by the researcher were: (1) What were the effects of participation in directed reading activity (DRA) modified to include digital storytelling in the post-reading phase of DRA on 6th graders' comprehension of information text? (2) Did the interactions observed during participation in directed reading activity modified to include digital storytelling reflect the principles promoted by Cultural-Historical Activity Theory?
Eighty sixth-grade students were randomly assigned to their digital storytelling groups. The subjects participated in whole-class DRA on two information texts, with the treatment group creating digital stories based on the texts. Cloze scores indicated that there was no significant difference in comprehension due to the treatment. However, there was ample evidence to support the claim that participation in digital storytelling instantiates the principles of CHAT.
Overall, digital storytelling does show promise as a multimodal instructional activity, and the discussion expands to several implications and recommendations of future research on this instructional activity.


Antibacterial activity of stable 1-monoacylglycerol (1-MAG) microemulsions (MEs) of capric (C10:0), undecanoic (C11:0), lauric (C12:0), and myristic (C14:0) acids against the growth of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria was tested and their inhibition effect was compared to that of neat 1-MAG. To reveal their behavior with respect to eukaryotic cells, the cytotoxicity on mouse fibroblasts was also determined. The MEs were studied via pseudo-ternary phase diagrams in order to find out the miscibility areas of all components used. The results indicated that at 1-MAG concentrations of 1000–1900 mg/L, an inhibition of gram-negative strains was improved compared to neat 1-MAG and depended on the fatty acid type; however, at lower 1-MAG concentrations, both systems showed comparable effect. The opposite trend was detected on gram-positive bacteria, where 1-MAGs showed better performance compared to corresponding MEs. The best antibacterial activity against both bacterial types was observed in 1-MAG C12:0 MEs. MTT assay revealed significant cytotoxicity of all MEs. The threshold of 10 mg/L was determined as the limit for moderate toxicity, which represents 40–60% cell survival. All prepared MEs were transparent, stable during the storage period of 6 months and their particle sizes were between 15 and 20 nm.

Practical applications: 1-MAGs belong to safe and efficient antimicrobial agents and their application may be a convenient alternative to usage of synthetic antimicrobials; however, one of their limitations for certain applications is their insolubility in aqueous systems. This drawback can be reduced by encapsulation of 1-MAGs in suitable ME system. The presented study has confirmed that 1-MAG MEs possess suitable inhibitory activity against both gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria. Efficacy of MEs against gram-negative strains was enhanced compared to 1-MAG alone. Although the growth of gram-positive bacteria was less affected by MEs when compared to neat 1-MAG, the results can be closely related to potential industrial applications of the MEs as effective agents for cosmetics, dermatology, food industry, paint or coatings where water-based systems are frequently used and desired. The application of studied systems might be to some extent limited due to the potential health risk caused by the observed cytotoxicity.


More than 22 million people in the world in 2030 are predicted to be diagnosed with cancer. In Indonesia, in 2020 the number of new cases of cancer reached 396,914 cases and 234,511 patients were reported to have died (Sung et al., 2021). There are three types of cancer in Indonesia that experienced the highest increase in the 2020 period, namely: breast cancer 16.6%, cervical cancer 9.2%, and lung cancer 8.8% (GLOBOCAN, 2020). Cancer results in an increased economic burden for patients, their families and healthcare providers. Household expenditure is also affected after a patient is diagnosed with cancer, as out-of-pocket (OOP) costs incurred to support specialized treatment/therapy are not fully covered by the National Health Insurance. In addition, direct non-medical costs are still imposed on patients and their families, as well as indirect costs that can affect the family's economic situation. This study was conducted with the aim of understanding the experiences of cancer patients and their families in depth; knowing the factors that contribute to the patient's care and treatment process; knowing the estimated direct medical and non-medical costs and indirect costs that become OOP; and providing evidence-based recommendations to support interventions by the government in the issue of cancer patient service delivery. This study uses the illness trajectory model in analyzing the field findings, so the main focus is the disease journey experienced by patients and their families. The use of the illness trajectory can represent the cumulative effects of the disease that affect physical symptoms, changes in individual and social functioning of patients, and specifically examine each stage experienced by patients from the initial diagnosis to experiencing subsequent symptoms (Smit et al., 2019). Furthermore, this study also uses the concept of OOP costs in health in order to describe the economic burden experienced by households or individuals due to the loss of economic resources and opportunities due to the occurrence of an illness (Pisu et al., 2010). Adherence and willingness to continue undergoing treatment will also depend on the patient's resilience in the progression of the disease. The concept of resilience is relevant and can be used to analyze the factors that contribute to the cancer course of the study informants. Based on field findings, in the pre-diagnosis phase the majority of cancer patients ignore the initial symptoms they feel. This is due to the lack of health literacy, so that before the condition is severe they choose not to check themselves to a health facility. In addition, experience, motivation and knowledge also influence the actions taken by cancer patients in this early phase. Then in the phase of going to health facilities, this study found barriers experienced by cancer patients include: inadequate hospital services, minimal transparency of the stages of treatment delivered by doctors, and limited information regarding the stages of referral provided by medical personnel to patients. The factors that influence the process of care and treatment of cancer patients found are: support from caregivers, support from family and extended family, support from the community, information from third parties, and internal motivation of patients to recover. The forms of support provided vary from psychological support, assistance, financial support, material support, support in seeking various information related to treatment, support for choosing health facilities, and arranging financial resources during treatment. Findings related to non-medical direct costs include several substantial expenses such as: transportation costs, accommodation (lodging), meals (other than hospital nutrition services), additional vitamins, alternative medicine, diapers, and costs for temporary childcare when the patient is out of town. Transportation costs include land travel costs (including tolls or drivers), airplane, motorcycle taxi, and boat costs. As for non-medical indirect costs found in this study, it is the loss of productivity of patients or their families. Loss of productivity such as salary cuts due to absence from work, prioritizing caring for cancer patients over work, or reducing the frequency of work due to accompanying patients undergoing treatment. This study also analyzed the implications of the field findings for cancer control policies in Indonesia. First, related to the factors that contribute to policy proposals based on the results of qualitative analysis of field findings, namely: the long duration of treatment for cancer patients with high intensity has implications for the direct non-medical expenses of patients and their families. The current policy still focuses on prevention programs and improving case management to tackle Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs). So that attention to curative policies for the care and treatment of cancer patients has not been maximized. Second, regarding direct medical expenditure which includes: treatment/supplements, technology, targeted therapy, referral systems, equitable distribution of health facilities, and increasing the number of oncology specialists. One of the policies in terms of financial efficiency is increasing the capacity of Health Technology Assessment (PTK). Health Technology Assessment in the National Health Insurance program (PTK-JKN) is a policy analysis conducted systematically with a multidisciplinary approach to assess the impact of the use of health technology. However, this policy still focuses on increasing the efficiency of financing from BPJS Kesehatan and health facilities, not yet accommodating increased efficiency from patient/household spending on health. Third, direct non-medical expenses include: palliative care costs (homecare), transportation costs, food costs, accommodation costs, and other expenses that have not been included in the benefit package of the national health insurance. Policies related to palliative care in Indonesia currently focus on care in health facilities. Other direct non-medical expenses have also not been included in the national health insurance benefit package. Fourth, it relates to indirect costs that must be incurred by patients and their families, namely: risk of losing their job due to caring for a family member diagnosed with cancer, salary cuts, not getting incentives at work, reduced income, decreased productivity, decreased mental health conditions. Currently there is no policy that can encourage psychoeducational treatment for patients and caregivers in the same health facility.


The 2008 U.S. presidential campaign has provided a lifetime's worth of surprises. Once again, however, the nomination process highlighted the importance of organization, political prowess, timing, and money. And once again, it raised many hackles. The Democratic contest in particular generated many complaints --for example, it started too early, it was too long, and Super Tuesday was overloaded. This timely book synthesizes new analysis by premier political scientists into a cohesive look at the presidential nomination process --the ways in which it is broken and how it might be fixed. The contributors to Reforming the Presidential Nomination Process address different facets of the selection process, starting with a brief history of how we got to this point. They analyze the importance --and perceived unfairness --of the earliest primaries and discuss what led to record turnouts in 2008. What roles do media coverage and public endorsements play? William Mayer explains the ""superdelegate"" phenomenon and the controversy surrounding it; James Gibson and Melanie Springer evaluate public perceptions of the current process as well as possible reforms. Larry Sabato (A More Perfect Constitution) calls for a new nomination system, installed via constitutional amendment, while Tom Mann of Brookings opines on calls for reform that arose in 2008 and Daniel Lowenstein examines the process by which reforms may be adopted --or blocked.


