Abstract Several magmatic events based on U-Pb zircon geochronology were recognized in the Permian sedimentary succession of the Northern Gemeric Unit (NGU). The Kungurian magmatic event is dominant. The later magmatism stage was documented at the Permian-Triassic boundary. The detrital zircon assemblages from surrounding sediments documented the Sakmarian magmatic age. The post-orogenic extensional/transtensional faulting controlled the magma ascent and its emplacement. The magmatic products are represented by the calc-alkaline volcanic rocks, ranging from basaltic metaandesite to metarhyolite, associated with subordinate metabasalt. The whole group of the studied NGU Permian metavolcanics has values for the Nb/La ratio at (0.44–0.27) and for the Nb/U ratio at (9.55–4.18), which suggests that they represent mainly crustal melts. Magma derivation from continental crust or underplated crust is also indicated by high values of Y/Nb ratios, ranging from 1.63 to 4.01. The new 206U–238Pb zircon ages (concordia age at 269 ± 7 Ma) confirm the dominant Kungurian volcanic event in the NGU Permian sedimentary basin. Simultaneously, the Permian-Triassic boundary volcanism at 251 ± 4 Ma has been found for the first time. The NGU Permian volcanic activity was related to a polyphase extensional tectonic regime. Based on the new and previous U-Pb zircon ages, the bulk of the NGU Permian magmatic activity occurred during the Sakmarian and Kungurian. It was linked to the post-orogenic transpression/transtension tectonic movements that reflected the consolidation of the Variscan orogenic belt. The Permian-Triassic boundary magmatism was accompanied by extension, connected with the beginning of the Alpine Wilson cycle.


ABSTRACT Non-communicable diseases have been recognized as a serious threat to public health in Palau. To tackle the problem, different strategies might be necessary for populations with different ethnic backgrounds. This study aims to find the differences in the prevalence of metabolic risk factors of non-communicable diseases between Palauans and Filipinos living in Palau, and examine possible determinants of the differences. We selected data of 2,032 participants, including native Palauans and Filipinos, from the Palau STEPS Survey 2011–2013 for this study. Logistic regression models were used to inspect the association of each metabolic risk factor with ethnicity by calculating odds ratios adjusted for potential confounding factors. Palauans had higher age-standardized prevalence of overweight or obesity (84% vs. 45%), hypertension (50% vs. 38%) and diabetes (19% vs. 13%) than Filipinos. However, after adjusting for BMI and various lifestyle related factors, there are no statistical significant differences in the prevalence of hypertension and diabetes between these two ethnic groups. Palauan men were less likely to have elevated total cholesterol, especially after adjusting for BMI (odds ratio=0.55, 95% confidence interval: 0.33–0.91), while Palauan women were more likely to have elevated triglycerides than their Filipino counterparts (odds ratio=1.45, 95% confidence interval: 1.02–2.06). Our findings suggested that Palauans' higher BMI distribution might be able to explain their higher prevalence of hypertension and partially explain their higher diabetes prevalence. Palauans were not consistently more likely to have all metabolic risk factors, namely dyslipidemia were less likely to be observed in Palauan men.


The authors describe the issues and options that would be associated with the development of regulatory minimum capital standards for credit risk based on banks' internal risk measurement models. Their goal is to provide a sense of the features that an internal-models (IM) approach to regulatory capital would likely incorporate, and to stimulate discussion among financial institutions, supervisors, and other interested parties about the many practical and conceptual issues involved in structuring a workable IM regulatory capital regime for credit risk. The authors focus on three main areas: prudential standards defining the risk estimate to be used in the capital requirements, model standards describing the essential components of a comprehensive credit risk model, and validation techniques that could be used by supervisors and banks to assess model accuracy. The discussion highlights a range of alternatives for each of these areas.


Robotic systems (and in particular mobile autonomous agents) embody a complex interaction of computational processes, mechanical systems, sensors, and communications hardware. System integration can present significant difficulties to the construction of a real system, because the hardware is often built around convenience of design rather than convenience of system integration. Nonetheless, in order for robots to perform real-world tasks such as navigation, localization and exploration, the different subsystems of motion, sensing and computation must be merged into a single, realisable unit. Our group is investigating particular problems in the domain of computational perception, in the context of mobile robotics. In particular, we are concerned with environment exploration, position estimation, and map construction. We have several mobile platforms integrating different sensing modalities, which we are able to control simultaneously from a single source.


The overall aim of this thesis is to explore the theoretical and empirical relationship between entrepreneurship and bureaucracy, and to examine the cause and effect of entrepreneurship. From this overall aim, four specific questions are investigated. The first question deals with the issue of combining agency and structural explanations of entrepreneurship. Traditional one-sided explanations are discussed, and a two-sided explanatory model of the entrepreneurial choice is presented and tested empirically. In relation to this, the issue of causal heterogeneity is discussed and tested. The empirical results indicate that several country-level variables, including bureaucracy, influence the entrepreneurial choice at the individual level, and that the effect of some individual variables on the entrepreneurial choice varies according to structural context. The following two questions deal with the relationship between the entrepreneur and bureaucracy. The first one describes how the entrepreneurial process is regulated by bureaucracy, and how entrepreneurs solve regulatory problems. From this study it is clear that the smaller entrepreneurs comply with 'good' law in order to enjoy the benefits of formality, and avoid 'bad' law to reduce the costs of formality. The larger entrepreneurs comply with all regulations and are very frustrated over delays and inefficiency. The smaller entrepreneurs have a more understanding attitude towards bureaucratic inefficiency and have less trouble solving regulative problems. Both groups have strategies for solving regulative problems; most frequently this involves social ties with public officials and bribes. The second of the relationship questions investigates the extent to which entrepreneurs are obstructed by or dissatisfied with the regulatory authorities, and whether this varies over different types of entrepreneurs. Based on Schumpeter's distinction between entrepreneurs and other, less creative, business owners, the overall results indicate that creative companies have larger problems with regulatory authorities. The conclusion is that bureaucracy tends to be a problem with regard to new ideas, but not for new companies. The fourth question raised deals with the economic effects of entrepreneurship and bureaucracy. Can entrepreneurship and bureaucracy explain variation in economic development across countries? The results indicate that entrepreneurship combined with bureaucracy offer high explanatory values and that a large part of the variance in economic development, left unexplained by agency behaviour, is explained by the regulation of that behaviour. In terms of policy implications the results indicate that the removal of bureaucratic barriers to entrepreneurs could have large potential payoffs in terms of economic growth.


Purpose: The purpose of this study is to provide a better understanding of how instructional leadership responsibilities are distributed in International Baccalaureate (IB) schools in East Asia. Research Design: Case studies were conducted in five international schools located in Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and China. These schools were selected on the basis of location in East Asia, the offering of the full continuum of the IB's three programs, and evidence of prior academic success. In total, 68 teachers and administrators and 25 students were interviewed. Qualitative analysis of the interview data was conducted using pattern coding. Findings: Three broad instructional leadership practices were identified: curriculum articulation, cross-program activities, and strategic staffing. These appeared to enhance curriculum consistency and coherence across the three IB programs, a problem that had been identified in full-continuum IB schools. The qualitative data suggested that distributed instructional leadership forged and sustained professional interactions among staff across programs and organizational units. Conclusions: IB schools globally are often structurally separated into two or three organizational units (e.g., primary, middle, high school). These units operate IB programs that, despite their common origin and international philosophy, employ distinct pedagogical and curricular approaches. The findings reinforce the importance of acting intentionally to distribute responsibilities for instructional leadership widely throughout the school. They also support the assertion that international schools offer a unique and fruitful context for studying distributed instructional leadership.


This is the fascinating story of a group of reformers who tried to go too fast, bungled their reform, and so changed the course of history. Hengel's thesis is that Hellenistic influences were, and had been for centuries, smoothly penetrating Judaism even in Jerusalem; there was respect on both sides between Jew and Greek. Then the Greek party tried to go too fast, make Hellenization obligatory and outlaw the Law. This occasioned a furious defensive reaction; Judaism clammed up, became xenophobic and rigoristic, producing the attitude which in its turn created the defensive reaction of anti-Semitism which has stained so many centuries. The defensive rigidity set up in Judaism made it unable to respond to Jesus' creative reinterpretation of the Law, and so led to the rejection of Christianity. This is a truly important scholarly work. The exhaustive collection of evidence will make it a fundamental textbook for the period' (The Tablet). 'A foundation book and essential as a source book and as a guide to trends in present research' (The Expository Times). Martin Hengel was Professor of New Testament and Early Judaism in the University of Tubingen.


This book considers the various ways in which the last major King of Judah has been presented in biblical texts and the subsequent cultures that have made use of the biblical narratives. It is posited that there is no reliable material that can be dated to the time of Josiah and that the literary constructions of Josiah's reign in Kings, Chronicles, and First Esdras already provided the inventive memory of a no longer recoverable monarch's life. Aspects of these narratives are considered as well as the history of Josiah in historiographical renditions of world history and in presenting his story in narrative artistic productions.


