The movie industry has been using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles as a new tool to produce more and more complex and aesthetic camera shots. However, the shooting process currently rely on manual control of the drones which makes it difficult and sometimes inconvenient to work with. In this paper we address the lack of autonomous system to operate generic rotary-wing drones for shooting purposes. We propose a global control architecture based on a high-level generic API used by many UAV. Our solution integrates a compound and coupled model of a generic rotary-wing drone and a Full State Feedback strategy. To address the specific task of capturing cinema scenes, we combine the control architecture with an automatic camera path planning approach that encompass cinematographic techniques. The possibilities offered by our system are demonstrated through a series of experiments.


To ensure the security and privacy of the patient's health status in the wireless body area networks (WBANs), it is critical to secure the extra-body communication between the smart portable device held by the WBAN client and the application providers, such as the hospital, physician or medical staff. Based on certificateless cryptography, this paper proposes a remote authentication protocol featured with nonrepudiation, client anonymity, key escrow resistance, and revocability for extra-body communication in the WBANs. First, we present a certificateless encryption scheme and a certificateless signature scheme with efficient revocation against short-term key exposure, which we believe are of independent interest. Then, a certificateless anonymous remote authentication with revocation is constructed by incorporating the proposed encryption scheme and signature scheme. Our revocation mechanism is highly scalable, which is especially suitable for the large-scale WBANs, in the sense that the key-update overhead on the side of trusted party increased logarithmically in the number of users. As far as we know, this is the first time considering the revocation functionality of anonymous remote authentication for the WBANs. Both theoretic analysis and experimental simulations show that the proposed authentication protocol is provably secure in the random oracle model and highly practical.


Several utilities in New England have conducted pilot bidding programs for demand-side resources, while integrated bidding processes, which include DSM resources, are currently being planned or implemented by utilities in New York, New Jersey, and Washington. In this study, we examine several resource planning and program implementation issues that are raised by competitive bidding programs for DSM resources: the choice of combined or separate bidding for demand and supply resources, the criteria used to rank and select projects proposed by bidders, the value of DSM resources, the role of non-price factors, and issues that arise in measuring the impact of DSM programs. We compare the bid evaluation systems used by four utilities that are conducting integrated bidding programs and examine the nominal weights assigned to various features (e.g., price, project status/viability, system optimization, environmental factors) by each utility. We conclude that bidding may have a limited role in a utility's overall DSM strategy because bidding mechanisms are inappropriate for various types of programs and because of the relative immaturity of the energy services industry.


This research aimed at describing the implementation of Kirkpatrick's evaluation model in the learning of Initial Value and Boundary Condition Problems. For each of the four different levels in the model, an evaluation was conducted using different instruments. A performance evaluation was conducted to assess the students' product or project. This was a qualitative descriptive study involving 58 students of Mathematics Department, Faculty of mathematics and Natural Sciences, State University of Gorontalo as the sample. The data were collected by means of questionnaire; the reliability was tested through Cronbrach's alpha. Students' learning achievement was scored using a performance rubric. The study shows that Kirkpatrick's Evaluation Model for the learning program of initial Values and Boundary Condition Problems is very effective. Keywords: Kirkpatrick's evaluation model, Performance assessment, Initial value and boundary condition problems


Pioneering firms have the potential to achieve significant social and economic benefits in fragile and conflict‑affected settings. However, these contexts involve higher risks and costs, which dissuades pioneers and investors. In this policy paper, we argue that the public good these firms provide warrants the use of public funds to offset the costs of pioneering in these settings.


This article aims to evaluate the impact of different categories of investments in public infrastructures on economic growth and private investment in Tunisia over the period 1975-2014. By using the generalized method of moments, we estimate a simultaneous equations model containing a growth equation and a private investment equation. In the empirical study, we have introduced both economic and social infrastructures. The results demonstrate that in the two cases, the investments in public infrastructures affect positively and strongly the growth and private investment. The experience from Tunisia suggests that it is necessary to adopt economic policies that develop the physical infrastructures and improve the quality of human capital for sustainable economic growth in developing countries.


In prior work, I suggested the way in which private enterprises have been developing coherent systems of governance that draw on but are autonomous of law and state based legal systems. In this essay I suggest the challenges to the erection of a similar coherent system of legal regulation by or through states. This essay has two objectives. The first is to examine the difficulties of current approaches to use law and legal frameworks to manage MNEs through law. The second is to examine the way that current contradictions impede efforts act developing coherent regulatory models and on that basis to sketch out alternatives beyond the quite limited and repetitive discursive approaches to the regulations of MNEs through law. The fundamental impediment to the legal regulation of the MNE, then, may well be the conceptual cage within which this use of regulation is constrained. As long as the "problem" of MNEs is understood as an institutional problem, that is as a problem of managing something that can be conceived at some level of generality as an institution, an appropriate regulatory response will be elusive. And it will be elusive precisely because the object of regulation cannot focus on the regulation of an object (the MNE as enterprise), but the management of a system (production chains beyond and within the state). For that enterprise, the traditional tools available to states and exercised on "things" will continue to increasingly elaborate legal interventions produce failure.