Objective:To determine the associations between HIV encephalitis and other central nervous system (CNS) pathology, viral burden, cognitive impairment, zidovudine therapy and risk group in AIDS patients. Design:Planned autopsy study in AIDS patients evaluated prospectively for numerous clinical parameters. Setting:Regional academic centre for clinical care and pathology examination of patients with HIV infection. Patients:Edinburgh cohort of HIV-positive patients prospectively assessed for cognitive impairment, immunosuppression and clinical course. Unbiased series of consecutive autopsies in 27 homosexual men and 39 drug-using patients with AIDS. Interventions:Zidovudine therapy monitored in all patients. Main outcome measures:Determination of CNS viral burden and pathology including immunocytochemically confirmed HIV encephalitis in injecting drug users (IDU) versus homosexual AIDS patients with known CD4 counts and cognitive function. Results:HIV encephalitis was present in 59% of IDU and 15% of homosexuals: 88% of patients with encephalitis had displayed cognitive impairment. HIV encephalitis was strongly associated with a high viral load and HIV p24 immunopositivity. Opportunistic infections and lymphomas were more common in homosexuals (63%) than in IDU (31%) and were associated with the degree of immunosuppression before death. Within both groups, prolonged zidovudine treatment was associated with a lower incidence of HIV encephalitis. Conclusions:This study documents two separate CNS outcomes in AIDS patients in that HIV encephalitis occurs independently of opportunistic infections and lymphomas and shows different associations with risk group, immunosuppression and antiviral treatment before death.


In the southwestern Atlantic Ocean, leatherback turtles Dermochelys coriacea are only known to regularly nest in eastern Brazil, on the coast of the state of Espírito Santo. Here, we present an analysis of the nesting ecology, population trends and conservation status of this leather back turtle colony between 1988 and 2017. We observed an increasing, although variable, trend in the annual number of nests, with the mean increasing from 25.6 nests in the first 5 yr of the study to 89.8 in the last 5 yr. Concurrently, there was also a significant decrease in the mean curved carapace length of the population, which we hypothesize was caused by recruitment of new females to the nesting population. Throughout the study period, nests were concentrated in the southern part of the 160 km long study area. No change was observed in the annual median nesting date. Mean annual hatching success was 66.0% and no significant variation in hatching success was detected after a major spill of mining tailings into the nesting area in 2015. We postulate that local conservation actions that started in the 1980s have contributed to the gentle recovery of this population; however, given the small population size and restricted nesting geographical distribution alongside the persistence of various threats — fisheries bycatch, climate change, pollution and coastal development — this population continues to be of conservation concern.


What Causes Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Obsessive compulsive disorder is a severe, chronic mental illness that affects millions of individuals. However, the mechanisms underlying this disease are still largely unknown (see the Perspective by Rauch and Carlezon Jr.). Ahmari et al. (p. 1234) stimulated glutamatergic pathways between the orbitofrontal cortex and the ventromedial striatum and used grooming to assess obsessive compulsive behavior in mice. Repetitive stimulation over days triggered changes in the neuronal responses of the ventromedial striatum. Over time, the behavior of the animals became independent of stimulation and could be prevented by the antidepressant fluoxetine. Burguière et al. (p. 1243) investigated the neural basis of obsessive compulsive symptoms in a mutant mouse that showed excessive expression of a conditioned form of grooming. Normal behavior can be rescued in a mouse model of obsessive-compulsive disorder. [Also see Perspective by Rauch and Carlezon] Dysfunctions in frontostriatal brain circuits have been implicated in neuropsychiatric disorders, including those characterized by the presence of repetitive behaviors. We developed an optogenetic approach to block repetitive, compulsive behavior in a mouse model in which deletion of the synaptic scaffolding gene, Sapap3, results in excessive grooming. With a delay-conditioning task, we identified in the mutants a selective deficit in behavioral response inhibition and found this to be associated with defective down-regulation of striatal projection neuron activity. Focused optogenetic stimulation of the lateral orbitofrontal cortex and its terminals in the striatum restored the behavioral response inhibition, restored the defective down-regulation, and compensated for impaired fast-spiking neuron striatal microcircuits. These findings raise promising potential for the design of targeted therapy for disorders involving excessive repetitive behavior.


This thesis focuses on the development of new variants of adaptive filters. Built around state-space framework, the proposed filters are especially suitable for applications like tracking, output feedback control and recursive spectrum estimation. They operate without prior knowledge of process and observation noise statistics and exhibit good stability properties.The development in this thesis can broadly be classified into statespace least mean square (SSLMS) and finite memory least-squares filters. SSLMS is a generalization of the well-known least mean square (LMS) filter. Incorporating linear time-varying state-space model of thement in its tracking performance over the standard LMS. An extension of SSLMS is SSLMS with adaptive memory (SSLMSWAM).SSLMSWAM iteratively tunes the step-size parameter by stochastic gradient method in an attempt to yield its most appropriate value.This filter is useful for situations where a suitable value of step-size parameter is difficult to obtain beforehand. Recursive nature of an adaptive filter brings with it stability issues. The concept of finite memory (or receding horizon) for an adaptive filter is appealing because it ensures stability.This motivates the development of finite memory filters, both for unforced and forced systems. Finite impulse response (FIR) adaptive filter, built around structure of an unforced system, uses weighted observations on a finite interval. Uniform weighting of the observations results in rectangular RLS (RRLS). Additional flexibility is achieved by developing an adaptive memory variant of FIR adaptive filter.Similar to SSLMSWAM, the data window size is iteratively tuned so as to minimize the prediction error. For the forced system case, a useful solution in the form of receding horizon state observer is obtained. It finds utility in output feedback control of linear time-varying systems. An insight into convergence properties of finite memory based filters is provided by the convergence analyses. Spectrum update with the arrival of new data is a desirable feature in real-time spectrum estimation applications.The mathematical equivalence of RRLS resonator bank and recursive discrete Fourier transform (DFT) gives the rationale for using the newly developed filters for recursive spectrum estimation. A symmetric windowed variant of RRLS called 'truncated exponential RLS (TERLS) is useful for reducing spectral leakage.Same is true for an SSLMS resonator, which has an attractive feature that spectral side levels and main lobe width may be reduced simultaneously by reducing the step-size parameter. The higher order resonator (HOR), constructed from several SSLMS resonators, exhibits close resemblance to an ideal (rectangular) frequency bin, thus minimizing spectral leakage and increasing resolution.


We compared levels of (+)-catechin, (-)-epicatechin, and their metabolites in rat plasma and urine after oral administration. Rats were divided into four groups and given (+)-catechin (CA group), (-)-epicatechin (EC group), a mixture of the two (MIX group) or deionized water. Blood samples were collected before administration and at designated time intervals thereafter. Urine samples were collected 0-24 h postadministration. (+)-Catechin, (-)-epicatechin and their metabolites in plasma and urine were analyzed by HPLC-mass spectrometry after treatment with beta-glucuronidase and/or sulfatase. After administration, absorbed (+)-catechin and (-)-epicatechin were mainly present in plasma as metabolites, such as nonmethylated or 3'-O-methylated conjugates. In the CA and MIX groups, the primary metabolite of (+)-catechin in plasma was glucuronide in the nonmethylated form. In the EC and MIX groups, in contrast, the primary metabolites of (-)-epicatechin in plasma were glucuronide and sulfoglucuronide in nonmethylated forms, and sulfate in the 3'-O-methylated forms. Urinary excretion of the total amount of (-)-epicatechin metabolites in the EC group was significantly higher than the amount of (+)-catechin metabolites in the CA group. The sum of (+)-catechin metabolites in the urine was significantly lower in the MIX group than in the CA group, and the sum of (-)-epicatechin metabolites in the MIX group was also significantly lower than in the EC group. These results suggest that the bioavailability of (-)-epicatechin is higher than that of (+)-catechin in rats, and that, in combination, (+)-catechin and (-)-epicatechin might be absorbed competitively in the gastrointestinal tract of rats.


Nine Nummulites species: Nummulites fraasi De La Harpe 1883, Nummulites luxorensis Boukhary, Hussein- Kamel and Abdelmalik n. sp., Nummulites dandaraensis Boukhary, Hussein- Kamel and Abdelmalik n. sp., Nummulites rotularius Deshayes 1838, Nummulites subramondi De La Harpe 1883 (Topotype material from Gebel Deir, near Esna) sensu Schaub 1951, Nummulites thalmanni Schaub 1981, Nummulites aff. arnii Schaub 1981, Nummulites ornatus Schaub 1951 and Nummulites cailliaudi D'Archiac and Haime 1853 (Topotype material from Garra El Hamra, Bahariya Oasis) are described from Ypresian rocks in the Luxor-Minia reach of the Nile Valley and also from the region of Bahariya oasis. The study of the larger foraminifera from these two localities enables us to correlate the Thebes Formation in the Luxor- Qena stretch in the Nile Valley with the Minia Formation in some localities as in G. Drunka, Wadi Gabrawi, Assiut environ and Beni Hassan. The investigated strata could be also equated to the Naqb and Qazzun Formations in Bahariya Oasis, where the Naqb Formation is found to be correlatable with the Nusf and Farafra Formations, both underlying the Qazzun Forma- tion. The Thebes-Minia sequence could be also correlated with a recently described sequence from Northern Galala in the Eastern Desert (Boukhary et al. 2009). The identified biozones match well with the SBZ 10 - SBZ 12 zones of Serra - Kiel et al. 1998.