We investigated the effect of solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR) and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) on the development of tropical micro- and macrofouling communities for 30 d. The experimental design involved 3 treatments: full spectrum (PAR+UVR), PAR only, and minimal light (reduced PAR and UVR). Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis demon- strated that different light conditions resulted in the formation of highly different microbial commu- nities. The lowest densities of bacteria were found under the full spectrum treatment, while the low- est densities of diatoms were found in the minimal light treatment. Macrofouling communities consisted of 13 species and differed among light treatments. In the presence of UVR, communities had low species diversity, evenness, and richness, while in minimal light and PAR treatments, com- munities had high species diversity, evenness, and richness. Similarity percentage (SIMPER) analysis revealed that the tubeworm Hydroides elegans, the alga Ulva (Enteromorpha) sp., and the bivalve Perna viridis were the species responsible for most of the dissimilarities in macrofouling communities among treatments. While densities of H. elegans were similar in the PAR and minimal light treat- ments, this polychaete had higher growth rates under minimal light conditions. We conclude that UVR and PAR directly control the development of shallow micro- and macrofouling communities by inhibiting the recruitment and growth of sensitive species and promoting the growth of resistant spe- cies, but also that these forms of solar radiation influence the surface cues available to competent lar- vae by altering the development of the microbial community.


Our aim was to examine the molecular basis for acute effects of the anthracycline daunorubicin on cardiac ryanodine receptor (RyR2) channels and cardiac calsequestrin (CSQ2). Cardiotoxic effects of anthracyclines preclude their chemotherapeutic use in patients with pre-existing heart conditions. To address this significant problem, the mechanisms of anthracycline toxicity must be defined but at present are poorly understood. RyR2 channel activity was assessed by measuring Ca2+ release from cardiac sarcoplasmic reticulum vesicles and by examining single RyR2 channels inserted into artificial lipid bilayers. We show that 0.5 to 10 μM daunorubicin increases the activity of RyR2 channels after 5 to 10 min and that activity then declines to very low levels when channels are exposed to daunorubicin concentrations of ≥2.5 μM for a further 10 to 20 min. Extensive dissection of these effects shows for the first time that the activation results from a redox-independent binding of daunorubicin to the RyR2 complex. Novel data include the demonstration of daunorubicin binding to RyR2. We provide compelling evidence that RyR2 channel inhibition is due to the oxidation of free SH groups. The oxidation reaction is prevented by the presence of 1 mM dithiothreitol. We also present novel data showing that CSQ2 modifies the response of RyR2 to daunorubicin, but that the response of RyR2 is not dependent on daunorubicin binding to CSQ2. We suggest that binding of daunorubicin to RyR2 and CSQ2, and oxidation of RyR2, are all likely to contribute to anthracycline-induced cardiotoxicity during chemotherapy.


Reviews of the first edition: "Factual and straightforward.... Recommended"--Library Journal; "most impressive...clarity and concise...highly thought-provoking"--Muscular Development; "a careful exploration of the chemistry and physiology of testosterone...must reading for the serious bodybuilder"--Southern Bodybuilder; "extremely well documented"--Track & Field News. The first edition of this work, published in 1982, concentrated on the athletes use of and the physicians knowledge of, anabolic steroids. This fully updated second edition discusses the continuing controversy over their use in competitive sports. An introduction of the use and abuse of anabolic steroids is followed by chapters on such topics as anabolic steroid compounds, the anabolic-to-androgen ratio, basic principles of muscle building, current anabolic steroid preparations, anabolic steroid regimes used by athletes, the enhancement of athletic performance, adverse physical effects and mental health risks, the classification of anabolic steroids as controlled substances, growth hormones and other anabolic hormones, the limits of urine drug testing, medical applications of anabolic steroids, muscle building and ergogenic supplements, and addictions.


Hyperlactatemia, hypercapnia, low pH and low oxygen saturation (SatO2) are commonly observed in premature calves. These clinical indicators are associated with increased mortality in preterm human newborns with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). The aim of this study was to investigate the prognostic importance of venous pH, partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) and lactate level and which parameters are related with mortality in premature calves with RDS. All premature calves (52 male/58 female) were admitted to clinic within 12–24 hours after birth and blood samples were also taken into heparinised plastic syringes from the jugular vein within 30 minutes following admission. Diagnosis of RDS was made by both clinical signs and blood gas results. For the evaluation of independent samples, t test was used to compare the venous blood gas indicators of surviving and non-surviving premature calves. Receiver operating characteristics curves were used to determine a cut-off value in terms of lactate and pCO2 measurements among non-surviving and surviving calves. Venous pH, pCO2, SatO2, base deficit, bicarbonate (HCO3) and lactate levels showed a significant variance between surviving and non-surviving calves. Mean venous pH, pCO2, SatO2, lactate levels in non-surviving premature calves was 7.05, 78.9 mm Hg, 16.1 per cent and 9.50 mmol/l, respectively. Mean pH, pCO2, SatO2 and lactate levels in surviving premature calves were 7.29, 56.3 mm Hg, 25.5 per cent and 5.1 mmol/l, respectively. The cut-off values for lactate and pCO2 were 7.5 mmol/l and 63.5 mm Hg, respectively. In conclusion, the results of the study show that venous blood lactate and pCO2 have prognostic importance in premature calves with RDS.


The human brain is nearly constantly subjected to visual motion signals originating from a large variety of external sources. It is the job of the central nervous system to determine correspondence among visual motion input across spatially distant locations within certain time frames. In order to create stable and coherent percepts of the visual scenery, the brain is required to integrate visual motion signals over space and time, which may be accomplished by creating predictions of upcoming visual input. A recent fMRI BOLD study has shown that integration of visual motion input coincides with biased BOLD activity for radial motion directions at both peripheral and foveal cortical visual field representations. The current thesis, investigates mechanisms of visual motion integration through the presence or absence of motion biases using high-field 7 Tesla BOLD fMRI. We found that motion biases only emerged for motion stimuli that exhibited an uninterrupted motion trajectory during the perception of random dot kinematograms. More specifically, motion biases emerged at the onset of motion trajectories, which reflects different responses to novel appearing moving dots versus dots that were detected previously by other neurons. Thus, the visual system plausibly uses predictions to encode visual motion input. Accordingly, we show in several following experiments that the amplitude of the BOLD response depends on the novelty of the visual motion input regardless of location in the visual field and motion direction. BOLD signals to various motion stimuli were always enhanced at the onset of motion stimuli, where appearance of motion signals could not be predicted, while gradually decreasing for motion signals towards the end of motion trajectories. These effects were found for both random dot kinematograms and single moving objects, and appear to originate at the lowest levels of visual motion processing. We also managed to exclude several possible alternative explanations for present findings, such as classical receptive field effects, shifts in spatial attention towards novel motion, flexible retinotopy, and blurring of motion signals due to low temporal integration.
 In the current thesis, we show that the BOLD response to visual motion plausibly reflects prediction mechanisms used by the visual system during visual motion processing in human early visual cortex. However, the mechanisms at work might not literally predict each possible change within the visual field. Predictions of visual motion input may instead be heuristically determined by means of an automatic suppression which is conveyed through horizontal connections in the direction of visual motion. A simple suppression mechanism that allows for motion anticipation could be sufficiently effective to determine correspondence across motion signals, while being most energy efficient.


Online surveys are widely used in human-computer interaction (HCI) to gather feedback and measure satisfaction; at a glance many tools are available and the cost of conducting surveys appears low. However, there is a wide gap between quick-and-dirty surveys, and surveys that are properly planned, constructed, and analyzed. This course examines survey research approaches that meet HCI goals, selecting the appropriate sampling method, questionnaire design best practices, identifying and avoiding common survey biases, and questionnaire evaluation. Attendees will gain an appreciation for the breadth and depth of surveys in HCI, combined with keys to conducting valid, reliable, and impactful survey research themselves.


We investigate the reflection of plane waves of s and p polarization from the interface between a homogeneous transparent medium and an amplifying medium with a gain profile decreasing exponentially with depth of penetration. For angles of incidence less than critical angle, the reflectance curves are essentially the same as those deduced from the usual Fresnel formulas for two transparent media. In the vicinity of critical angle, the reflection coefficients are virtually the same for both polarizations and are greater than unity. Beyond critical angle, the reflectances fall toward unity as grazing incidence is approached. Both the reflectance and the far-field transmittance peak in the immediate vicinity of critical angle. For angles less than critical angle, the transmittance can be 2 orders of magnitude greater than the reflectance. Certain values of gain parameters and incident angle lead to singularities in the theoretical reflectance. At these points the usual neglect of the effect of the transmitted wave on the population inversion is no longer valid.


Closed loop supply chains comprise, in addition to the conventional forward flows from suppliers to end-users, a reverse flow of products, components, and materials from end-users to the manufacturers and secondary markets. Designing a closed-loop supply chain is a strategic level planning which considerably impacts on tactical and operational performance of the supply chain. It refers to the decisions taken on the location of facilities involved in the supply chain network along with the management of the physical flows associated with forward and product recovery channels. Our problem of interest is mainly motivated by the case of durable products including but not limited to large household appliances, computers, photocopying equipment, and aircraft engines. Such category of products has a modular structure, composed of independent components. As opposed to simple structured products, e.g., printer cartridges, that can only be recycled, each of the components in the reverse bill of materials of durable products can be recovered by a particular type of recovery process. Besides, durable products share a long life cycle characteristic which indeed makes designing their CLSC networks more complicated.