Background Neurofibromatosis 2 (NF2) is an autosomal-dominant tumour predisposition syndrome characterised by bilateral vestibular schwannomas, considerable morbidity and reduced life expectancy. Although genotype–phenotype correlations are well established in NF2, little is known about effects of mutation type or location within the gene on mortality. Improvements in NF2 diagnosis and management have occurred, but their effect on patient survival is unknown. Methods We evaluated clinical and molecular predictors of mortality in 1192 patients (771 with known causal mutations) identified through the UK National NF2 Registry. Kaplan–Meier survival and Cox regression analyses were used to evaluate predictors of mortality, with jackknife adjustment of parameter SEs to account for the strong intrafamilial phenotypic correlations that occur in NF2. Results The study included 241 deaths during 10 995 patient-years of follow-up since diagnosis. Early age at diagnosis and the presence of intracranial meningiomas were associated with increased mortality, and having a mosaic, rather than non-mosaic, NF2 mutation was associated with reduced mortality. Patients with splice-site or missense mutations had lower mortality than patients with truncating mutations (OR 0.459, 95% CI 0.213 to 0.990, and OR 0.196, 95% CI 0.213 to 0.990, respectively). Patients with splice-site mutations in exons 6–15 had lower mortality than patients with splice-site mutations in exons 1–5 (OR 0.333, 95% CI 0.129 to 0.858). The mortality of patients with NF2 diagnosed in more recent decades was lower than that of patients diagnosed earlier. Conclusions Continuing advances in molecular diagnosis, imaging and treatment of NF2-associated tumours offer hope for even better survival in the future.


The division of power between majority and minority shareholders raises a fundamental tension for corporate law scholars. Awarding minority owners too much say can hinder effective decision making and introduce holdout problems. But naked majority rule only breeds a different malady by handing controlling shareholders the power to steal from minority owners. This governance conflict plays out in a variety of contexts but presents itself most explicitly during freezeout mergers.Appraisal rights are a statutory attempt to deal with this problem. These laws do not directly prevent freezeouts; rather, they impose a liability rule where minority holders can demand fair value for their shares when they object to a deal. Unfortunately, this remedy functions rather poorly, and legal scholars have mostly scoffed at appraisal rights for the last half-century.Interestingly, however, several recent developments in the back offices of Wall Street and the courthouses of Delaware have created a new appraisal puzzle. The problem relates to identity ambiguity. Appraisal statutes are written to cover record holders (the direct owners listed on a firm's books). Yet under modern securities settlement practices the identity of these clearinghouse owners no longer changes during the sale of stock. And recent precedent now permits beneficial owners (the real investors) to obtain appraisal even if they purchase shares after voting rights on the merger have been severed from the stock. This introduces what I will call amplified appraisal claims, where a large number of investors can seek appraisal - each insisting that they have claim to a smaller pool of "qualified" shares. Such a development has the potential to turn the dynamics of a freeze-out merger on its head. This Article describes the appraisal identity puzzle, analyzes the theoretical implications for majority and minority shareholders, and proposes a normative response.


We have characterized Unstable factor for orange1 (Ufo1), a dominant, allele-specific modifier of expression of the maize pericarp color1 (p1) gene. The p1 gene encodes an Myb-homologous transcriptional activator of genes required for biosynthesis of red phlobaphene pigments. The P1-wr allele specifies colorless kernel pericarp and red cobs, whereas Ufo1 modifies P1-wr expression to confer pigmentation in kernel pericarp, as well as vegetative tissues, which normally do not accumulate significant amounts of phlobaphene pigments. In the presence of Ufo1, P1-wr transcript levels and transcription rate are increased in kernel pericarp. The P1-wr allele contains approximately six p1 gene copies present in a hypermethylated and multicopy tandem array. In P1-wr Ufo1 plants, methylation of P1-wr DNA sequences is reduced, whereas the methylation state of other repetitive genomic sequences was not detectably affected. The phenotypes produced by the interaction of P1-wr and Ufo1 are unstable, exhibiting somatic mosaicism and variable penetrance. Moreover, the changes in P1-wr expression and methylation are not heritable: meiotic segregants that lack Ufo1 revert to the normal P1-wr expression and methylation patterns. These results demonstrate the existence of a class of modifiers of gene expression whose effects are associated with transient changes in DNA methylation of specific loci.


Abstract This article explores the entanglement of two kinds of invasive lives in northern Australia: invasive plants, and the enduring life of the unfinished colonial project, which continues to have implications for indigenous peoples. In the extensive indigenous lands of Australia's tropical north, communities have increasing responsibility for invasive plant management among other pressing land management tasks. In a context of climate change and novel ecosystems, these entanglements exacerbate environmental management challenges in the tropical savanna and affect indigenous livelihoods. Drawing on arguments that it is necessary to literally speak novel ecologies, we here enunciate and describe a novel ecological assemblage we call Indigenous Invasive Plant Management (IIPM). Historical accounts and contemporary ethnography (semi‐structured interviews and participant observation undertaken in 2010–2013) show a lingering colonial heritage in the ways that IIPM is entwined with tenure and governance issues, and in its everyday practice. These findings illustrate how IIPM can risk being a form of continuing dispossession as well as having good potential outcomes.


n contemporary music performance the sound of live instruments often coexists with electronic sounds. Numerous studies have shown that radiation patterns of natural sound sources vary with frequency and time. This affects the reverberant sound field of a room and hence the perception of timbre of the sound at the listener's position. Thus, reproducing not only the temporal and spectral but also the spatially varying radiation pattern becomes a challenging task in virtual audio environments. One topic of ongoing research is the measurement, reproduction, and compact description of sound radiation patterns. The wave field expansion in spherical coordinates provides a general description format, which is independent of the sound field rendering technique applied. This article discusses how simultaneous recordings with a spherical microphone array can be applied to streaming concerts. A soloist player is recorded in the semi-anechoic chamber of the University in Graz and the audio and video data is streamed in real-time to IRCAM, where it is reproduced as virtual sound source on stage using an eighty channel WFS array.