Abstract. Household Water Treatment and safe Storage (HWTS) systems aim to provide safe drinking water in an affordable manner to users where safe piped water supply is either not feasible or not reliable. In this study the effectiveness, economic parameters and costs of three selected HWTS systems were identified. The selected systems are SODIS, ceramic filter and biosand filter. These options were selected based on their accessibility, affordability and available scientific data. Data was obtained through peer-reviewed literature, reports, web-pages and informal sources. The findings show a wide dispersion for log removal of effectiveness of the HWTS systems. For bacteria (E. coli), log removals of 1–9 (SODIS), 0.5–7.2 (ceramic) and 0–3 (biosand) were reported. In the case of viruses (mostly echovirus and bacteriophages), log removals of 0–4.3 (SODIS), 0.09–2.4 (ceramic) and 0–7 (biosand) were found. The dispersions of log removals for both bacteria and viruses range from non-protective to highly protective according to WHO performance targets. The reported costs of HWTS systems show a wide range as well. The price per cubic meter water is found to be EUR 0–8 (SODIS), EUR 0.37–6.4 (ceramic) and EUR 0.08–12.3 (biosand). The retail prices found are: negligible (SODIS), USD 1.9–30 (ceramic) and USD 7–100 (biosand). No relationship was observed between removal efficiency and economics of the three systems.


Off-policy model-free deep reinforcement learning methods using previously collected data can improve sample efficiency over on-policy policy gradient techniques. On the other hand, on-policy algorithms are often more stable and easier to use. This paper examines, both theoretically and empirically, approaches to merging on- and off-policy updates for deep reinforcement learning. Theoretical results show that off-policy updates with a value function estimator can be interpolated with on-policy policy gradient updates whilst still satisfying performance bounds. Our analysis uses control variate methods to produce a family of policy gradient algorithms, with several recently proposed algorithms being special cases of this family. We then provide an empirical comparison of these techniques with the remaining algorithmic details fixed, and show how different mixing of off-policy gradient estimates with on-policy samples contribute to improvements in empirical performance. The final algorithm provides a generalization and unification of existing deep policy gradient techniques, has theoretical guarantees on the bias introduced by off-policy updates, and improves on the state-of-the-art model-free deep RL methods on a number of OpenAI Gym continuous control benchmarks.


This article investigates verb placement, especially Verb second (V2), in post-puberty second language (L2) learners of two closely related Germanic V2 languages: Swedish and German. Håkansson, et al. (2002) have adduced data from first language (L1) Swedish-speaking learners of German in support of the claim that the syntactic property of V2 never transfers from the L1 to L2 interlanguage grammars. Regardless of L1, learners are said to follow a hypothe-sized universal developmental path of L2 German verb placement, where V2 is mastered very late (only after Object–Verb, OV, has been acquired), if ever. Explanations include the notion of Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) being a more basic, 'canonical' word order (e.g. Clahsen and Muysken, 1986), so-called 'vulnerability' of the C-domain (Platzack, 2001), and 'processability', according to which SVX and Adv–SVX (i.e. V3) are easier to process (i.e. produce) than XVS (i.e. V2) (e.g. Pienemann, 1998). However, the empirical data comes exclusively from Swedes learning German as a third language, after substantial exposure to English. When these learners violate V2, syntactic transfer from English, a non-V2 language, cannot be ruled out. In order to control for this potential confound, I compare new oral production data from six adult Swedish ab initio learners of German, three with prior knowledge of English and three without. With an appropriate elicitation method, the informants can be shown to productively use non-subject-initial V2 in their German after four months of exposure, at a point when their interlanguage syntax elsewhere is non-targetlike (VO instead of OV). Informants who do not know English never violate V2 (0%), indicating transfer of V2-L1 syntax. Those with prior knowledge of English are less targetlike in their L3-German productions (45% V2 violations), indicating interference from non-V2 English. These results suggest that, contra Håkansson et al. (2002), learners do transfer the property of V2 from their L1, and that L2 knowledge of a non-V2 language (English) may obscure this V2 transfer. The findings also suggest that V2 is not difficult to acquire per se, and that V2 is not developmentally dependent on target headedness of the VP (German OV) having been acquired first.


Recent requirements to reduce thermal coal plant emissions, and ultrafine coal's tendency to produce these emissions due to its typically high ash and moisture contents have limited the use of ultrafine coal. Ultrafine coal in beneficiation plants are usually either disposed of in tailing ponds at a loss in combustible material or disposed of by blending with coarser higher-grade products, resulting in a reduction in marketed product quality. A study of the options for processing ultrafine coal, consisting of < 200 μm hydrocyclone overflow, with 38.8 percent ash content is presented here. Ultrafine coal was processed based on 200-μm sieve bend and 10-μm hydrocyclone classifications, enhanced gravity separation (EGS) and froth flotation concentration as well as combinations of these. Yield, combustible material recovery (CMR) and product humidity were evaluated as test results.Depending on the processing applied, product ash content could be reduced up to 49.7 percent, and up to 95.8 percent CMR of the actual run of mill feed could be attained. All of the processing options analyzed could reduce produced thermal electric plant emissions due to ash and moisture from 22 to 38 percent of the actual unprocessed ultrafine coal product.Froth flotation was found to be the optimal process, yielding a product with the lowest ash content attained of 19.5 percent and CMR of 92.3 percent. Being the most versatile of the processes evaluated, it is capable of producing coal with varied ash contents but is subject to potential variations in coal flotability. The most complicated of the processing options, a combined sieve bend recovery of the > 200 μm fraction and EGS processing of the 10 to 200 μm fraction was found to be the next best option, attaining a combined 90.1 percent CMR and 25.0 percent ash content.


When Arizona Governor Janice K. Brewer signed the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act - better known as SB 1070 - into law in April 2010, the world was taken aback not only by the State of Arizona's brazen attempt to regulate immigration at the state level, but by the manner in which it pledged to do so. By giving state and local law enforcement officials the responsibility to detain persons that they have "reasonable suspicion" to believe are unlawfully present, the Arizona immigration law was not only branded "the toughest immigration law in the country," but it was also heavily criticized as a law which premised its enforcement on racial profiling of Latinos and other racial minorities and which would require anyone to produce proof of citizenship to law enforcement on demand. Although SB 1070 seemed to have come out of nowhere to many persons, residents of the State of Arizona and other observers of Arizona state politics are keenly aware that its passage by the Arizona legislature and its signing by Governor Brewer were in the making for the better part of the last decade. Beginning with the approval of Proposition 200 in 2004 - a ballot initiative formally known as the Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen and Protection Act that prohibited undocumented persons from voting and from receiving access to state and local public benefits - a concerted effort by Arizona state legislators and anti-immigrant groups led to the enactment of no less than a half-dozen laws designed to regulate immigration and punish undocumented immigrants in the State of Arizona. While the anti-immigrant fervor in Arizona would reach a crescendo with the enactment of SB 1070, the truth is that its passage merely represents the codification of a scheme designed to ensure "attrition by enforcement" of undocumented immigrants in the State of Arizona that had been building for quite some time, particularly in Phoenix, the state capitol and the county seat of Maricopa County, which is home to more than 3/5 of the state's population and is under the jurisdiction of the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio. This Article examines the road leading up to the passage of SB 1070 in early 2010, and attempts to demonstrate how it and other state immigration laws that purport to be a legitimate exercise of governmental authority are, in fact, tools of oppression, racism, and xenophobia, particularly against Latinos. In looking back on the state laws regulating immigration that preceded SB 1070, this Article argues that by using alienage as a proxy for race, color, and national origin, Arizona's attempt to regulate immigration at the state level is a form of legitimized vigilantism designed to purge the State of Arizona not only of undocumented persons, but of all persons who are or appear to be of Latino heritage, through racial profiling by state and local law enforcement. Part I provides an overview of the pre-SB 1070 immigration regulations enacted in Arizona during the 2000s, either by the Arizona legislature or through the approval of ballot initiatives by Arizona voters. Part II discusses how this assault on the rights of Latino immigrants and citizens in the State of Arizona has given rise to a powerful grassroots response, in which Latinos and their allies have fought back against the civil and human rights abuses that have resulted in the wake of various state and local anti-immigrant laws and demanded iya basta! In light of this response, I examine how Arizona has transformed from a place where immigrants and Latinos suffered in relative silence to become the home of a vocal, passionate group of advocates whose activism has made Phoenix the modern-day Selma in the struggle for immigrant and Latino civil rights in America. Finally, in Part III, I examine the landscape for state and local anti-immigrant regulations in the United States post-SB 1070, and offer a prognostication as to what the battle over immigrants' and Latino rights in Arizona means for the struggle for federal comprehensive immigration reform going forward.


Low birth weight infants have a higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome, including Type II Diabetes. Fetal muscle is growth restricted in low birth weight infants and is the main tissue for determining insulin resistance. Recent studies indicate premature senescence in low birth weight rodents, which could lead to adult disease. In utero environments may play a role in the development of senescence through increased reactive oxygen species (ROS). Telomerase is present at high levels during development and protects cells from cellular stress and apoptosis. We postulate that telomerase protects cells from DNA damage and premature senescence. A primary culture of fetal guinea pig muscle cells were grown at 20% and 2% oxygen concentrations and treated with a telomerase inhibitor for 48 hours. ROS detection was conducted with MitoSOX, Mitotracker and DCF staining. Cells cultured at 20% O2 and treated with telomerase inhibitor displayed reduced growth rates and increased levels of senescence markers, including p21 and p53. DNA damage, measured by γH2AX staining at telomeres, was significantly increased at all oxygen concentrations with telomerase inhibition. Telomerase inhibition increased phosphorylation of metabolic proteins p66Shc and S6K and increased mitochondrial ROS levels, which can lead to DNA damage and senescence. Telomerase may protect cells during development from adverse in utero environments that cause premature senescence.