In this thesis, in keeping with the abovementioned motivation, we focus on designing closed-loop and reverse supply chains in the context of durable products that are of various quality conditions. The recovery decisions for product return include remanufacturing, part harvesting, bulk recycling, material recycling, and landfilling/incineration. Moreover, we take into account environmental concerns regarding the harmful impacts of used products in the closed-loop supply chain planning. As the closed-loop supply chains typically encounter uncertainty in quality and quantity of the profitable return stream, we further aim to consider the impact of uncertainty in designing the recovery network. For such purposes, in the first phase, we address a closed-loop supply chain planning problem in the context of durable products with generic modular structures. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer programming model which is then solved by an accelerated Benders decomposition-based algorithm. The performance of the proposed decomposition approach is enhanced through incorporating algorithmic features including valid inequalities, non-dominated optimality cuts, and local branching strategies.

Next, in the second phase, we propose a precise approach to model the uncertain quality status of returns, in which the availability of each component in the reverse bill of materials is modeled as discrete scenarios. We propose a two-stage stochastic programming model to address this problem setting. Then, since the cardinality of the scenario set grows exponentially with the number of involved components, we detail on a scenario reduction scheme to alleviate the computational burden of the proposed model. The stochastic problem is solved by a L-shaped algorithm enhanced through valid inequalities and Pareto-optimal cuts.

Finally, we investigate designing a dynamic reverse supply chain where the quantity of the return flows is uncertain. We introduce a multi-stage stochastic programming model and develop a heuristic inspired by scenario clustering decomposition scheme as the solution method. It revolves around decomposing the scenario tree into smaller sub-trees which consequently yields a number of sub-models in accordance with sub-trees. The resulting sub-models are then coordinated by Lagrangian penalty terms. On account of the fact that each sub-model per se is a hard to solve problem, a Benders decomposition-based algorithm is proposed to solve sub-models.


In recent history, journaling file systems were viewed as an oddity and thought of primarily in terms of research. But today, a journaling file system (ext3) is the default in Linux®. Discover the ideas behind journaling file systems, and learn how they provide better integrity in the face of a power failure or system crash. Learn about the various journaling file systems in use today, and peek into the next generation of journaling file systems.


The proliferation of nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, is one of the most striking features of contemporary international politics. While states remain the major protectors-and abusers-of human rights, NGOs such as Amnesty International have emerged as central players in the promotion of human rights around the world. As advocacy organizations, human rights NGOs work with or against governments in developing agendas for action. Through treaty negotiations with governments, they seek to establish international standards for state behavior. To mobilize public opinion, they investigate and report human rights abuses and offer direct assistance to victims of those abuses. They lobby political officials, corporations, international financial institutions, intergovernmental organizations, and the media. As their numbers increase, so their range of activities continues to expand. Today, NGOs are increasingly involved in providing services, such as holding training programs for upholding the rule of law and providing humanitarian assistance in disaster areas. There is little doubt that NGOs have influenced the human rights practices of governments and popular perceptions of human rights. Agreement on what NGOs do best remains an area of continuing scholarly debate. The authors of NGOs and Human Rights-all respected scholars and activists-assess the performance of NGOs by examining a number of significant organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Commission of Jurists. They identify the goals of such organizations, analyze their strategies, and consider the resources necessary to implement those strategies effectively. They also take a look at some of the major financial supporters of NGOs, such as the Ford Foundation. Throughout the chapters, the authors reveal promising evidence that transnational networks of organizations can both exert pressure on states and influence public opinion, resulting in the improved protection of human rights around the world.


ABSTRACT In this paper we demonstrate that during acute infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), the peripheral blood fills up with latently infected, resting memory B cells to the point where up to 50% of all the memory cells may carry EBV. Despite this massive invasion of the memory compartment, the virus remains tightly restricted to memory cells, such that, in one donor, fewer than 1 in 104 infected cells were found in the naive compartment. We conclude that, even during acute infection, EBV persistence is tightly regulated. This result confirms the prediction that during the early phase of infection, before cellular immunity is effective, there is nothing to prevent amplification of the viral cycle of infection, differentiation, and reactivation, causing the peripheral memory compartment to fill up with latently infected cells. Subsequently, there is a rapid decline in infected cells for the first few weeks that approximates the decay in the cytotoxic-T-cell responses to viral replicative antigens. This phase is followed by a slower decline that, even by 1 year, had not reached a steady state. Therefore, EBV may approach but never reach a stable equilibrium.


Using an inducible kinase system, Rapamycin Regulated kinase (RapR-kinase), we directly activated the Src family tyrosine kinases c-Src (Src) and Lyn in human pulmonary arterial endothelial cells. We found that Src induced a transient endothelial cell barrier enhancement phase followed by a subsequent increase in permeability. Conversely, Lyn activation resulted in only disruption of the endothelial cell barrier. Similarly, we found that activation of Src but not Lyn was able to increase the rate of barrier recovery following disruption via thrombin. Further investigation revealed that Src-mediated enhancement of the endothelial cell barrier relied on accumulation of adherens junction protein VE cadherin, as well as rearrangement, and broadening of adherens junctions. In addition, we determined that phosphorylation of VE cadherin residue Y731 was required for Src-mediated endothelial cell barrier enhancement. The ability to temporally monitor the effect of direct activation of a specific kinase allowed for the identification of novel Src-mediated roles in endothelial cell barrier regulation, demonstrating the utility of using an inducible kinase system. A major limitation of the RapR-kinase system was that it only enabled activation of a kinase and not inactivation. However, due to the dynamic nature of phosphorylation, a system that allows for both specific and rapid activation and inhibition is needed for more accurate re-capitulation and dissection of signaling cascades mediated by specific kinases. Therefore, we further modified the system to allow for transient activation. By combining the RapR-kinase method with the mutation of the "gate keeper" residue in the catalytic domain and using the allele specific inhibitor 1-Naphthyl-PP1, we successfully generated a highly efficient and specific method to transiently activate kinases. Using our engineered reversible Src kinase as a model, we demonstrated that the duration of its kinase signaling can be tightly controlled in living cells. By employing this approach, we identified morphological changes induced by transient activation of Src and demonstrated the role of sequential Src-PI3K and Src-Rac1 signaling in the regulation of cell morphology. Furthermore, we expanded the technique to the Serine/Threonine kinase p38 to demonstrate its broad applicability. In summary, we described a new approach that enables transient activation of a kinase in living cells and identified new Src-dependent mechanisms for influencing changes in endothelial cell barrier function. The ability to manipulate kinase activity for a finite amount of time therefore provides a biologically relevant method of dissecting individual kinase functions and their effects on downstream signaling pathways.


Here we systematically studied the excitation and the fluorescence steady-state spectroscopy of poly(2-methoxy-5(2'-ethylhexyloxy)-1,4-phenylenevinylene) (MEH-PPV) with three molecular weights, Mn= 51 kg mol-1, Mn= 86 kg mol-1 and Mn= 125 kg mol-1, in two equally good solvents and several concentrations, from dilute solutions to solid-state films produced by casting. The appropriateness of the two solvents was established by comparing their solubility parameters and the solubility parameter of the MEH-PPV estimated using the Small, the Van Krevelen and the Hoy models. Thus, chloroform and toluene were chosen. Fluorescence spectra were recorded for solutions in several concentrations (10-8 mol L-1 to 10-4 mol L-1) and films produced by casting, showing that chloroform and toluene solvate the polymer chain differently. Diluted solutions (10-8 mol L-1) in chloroform exhibit broader fluorescence spectra. A red-shift of the fluorescence spectra was observed for concentrations higher than 10-6 mol L-1 that can be explained using Kasha's rule for the sandwich anti-parallel orientation of the transition moments of the two chromophores. The conformations observed in solutions are partially retained in the solid films in addition to the broader red-shift spectra attributed to aggregated forms of the macromolecular segments. Annealing of the polymer films at the glass transition temperature eliminates the more stressed conformations, erases the memory and leads to sharper fluorescence spectra.


Nowadays, the problems of enhancing professional competence of future professionals, their training for future activities in the current socio-economic conditions are extremely urgent. Exploration of higher education standards applied in recent years reveals a significant increase in the requirements for foreign language knowledge gained by non-linguistic students. In terms of intensive cooperation with foreign partners, it is extremely important to be able to communicate with foreign colleagues. Therefore, one of the core elements of lawyers' professional competence is the ability to speak a foreign language at the level that is accessible for perception by a recipient. That is why teaching a foreign language as a means of communication in the future professional activity should be a priority goal of teachers. Thus, the formation of foreign language professional communicative competence of lawyers required for the use and analysis of foreign language information and data is an actual goal of the modern high school.
The aim of the research is to specify the role of foreign language for the development of lawyers' professional communicative competence.
It should be noted that the formation of professional skills of students in the process of learning foreign languages will be effective if the current level of personal development is taken into consideration as well as the prospects for professional development, possible communication difficulties are anticipated and prevented by means of adequate tasks for group and individual work, systematic activities aimed at developing motivation and reasoning of joint decisions are organized.
So, we can conclude that professionally-oriented teaching of a foreign language enables to organize active cooperation of all participants of the communication, which ensures mutual exchange of authentic, professionally meaningful information in a foreign language and mastering skills of professional communication. Professionally-oriented teaching English to law students at non-linguistic universities should be organized considering professional specifics. One of the most important elements of professional competence of future specialists is a good command of foreign language. Peculiarities of the formation of professional skills of future lawyers in the process of learning foreign languages are studied in the article. The stages of learning a foreign language and key communication qualities and competences formed in a specialist while studying foreign languages are analyzed.