The heart, like skeletal muscles, is made up of muscular cells arranged regularly and packed into sort of bundles commonly called cardiac fibers. After a myocardial infarction (MI) both during the acute phase and the reperfusion of the myocardium, several cells die and some local fibers orientation modifications appear. Consequently, the heart does not contract properly anymore. The evaluation of the fibers orientation and more particularly the modifications of their orientation can be useful to evaluate the extent of the lesion and to adapt the treatment after a MI. The purpose of our work is to develop ultrasound based imaging techniques to determine the cardiac fibers orientation in order to be able in fine to determine fibers orientation changes that appear due to MI. Recently, a fiber orientation ultrasound imaging technique has been proposed based on the spatial coherence of backscattered signals. In this paper, we study the spatial coherence technique in ultrafast imaging. We evaluate the feasibility to extend the previous published technique to diverging waves instead. The purpose is to extend the field of view which is typically reduced in cardiac imaging due to the limited ultrasound window possible between the ribs. Experimental data were acquired with a 1024 channels system and a 32×32 matrix array on a phantom constituted by seven wires at different orientations as a function of depth. These first results obtained with two different transmission strategies are compared and are in favor of diverging waves.


Abstract:  Drosophila suzukii is an invasive pest of cultivated fruit crops in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. However, more information is needed to understand the extent of D. suzukii utilization of wild fruit and specialty crops as suitable hosts, such as aronia (Aronia melanocarpa), for which risk assessment has not yet been established. Both laboratory bioassays and field monitoring were conducted to assess the susceptibly of aronia to D. suzukii. No-choice bioassays were conducted on damaged, destemmed, and undamaged aronia fruit. Field infestation was assessed using yeast-sugar traps for adults and fruit samples for larvae during the 2015 growing season at three farms in south-central Wisconsin. In bioassays, D. suzukii successfully completed its life cycle in damaged and destemmed aronia, while undamaged aronia did not support larval or adult development. Adult flies which emerged from damaged aronia took longer to develop and weighed less compared to adults emerging from raspberry. In the field, adults were abundant throughout the growing season (late June–late September) and larvae were detected in low numbers in ripe fruit samples collected from late August through late September. After harvest, fruit sampled from the processing and packing line revealed low numbers of drosophila larvae. Overall, these findings suggest that damaged or destemmed aronia is susceptible to D. suzukii infestation, while intact fruit is resistant to D. suzukii. In addition, the bioassays suggest that aronia may serve as a suboptimal host compared to raspberry. These findings suggest the importance of preventing fruit damage before harvest and add to a growing understanding of how wild and specialty crops, such as aronia, may affect population dynamics of this invasive fly.


Temporal and latitudinal gradients in ocean temperature may be useful for predicting the likely responses of marine species to accelerating global warming. Here, we examined seasonal variations in early life-history traits of the reef fish Pomacentrus moluccensis at Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Latitudinal variations were then compared among three locations from Kimbe Bay in Papua New Guinea to the southern GBR (18° latitude). At Lizard Island, a 4°C temperature rise from spring to summer was correlated with a 0.13 mm day⁻¹ increase in pre-settlement growth rates and a 3.28-day decrease in pelagic larval duration (PLD). The latitudinal comparison revealed a non-linear relationship where growth rate and settlement size declined and PLD increased at Kimbe Bay where temperature was the highest of all the study sites. Furthermore, the slopes of latitudinal variations in life-history traits as a function of temperature within the GBR were significantly steeper than those in the temporal analysis. These latitudinal patterns were likely to be shaped by (1) the species thermal reaction norm, (2) local adaptation or (3) location-specific environmental and demographic characteristics. The significant correlations of early life-history traits with natural temperature gradients emphasise the potential sensitivity of reef fish larvae to global warming.


Abstract. This paper presents the operational retrieval of tropical tropospheric ozone columns (TOCs) from the Second Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME-2) instruments using the convective-cloud-differential (CCD) method. The retrieval is based on total ozone and cloud property data provided by the GOME Data Processor (GDP) 4.7, and uses above-cloud and clear-sky ozone column measurements to derive a monthly mean TOC between 20° N and 20° S. Validation of the GOME-2 TOC with several tropical ozonesonde sites shows good agreement, with a high correlation between the GOME-2 and sonde measurements, and small biases within ~ 3 DU. The TOC data have been used in combination with tropospheric NO2 measurements from GOME-2 to analyse the effect of the 2009–2010 El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the tropospheric ozone distribution in the tropics. El Nino induced dry conditions in September–October 2009 resulted in relatively high tropospheric ozone columns over the southern Indian Ocean and northern Australia, while La Nina conditions in September–October 2010 resulted in a strong increase in tropospheric NO2 in South America, and enhanced ozone in the eastern Pacific and South America. Comparisons of the GOME-2 tropospheric ozone data with simulations of the ECHAM/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry (EMAC) model for 2009 El Nino conditions illustrate the usefulness of the GOME-2 TOC measurements in evaluating chemistry climate models (CCMs). Evaluation of CCMs with appropriate satellite observations helps to identify strengths and weaknesses of the model systems, providing a better understanding of driving mechanisms and adequate relations and feedbacks in the Earth atmosphere, and finally leading to improved models.