We experimentally study the effect of alternative campaign finance systems - as characterized by different information structure about donors - on donations, election outcomes, political candidates' policy choices, and welfare. Three alternative campaign finance systems are considered: a full anonymity (FA) system in which neither the politicians nor the voters are informed about the donors' ideal policies or levels of donations; a partial anonymity (PA) system in which only the politicians, but not the voters, are informed about the donors' ideal policies and donations; and finally a no anonymity (NA) system in which both the politicians and the voters are informed about the donors' ideal policies and donations. We find that donors contribute less in the FA system than in the PA and NA system, and candidates are less likely to deviate from their ideal policies under FA than under the PA and NA systems. The effect of donations on the candidate's policy deviations differs in FA from that in PA and NA. Specifically, in the FA system larger donations lead to smaller deviations from the candidate's ideal policy; but in the NA and PA systems, larger donations lead to larger deviations. As a result we observe that the donations lead to a centrist bias in the candidate's policy choices, i.e., donations are more likely to make extreme candidate move to the center than to make centrist candidate move to the right. This centrist bias is present more robustly in FA treatments. Finally, we find that donors greatly benefit from the possibility of donations regardless of the finance system. Voter welfare remains virtually unchanged under the PA and NA systems, especially when there is competition among the donors. Our findings provide the first experimental evidence supportive of Ayres and Ackerman's (2002) campaign finance reform proposal.


Where CGIAR breeding programs rely on the private sector for the multiplication and distribution of improved cultivars, persistent challenges have dampened their impact on varietal adoption and turnover rates. Part of the problem is that research and practice in CGIAR and among its national breeding program partners tend to treat the private sector as a vehicle for seed delivery, rather than as commercial businesses facing a range of unique constraints and threats. This paper adopts a value chain framework to examine these relationships and pathways for improved varietal adoption/turnover outcomes in three cases: hybrid maize, farmed fish, and rice. In the first two cases, weak incentives and high risks left seed companies reluctant to invest in the marketing and quality assurance efforts needed to realize near-term impacts at scale from breeding investments. In the third case, seed companies played an insignificant role: grain traders supplied certified seed to smallholders, potentially prioritizing consumers' quality preferences over climate-resilience and stress-tolerance traits for farmers. The findings raise important questions about the role of CGIAR and national breeding programs; specifically, how these programs can effectively support the private sector to deliver impact at greater scale, how consumer preferences are captured in trait prioritization within breeding programs, and what types of incentive mechanisms can be changed within breeding programs to advance a genuine shift towards 'demand-oriented' plant breeding.


The story of the women's movement in Nicaragua is a fascinating tale of resistance, strategy, and faith. From its birth in 1977 under the Somoza dictatorship through the Sandinista revolution to the fall of the Chamorro government, the Nicaraguan women's movement has navigated revolutionary upheaval, profound changes in government, and rapidly shifting definitions of women's roles in society. Through it all, the movement has surged, regressed, and persevered, entering the twenty-first century a powerful and influential force, stretching from the grassroots to the national level. How did women in an economically underdeveloped Central American country, with little history of organizing, feminism, or democracy, succeed in creating networks, organizations, and campaigns that carved out a gender identity and challenged dominant ideologies (both revolutionary and conservative)? In Still Fighting Katherine Isbester seeks to understand. She analyzes the complex and rich case of Nicaragua in order to learn more about the dynamics of social movements in general and women's organizing in particular. Social movement theory offers Isbester an analytic tool to explain the extraordinary evolution of the Nicaraguan movement. She theorizes that a sustainable movement is composed of three elements: a focused goal, a mobilization of resources, and an identity. The lack of any one of these weakens a social movement. Isbester shows how this theory is borne out by the experience of the Nicaraguan women's movement over the past thirty years. She demonstrates, for example, how the revolutionary government of the 1980s co-opted the women's movement, crippling its ability to create an autonomous identity, choose it own goals, and mobilize resources independent of the state. Hence, it lost legitimacy, membership, and influence. She traces the movement's resurgence in the 1990s, the result of his redifinition as an autonomous movement organized around an identity of care. Still Fighting combines social theory with field research, leading a new wave of scholarship on women in Latin America. Isbester interviewed more than a hundred key participants in the women's movement, in addition to members of the National Assembly, male leaders of other social movements, and women outside the movement. In Nicaragua, she was witness to much political organizing, enabling her to reveal the organic intricacy, as well as the historical path, of a social movement. Still Fighting will be an important book for a broad range of students and professionals in the areas of social movements, social change, gender, politics, and Latin America.


A special class of cuprous-based inorganic oxide materials, synthesized as nanoparticles via hydrothermal and co-precipitation methods, are portable to spectrally-selective absorber coatings with high solar-thermal energy conversion efficiency. Operating reliably at elevated temperatures when used in tandem with solar concentrators, these materials enable cost-competitive solar energy conversion technology that can be incorporated with thermal energy storage systems, supporting the viability of novel renewable power generation; notably, optimizing absorptive performance while mitigating thermal losses through re-radiated waste heat motivates sustainable energy production particular to desert climates, where water conservation and ecological sensitivity needs are paramount. This work targets the chemical synthesis optimization of such absorber coating materials to reliably form spectrally-selective surface texturing. Specifically, the synthesis of phase-stable unimetallic and bi-metallic oxide materials (CuO, Co3O4, Cu0.15Co2.84O4, Cu1.5Mn1.5O4), while viable for bulk manufacturability of absorber coatings, can be improved to increase solar absorptive capability with the addition of embedding sacrificial polymer beads. By modifying coating surface morphology, adjustable porous geometries materialize at mesoscale, enabling facile light-trapping structures for high ultraviolet and visible spectral absorptance while limiting infrared emittance. Morphological detail of the fabricated coating materials, as qualified by Field-Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM), determine quantitative correlations in calculating spectral absorptance, optical scatter, and irradiance/exitance distributions of incident solar radiation. Image processing on the materials microscopy data is used in custom raytracing simulations that calculate energy propagation to correlate material properties based on surface structuring. To ensure an accurate representation of the sample morphology, multiresolution analysis is performed to construct approximated surface profiles of the material. Ultimately, these computational approaches are proposed for optimizing chemical reaction conditions of inorganic nanomaterial syntheses, demonstrating simulation approaches to predict coating performance, supporting the characterization of nanomaterial fabrication that result in absorber coatings tenable for long-term usage in solar power technologies.


This study charts variation in subject inversion constructions in Bantu languages. It distinguishes between seven types of inversion constructions: formal locative inversion, semantic locative inversion, instrument inversion, patient inversion, (clausal) complement inversion, default agreement inversion and agreeing inversion. Based on a set of nine surface variables, a matrix of inversion constructions is developed which identifies characteristics of the set of constructions overall as well as of each individual construction type. The distribution of the different inversion constructions is documented with reference to a sample of 46 Bantu languages, from which geographical and typological generalisations are drawn. For example, languages with instrument inversion or with patient inversion always have locative inversion (but not vice versa), or if a language has at least one inversion construction, it always has at least either default agreement inversion or agreeing inversion. Finally, underlying parameters potentially accounting for the variation are discussed, such as the status of preverbal locatives as DP or PP, the agreement parameter and the syntactic and thematic restrictions on the preverbal element.


The paper of this research is used for managing the users' wireless network that can be accessed using hotspot method in terms of improving the stability of internet access in accordance with the bandwidth capacity. This research applies mark packet and mark connection techniques to divide the available average bandwidth capacity and monitor the traffic data to support the needs of network service so that each client can work with the bandwidth capacity in accessing the internet. The form of this research is case study applying research and development method and the techniques of data collection are in forms of observations, interviews, and documentation studies. This research applies NDLC (Network Development Life Cycle) method and uses Top-Down approach. The result of this research shows the ways of allocating the bandwidth numbers being available for each user to have stable and prevalent internet access and ease the operators in monitoring the users. In this case, the researcher uses Winbox as a software and Mikrotik OS as router and gateway in dividing the bandwidth


Optimal stopping is the problem of deciding the right time at which to take a particular action in a stochastic system, in order to maximize an expected reward. It has many applications in areas such as finance, healthcare, and statistics. In this paper, we employ deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) to learn optimal stopping policies in two financial engineering applications: namely option pricing, and optimal option exercise. We present for the first time a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the quality of optimal stopping policies identified by three state of the art deep RL algorithms: double deep Q-learning (DDQN), categorical distributional RL (C51), and Implicit Quantile Networks (IQN). In the case of option pricing, our findings indicate that in a theoretical Black-Schole environment, IQN successfully identifies nearly optimal prices. On the other hand, it is slightly outperformed by C51 when confronted to real stock data movements in a put option exercise problem that involves assets from the S&P500 index. More importantly, the C51 algorithm is able to identify an optimal stopping policy that achieves 8% more out-of-sample returns than the best of four natural benchmark policies. We conclude with a discussion of our findings which should pave the way for relevant future research.