This Article tries to find some practical resolutions for the problematic situation of Chinese defense lawyers. Part I introduces how Chinese laws and regulations provide legal protection for criminal defendants and their defense lawyers, and compares Chinese laws with well-established international standards. Part II focuses on examples of the problems and difficulties faced by Chinese lawyers in their defense work. Part III specifically discusses criminal charges that lawyers face in their practice. Part IV argues that the long-awaited new Chinese Lawyers Law cannot solve all of the problems or wipe away all obstacles they face. Rather, solving those problems requires an integrated and comprehensive approach that combines legislation, improved practice, and the society's efforts at large. WHEN CHINESE CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYERS BECOME THE CRIMINALS


Throughout this work, we aim to explore the linear optical properties of a semiconductor multi-shell spherical quantum dot with and without a hydrogenic donor impurity. The core and well layers are defined by the parabolic electronic potentials in the radial direction. The energy levels and corresponding wavefunctions of the structure are calculated by using the shooting technique in the framework of the effective-mass approximation. We investigate the intersublevel absorption coefficients of a single electron and the hydrogenic donor impurity comparatively as a function of the photon energy. In addition, we carry out the effect of a donor impurity and the layer thickness on the oscillator strengths and magnitude and position of absorption coefficient peaks. We illustrate the electron probability distribution and variation of the energy levels in cases with and without the impurity for different thicknesses of layers. This kind of structure gives an opportunity to tune and control the absorption coefficient of the system by changing three different thickness parameters. Also it provides a possibility to separate 0s and 1p electrons in different regions of the quantum dot.


In Japan, various styles of Lesson Study (LS) have been born over 140 years. The first issue is what should be the focus of observation in the live lesson. There are two trends with regard to the target of observation. One is teacher- and lesson-plan-centered observation since the Meiji era (1870s), and the other is child-centered observation since the Taisho era (1910s). The former is closely related to administrative-led teacher training. The latter is more complex and can be further divided into five types. The second issue is which activities are given priority in the LS processes: observation of the live lesson itself, preparation before the lesson, or reflection after the lesson. Furthermore, each activity can be designed as a personal or a collaborative process. Thus, there are roughly six types of LS in Japan related to this issue. Which type is adopted depends on the period, lesson-study frequency, and school type. In addition, it is noteworthy that the type of LS implemented is closely related to which of demonstration teacher or observers are regarded as the central learners. The third issue is whether to regard LS as scientific research or as literary research. Teachers and researchers in 1960s Japan had strong interest in making lessons and lesson studies more scientific. On the other hand, as teachers attempt to become more scientific, they cannot but deny their daily practice: making improvised decisions on complicated situations without objective evidence.
 Although lesson studies have been revised in various forms and permutations over the last 140, formalization and ceremonialization of lesson studies has become such that many find lesson studies increasingly meaningless and burdensome. What has become clear through the discussions on the three issues, the factors that impede teacher learning in LS are summarized in the following four points; the bureaucracy controlled technical expert model, exclusion of things that are not considered scientific, the view of the individualistic learning model, and the school culture of totalitarian products.
 To overcome obstruction of teachers' education in LS and the school crisis around the 1980s, the "innovative LS Cases" has begun in the 1990s. The innovative LS aims not for as many teachers as possible but for every teacher to learn at high quality. In the innovative LS Case, what teachers are trying to learn through methods of new LS is more important than methods of new LS itself. Although paradoxical, in order to assist every single teacher to engage in high quality learning inside school, LS is inadequate. It is essential that LS address not only how to actualize every single teacher to learn with high quality in LS but also through LS how to improve collegiality which enhances daily informal collaborative learning in teachers room. Furthermore, LS cannot be established as LS alone, and the school reform for designing a professional learning community is indispensable. Finally, the concept of "the lesson study of lesson study (LSLS)" for sustainable teacher professional development is proposed through organizing another professional learning communities among managers and researchers.


The purpose of this study was to establish the one-repetition maximum (1RM) prediction equations of a biceps curl, bench press, and squat from the submaximal skeletal muscle strength of 4-10RM or 11-15RM in older adults. The first group of 109 participants aged 60-75 years was recruited to measure their 1RM, 4-10RM, and 11-15RM of the three exercises. The 1RM prediction equations were developed by multiple regression analyses. A second group of participants with similar physical characteristics to the first group was used to evaluate the equations. The actual measured 1RM of the second group correlated significantly to the predicted 1RM obtained from the equations (r values were from .633-.985), and standard error of estimate ranged from 1.08-5.88. Therefore, the equations can be used to predict 1RM from submaximal skeletal muscle strength accurately for older adults.


Background: The Oise department in France has been heavily affected by COVID-19 in early 2020. Methods: Between 30 March and 4 April 2020, we conducted a retrospective closed cohort study among pupils, their parents and siblings, as well as teachers and non-teaching staff of a high-school located in Oise. Participants completed a questionnaire that covered history of fever and/or respiratory symptoms since 13 January 2020 and had blood tested for the presence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. The infection attack rate (IAR) was defined as the proportion of participants with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection based on antibody detection. Blood samples from two blood donor centres collected between 23 and 27 March 2020 in the Oise department were also tested for presence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Findings: Of the 661 participants (median age: 37 years), 171 participants had anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. The overall IAR was 25.9% (95% confidence interval (CI) = 22.6-29.4), and the infection fatality rate was 0% (one-sided 97.5% CI = 0-2.1). Nine of the ten participants hospitalised since mid-January were in the infected group, giving a hospitalisation rate of 5.3% (95% CI = 2.4-9.8). Anosmia and ageusia had high positive predictive values for SARS-CoV-2 infection (84.7% and 88.1%, respectively). Smokers had a lower IAR compared to non-smokers (7.2% versus 28.0%, P <0.001). The proportion of infected individuals who had no symptoms during the study period was 17.0% (95% CI = 11.2-23.4). The proportion of donors with anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in two nearby blood banks of the Oise department was 3.0% (95% CI = 1.1-6.4). Interpretation: The relatively low IAR observed in an area where SARS-CoV-2 actively circulated weeks before confinement measures indicates that establishing herd immunity will take time, and that lifting these measures in France will be long and complex.


Family background continues to be closely related to individuals' educational attainment in the United States. A notable change in one aspect of this background, number of siblings, is occurring as fertility is becoming extremely low. Examination of the negative relation between individuals' sibling number and years of schooling indicates that education among those with many siblings is disproportionately cut short before high school graduation. Because there is a strong negative relation between number of siblings and scores on tests measuring verbal ability, recent reductions in sibling number would be expected to contribute to enhanced verbal ability and increasing years of schooling for those born now in the United States.


Annular pancreas is a rare congenital anomaly characterized by the presence of ectopic pancreatic tissue surrounding the duodenum. This malformation is usually asymptomatic in adults, but can manifests as pancreatitis, duodenal stenosis, or duodenal or gastric ulceration. We report the case of a young patient of 18 years old hospitalized for epigastric pain and vomiting, in whom radiological investigations showed an annular pancreas. At operation, a complete obstruction of the duodenum between its first and second parts was found, caused by an annular pancreas. No other congenital anomaly of the intra abdominal organs was noted. A gastroenterostomy was performed. Both the rarity of this congenital abnormality and its successful correction by surgical means have prompted us to make the following presentation.


A need for improvement in minimally invasive surgical techniques is well documented. A method of achieving this improvement is through the development of a tetherless micro-robot capable of conducting medical procedures in vivo. Such a device could circumvent many of the problems associated with current minimally invasive procedures, and ultimately, may carry out procedures previously impossible and open up new areas of treatment.

A key obstacle that must be overcome in the development of such a device is the realisation of a motor capable of acting as the drive system. Such a motor needs to be approximately 200 um in diameter, produce a start-up torque in excess of 15 nNm/mm^2, and produce an output power of more than 65 uW/mm^2. Existing micro-motors have separately met the geometric or performance requirements, but never both.

In this thesis, we report a design methodology that results in a piezoelectric ultrasonic resonant micro-motor that, for the first time, effectively meets these requirements. The design methodology of the motor uses the piezoelectric element as a vibration generator, rather than as an integral part of the stator design. This simplifies the design, resulting in a reduction in size compared with existing micro-motor designs. The application of this methodology requires a stator design that can produce an elliptical stator tip motion from a single excitation source through resonant frequency matching. The design of such a stator is achieved through the development of three novel modelling techniques, which facilitate an understanding of how the system geometric parameters affect the resonant frequencies of interest, and affect the generation of the desired elliptical stator tip motion.

The resulting motor has a stator dimension of 241 um and an overall diameter of 400 um, the larger dimension resulting from the commercial availability of magnetic elements. The peak measured start-up torque was 230.4 nNm/mm^2, with a peak output power of 72.4 uW/mm^2. This exceeded the requirements for torque and power to drive a tetherless micro-robot by 15-times and 10%, respectively. By overcoming the challenge of the drive system design, this work has opened up the opportunity to progress to the next stage of research in in vivo micro-robotics, full prototype development.