January 2011 Abstract Large populations in the developing world lack adequate access to products, such as essential medicines, whose use confers positive externalities. Because of the critical role played by the privatesector distribution channel, donors (e.g., the Global Fund) are beginning to devote substantial resources to fund subsidies that encourage the channel to improve the availability of these products. A key question for a donor is whether it should subsidize the purchases or sales of the private channel. We find the answer depends crucially on whether consumers are homogeneous or heterogeneous in their valuation of the product. For the case of heterogeneous consumers' valuations, we provide evidence that subsidizing sales leads to greater expected donor utility, consumption, and social welfare. When consumers' valuations are homogeneous, we establish the opposite conclusion: subsidizing purchases leads to greater expected donor utility, consumption, and social welfare.


The paper deals with the investigation of the chemical composition, antimicrobial and antioxidant activity of four commercial products of Melaleuca alternifolia essential (TTO). The chemical composition was determined using gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis. The broth-microdilution method was used to test antimicrobial activity. The antioxidant activity was tested by stable free radical of the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH). Results of the chemical analysis identified over 30 components. The composition of the four samples varied and the major components included the following: terpinen-4-ol, γ-terpinene and α-terpinene, respectively. The samples were compliant to the ISO Standard 4730. All TTOs presented similar degrees of antimicrobial activity. A slightly higher activity was shown by TTO 4 , having a balanced level of the three main components: terpinen-4-ol (34.58%) γ γ γ γ-terpinene (9.89%) and α-terpinene (12.59%). Fungi were more sensitive than bacteria and yeast. All TTOs tested possessed the concentration-dependent antioxidant activity. Antioxidant activity was based on a balanced chemical composition between terpinen-4-ol and terpenic compounds. Biological testing confirmed the TTO antimicrobial activity against a wide range of the Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, and fungi and yeasts. The correlation between the chemical composition and biological activity was quite evident. In conclusion, this study's results reveal not only the biological activity of TTO, but also its potential as an antioxidative agent.


A detailed study of phonetic variation in the Eucalyptus gunnii-archeri complex clearly indicates continuous variation between the taxa E. archeri Maiden and Blakely and E. gunnii Hook f. The complex comprises a multidimensional clinally varying series of highly differentiated populations. In part, population differentiation appears to result from the interaction of multicharacter clines paralleling at least two independent habit gradients. These gradients are associated with, firstly, variation in exposure to the alpine environment and, secondly, the transition in the sub-alpine region from the open woodland, 'frost-hollow' habitat to the mixed eucalypt/rainforest habitat. This multidimensional continuum is summarized by classification of populations into five main phonetic groups which are more or less geographically and ecologically defined and correspond well with the perception of the taxa in the literature.


Nitric oxide (NO) is a freely diffusible transmitter acting throughout the mammalian nervous system via guanylyl cyclase activation and cGMP production. Since neuronal NO synthesis is linked to NMDA receptor activation, much research has focused on the role of NO in NMDA receptor-dependent long-term potentiation (LTP). The proposed role predicts that exogenous NO, paired with a standard LTP induction protocol, should restore the NO-dependent component of LTP when NMDA receptors are blocked. Surprisingly, however, tests of this prediction have not been reported. Here, it was found that exogenous NO, paired with a 1-s, 100-Hz tetanus during NMDA receptor blockade yielded a slowly-rising, long-lasting potentiation of CA1 field EPSPs in hippocampal slices. Like NO-dependent LTP, this potentiation required the tetanus and was guanylyl cyclase-dependent. Contrary to predictions, however, the NO-induced potentiation was additive with subsequent LTP. At CA1 and other synapses, NO is viewed as a putative retrograde transmitter, generated postsynaptically and acting presynaptically. Discordant with this role, the NO-induced potentiation was not associated with a persistent change in paired-pulse facilitation, an index of presynaptic function. However, endogenous NO did appear to facilitate neurotransmitter release under conditions of basal stimulation. In this case, NO generated by endothelial cells was responsible, perhaps explaining the requirement for endothelium-derived NO in LTP. An NMDA receptor-independent form of LTP involving L-type voltage-gated Ca2+ channels has previously been described at CA1 synapses. Unexpectedly, we found that this type of LTP also required NO, apparently derived solely from neurons. Unfortunately, supposed inhibitors of neuronal NO synthesis, though widely used, were found to be inadequately selective to be of use diagnostically. Finally, presynaptic effects of NO, such as those described above, have been reported to require the guanylyl cyclase α1 subunit. Accordingly, immunohistochemistry was used to investigate the location of this subunit in the hippocampus.


Abstract Interpretations of the allogenic and autogenic controls on dryland alluvial successions are commonly hampered by incomplete knowledge of the sedimentology of modern dryland river floodplains, in part because of the limited subsurface sediment exposures available in typically stable or aggrading riverine settings. Along many valleys in the South African interior, however, river incision and associated formation of "dongas" (gullies and badland-type settings) provides extensive exposures of Cenozoic alluvial successions, which enable assessment of the controls on their genesis, sedimentary architecture, and preservation potential. This paper focuses on the incised Modder River at Erfkroon, Free State, located ∼ 1480 km (river distance) inland from the Atlantic Ocean. At Erfkroon, numerous dongas have formed in an ∼ 15-m-thick alluvial succession deposited within a narrow (< 500 m) valley carved predominantly in erodible, fine-grained sedimentary rocks ("shales"). Facies associations include channel deposits that vary in texture from sandy gravel to silty sand, and overbank deposits consisting predominantly of sandy mud to muddy sand that have varying degrees of pedogenic overprinting. Younger deposits are stacked upon, crosscut, or onlap older deposits, indicating a complex history of cut and fill. Changing assemblages of associated fossil fauna and archaeological artifacts, luminescence ages, and paleosol characteristics demonstrate net sediment accumulation over at least the last 42 ka under humid to arid climatic conditions. By contrast, the present-day situation of deep channel and donga incision into bedrock appears to represent a new phase of sediment evacuation and valley deepening. Comparison with other incising dryland rivers in the South African interior suggests that: 1) while phases of cut and fill are driven largely by climatic fluctuations, major phases of incision into bedrock are controlled by breaching of downstream resistant rock barriers; 2) long-term sediment preservation is limited in narrow valleys that are subject to extended periods of base-level stability followed by episodic, major incisional phases, but is greater along broader valleys where rivers are undergoing lateral migration and more progressive long-term incision. Study of incising rivers such as the Modder can yield important insights into the controls on alluvial successions in stable continental interiors beyond the range of sea-level changes, which may help with the interpretation of inland alluvial valleys preserved in the geological record.