Significant environmental impacts associated with electric vehicle (EV) Li-ion battery pack production has lead to a desire to explore the possibility of offsetting some of the environmental burdens associated with the battery pack production from the EV to a post-vehicle application. In this study, different battery characteristics were calculated in order to allocate environmental EV Li-ion battery pack production impacts between an EV and selected reuse applications. The battery characteristics lifetime, the number of equivalent full cycles, the number of Wh discharged from the battery, and economic value of the battery pack for its first life and second life applications were calculated by using a suitable software. By literature research the most viable reuse applications of post- vehicle Li-ion batteries were found based on technical, practical and economical feasibility. It was found that reuse of battery packs after being used in EVs can be technically and economically feasible. It was found that area regulation, residential load following, and intermittent renewable energy time-shift are applications with the highest market potential for reuse of EV Li-ion battery packs. The study showed that if a battery pack is reused after being removed from an EV, a significant share of the environmental Li-ion battery pack production impacts can be attributed to a second life application in addition to the battery pack's first life in the EV. In the best case scenario, the GWP caused by EV Li-ion battery pack production was reduced by 87% and the total cradle-to-grave GWP caused by an EV can in the best case scenario be reduced by 15 %. This paper allows for a quantified understanding of the environmental benefits associated with EV Li-ion battery reuse. This is a topic has not yet been covered in the literature. The study provides new information of the environmental impacts associated with EV Li-ion batteries and gives the discussion of the environmental benefits of EVs a new aspect to consider.


The number of children with disability is increasing gradually in Japan. Previous researches in other countries have reported that parents as caregivers (CGs) of children with disability have mental health problems, but the actual situation has not been examined nationwide in Japan so far. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between mental health of CGs who had children with disability and characteristics of children, CGs, and household based on the nation-wide survey. This study utilized data from 2010 Comprehensive Survey of the Living Conditions, and defined children with disability aged 6 to 17. Individual data of children and CGs were linked, and 549 pairs of them were extracted. The Japanese version of Kessler 6 (K6) was used to assess mental health status of caregiver, scored 5 and over represented to general psychological distress. Logistic regression was used to evaluate the associations of interest. The almost half (44.4%) of CGs had psychological distress (k6 score; 5 +) in nationwide, and 8.9% of CGs might have serious mental illness (K6 score; 13+). After adjusting covariates of child, CG, and household factors, CG having a current symptom (OR, 95% CI: 3.26, 1.97–5.39), CG's activity restriction (OR, 95% CI: 2.95, 1.38–6.32), low social support (OR, 95%CI: 9.31, 1.85–46.8), three generation family (OR, 95% CI: 0.49, 0.26–0.92), and lower 25% tile group of monthly household expenditure (OR, 95% CI:1.92, 1.05–3.54), were significantly associated with psychological distress of CGs. This study encourages health care providers to pay more attentions toward parent's mental health, especially for in case of having low social support, and lower income family. Further research should examine the detailed information of child's disease and disability, medical service use, and quality and quantity of social support in nationwide to straighten the system for supporting services of both children with disabilities and their CGs.


Duplication cysts are rare congenital developmental anamolies of the gastrointestinal tract, the etiology of which is not completely understood. Multiple theories have been proposed to explain their existence including partial twinning, in utero ischemic events, and abnormal endoderm and notochord separation. Complications including infection, intussusception, and perforation can occur. Rarely, these duplications cysts may undergo neoplastic changes. In this report, we present the case of a 40- year-old male with a gastric duplication cyst who presented with vague postprandial dull-aching epigastric pain. Gastric duplication cyst was diagnosed with upper GI endoscopy and CT scan. The cyst was removed by simple excision and patient has remained symptom-free on follow up.


In January 2014, the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education released its report calling, among other things, for limited licensing and the expansion of independent paraprofessional training by law schools. In Washington State, all three law schools are collaborating with community college paralegal programs to design and deliver specialized training for "Limited License Legal Technicians" (LLLTs), who will be licensed to deliver limited family law services beginning in 2015. At least three other states, including California and New York — which together contain nearly twenty-six percent of U.S. lawyers and seventy-six law schools — are actively seeking ways to expand nonlawyer training and licensing in high-need areas such as family law, immigration, landlord–tenant, foreclosure, and consumer credit.The involvement of ABA-approved law schools in the delivery of paraprofessional training could play a key role in the standardization of titles and training for nonlawyer practitioners — that is, the creation of paraprofessional "brands." Such standardization could facilitate the development of a national consumer legal market by promoting quality assessment and professional mobilization, on the supply side, as well as consumer awareness of and demand for new paraprofessional roles. This Article examines the status of the Washington LLLT initiative and its reception in other states. It argues that, while the Washington model faces strong headwinds in the form of lawyer resistance on the one hand and unregulated competition on the other, law school training for licensed legal technicians is a promising means for institutionalizing a nationally recognized, independent paraprofessional brand, which itself could promote broader consumer access to — and demand for — routine legal services.


Abstract The role of local government has recently come under debate, in the context of state retrenchment, public sector cuts and the marketisation of welfare. Recent discussions have centred on local authorities as leaders, on enterprise and on democracy, but there has been little discussion of local authorities in relation to equalities issues and minority groups. This article examines the role of local government in relation to one minority grouping, Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual (LGB) people, drawing on empirical material gathered from 2007 to 2010 as part of a large Economic and Social Research Council research project. It describes the importance of equalities legislation and related implementation mechanisms in driving forward the LGB equalities agenda, explores aspects of welfare delivery to LGB people and addresses democratic processes. The article suggests that a collision of different forces is currently taking place: the legislation supports the protection of the LGB communities, but this support is undermined by the recession-related and ideologically driven public sector cuts. In addition, aggregate approaches to local democracy may override the interests of minority groups such as LGB people.


Over the past twenty years the American Catholic bishops have played a leading role in the antiabortion movement, published lengthy and highly detailed pastoral letters on nuclear weapons and on the American economy, and involved themselves, collectively and individually, in several national election campaigns. What is the source of the sometimes controversial political role of these religious leaders? Timothy Byrnes proposes a new answer in this lucid description of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and its activities. He demonstrates that the key to the political role of the bishops and other modern American religious leaders has been political change, rather than religious revival.Originally published in 1991.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


When Mrs Hawkins tells Hector Bartlett he is a 'pisseur de copie', that he 'urinates frightful prose', little does she realise the repercussions. Holding that 'no life can be carried on satisfactorily unless people are honest' Mrs Hawkins refuses to retract her judgement, and as a consequence, loses not one, but two much-sought-after jobs in publishing. Now, years older, successful, and happily a far cry from Kensington, she looks back over the dark days that followed, in which she was embroiled in a mystery involving anonymous letters, quack remedies, blackmail and suicide.


The segregation and myelination of axons in the developing PNS, results from a complex series of cellular and molecular interactions between Schwann cells and axons. Previously we identified the Lgi4 gene (leucine-rich glioma-inactivated4) as an important regulator of myelination in the PNS, and its dysfunction results in arthrogryposis as observed in claw paw mice. Lgi4 is a secreted protein and a member of a small family of proteins that are predominantly expressed in the nervous system. Their mechanism of action is unknown but may involve binding to members of the Adam (A disintegrin and metalloprotease) family of transmembrane proteins, in particular Adam22. We found that Lgi4 and Adam22 are both expressed in Schwann cells as well as in sensory neurons and that Lgi4 binds directly to Adam22 without a requirement for additional membrane associated factors. To determine whether Lgi4-Adam22 function involves a paracrine and/or an autocrine mechanism of action we performed heterotypic Schwann cell sensory neuron cultures and cell type-specific ablation of Lgi4 and Adam22 in mice. We show that Schwann cells are the principal cellular source of Lgi4 in the developing nerve and that Adam22 is required on axons. Our results thus reveal a novel paracrine signaling axis in peripheral nerve myelination in which Schwann cell secreted Lgi4 functions through binding of axonal Adam22 to drive the differentiation of Schwann cells.


In this paper we investigate the effects of risk preferences and attitudes towards risk on optimal antitrust enforcement policies. First, we observe that risk aversion is negatively correlated with players' proclivity to form a cartel, and that increasing the level of fines while reducing the probability of detection enhance deterrence. This confirms that the design of an optimal law enforcement scheme must keep risk attitudes into account, as suggested by Polinsky and Shavell. We also notice that players' propensity towards communication drops right after detection even if the collusive agreement was successful, and it declines as the sum of the fines paid by a subject increases. This effect could be explained by availability heuristic, Â-a cognitive bias, where people's perception of a risk is based on its vividness and emotional impact rather than on its actual probability. Our results also confirm the crucial role of strategic risk considerations (analogous to risk dominance for one shot games) in determining the effects of leniency programs. Indeed, we show that the effectiveness of leniency programs in deterring cartels is mostly due to the increased risk of a cartel member being cheated upon when entering a collusive agreement, while the risk of a cartel being detected by an autonomous investigation of the Authority seems to play a less important role.