I WAS FORTUNATE to enter computing in the era of site funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA). "DARPA sites" from 1960s through the mid1990s had sustained investment of $10M/year (inflation adjusted). The talent and vision combined with sustained funding at scale enabled the undertaking of bold transformative ideas, such as timesharing, entire new operating systems, novel computing system architectures, new models of networking, and a raft of exciting artificial intelligence technologies—in robotics, self-driving cars, computer vision, and more. For example, I joined Arvind's Tagged-token Dataflow Computing project as an MIT graduate student. This single project, which involved a dozen graduate and undergraduates plus staff and faculty, garnered ~$13.5M support with a run rate exceeding $4M/year. Why is large-scale funding important? It enables examination of larger questions that cross problem spaces, systems, abstractions, even fields. Yes, we have open source software. Yes, we can build on large-scale frameworks and software systems. Yes, we can compose services and leverage the cloud. But it is important to recognize that leverage of such infrastructures often means that rethinking or reimagining them is beyond the scope of inquiry. I believe the need for such large investments has never been greater. We are seeing: ˲ Transformative change in architecture, operating systems, programming languages, and applications. New large-scale geographic and distributed structures—datacenters, edge, home, undersea, orbital systems and soon outer space. ˲ New applications from computing, data, intelligence, and trusted algorithmic execution (for example, blockchain) melding with a variety of fields—law, business, in new ways with accelerating benefit to society. ˲ Information technology in the body politic, journalism, and social fabric writ large—"fake news," "social network addiction and depression," and "societal manipulation." In the past decade, we have seen extraordinary new capabilities. GPU computing has enabled new levels of energy efficient, high performance, but only with radical software change (and of course architecture). The reemergence of neuromorphic computing (including deep learning) delivered new artificial intelligence capabilities to a broad array of applications. And visionaries suggest many more eruptions are coming. Numerous National Academy and committee reports have called for research "big bets" based on need and opportunity. And in late 2007, during my service on the NSF CISE Advisory Committee, then-CISE AD Jeannette Wing initiated the NSF CISE Expeditions program to create "big bets." A bright spot! But with a much smaller investment than prior programs, funding only 1.5 projects per year (each ~$10M/five years). Expeditions are terrific projects, but typically split over several sites, diluting infrastructure, capability, and perspective. For example, a 2018 Expedition Award, "EPiQC: Enabling Practical-Scale Quantum Computation," led by my colleague Fred Chong at the University of Chicago, includes five institutions. Given industrial-scale R&D, does computing need large-scale government research investments? Yes! Academic research has fundamental advantages for society, including education and broad idea and technology dissemination; openness to a wide range of possibilities and directions (not just "our business position"); vetted and publicly examined rigorously from a scientific point of view (for example, bias in algorithms, security architectures, privacy and exploitation); and vetted and publicly examined from a broad societal perspective (for example, social media, addictive technology). So what would I propose? Perhaps a new program. Perhaps a doubling, and doubling again of the Expeditions program. Projects of twice the scale ($20M over five years) with mechanisms to ensure they are concentrated at no more than two institutions. And doubling the number of such efforts to three new starts every year. Too expensive? Such a program would be less than 1/5 of 1% of the NIH's annual budget, and 1/100 of 1% of the U.S. Department of Defense budget. Perhaps if we want to increase global economic growth beyond what economists call "structural limits," we need more disruptive computing advances. Carpe Diem!


Hepatitis B virus (HBV), the prototypic virus of the Hepadnaviridae family, induces chronic liver disease in approximately 5% of the global population and is a cause of incurable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The woodchuck infected with woodchuck hepatitis virus (WHV) has been validated as the most valuable natural model of HBV infection, especially in the absence of practical in vitro systems for HBV investigations. Although HBV and WHV are primarily hepatotropic, they also infect the host lymphatic system. The significance of this extrahepatic infection in the establishment and progression of liver disease is unknown. Therefore, it would be highly advantageous to develop an in vitro cell culture system in order to investigate the interaction of hepadnavirus derived from lymphoid cells with host hepatocytes. This interaction should not be complicated by host immune surveillance directed against the virus. The main objectives of this study were to design and establish an in vitro experimental system for the propagation of WHV in hepatocytes and lymphoid cells and to investigate the ability of virus derived from lymphatic cells and serum to replicate in cultured woodchuck hepatocytes. In this work, both cultured woodchuck hepatocytes were shown to be susceptible to WHV infection and conditions for short-term maintenance of WHV in cultured lymphoid cells were established. In addition, highly sensitive methods for the detection of WHV genes, replicative forms of the genome and virus antigens in in vitro infected woodchuck cells were adopted and validated. -- The obtained results provide, for the first time, direct in vitro evidence that WHV released by naturally infected lymphoid cells is infectious to the host hepatocytes. The data indicate that lymphoid cells in the spleen constitute a site where infectious virus replicates with higher efficiency than in circulating lymphoid cells. Furthermore, it was shown that WHV originating from lymphoid cells could be passaged serially through cultured hepatocytes and remain infective to a virus- naive woodchuck. These experiments demonstrated that the virus continues to be biologically active in both in vitro and in vivo conditions. Finally, preliminary experiments indicated that replication of WHV in the hepatocyte culture system could be suppressed by the presence of antibodies to the N-terminal domain of the WHV large envelope protein or by a synthetic analogue derived from the putative WHV cell binding site 1 (CBS1). This finding suggests that WHV CBS1 plays an important role in virus-hepatocyte interaction. -- The woodchuck hepatocyte culture system developed in this work will serve as an important tool to study the early events in WHV infection and replication, the effects of the cellular microenvironment on infection and genetic variation of the virus, and for evaluation of novel anti-hepadnaviral agents.


In this paper we propose a new architecture, which is composed of distributed cooperative agents to reduce the false alarm ratio of the intrusion detection systems (IDS) in a twofold contribution. The first contribution lies in reducing the false alarm rate of the attack detection in an agent-based architecture by using honeypot network as the closer level of investigation. The connection is retrieved to the original destination in case of false alarm recognition, while the actions are hidden to the user. Such a scheme significantly decreases the alarm rate and provides a higher performance of IDS. The second contribution applies the game theoretic analysis in the sense that the contributing agents are led to perform the best they could in order to achieve their goals. The Shaply value is computed to find the actual contribution of each agent in the coalition he belongs to. The Equilibrium Point is found and consequently the winner coalition is formed. In this paper the architecture of the proposed system is described, a theoretical analysis of agents' behavior is given and its possible extensions are explained.


Consumer vulnerability affects billions of consumers worldwide, yet there is no consensus about what constitutes this state or about its consequences for consumers. Indeed, while consumer vulnerability is often invoked in consumer research, it is usually discussed informally, with little conceptual anchoring. The goal of the current work is to advance the field's understanding of consumer vulnerability by (a) reviewing and integrating existing research, (b) extracting common features to develop a comprehensive framework for the concept of consumer vulnerability, and (c) charting paths forward for future research. We begin by defining consumer vulnerability as a state in which consumers are subject to harm because their access to and control over resources are restricted in ways that significantly inhibit their ability to function in the marketplace. We then introduce two lenses through which to identify this state: experience and observation. Next we delineate the antecedents and consequences of consumer vulnerability and discuss the merits of adopting a view of this state as more global and dynamic. Finally, we use our framework to offer future research considerations.


Data from computer log files record traces of events involving user activity, applications, system software and network traffic. Logs are usually intended for diagnostic and debugging purposes, but their data can be extremely useful in system audits and forensic investigations. Logs created by intrusion detection systems, Web servers, antivirus and anti-malware systems, firewalls and network devices have information that can reconstruct the activities of malware or a malicious agent, help plan for remediation and prevent attacks by revealing probes or intrusions before damage has been done. While existing tools like Splunk can help analyze logs with known schemas, understanding log whose format is unfamiliar or associated with new device or custom application can be challenging. We describe a framework for analyzing logs and automatically generating a semantic description of their schema and content in RDF. The framework begins by normalizing the log into columns and rows using regular expression-based and dictionary-based classifiers. Leveraging our existing work on inferring the semantics of tables, we associate semantic types with columns and, when possible, map them to concepts in general knowledge-bases (e.g. DBpedia) and domain specific ones (e.g., Unified Cybersecurity Ontology). We link cell values to known type instances (e.g., an IP address) and suggest relationships between columns. Converting large and verbose log files into such semantic representations reveals their meaning and supports search, integration and reasoning over the data.


Characterization of the Mechanical Response of the Lumbar Spine Shannon A. Zirbel Department of Mechanical Engineering, BYU Master of Science The primary objective of this research is to associate lumbar segmental mechanical response with intervertebral disc degeneration under physiologic testing conditions. Because no mathematical model exists for lumbar spine segmental rotations, a portion of this thesis evaluates potential methods for curve fitting the torque-rotation curves. The Dual Inflection Point (DIP) Boltzmann equation was developed during the course of this research and is presented here as a method for fitting spinal motion data wherein a physical meaning can be assigned to each of the model coefficients. This model can tell us more about the effects of degeneration, testing conditions, and other factors that are expressed in the change in spinal motion. Previous studies have investigated the relationship between the degeneration grade and flexibility of the intervertebral disc, but were completed without the presence of a compressive follower load. This study builds on past work by performing the testing under a compressive follower load. Segmental stiffness, range of motion (ROM), hysteresis area, and normalized hysteresis (hysteresis area/ROM) were evaluated and the effect of degeneration, segment level, temperature, and follower load were analyzed. Twenty-one functional spinal units (FSUs) were tested in the three primary modes of loading at both body temperature (39 ± 2 °C) and room temperature (21 ± 1 °C) in a near 100% humidity environment. A compressive follower load of 440 N was applied to simulate physiologic conditions. Fifteen of the twenty-one segments were also tested without the follower load to determine the effects of the load on segmental biomechanics. The grade of degeneration for each segment was determined using the Thompson scale and the torque-rotation curves were fit with the DIP-Boltzmann sigmoid curve. The effect of degeneration was statistically significant (α = 0.05) for stiffness, ROM, and hysteresis area in axial rotation (AR) and lateral bending (LB); it was also statistically significant for ROM and normalized hystersis in flexion-extension (FE). The lumbosacral joint (L5-S1) was significantly stiffer in AR and LB; the decrease in ROM and hysteresis area in AR and LB were also statistically significant for the lumbosacral joint compared to L1-L2 and L3-L4. Temperature had a significant effect on stiffness and hysteresis area in AR and on hysteresis area in LB. The follower load increased stiffness in all three modes of loading, but was significant only in AR and LB; it also reduced ROM and increased normalized hysteresis in all three modes of loading.