The structure of species interaction networks is important for species coexistence, community stability and exposure of species to extinctions. Two widespread structures in ecological networks are modularity, i.e. weakly connected subgroups of species that are internally highly interlinked, and nestedness, i.e. specialist species that interact with a subset of those species with which generalist species also interact. Modularity and nestedness are often interpreted as evolutionary ecological structures that may have relevance for community persistence and resilience against perturbations, such as climate-change. Therefore, historical climatic fluctuations could influence modularity and nestedness, but this possibility remains untested. This lack of research is in sharp contrast to the considerable efforts to disentangle the role of historical climate-change and contemporary climate on species distributions, richness and community composition patterns. Here, we use a global database of pollination networks to show that historical climate-change is at least as important as contemporary climate in shaping modularity and nestedness of pollination networks. Specifically, on the mainland we found a relatively strong negative association between Quaternary climate-change and modularity, whereas nestedness was most prominent in areas having experienced high Quaternary climate-change. On islands, Quaternary climate-change had weak effects on modularity and no effects on nestedness. Hence, for both modularity and nestedness, historical climate-change has left imprints on the network structure of mainland communities, but had comparably little effect on island communities. Our findings highlight a need to integrate historical climate fluctuations into eco-evolutionary hypotheses of network structures, such as modularity and nestedness, and then test these against empirical data. We propose that historical climate-change may have left imprints in the structural organisation of species interactions in an array of systems important for maintaining biological diversity.


Dissertation Title: CHARLES FOWLER AND HIS VISION FOR MUSIC EDUCATION: AN INTRODUCTION AND SELECTED WRITINGS FROM 1964 TO 1989 Craig Michael Resta, Doctor of Philosophy, 2008 Directed By: Professor Marie McCarthy School of Music Charles Fowler, eminent advocate for arts education, devoted his career to the idea that music was critical to the development of young people and could positively impact schooling and society. During his 45-year career, he served in many roles: as teacher, supervisor, professor, scholar, author, editor, consultant, and advocate. Although his contributions are prolific, this research represents the first full-scale study that considers his work as an entire body. The purpose of this dissertation is to introduce Fowler as a significant figure in the field of music education, codify the major periods of his career, identify important writings, contextualize them within their times, and review them according to his vision for music education. Utilizing historical method and content analysis, several thousand documents were examined from the Charles Fowler Papers archived at the University of Maryland, College Park. Following an introduction to Fowler and his work, four periods of his career are presented, with the two middle periods, 1964 to 1973 and 1974 to 1989 serving as the focus of the study. Selected works were chosen based on their relevance to important events in Fowler's life and their relationship to his philosophy and viewpoint. The works were analyzed and contextualized by using primary source documents, foundational texts in music education, Fowler's own commentary, and interviews with established scholars and colleagues who knew him and respected his work. Finally, these writings traced the development of Fowler's vision which advocated music education can serve as an agent of social change. Findings reveal that Fowler's initial vision was based on the seven reconstructionist objectives he outlined in his 1964 dissertation. Based on these objectives, fifteen broad themes emerged in his writings during the period of 1964 to 1989. The themes elaborate on Fowler's vision for music education and its value to society, and relate to core concepts of reform, democracy, creativity, advocacy, and social change. It is hoped that this study will serve as a catalyst to encourage others to continue research into the life and career of Charles Fowler, along with further writing about reform and pragmatic change within the music education profession. CHARLES FOWLER AND HIS VISION FOR MUSIC EDUCATION: AN INTRODUCTION AND SELECTED WRITINGS FROM 1964 TO 1989


There is evidence that infection with Chlamydia pneumoniae is associated with asthma of recent onset and that it can influence the severity of asthma. This has led to the suggestion that macrolide antibiotics may be useful in the treatment of asthma in subjects infected with C. pneumoniae. This study examined the association between immunoglobulin (Ig)G and IgA titres to C. pneumoniae and the severity of asthma. IgG and IgA antibodies to C. pneumoniae were measured in 619 subjects with asthma (18-60 yrs), using the microimmunofluoresence method. Subjects were asked about their use of asthma medicines, symptoms, previous hospitalization for asthma, smoking status and age of onset of asthma. In subjects with IgG titres of > or =1:64 and/or IgA titres > or =1:16 (n=212), spirometry was performed and peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) and symptoms were recorded twice daily for 4 weeks on a diary card. The use of high dose inhaled steroids was associated with an increase of 74.1% in the titre of IgG antibodies (p=0.04) and an increase of 70.6% in the titre of IgA antibodies (p=0.0001) when compared with the use of low dose inhaled steroids. There was an inverse association between IgG antibodies and forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) as a percentage of predicted in those subjects with elevated IgG and/or IgA (p=0.04). In this group IgA antibodies were also associated with a higher daytime symptom score (p=0.04). Higher titres of antibodies to Chlamydia pneumoniae appears to be associated with markers of asthma severity. This raises the possibility that chronic infection with Chlamydia pneumoniae leads to an increase in the severity of asthma. Studies aimed at eradicating chronic infection with Chlamydia pneumoniae are necessary to determine whether or not this is the case.