Governments around the world are trying to come to terms with new technologies, new social movements and a changing global economy. As a result, educational policy finds itself at the centre of a major political struggle between those who see it only for its instrumental outcomes and those who see its potential for human emancipation. This book is a successor to the best-selling Understanding Schooling (1988). It provides a readable account of how educational policies are developed by the state in response to broader social, cultural, economic and political changes which are taking place. It examines the way in which schools live and work with these changes, and the policies which result from them. The book examines policy making at each level, from perspectives both inside and outside the state bureaucracy. It has a particular focus on social justice. Both undergraduate and postgraduate students will find that this book enables them to understand the reasoning behind the changes they are expected to implement. It will help to prepare them to confront an uncertain educational world, whilst still retaining their enthusiasm for education.


In this paper, a simple and efficient approach for the modeling of low-frequency dispersive phenomena in FETs is proposed. The method is based on the definition of a virtual, nondispersive associated device controlled by equivalent port voltages and it is justified on the basis of a physically-consistent, charge-controlled description of the device. Dispersive effects in FETs are accounted for by means of an intuitive circuit solution in the framework of any existing nonlinear dynamic model. The new equivalent-voltage model is identified on the basis of conventional measurements carried out under static and small signal dynamic operating conditions. Nonlinear experimental tests confirm the validity of the proposed approach.


Abstract. During the last 30 years, several magnetospheric missions have recorded the presence of narrow proton structures in the ring current region. These structures have been referred as "nose-like" structures, due to their appearance when represented in energy-time spectrograms, characterized by a flux value increase for a narrow energy range. Cluster's polar orbit, with a 4 RE perigee, samples the ring current region. The ion distribution functions obtained in-situ by the CIS experiment (for energies of ~5 eV/q to 40 keV/q) reveal the simultaneous presence of several (up to 3) narrow nose-like structures. A statistical study (over one year and a half of CIS data) reveals that double nose structures are preferentially observed in the post-midnight sector. Also, the characteristic energy of the nose (the one observed at the lower energy range when several noses occur simultaneously) reveals a clear MLT dependence during quiet events (Kp Numerical simulations of particles trajectories, using large-scale electric and magnetic field models are also presented. Most of the features have been accurately reproduced (namely the single and double noses), but the triple noses cannot be produced under these conditions and require to consider a more complex electric field model.


There is a strong conceptual association between improvement and effort. Therefore, we propose that people tend to use improvement as a heuristic for judging effort in others. Hence, they would perceive greater effort in improved performance records than in nonimproved records with superior overall performance. To examine whether people use improvement as a heuristic for effort, we compared judgments of effort investments and trait effort in improved and consistently-strong performance profiles with equivalent recent performance. Across six empirical studies, participants thought that those with improved profiles exerted more effort and were more hardworking than those with consistently-strong profiles, and this resulted in a preference for improved candidates when making decisions (e.g., selecting among candidates for a promotion). Even when we introduced manipulations that highlighted strengths of the consistent profiles, participants still made effort judgements in favour of improvement (Studies 2 and 3). Moreover, participants had a greater tendency to mention effort as a reason for selecting an improved (vs. consistently-strong) candidate for an award (Study 4). Furthermore, two studies (Studies 5 and 6) showed that the use of improvement as a heuristic for effort was restricted to contexts with considerable ambiguity. Finally, we examined the overall effects using meta-analyses (Study 7). Overall, the results provided converging evidence that people use improvement as a heuristic for judging effort, particularly in contexts that are relatively ambiguous, and that these judgments can have implications for important


Abstract "Graphic design" was not a proper term until the beginning of the twentieth century. This led to confusion in credits/authorship for book covers, typography, which was exacerbated by the fact that printers, in addition to being in charge of the production process of books, were also making decisions regarding their finishings. Venezuela presents an interesting chapter in the history of publishing in the world given the hybrid character of publishing in the country in which traditional national artists, illustrators, and publicists comprised a mix of European and North American immigrants. The lack of current bibliographic material inspired me, as a researcher, to make a timeline of the political and graphic history of the country through its colophons. Colophons, which appear at the end of books and thus are often ignored, are nonetheless providers of essential information—witnesses of our progress in authorship and as a society.


In Continental Paper Bag Co. v. Eastern Paper Bag Co., the Supreme Court, held (among other things) (1) that patent owners have an absolute right not to practice their patent and (2) that even these non practicing patent owners are entitled to the liberal use of injunctive relief against infringers. Both of these holdings have been very important to the viability of patent assertion entities, or so-called "patent trolls." In eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, LLC, the Supreme Court softened the injunction rule. In this essay, we argue that Congress or the Court should also reconsider Continental Paper Bag's endorsement of a robust right not to use, not because patents are not property but because the considerations at work within both property and patent law do not support recognizing such an absolute right not to use patents. The Court's endorsement in Continental Paper Bag of a robust right not to use patents was based on an overly simplistic analogy to tangible property, which the Court characterized as recognizing "the privilege of any owner of property to use or not use it, without question of motive." The Court's reasoning was flawed in two respects. First, the law of tangible property distinguishes among nonusers, penalizing owners whose derelict nonuse interferes with other owners' use of their own property or induces others to waste time or effort appropriating the unused property. With respect to these derelict nonusers, the law employs numerous doctrines, such as nuisance, abandonment, adverse possession, and permissive waste, to ensure that owners' decision not to use their property does not inflict harm on others. Second, beyond its poor understanding of the law of nonuse as it relates to tangible property, the Court in Continental Paper Bag failed to consider the ways in which the reasons for recognizing a right not to use might differ in the contexts of patent and tangible property. Although the same basic considerations are at play in both contexts -- efficiency, autonomy, and personhood -- the implications of nonuse differ in the patent context because of information's nonrivalrous nature and because of the particularly powerful way that patent law constrains the freedom of nonowners. Taking these factors into account suggests that the normative case for recognizing a robust right not to use a patent is weaker than in the domain of tangible property. This is especially true when nonusing owners attempt to enforce their patents against independent inventors. As a consequence, in cases brought against independent inventors, we suggest making patent remedies contingent on a patent owner's efforts to disseminate their inventions. Recognition of such an obligation to use in patents would significantly reduce the threats posed by so-called patent trolls and the high tech patent wars.


The CP Violating asymmetry in Bs mixing (beta_s) is one of the most promising measurements where physics beyond the Standard Model could be revealed. As such, analyses need to be subjected to great scrutiny. The mode Bs -> J/psi\phi has been used, and the mode Bs -> \phi \phi proposed for future measurements. These modes both have two vector particles in the final state and thus angular analyses must be used to disentangle the contributions from CP+ and CP- configurations. The angular distributions, however, could be distorted by the presence of S-waves masquerading as low mass K+K- pairs, that could result in erroneous values of beta_s. The S-waves could well be the result of a final state formed from an s-quark anti-s-quark pair in a 0+ spin-parity state, such as the f0(980) meson. Data driven and theoretical estimates of the Bs decay rate into the CP+ final state J/psi f0(980) are given, when f0 -> pi+pi-. The S-wave contribution in J\psi\phi should be taken into account when determining beta_s by including a K+K- S-wave amplitude in the fit. This may change the central value of current results and will also increase the statistical uncertainty. Importantly, the J/psi f0(980) mode has been suggested as an alternative channel for measuring beta_s.


Aims: The EORTC-NCI study investigating the addition
of temozolomide trial to standard radiation therapy has demonstrated improved
duration of survival in patients with Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). With
longer survival duration, there is the potential for latent RT morbidity, not
previously seen in historical patients. This study evaluates the potential
dosimetric advantages of utilising IMRT over 3D-conformal RT in such patients.
Methods: 10 consecutive patients with GBM formally screened for a clinical
study over a two-month
period were planned and treated with IMRT utilising daily on-board imaging
(OBI). The EORTC protocol dosimetric criteria and constraints were used in
target delineation and planning. For each patient, a 3DCRT plan was also produced.
Endpoints for dosimetric evaluation analysed related to
tumour dose: mean PTV60 dose (mPTV60Dose), Conformity Index (CI); and normal
tissue dose: mean normal brain dose (mBrainDose) and V40 Brain (Brainv40). IGRT
endpoints were the median isocentre shifts required in 3 axes measured in one
direction. The variation between the IMRT and 3DCRT dosimetric endpoints was
examined using Wilcoxon analysis. Results: The 10 patients had tumours located in temporal (3), parietal
(3), occipital (2) and callosal (2) regions. The median PTV and normal brain
volumes were 308.1 cm3 and 1077.5 cm3 respectively. The IMRT dosimetry was significantly improved in all endpoints
specifically CI (p = 0.002), mPTV60Dose (p = 0.004), mBrainDose (p = 0.002) and Brainv40 (p = 0.019). OBI directed isocentre
measurements in the patient group were available for 230 treatments. The median
shifts (and 95% C.I.s)
were 0.1 cm vertical (0.1 - 0.2), 0.1 cm longitudinal (0.1 - 0.2) and 0.2 cm lateral (0.2 - 0.2). At a minimum follow-up of 2 years' post diagnosis, the median survival
of the group is 18.0 months (95% CI: 13.4 - 22.6 months). Conclusion: IMRT for GBM produces significant dosimetric advantages
in relation to planning target volume and normal tissue dose compared with 3D
conformal plans. The data also confirm the accuracy of IMRT technique for CNS
with IGRT delivery utilising OBI demonstrating minimal deviation from planned
to treated isocentre.