3 Abstract: An exploratory study investigating the effects of supplementing soyabeans with Moringa oleifera leaf meal, as a protein source in poultry production was done at Bindura University Farm. Five different graded levels of Moringa oleifera meal were used in formulating the diets. Ration formulation using soyabean, yellow maize and Moringa oleifera meal as ingredients for broiler starter (20% Crude Protein) and broiler finisher (18% Crude Protein) diets was done using the Pearson Square Method. Twenty-five day old Habbard chicks were randomly allocated to the five treatment diets T1 (0% Moringa oleifera meal), T2 (25% Moringa oleifera meal), T3 (50% Moringa oleifera meal), T4 (75% Moringa oleifera meal) and T5 (100 % Moringa oleifera meal) in a completely randomized design. Birds were managed under the dip litter system with five compartments each with five birds for a period of 6 weeks. Weekly weight gain, feed intake and feed conversion ratio were recorded throughout the period. Evisceration of carcasses was done after 6 weeks and the different body parts were weighed and recorded. Proximate analysis of Moringa oleifera meal, broiler starter and broiler finisher diets were done and the results were tabulated. Statistical analysis was done using Genstat Software Version 12. No significant differences were noted in the amount of feed taken by broiler birds under different treatments of Moringa oleifera meal, however significant differences in fee d conversion ratios were noted. It was therefore concluded that inclusion of Moringa oleifera meal as protein supplement in broiler diets at 25% inclusion level produces broilers of similar weight and growth rate compared to those fed under conventional commercial feeds (p>0.05).


This article addresses whether the DNA Act (which requires DNA samples from arrestees) passes constitutional muster. I argue that the act is constitutional and that if society believes the collection of DNA from arrestees violates an individual's privacy, it should seek legislative resolution and not seek the protection of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Throughout my analysis, I demonstrate why DNA collection is constitutional and how it is necessary. Part I of this article examines the history of DNA sampling, case law establishing an arrestee's expectation of privacy, and the applicable Fourth Amendment tests. Part II examines the arguments for and against DNA sampling by considering case law at the state and federal level, and explores the significance of junk DNA and the treatment of abandoned DNA. Part III is the personal analysis section, which argues that the totality of circumstances test is the proper test. I apply the test to determine that there is minimal intrusion of an arrestee's expectation of privacy through DNA sampling, a legitimate governmental interest, and that warrants are unnecessary. Further, the section demonstrates why DNA sampling is a natural progression from fingerprint collection, and the section analyzes abandoned DNA and DNA sampling. Part IV concludes the article by stating that the Fourth Amendment is not violated and that society must turn to Congress to seek greater protection.


Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modeling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. This paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework synthesizes the idea from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse.


SUMMARY The pelagic longline fishery catches not only tuna and tuna-like species but also sharks as bycatch. There are some concerns about the populations of sharks that are probably very vulnerable to fisheries. Also, there are some enforcement and international recommendations indicating that discards of dead fish should be prohibited. Therefore, after the longline is retrieved, the sharks that are still alive should be released. In this paper we have calculated the proportions of discards and also the mean number of sharks dead per fishing set by the leased fleet off the Brazilian coast. The results indicate that valuable species like mako and blue shark are hardly discarded, dead or alive. Nevertheless, close to half of the threshers were discarded and most of them were alive.


Meretrix meretrix is believed to be abundant in Panguil Bay and in the absence of relevant fishery statistics, it is useful to quantify their biomass with a view to determining their fishery potential. This study aims to monitor the gonadal development, identify the associated macrofauna and determine the distribution and abundance of hard clam shells M. meretrix along the coastline of four municipalities of Lanao del Norte at Panguil Bay. Four sampling sites were selected and established to achieve and relate some generalities using the transect-quadrat method. Clams were counted, measured and identified. Physicochemical parameters were also noted every sampling. M. meretrix was found to be most abundant in Raw-an Pt. Baroy (28-542 pcs./m2) followed by Mayao, Lala (0.3-26 pcs/m2). M. meretrix at Aloha Tubod occurred in low densities (0.1-4 pcs/m2). No hard clam shell was found in Taguitic, Kapatagan. Mean length differed significantly at the three locations. The coastal area of Mayao, Lala, had the highest diversity (H' = 4.236737) in terms of shell species identified and recorded during the twelve months sampling period. Most of the shells dissected were sexually immature with male shellfishes being more predominant than females. Differences in distribution, density and length size of hard clam shells were compared in this study at four locations. Anthropogenic causes e.g. exploitation as well as environmental parameters such as salinity levels and sediment quality are suggested to be the main cause of the variation. These results will be used as baseline information to properly manage hard clam shell resources in Panguil Bay.


The continuous induction melter with a graphite-packed bed heat generator has a possible application to a waste melter because of its flexibility regarding waste contents, large treatment rate, and safe performance. This study proposed an analysis scheme for locally matching conditions between a melter and a high frequency electric power generator, and for fluctuation ranges of the frequency and input electric power in the melter. This scheme consisted of estimations of the melter coil inductance and resistance by eddy current loss from analytical solutions of Maxwell equations, which are linked to the locally matching conditions about capacitance and transformer turn number ratio. The measured results in a 100 kW pilot melter were compared to experimental ones. Energy use efficiency of the melter was also obtained by carrying out melting treatment rate measurements regarding two major components included in the wastes, iron and calcium silicate. Numerical results agreed well with the measured ones regarding the local matching conditions (capacitance: 10.4 μF, transformer turn number ratio: 7/15), and the fluctuation widths of the frequency (0.3 kHz) and input power (7 %). The measured melting treatment rates were 135 kg/h for iron and 40 kg/h for calcium silicate, when the respective values of input electric power were 92 and 85 kW. Based on these results, the energy use efficiency of the pilot melter was about 40 %.


In the Gas Distribution business Unaccounted Gas is referred to by various names or terms such as: Lost and Unaccounted-For, LUG, L&U, and UAF. In simplest terms, Unaccounted Gas is the result of the formula "gas receipts minus gas deliveries". For the Measurement Group the process amounts to a "gas inventory reconciliation" based on the recorded volumes into the system(s) less the sum of the volumes out of the system(s). This can be a town by town or a total-system reconciliation.


The goal of this work is the design of a language for the implementation of smart card applications, specifically an operating system, as high integrity software. The integrity of a piece of software is demonstrated by proving various properties of the software. The language must therefore exclude any constructs that would make such proofs unreasonably difficult. An untyped language is not only very difficult to reason about formally but also allows many unchecked run-time errors that are eliminated in a, suitably, typed language. We would like the type system of the language to be strong, expressive and simple. Unfortunately the language is required to be able implement certain routines that might normally be part of the run-time system, notably the storage allocation routines. This requirement is likely to force the adoption of a weaker type system than we would ideally prefer. In order to understand the consequences of this requirement we first had to understand in more detail the storage allocation system required. To this end we prepared an initial Z specification of a memory manager for a smart card system. We then produced an executable specification and a Miranda implementation of the memory manager. These led to a modified Z specification for the existing implementation in both an abstract and refined form. The refined form of the modified Z specification was further refined to a detailed design. This was followed by some analysis about the general requirements and implications of a storage allocation function and an example implementation in Modula-3. Finally a proposal for a type system was prepared, describing the advantages of certain choices and the problems introduced by others.


Since timber is naturally directional, timber products become directionally neutral only due to the progress in manufacture technology. This work studies timber panels with a view to analyse their influence on the architectural form. From a design point of view, two sub-categories are defined. These are solid panels, and optimised panels. Solid panels have a homogeneous and compact section and their thicknesses are relatively small. Composite panels are generally made up with two boards and an inner structure to which they are bonded. The work concludes that the two main typologies of timber panels influence design in a different way: due to their homogeneous inner structure, solid panels allow flexible cutting of the openings, and loads and supports can be placed with few limitations. In the other hand, optimised section panels require more planning and should be treated as finished elements.


The Eurozone debt crisis is entering its third year. The original objective of the official sector's response to the crisis -- containment -- has failed. All of the countries of peripheral Europe are now in play; three of them (Greece, Ireland and Portugal) operate under full official sector bailout programs. The prospect of the crisis engulfing the larger peripheral countries, Spain and Italy, has sparked a new round of official sector containment measures. These will involve active intervention by official sector players such as the European Central Bank in order to preserve market access for the affected countries. This paper surveys the options now facing the sovereign debtors and their official sector sponsors. It concludes that there are no painless or riskless options. In the end, the question may come down to this -- to what extent will the official sector sponsors of peripheral Europe be prepared to take on their own shoulders (and off of the shoulders of private sector lenders) a significant portion of the debt stocks of these countries during this period of fiscal adjustment?