"This book begins where the reach of archaeology and history ends," writes Charles Hudson. Grounded in careful research, his extraordinary work imaginatively brings to life the sixteenth-century world of the Coosa, a native people whose territory stretched across the Southeast, encompassing much of presentday Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Cast as a series of conversations between Domingo de la Anunciacion, a real-life Spanish priest who traveled to the Coosa chiefdom around 1559, and the Raven, a fictional tribal elder, Conversations with the High Priest of Coosa attempts to reconstruct the worldview of the Indians of the late prehistoric Southeast. Mediating the exchange between the two men is Teresa, a character modeled on a Coosa woman captured some twenty years earlier by the Hernando de Soto expedition and taken to Mexico, where she learned Spanish and became a Christian convert. Through story and legend, the Raven teaches Anunciacion about the rituals, traditions, and culture of the Coosa. He tells of how the Coosa world came to be and recounts tales of the birds and animals - real and mythical - that share that world. From these engaging conversations emerges a fascinating glimpse inside the Coosa belief system and an enhanced understanding of the native people who inhabited the ancient South.


The labial flap is a speech sound which has received little attention in the literature. In this paper, we document the articulation of the sound, including audio and video data from Mono (D.R. Congo, Ubangian). The sound is attested in over sixty languages and has been incorporated into the phonological system of at least a dozen of them. The sound is easily describable in terms of values of phonological features or phonetic parameters, and it appears to have arisen independently in at least two regions of the world. These factors argue for the inclusion of the sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet.


Background: Drug addiction is a serious public health crisis which affects almost every sphere in a community in a way or another and this in turn can possibly lead to social disharmony, severe crimes, degraded social status and most possibly physical and mental health deterioration. The sole purpose of our study was aimed to analyze the current awful situation of drug addiction at four different southern cities of Bangladesh. Methods: This cross sectional health based survey was carried out with a self-designed standard questionnaire by manual data collection over a nine months period (12.09.2015 to 10.04.2016) at four adjacent cities Gopalganj, Khulna, Bagerhat and Narail respectively. Total 300 substance abusers were investigated by majorly visiting at their home and sometimes visiting the places where they usually take drugs. Descriptive statistics were applied to the collected data and analyzed using Microsoft Excel software. Results: In this cross sectional study we observed that, 82% addicts are predominantly young males mostly between the ages of 10-30. About 48% are addicted by cannabis, 19% and 17% by yaba and phensedyl respectively. In case of first starting of drug use curiosity, surrounding environment were the primary reason and cannabis as their first drug (61%) followed by phensedyl (16%). At least 53% addict's relayed on locality like friends and 30% used local dealers as a main source to collect these abused drugs. Healthy financial support is very important for collecting abused drugs and 30% addicts spend pocket money, 23% job, 20% business source to buy these costly substances. Although it is important to mention that 61% addicts are compromising either physical or psychological complications but it is one of good symptoms to observe that more than 60% of drug addicts are trying to give up addiction forming agents in these days. Conclusion: In recent years drug addiction has significantly increased in the whole world especially in South Asian countries. It must be emphasized as an alarming sign by the government as well as awareness among the peoples are very essential to stop this critical condition from affecting our future young leaders.
Keywords: Drug; Addiction; Youths; Bangladesh.


We present a global spectrophotometric characterization of the surface of dwarf planet Ceres using Dawn Framing Camera images. We employed a global photometric model to assemble photometrically corrected images acquired on approach to Ceres into global maps of albedo and color. An accumulating body of evidence suggests water ice is abundant below the Ceres surface. Water ice is not stable on the surface, yet has been directly detected in Oxo crater (Combe et al. 2016). Water may even exist in liquid form in the interior. Carbonates identified in the very bright and young Cerealia Facula in Occator crater suggest (past) hydrothermal activity (De Sanctis et al. 2016). We search for spectrophotometric evidence for water ice and hydrothermal activity in the visible wavelength range. Even though colors on Ceres are generally subdued, this small world is surprisingly colorful. The dominant color variation over the surface is represented by "blue" and "red" material, which have a negative and positive spectral visible slope, respectively. Blue terrain is widespread and often distributed in and around fresh craters. A clear correlation between blue color and youth exists (Schmedemann et al. 2016). One of the bluest, and possibly youngest, craters is Haulani, which may show evidence for cryovolcanic flows (Krohn et al. 2016). The blue color may be associated with dehydrated phyllosilicates (Schröder et al. 2017), although alternative explanations have been proposed (Stephan et al. 2017). On the other hand, red terrain is found in only a few locations, usually in small patches. The prime examples are found inside Occator crater and around Ernutet crater (Nathues et al. 2016, Schröder et al. 2017). The reddest terrain in Occator is found in the youngest parts of Cerealia Facula, and may be associated with hydrothermal activity. The origin of the red terrain near Ernutet has not yet been established. Our color and albedo maps allow us to identify sites of interest that we study in more detail using color images acquired at higher resolution.