The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has become the most talked-about clinical entity in early 2020. As an infection that spreads easily and has a significant mortality rate, it has caused global panic rarely seen before. Many of the measures taken by governments worldwide will have long-lasting impacts on the wellbeing of the population at large. It has been widely reported that the most vulnerable patients have been most negatively affected by SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). In this study, we have tried to search the currently available data on the outcomes of infected cancer patients. Most of the data points to the very challenging nature of treating such patients. Their overall outcomes seem to be worse than in the general population, and it may be difficult to differentiate which potential complications are a result of the primary oncologic disease versus the infection. Management presents its own set of challenges, including but not limited to, deciding whether postponing cancer treatment until the infection resolves is going to benefit the patient and how to organize all aspects of patient care when social contact is as limited as it is for patients newly diagnosed with COVID-19. We believe that as more data becomes available, it is going to be necessary to publish detailed guidelines on how to approach this unique clinical challenge.


Ciudad Jurez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad. Last year 1,607 people were killeda number that is on pace to increase in 2009. In Murder City, Charles Bowdenone of the few journalists who has spent extended periods of time in Jurezhas written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city disintegrates. Interweaving stories of its inhabitantsa raped beauty queen, a repentant hitman, a journalist fleeing for his lifewith a broader meditation on the towns descent into anarchy, Bowden reveals how Jurezs culture of violence will not only worsen, but inevitably spread north. Heartbreaking, disturbing, and unforgettable, Murder City establishes Bowden as one of our leading writers working at the height of his powers.


Wheat crops produced under dryland conditions in the winter rainfall region of South Africa often experience periods of water stress. It is, therefore, important to identify spring wheat cultivars that can withstand these conditions. The multitude of factors potentially involved in drought resistance make it unlikely that a single measurement will provide an all-encompassing test of drought tolerance. The aim of this study was to determine whether total ear water potential, relative water content (RWC), leaf diffusive resistance (LDR), transpiration rate and the accumulation of free proline could be used to distinguish between drought tolerant and drought sensitive spring wheat cultivars. The withholding of water and the use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) imposed stress at different physiological growth stages. It was shown in this study that these physiological parameters could be used to identify drought tolerance in spring wheat cultivars. Although genetic differences, as measured by the above-mentioned parameters, do exist between cultivars, the effect of water stress on plant growth and harvest data should also be taken into account in deciding whether these differences are of any commercial benefit.


In its discussion of Gil Courtemanche's Un dimanche a la piscine a Kigali and Alfredo Jaar's installation of "Real Pictures," both of which are representations of the Rwandan Genocide, this analysis contributes to a larger discussion on ethical representations of violence. Generally the discussion of the ethics of representation analyzes the ways in which the author or artist portrays the violent events. It focuses on the importance of the historical and political context when describing the events, as well as on the ways in which the author or artist avoids the potential objectifying or dehumanizing effects of representations on the victims, as well as, the perpetrators. This article highlights another important element to be considered in the study of ethical representations- that of how the reader is engaged in the representation and as a result may or may not contribute to stereotypes, objectification, and other negative consequences possible when representing violence. Those who represent violence must not only consider ethical implications with their own interactions with the event and text or image, but also how they encourage their audience to interact with them.


During the past decades, the link between profits and domestic investment weakened in the biggest high-income economies. This contribution explores this relaxation of the profits-investment nexus in a Marxist profit-centred perspective. Focusing on the impact of the origins and the uses of profits, we study the investment behaviour of non-financial corporations in relation to their profits at the macro level since 1980, a period marked by financialisation and globalisation. We contrast three competing hypotheses – the Revenge of the Rentiers, the Financial-turn of Accumulation and Globalisation – and test them through a macro panel data analysis for France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United-Kingdom and United States over the period 1980-2012.


Methylation at the 5-carbon position of the cytosine nucleotide base in DNA has been shown to be a reliable diagnostic biomarker for carcinogenesis. Early detection of methylation and intervention could drastically increase the effectiveness of therapy and reduce the cancer mortality rate. Current methods for detecting methylation involve bisulfite genomic sequencing, which are cumbersome and demand a large sample size of bodily fluids to yield accurate results. Hence, more efficient and cost effective methods are desired. Based on our previous work, we present a novel nanopore-based assay using a nanopore in a MoS2 membrane, and the methyl-binding protein (MBP), MBD1x, to detect methylation on dsDNA. We show that the dsDNA translocation was effectively slowed down using an asymmetric concentration of buffer and explore the possibility of profiling the position of methylcytosines on the DNA strands as they translocate through the 2D membrane. Our findings advance us one step closer towards the possible use of nanopore sensing technology in medical applications such as cancer detection.


Museums, through their institutional discourses, are playing an important but sometimes neglected role in enforcing social practices and creating social identities. With the new digital era, museums had to adapt to new forms of communication: in an environment that, at least, gives everybody an equal voice, museums managed to communicate themselves without renouncing their position of depositaries of knowledge and authority. By analyzing online communication, through content management and interaction management (on websites, Facebook pages) the current study aims to explore the mechanisms enabling museums to convey information about their specific features (space, access, learning and interpreting) while retaining a main role not only as communicators, but also as actors reinforcing the larger system of beliefs and knowledge that govern what counts as right or wrong, good or bad, normal or abnormal, in a particular society. Thus, by combining communication seen as a management tool and textual analysis, this study illustrates the application of diverse qualitative research methods in the fields of management, and, specifically, in the field of communication management.


This paper discusses the determinants of two alternative measures of innovative success/output by looking at firm's innovation strategies. These relationships are also discussed by distinguishing between firms belonging to manufacturing and services sectors.Our econometric analysis is based on an extensive sample of 3,919 firms taken from the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC) for the period 2008–2012. Alongside the empirical analysis we applied a two-step procedure. We first identified a diverse range of innovation strategies by applying a principal component analysis (absence, mixed and oriented). Then, after controlling for positive skewness of the dependent variables, we used a generalized linear model (GLM) to examine the impact of these strategies. Our empirical results have some interesting aspects. Firstly, firms that do not design innovation strategies have a lower probability of being a successful innovative firm. Secondly, firms that design a strategy, but one that is not oriented on any specific direction, are prone to achieving lower success rates than firms with an oriented strategy. Finally, the results also show that there is a good fit between the oriented strategy pursued by a firm and its innovation success.


Natural selection mediated by pollinators has influenced the evolution of floral diversity of the flowering plants (angiosperms). The scope of this thesis was to study: 1) phenotypic selection, 2) mating systems, and 3) floral shifts involved in plant speciation. Model plant species were Platanthera bifolia and P. chlorantha (Orchidaceae). These orchids are moth-pollinated, strictly co-sexual (bisexual flowers), and produce a spike that displays 10-20 white flowers.I explored the influence of characters on plant fitness by using multiple linear regressions. Pollen removal (male fitness) and fruit set (female fitness) increased with more flowers per plant in three P. bifolia populations. There was selection towards longer spurs in a dry year when average spur length was shorter than in normal-wet years. Female function was sensitive to drought, which enabled an application of the male function hypothesis of floral evolution (Bateman's principle). The results show that selection may vary between populations, years, and sex-functions.I examined inbreeding by estimating levels of geitonogamy (self-pollination between flowers of an individual) with an emasculation method in two P. bifolia populations. Geitonogamy did not vary with inflorescence size. Levels of geitonogamy was 20-40% in the smaller, but non-significant in the larger population. This may relate to lower number of possible mates and pollinator activity in the smaller population.Platanthera bifolia exhibits the ancestral character state of tongue-attachment of pollinia on the pollinator. Its close relative P. chlorantha attaches its pollinia onto the pollinator's eyes. To explore the mechanism of a floral shift, pollination efficiency and speed was compared between the two species. The results showed no differences in pollination efficiency, but P. chlorantha had faster pollen export and import. Efficiency of pollination in terms of speed may cause floral shifts, and thus speciation.


The global rate of informal firms is high, especially for those that are women-owned and in the poorest countries, despite 149 economies implementing 368 reforms to simplify the registration process in a recent ten-year period. Through an experiment in Malawi, the author established an effective and replicable design to offer informal firms support to formalize, costing much less than the typical private sector development intervention. What works in the short-term is combining business registration with an information session at a bank including the offer of a business bank account. This led to women entrepreneurs increasing usage of bank accounts for business-only purposes, financial record keeping, and access to other financial services including insurance. Informal firms are smaller and less productive than formal ones, and their informal status is often associated with a number of costs, including less access to finance. Although 75 percent of the countries included in the Doing Business project have adopted at least one reform making it easier to register a business since 2004, informality remains very prevalent, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This may lead many to believe that entrepreneurs are not interested in registering their firms, and that if they could only be convinced to formalize it would lead to great benefits for their business.


With the Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we have observed the radio emission from 561 extensive air showers with zenith angles between 60$^\circ$ and 84$^\circ$. In contrast to air showers with more vertical incidence, these inclined air showers illuminate large ground areas of several km$^2$ with radio signals detectable in the 30 to 80\,MHz band. A comparison of the measured radio-signal amplitudes with Monte Carlo simulations of a subset of 50 events for which we reconstruct the energy using the Auger surface detector shows agreement within the uncertainties of the current analysis. As expected for forward-beamed radio emission undergoing no significant absorption or scattering in the atmosphere, the area illuminated by radio signals grows with the zenith angle of the air shower. Inclined air showers with EeV energies are thus measurable with sparse radio-antenna arrays with grid sizes of a km or more. This is particularly attractive as radio detection provides direct access to the energy in the electromagnetic cascade of an air shower, which in case of inclined air showers is not accessible by arrays of particle detectors on the ground.