We propose the use of a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) accelerometer as a middle ear microphone for future totally implantable cochlear prostheses. The MEMS accelerometer would be attached to the umbo to detect and convert the natural bone vibration that occurs in response to external sounds into an electrical signal that represents the acoustic information. The signal could be further processed to stimulate cochlear implant electrodes. To determine the feasibility of our proposal, we conducted a study to investigate whether the characteristics of umbo vibration along two orthogonal axes—one axis being perpendicular to the tympanic membrane and the other axis being parallel to the tympanic membrane plane but orthogonal to the long process of the malleus—differ significantly enough to compromise the sensing performance of the proposed accelerometer should a position misalignment occur during the implant procedure. We used laser Doppler vibrometry to measure the displacement of the umbo along the two orthogonal axes in 4 cadaveric temporal bones at multiple frequencies within the audible spectrum. We found that the peak-to-peak displacement frequency response along both axes was nearly flat from 250 Hz to 1 kHz, and it gradually rolled off with a slope of approximately −20 dB and −40 dB per decade above 1 kHz and 4 kHz, respectively. At each frequency, the displacement exhibited a linear function of the input sound level with a slope of 20 dB per decade. A comparison of measurements along the two axes indicated a similar frequency response, with an average amplitude difference of 20%. The characterization data suggest that the performance of a miniature ossicular vibration-sensing device attached on the umbo would not be degraded in the event of a position misalignment. The data also indicate that a MEMS accelerometer needs to achieve a resolution of i g /√ Hz to detect normal conversation.


Patients with the very rare eye pathology Wagner disease (OMIM #143200) present with an abnormal (empty) vitreous, retinal detachment and altered electroretinogram (ERG). The disease is progressive and can eventually lead to blindness. No therapy can be offered to date. The genetic basis is the presence of mutations in the VCAN gene, encoding the large extracellular matrix molecule versican, which is a component of the vitreous. All identified mutations map to the canonical splice sites flanking exon 8, resulting in low number of aberrant splice products and a severe increase in two (V2, V3) of the four naturally occurring splice variants. The pathomechanism of Wagner's disease is poorly understood and a mouse model may afford further insight. The hdf -/- mice, named for their initial phenotype of heart defects, carry a null allele for Vcan that leads to embryonic lethality when homozygous, but heterozygote animals are viable. Here we investigated a possible eye phenotype in the heterozygous animals. While the overall morphology of retina and ciliary body appears to be normal, older (17 months) mutant animals show a decrease in ERG signaling profiles affecting the a-, b- and c-waves. This aspect of altered ERG profile demonstrates similarities to the human disease manifestation and underlines the suitability of heterozygous hdf+/- mice as a model for Wagner disease.


Nonlinearity effects, arising within a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), have been deeply investigated with particular interest for exploiting them in wavelength conversion. This application shrinks the research area to a precise scenario: a strong pump signal travels through the active medium simultaneously with a modulated signal to be converted. In this case, it is possible to neglect the spectral distribution of the optical power and phase relationship between propagating signals. SOAs have been also studied as line amplifiers for wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) phase-modulated signals. Aim of this paper is to extend the propagation model in an SOA, in order to simulate nonlinearities occurring in the amplification of a WDM comb signal evaluating-wave mixing on constant envelope modulation schemes (differential phase-shift keying). This can be carried out due to an enhanced analytical model based on the optical field and medium interaction, overcoming the wide-used rate equation approach, which is based on the overall photons density.


Herbal medicines have unique therapeutic properties and therefore, used in rural areas to cure different diseases. The crude phytochemicals (total phenols, flavonoids, tannins, carbohydrates and protein), vitamins (thiamine, niacin, riboflavin and ascorbic acid) and trace elements (calcium, phosphorus and iron) were determined quantitatively from the flowers of Hibiscus rosa sinensis and Hibiscus syriacus. The secondary plant products such as phenols, tannins and flavonoids were found maximum in Hibiscus syriacus whereas the primary metabolite namely carbohydrates and protein were higher in Hibiscus rosa sinensis. All the vitamins were higher in Hibiscus rosa sinensis than Hibiscus syriacus. The trace elements such as calcium and phosphorus were greater in Hibiscus syriacus whereas the content of iron was higher in Hibiscus rosa sinensis.


Background: Mechanical ventilation is used to treat respiratory failure in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Purpose: To review multiple streams of evidence regarding the benefits and harms of ventilation techniques for coronavirus infections, including that causing COVID-19. (PROSPERO registration: CRD42020178187) Data Sources: 21 standard, World Health Organization–specific and COVID-19–specific databases, without language restrictions, until 1 May 2020. Study Selection: Studies of any design and language comparing different oxygenation approaches in patients with coronavirus infections, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), or with hypoxemic respiratory failure. Animal, mechanistic, laboratory, and preclinical evidence was gathered regarding aerosol dispersion of coronavirus. Studies evaluating risk for virus transmission to health care workers from aerosol-generating procedures (AGPs) were included. Data Extraction: Independent and duplicate screening, data abstraction, and risk of bias assessment (GRADE for certainty of evidence and AMSTAR 2 for included systematic reviews). Data Synthesis: 123 studies were eligible (45 on COVID-19, 70 on SARS, 8 on MERS), but only 5 studies (1 on COVID-19, 3 on SARS, 1 on MERS) adjusted for important confounders. A study in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 reported slightly higher mortality with noninvasive ventilation (NIV) than with invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV), but 2 opposing studies, 1 in patients with MERS and 1 in patients with SARS, suggest a reduction in mortality with NIV (very low-certainty evidence). Two studies in patients with SARS report a reduction in mortality with NIV compared with no mechanical ventilation (low-certainty evidence). Two systematic reviews suggest a large reduction in mortality with NIV compared with conventional oxygen therapy. Other included studies suggest increased odds of transmission from AGPs. Limitation: Direct studies in COVID-19 are limited and poorly reported. Conclusion: Indirect and low-certainty evidence suggests that use of NIV, similar to IMV, probably reduces mortality but may increase the risk for transmission of COVID-19 to health care workers. Primary Funding Source: World Health Organization.


This scoping review aimed to examine telehealth-assisted case management for chronic illnesses and assess its overall impact on health care delivery. Guided by the PRISMA statement, this review included 36 empirical studies published between 2011 and 2020. This study identified three weaknesses and four strengths of telehealth-assisted case management. While the weaknesses were negative feelings about telehealth, challenges faced by patients in learning and using telehealth devices, and increased workload for case managers, the strengths included efficient and timely care, increased access to health care services, support for patients' satisfaction, and cost savings. Future research can be designed and conducted for overcoming the weaknesses of telehealth-assisted case management. Additionally, the strengths identified by this review need to be translated from research into case management practice for chronic illness care. This review not only describes the value of such care strategy, but also provides implications for future nursing practice and research.


Plasma noradrenaline and platelet α2-adrenoceptor density (sites/cell using 3H-rauwolscine with and without phentolamine) were correlated with withdrawal score in 23 hospitalized patients undergoing ethanol withdrawal. Control groups for plasma noradrenaline were 25 patients admitted to hospital for elective gastroscopy and 12 laboratory workers accustomed to venipuncture. Controls for platelet α2-adrenoceptor measurements were a separate group of 31 normal subjects with a mean age close to that of the patients' withdrawing from ethanol.

Plasma noradrenaline was significantly higher in the patients undergoing ethanol withdrawal than in patients admitted to hospital for elective endoscopy. Twelve laboratory controls had plasma noradrenaline levels significantly lower than either patient group.

A significant though poor statistical correlation existed between ethanol withdrawal score and simultaneously determined plasma noradrenaline level.

Platelet α2-adrenoceptor sites/cell were reduced in ethanol withdrawal compared with the normal controls. Platelet α2-adrenoceptor sites/cell increased over the first 24 hr of ethanol withdrawal but remained significantly lower than control values. The change in platelet adrenoceptors was accompanied by a fall in mean plasma noradrenaline.

Thus, the stress of hospital admission itself is associated with an increase in plasma noradrenaline, but ethanol withdrawal enhances this increase, which is accompanied by and probably causes a reduction in platelet α2-adrenoceptor numbers. These changes begin to return towards normal within 24 hr as the withdrawal reaction subsides.


Aim: to review the current knowledge on dental caries microbiology and critically appraise the literature.
 Methodology: An electronic search of the available dental literature was done using different databases (PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus). The following keywords were used: dental caries, carcinogenic bacteria and oral biofilm. In addition, classic textbooks that related to dental caries and oral microbiology were searched.
Findings: Oral bacteria can grow in two ways: in planktonic or biofilm forms. In the past, most microbial studies were studies of the planktonic form. Only around 0.1% of oral bacteria grow in the planktonic state. Bacterial cells usually aggregate and attach to the tooth surface to form an oral biofilm. The polysaccharides in the biofilm matrix are a resource that acidogenic bacteria metabolise and produce acids to initiate or progress the dental caries lesion. Different types of acids are created as a result of biofilm metabolism, which cause a shift in oral pH under the critical level. This reduction in the pH level will influence the chemical composition of the tooth surface. The bacterial cells start to multiply to form a microcolony within 24 hours. If left undisturbed the growth is continued, resulting in a mature type of biofilm within a week.
 Summary of findings: The most frequent species found associated with dental caries were mutans streptococci and lactobacilli, which shift the balance towards tooth tissue demineralisation.