This paper examines the nature of genuine uncertainty and rule-following behaviour and suggests some implications for the theory of the firm. The firm is seen here as emerging as a means to manage some of the experienced uncertainty. The nature of the firm is perceived as an evolving institution creating predictability both inside the firm and in the market. But because of the spontaneous nature of life-world, social processes remain open-ended. This subjectivist perspective cannot assign any particular premeditated purpose to the spontaneous order which emerges through the market process. The process is not kaleidic but nor is it considered to be moving toward increasing efficiency either. Rules and institutions provide predictability to the extent that novelties can be introduced to the process. Discoveries do not, however, only introduce new outcomes in the market process, they also change the rules of the game.


Abstract. We have compared spectral ultraviolet overpass irradiances from the Ozone Monitoring Instruments (OMI) against ground-based Brewer measurements at Thessaloniki, Greece from September 2004 to December 2007. It is demonstrated that OMI overestimates UV irradiances by 30%, 17% and 13% for 305 nm, 324 nm, and 380 nm respectively and 20% for erythemally weighted irradiance. The bias between OMI and Brewer increases with increasing aerosol absorption optical thickness. We present methodologies that can be applied for correcting this bias based on experimental results derived from the comparison period and also theoretical approaches using radiative transfer model calculations. All correction approaches minimize the bias and the standard deviation of the ratio OMI versus Brewer ratio. According to the results, the best correction approach suggests that the OMI UV product has to be multiplied by a correction factor CA(λ) of the order of 0.8, 0.88 and 0.9 for 305 nm, 324 nm and 380 nm respectively. Limitations and possibilities for applying such methodologies in a global scale are also discussed.


This article examines empirically how American cultural hegemony operates through the medium of film-in this case, via the James Bond "007" movie series. It is evident that American values are diffused worldwide via the motion picture industry. The 007 series is a masterpiece that successfully adjusted to the Hollywood system where American capital and structure prevails. The films are controlled by U.S. funding and reflect American perspectives vividly. Between the lines in the scripts, filmgoers are urged to link the United States with positive-hence legitimate-values and accept American's dominant position. The authors of this study argue that the "007" movie series satisfies certain conditions to diffuse and reproduce American hegemony. Moreover, since the series reflects different aspects of the international environment, it is an appropriate case to speculate about hegemony in films. Key words: cultural hegemony, U.S. hegemony, Social Network Analysis American Hegemony and the "007" Movie Series The operation of American hegemony is evident not only in the politico-economic and military realms, but also in the cultural sphere. Nye's discussion of "soft power," for example, reconfirms that maintaining American hegemony in the cultural realm is essential in general to U.S. leadership of international politics. However, cultural hegemony is not easily recognized. Culture is typically disseminated with relatively less resistance and opposition than other forms of hegemony. Compared to its importance, study on American hegemony in the cultural sector is rare. When we consider that interest regarding culture in international politics has existed for quite some time, the relative lack of empirical studies seems odd. The purpose of this article is to analyze empirically how American hegemony operates in the cultural sphere. Specifically, this article examines how American cultural hegemony is maintained via the cultural medium of film, and in what way American values are disseminated through films. It is evident that American hegemony obviously operates worldwide via motion pictures. Especially in Asia, Hollywood blockbusters function even more critically in delineating American perspectives because Asian filmgoers use film as their socialization tool to better understand the United States. Thus the reliance of Asian audiences on American films is more significant. Unfortunately, systematic research that recognizes and analyzes films as political is uncommon, the reason being that proper methodology to deal with film has not been settled in international political analysis.1 This article examines the operation of American hegemony within the "007" movie series (also referred to as "James Bond films"). James Bond films are controlled from "without" by American funding and reflect American perspectives vividly "within" their narratives. Over a forty-five year period, the series achieved tremendous worldwide box-office records and still continues to produce successful products. The 007 series is a masterpiece that successively adjusted to the Hollywood system where American capital and structure prevails. Moreover, since the series reflects different aspects of international environment, it is an appropriate case to speculate about hegemony in films.2 Scholars have shown interest in the 007 series.3 In particular, geopolitical research has dealt with the 007 films.4 For instance, Black contends that 007 films show that international society inevitably needed the United States as Britain disappeared from the political-military scene.5 He believes that 007 films happened to emphasize American influence due to capital and filmgoers' interest. On the other hand, the 007 novels, written by Ian Lancaster Fleming, extended British Empire through the novels' plots. Dodds examined geopolitical factors of the film Die Another Day (2002) and showed how filmgoers recognized the international order between nations. …


Readers of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM) are quite familiar with reports that highlight clinical cases or workplace incidents that may represent sentinel events or exposures. There is a storied history of these in the field and there are countless examples of their utility and importance to physicians and researchers. Recently, when I was reviewing the Archives of OEM online ([http://oem.bmj.com/contents-by-date.0.dtl] - browsing this archive is an activity I highly recommend to all) I was struck by the considerable evidence of the active evolution of medicine and science. The archive is replete with published descriptions of occupational disease that, in retrospect, offer striking evidence of the incremental advance in the understanding of mechanism, diagnosis and prognosis in a large number of complex medical conditions. I was particularly attracted to two descriptions of the potential adverse effects of benzene exposure; the first presented in 1966 by the then 32 year old Finnish occupational physician and epidemiologist Sven Hernberg (1) and the second, a paper authored in 1971 by a group of Turkish hematologists headed by Muzaffer Aksoy (2). In 1966 benzene was suspected to be acutely quite toxic to the blood forming tissues and the American Conference of Governmental Hygienists threshold limit value for benzene exposure in the workplace was 25 ppm, having been lowered from35ppm in 1963.