The link between scientific research, knowledge investments and economic performance was illustrated in detail for the UK by case studies Frontier recently carried out for the business department. This link has heightened universities' funding concerns following the Brexit vote, since although the UK is a net contributor to the EU overall, it receives a disproportionate share of EU research funds. In this bulletin, we examine the extent of this dependence, and identify some pinch points – where the demands will be greatest for post-Brexit national funding to make up the difference.


"In "The New Woman International," editors Elizabeth Otto and Vanessa Rocco have gathered a group of intellectually stimulating and provocative essays that present the emergence, both tentative and triumphant, of this new global icon and her increasingly multicultural image. Written largely by historians of art and film, these essays emphasize visual analysis of the photographic and film media that carried the new woman's influential message."---Norma Broude, American University ""The New Woman International" focuses on the New Woman not simply as an image to be analyzed but also as a producer of images and text. This groundbreaking anthology represents a theoretically sophisticated set of essays that thoroughly examine the phenomenon of the New Woman in previously unexplored ways."---Sarah E. Chinn, Hunter College, CUNY Images of flappers, "garconnes," Modern Girls, "neue Frauen," and "trampky"---all embodiments of the dashing New Woman---symbolized an expanded public role for women from the suffragist era through the dawn of 1960s feminism. Chronicling nearly a century of global challenges to gender norms, "The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s" is the first book to examine modern femininity's ongoing relationship with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' most influential new media: photography and film. This volume examines the ways in which novel ideas about women's roles in society and politics were disseminated through these technological media, and it probes the significance of radical changes in female fashion, appearance, and sexual identity. Additionally, these original essays explore the manner in which New Women artists used photography and film to respond creatively to gendered stereotypes and to reconceive of ways of being a woman in a rapidly modernizing world. "The New Woman International" brings together different generations of scholars and curators who are experts in gender, photography, literature, mass media, and film to analyze the New Woman from her inception in the later nineteenth century through her full development in the interwar period, and the expansion of her forms in subsequent decades. Arranged both chronologically and thematically, these essays show how controversial female ideals figured in discourses including those on gender norms, race, technology, sexuality, female agency, science, media representation, modernism, commercial culture, internationalism, colonialism, and transnational modernity. In exploring these topics through images that range from montages to newspapers' halftone prints to film stills, this book investigates the terms of gendered representation as a process in which women were as much agents as allegories. Inaugurating a new chapter in the scholarship of representation and New Womanhood and spanning North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, and the colonial contexts of Africa and the Pacific, this volume reveals the ways in which a feminine ideal circled the globe to be translated into numerous visual languages. With a foreword from the eminent feminist art historian Linda Nochlin, this collection includes contributions by Jan Bardsley, Matthew Biro, Gianna Carotenuto, Melody Davis, Kristine Harris, Karla Huebner, Kristen Lubben, Maria Makela, Elizabeth Otto, Martha H. Patterson, Vanessa Rocco, Clare I. Rogan, Despina Stratigakos, Brett M. Van Hoesen, Kathleen M. Vernon, and Lisa Jaye Young. DIGITALCULTUREBOOKS: a collaborative imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the University of Michigan Library"


Contemporary Supreme Court jurisprudence treats "property" as far less deserving of judicial protection than "life" or "liberty." The Supreme Court, however, has misread American legal history. Anglo-American traditions, customs, and law held that property was an essential ingredient of the liberty that the Colonists had come to enjoy and must be protected against arbitrary governmental interference. The Framers' generation believed that "property" and "liberty" were equally important institutions and that neither one could exist without the other. The Framers venerated property as a means of guaranteeing personal independence because (among other things) the concept of "property" embraced the legal rights to which everyone was entitled, such as the right to governance under "the rule of law." Property was not immune from regulation, but that regulation had to be for the purpose of promoting "the general Welfare," not the interests of specific groups or people. It is time for the Supreme Court to revisit Anglo-American legal history and to re-examine its precedents in light of what that history teaches.


SUMMARY
Modern cone scales and seeds of Pinus strobus and Sequoia sempervirens, and their fossil (Upper Miocene, c. 6 Mar) counterparts Pinus leitzii and Sequoia langsdorfii have been studied using pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS), electron-microprobe and scanning electron microscopy. Microscopic observations revealed only minor microbial activity and high-quality structural preservation of the fossil material. The pyrolysates of both modern genera showed the presence of ligno-cellulose characteristic of conifers. However, the abundance of (alkylated)phenols and 1,2-benzenediols in modern S. sempervirens suggests the presence of non-hydrolysable tannins or abundant polyphenolic moieties not previously reported in modern conifers. The marked differences between the pyrolysis products of both modern genera are suggested to be of chemosystematic significance. The fossil samples also contained ligno-cellulose which exhibited only partial degradation, primarily of the carbohydrate constituents. Comparison between the fossil cone scale and seed pyrolysates indicated that the ligno-cellulose complex present in the seeds is chemically more resistant than that in the cone scales. Principal component analysis (PCA) of the pyrolysis data allowed for the determination of the discriminant functions used to assess the extent of degradation and the chemosystematic differences between both genera and between cone scales and seeds. Elemental composition (C, O, S), obtained using electron-microprobe, corroborated the pyrolysis results. Overall, the combination of chemical, microscopic and statistical methods allowed for a detailed characterization and chemosystematic interpretations of modern and fossil conifer cone scales and seeds.


Almost everyone has citizenship, and yet it has emerged as one of the most hotly contested issues of contemporary politics. Even as cosmopolitan elites and human rights advocates aspire to some notion of "global citizenship," populism and nativism have re-ignited the importance of national citizenship. Either way, the meaning of citizenship is changing. Citizenship once represented solidarities among individuals committed to mutual support and sacrifice, but as it is decoupled from national community on the ground, it is becoming more a badge of privilege than a marker of equality. Intense policy disagreement about whether to extend birthright citizenship to the children of unauthorized immigrants opens a window on other citizenship-related developments. At the same time that citizenship is harder to get for some, for others it is literally available for purchase. The exploding incidence of dual citizenship, meanwhile, is moving us away from a world in which states jealously demanded exclusive affiliation, to one in which individuals can construct and maintain formal multinational identities. Citizenship does not mean the same thing to everyone, nor have states approached citizenship policy in lockstep. Rather, global trends point to a new era for citizenship as an institution. In Citizenship: What Everyone Needs to Know®, legal scholar Peter J. Spiro explains citizenship through accessible terms and questions: what citizenship means, how you obtain citizenship (and how you lose it), how it has changed through history, what benefits citizenship gets you, and what obligations it extracts from you--all in comparative perspective. He addresses how citizenship status affects a person's rights and obligations, what it means to be stateless, the refugee crisis, and whether or not countries should terminate the citizenship of terrorists. He also examines alternatives to national citizenship, including sub-national and global citizenship, and the phenomenon of investor citizenship. Spiro concludes by considering whether nationalist and extremist politics will lead to a general retreat from state-based forms of association and the end of citizenship as we know it. Ultimately, Spiro provides historical and critical perspective to a concept that is a part of our everyday discourse, providing a crucial contribution to our understanding of a central organizing principle of the modern world.


Once seen as synonymous with "anti-feminism" postfeminism i now understood as the theoretical meeting ground between feminism and anti-foundationalist movements such as postmodernism, post-structuralism and post-colonialsm. In this clear exposition of some of the major debates, theorists and practitioners, Ann Brooks shows how feminism is being redefined for the twenty first century. Individual chapters look at postfeminism in relation to feminist epistemology, Foucault, psychoanalytic theory and semiology postmodernism and postcolonialism, cultural politics, popular culture, film and media, and sexuality and identity For all students looking for guidance through the sometimes murky waters of contemporary feminist theory, this book wil provide a reassuring first port of call.


Sarcoidosis is a multisystem granulomatous inflammatory disorder frequently affecting the lungs, but also the liver, along with cirrhosis and portal hypertension occurring in less than 1% of the patients. A 56-year-old female presented with dyspnea, abdominal and leg swelling. Physical examination revealed finger clubbing, ascites and pretibial edema. Chest CT revealed diffuse micronodular opacities in both lungs without any enlarged thoracic lymph nodes. PFTs and DLCO/VA were moderately decreased. Transbronchial biopsy revealed non-caseified granulomas compatible with sarcoidosis. Serologic markers for infectious and autoimmune hepatitis were negative. Liver biopsy showed noncaseating granulomas, severe hepatitis and fibrosis. Stool, urinary analysis and antibodies for Schistosoma infection were negative. Final diagnosis was cirrhosis associated with stage III sarcoidosis. We report a case of sarcoidosis complicated by cirrhosis and portal hypertension with finger clubbing. Clinicians should bear in mind that cirrhosis, portal hypertension and clubbing may arise as the initial manifestations of sarcoidosis.