The generation of resilient learning communities has become a priority for the national government of Costa Rica, recognizing the importance of incorporating a cross-cutting component of risk management in the education sector of the country. However, this process must be accompanied by appropriate access to information to enable decision-making in the field of planning. This prototype seeks to establish itself as an alternative solution to reduce gaps in information in the context of risk reduction in schools.


The potential measurement accuracy of coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) in N2 was studied. A test was conducted using BOXCARS and nonresonant background suppression in a stabilized tube furnace from room temperature up to 1700 K. A computer program was developed for quick data processing. The influence of referencing on temperature measurement accuracy was analyzed. Absence of referencing produced errors up to 100 K on the mean temperature and on the standard deviation. Referencing with a time-averaged reference gave accurate values for the mean temperature. Referencing on a shot-to-shot basis improved the mean slightly and produced marginal gains in the standard deviation of individual measurements. The latter stays in the 10–50 K range in the temperature domain. Simulations show that part of the standard deviation (20%) is attributable to shot noise alone. The rest probably results from dye laser spectral noise and beam wandering.


We introduce the use of a birefringent crystal with lensless digital holography to create an on-chip differential interference contrast (DIC) microscope. Using an incoherent source with a large aperture, in-line holograms of micro-objects are created, which interact with a uniaxial crystal and an absorbing polarizer, encoding differential interference contrast information of the objects on the chip. Despite the fact that a unit fringe magnification and an incoherent source with a large aperture have been used, holographic digital processing of such holograms rapidly recovers the differential phase contrast image of the specimen over a large field-of-view of ~24 mm2.


Background: Workforce planning is critical for being able to deliver appropriate health service and thus is relevant to medical education. It is, therefore, important to understand medical students' future specialty choices and the factors that influence them. This study was conducted to identify, explore, and analyze the factors influencing specialty preferences among medical students of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Methods: A multiyear, multicenter survey of medical student career choice was conducted with all five UAE medical schools. The questionnaire consisted of five sections. Chi-squared tests, regression analysis, and stepwise logistic regression were performed. Results: The overall response rate was 46% (956/2079). Factors that students reported to be extremely important when considering their future career preferences were intellectual satisfaction (87%), work–life balance (71%), having the required talent (70%), and having a stable and secure future (69%). The majority of students (60%) preferred internal medicine, surgery, emergency medicine, or family Medicine. The most common reason given for choosing a particular specialty was personal interest (21%), followed by flexibility of working hours (17%). Discussion: The data show that a variety of factors inspires medical students in the UAE in their choice of a future medical specialty. These factors can be used by health policymakers, university mentors, and directors of residency training programs to motivate students to choose specialties that are scarce in the UAE and therefore better serve the health-care system and the national community.


Bioconversion of sago starch to fermentable sugar was investigated using three
genetically modified Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains, YKU107 (expressing α-
amylase), YKU131 (expressing glucoamylase) and YKU 132 (expressing α-amylase
and glucoamylase). Alpha-amylase (YKU107) and glucoamylase (YKU131) was
partial purified using acetone and ammonium sulphate precipitation, respectively
before characterisation studies were carried out. The enzymes were purified by about
2.78 and 1.08 fold with recovery of 41.93% and 33.64%, respectively. Through
DEAE-cellulose column chromatography, only 26.31% α-amylase and 36.68%
glucoamylase were recovered with purification fold of 6.90 and 1.81. Futher
characterisation showed that both enzymes were stable at pH 5.5, temperature 30oC
and ionic strength of 0.05 M, evidenced with residual activity higher than 90%.
Optimum pH, temperature and initial starch concentration for glucose production
were determined as 5.5, 30oC and 20gL-1, respectively. From influence of various
starches studied, potato starch was hydrolysed efficiently, followed by corn, sago,
cassava and rice starch. However, the maximum yield of glucose based on utilised
starch followed the sequence: sago > corn > potato > cassava > rice starch. Batch
fermentation using 2 L fermenter showed that strains YKU107, YKU131 and
YKU132 were able to hydrolyse about 97.82%, 86.86% and 88.06%, respectively
during 60 hours cultivation with maximum glucose concentration of 9.32 gL-1, 3.63
gL-1 and 0.85 gL-1, respectively. Based on maximum glucose production, YKU107
was selected for futher studies. The influence of rpm examined by this strain
indicated that the glucose production consistently increased with rpm. Repeatedbatch
fermentation at maximum glucose concentration produced 6.91 gL-1 of
glucose and 12.35 gL-1 of biomass. The continuous culture was performed in order to
increase the glucose production. The maximum glucose concentration of 7.80 gL-1
was obtained at 0.075 h-1 dilution rate and suggested that the optimum operating
conditions for glucose production is just at the critical dilution rate. The plasmid was
categorised as stable even after 348 hours of continuous cultivation (43 residence
times).


This article explores the potential of using an educational board game as a fun and stimulating learning resource to support researchers and academics in Higher Education. The Publishing Trap was developed by Chris Morrison and Jane Secker (@UKCopyrightLit) to highlight the impact of publishing and scholarly communication choices that researchers make throughout their career. After trialling the game with Library staff at Leeds Beckett University, Rachel Thornton summarises the experience and participants' feedback, and considers the game's usefulness as a training tool.


Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality have the potential of delivering interactive experiences that take us to places of emotional resonance, give us agency to form our own experiential memories and become part of the everyday lives we will live in the future. Philip Lelyveld will define what Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality are, present recent developments that will shape how they will potentially impact entertainment, work, learning, social interaction, and life in general, and raise rarely-mentioned but important issues that will impact how VR/AR/MR is adopted. Just as TV programming progressed from live broadcasts of staged performances to today's very complex language of multithread long-form content, so VR/AR/MR will progress from the current 'early days' of projecting existing media language with a few tweaks into a headset experience to a new VR/AR/MR-specific language that both the creatives and the audience understand. Philip's goal is to bring you up to speed on the current state, the potential, and the known barriers to adoption of Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality.


The purpose of this thesis was to find out how an entrepreneurial start‐up company should go forth to initiate successful new relationships with customers. Surprisingly few researchers have focused on initiation alone as a phenomenon, even though it is essential for creating prosperous relationships. The authors have broken the aim into five research questions. The first research question are; (1) How the initiation of a relationship progresses, and which sub‐processes and factors are important for building a new relationship for an entrepreneurial start‐up. The authors have preformed a broad literature review, covering the following categories and literature perspectives to ensure a thorough theoretical study of the phenomenon; relationship development, selling and buying, and network, third parties and social embeddedness. With regard to relationship development the authors have grouped key aspects from the literature together into a synthesis of four states, including a contextual aspects, which are important sub-processes that must be fulfilled during an initiation process, these are; (1) Pre dialogue state, (2) First contact state, (3) Forming the relationship foundation, and (4) Commitment state. In addition the authors have highlighted some contextual aspects, which may influence to process. Secondly the authors have grouped key aspects from the selling and buying literature into three phases, which describes initiation sub‐processes from a sellers perspective, namely; (1) Establishing a strategic foundation, (2) Getting in contact, (3) Meeting and dialogue with the prospect. With regards to the third literature perspective, and network, third parties and social embeddedness, the authors have studied how sellers, third parties and buyers and social relations influence the initiation process through several interfaces, which are named; S1 (seller influences the process directly), S2 (seller influences third parties), B1 (buyer influences the process directly), T1 (third parties influences the process directly), T2 (third parties influences the buyer), and T3 (third parties influences the seller). The authors combine these insights and findings in order to create a conceptualized model to describe initiation of customer relationships. Furthermore, the authors provide an analogy of a maze of traffic lights to explain the complex process.  In addition, the authors conducted a multiple comparative case study consisting of five entrepreneurial start-up companies and five consultancies, in order to gain further insight from an entrepreneurial and a consultant mindset. The findings from the case study provided an answer to the following research questions; (2) How do consulting companies proceed to initiate new customer relationships? (3) How do entrepreneurial start-ups proceed to initiate new customer relationships? (4) What are the best practices used by consultancies and entrepreneurial start-ups and what are the similarities and differences in their approaches to initiate new customer relationships? The main conclusions from the case study with regard to consultancies were that they focus most of their efforts on existing customer relationships. This is due to the fact that the consultancies are very niche and industry specific, and has a very large network and highly specialized competence within their niche and industry. Thus, even when approaching potential new customers they often have some kind of existing tie supporting the initiation process. The main conclusions from the study with regard to entrepreneurs where that they highlighted the importance of keeping the client warm through regular follow-up and involving the client in the product development in a sustainable manner. In addition the entrepreneurial companies focused on taking advantage of network effects by, for instance, make us of hybrid structures. Finally, the authors answered the last research question, which were; How may a small entrepreneurial start‐up make use of the insight provided by the literature review and the best practices uncovered in the case study to improve their processes of business relationships initiation? In conclusion, the conceptual model and insight gained from the empirical findings into the initiation process provides an improved understanding for entrepreneurial start-ups. This improved understanding can help entrepreneurs to adapt and improve their initiation efforts, by assessing their current initiation efforts and formulating a strategy to consciously improve their initiation practices. The authors propose several measures for establishing a strategic foundation, getting in contact, and meeting and dialogue with prospects. Furthermore it is important to understand that as a seller they can influence the process directly through sales effort and also proactively by facilitating that third parties influence the initiation process. Lastly, the authors propose several issues, which may be pursued in further research.