While High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes have been used for decades as a strategy for mitigating congestion, research has shown that they are not always effective. A 2001 study of the I-394 and I-35W HOV lanes in Minnesota found that the HOV lanes were on average underutilized, moving fewer people than the General-Purpose Lanes (GPL) even with the increased number of passengers per vehicle. To address the issue of underuse, in 2003 the Minnesota Legislature authorized the conversion of the I-394 HOV lanes into High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes, named the MnPASS Express Lanes. The MnPASS lanes operate using a fully dynamic pricing schedule, where pricing is dictated by the level of congestion in the HOT lane. To better understand the nature of HOT lanes and the decisions of their users, this study explored the possibilities for a microscopic traffic simulation-based model of HOT lanes. Based on a series of field studies where the price of the toll was changed while observing changes in demand in the HOT lane, models describing the lane choice behavior of MnPASS users were developed and calibrated. These models interfaced with the traffic simulation software Aimsun through a number of extension modules and tested on the two MnPASS corridors of I-394 and I-35W corridors in the west and south suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The integrated HOT simulation tool was also used to develop and test a number of alternative pricing strategies including a more efficient version of the current strategy.


Snapshot views of environmental policy integration (EPI) practices fail to consider the stability of EPI over time – both as aspiration and performance. This paper reviews the evolution of EPI over more than two decades at the national level in the agriculture and energy sectors in Sweden – an EPI pioneer. We study how the extent of EPI stability can be explained partly by shifting political priorities by governments and partly by underlying governance models (actors and organizational landscape and policy instruments used). Comparing the two sectors, the institutionalization of EPI appears to be stronger in the energy sector. In the agricultural sector, the current reform of the Common Agricultural Policy seems to imply decreasing prominence of EPI – due to shrinking budgets for environmental targets along with greater policy goals complexity. Overall, observed shifts in governance have been mildly conducive to EPI by providing an infrastructure, but further enhancements require clear political priority awarded to the environment.


Automatic annotation of text is an important complement to manual annotation, because the latter is highly labour intensive. We have developed a fast dictionary-based named entity recognition (NER) system and addressed a wide variety of biomedical problems by applied it to text from many different sources. We have used this tagger both in real-time tools to support curation efforts and in pipelines for populating databases through bulk processing of entire Medline, the open-access subset of PubMed Central, NIH grant abstracts, FDA drug labels, electronic health records, and the Encyclopedia of Life. Despite the simplicity of the approach, it typically achieves 80–90% precision and 70–80% recall. Many of the underlying dictionaries were built from open biomedical ontologies, which further facilitate integration of the text-mining results with evidence from other sources.


Patent management is increasingly important for organizations to sustain their competitive advantage. The classification of patents is essential for patent management and industrial analysis. In this study, we propose a novel patent network-based classification method to analyze query patents and predict their classes. The proposed patent network, which contains various types of nodes that represent different features extracted from patent documents, is constructed based on the relationship metrics derived from patent metadata. The novel approach analyzes reachable nodes in the patent ontology network to calculate their relevance to query patents, after which it uses the modified k-nearest neighbor classifier to classify query patents. We evaluate the performance of the proposed approach on a test dataset of patent documents obtained from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and compare it with the performance of the three conventional methods. The results demonstrate that the proposed patent network-based approach outperforms the conventional approaches.


The purpose of this study is to investigate the mystery as to why public displays invite use in some places but not in others. This is a comparative study of UBIOulu, where Open UBI Oulu project installed 11 UBI hotspots around Oulu city centre in 2009. In the most active time there were 18 UBI hotspots available. UBI hotspot is a large touchsensitive screen and it is publicly located, and anyone can use it freely. UBI hotspots are located both indoors and outdoors, six of which were selected for this research. swimming center Out of all the hotspots, the one located at Raksila swimming center gets approximately 55-85% of total clicks, depending on the weekday. This thesis tries to establish the reasons for that popularity. Prior research was studied to obtain research data on contextual use of technology; privacy, propinquity and social designation. Furthermore, situated use of public displays was studied also to find out what the impact of weather, climate, time of day, and weekday, for example, have on hotspot usage. Data for this study was collected in the autumn of 2015 and it consists of hotspot usage statistics in a period of one week. Six hotspots under study were analysed in detail from the social and architectural point of view. On the basis of the results of this thesis, two conclusions can be made. When UBI hotspots or similar are planned to be installed, they should be located in places that already have a lot of visitors, who spend time there anyway. The content and the context should match, so that the displays will reach those audiences who are interested in the content. In the Oulu case, the displays were most appealing to children.


It is widely assumed that synaptic plasticity provides the neural basis for long-term memory in the brain (Abraham, 2008, Caporale and Dan, 2008, Martin et al., 2000). However, the precise nature of the underlying representation is still unclear, despite being of great relevance to brain research (Caroni et al., 2012). Izhikevich (2006a) has proposed that Polychronous Neural Groups (PNGs) might provide this representational mechanism. Importantly, this proposal links a highlevel concept of representation to a model that is expressed at the level of spiking neurons and an empirically observed learning rule called Spike-timing-dependent Plasticity (STDP). Polychronous groups are connected groups of neurons that exist in large numbers in brain-like network simulations, and are often related to the Hebbian idea of neuronal assemblies (Hebb, 1949). The neurons in a polychronous group can be fired together in a process called PNG activation. However, the activation of polychronous groups is not synchronous but polychronous (i.e. manytimed), occurring at slightly different times as a wave-like sequential pattern of firing that passes through the group. Izhikevich views such activation events as corresponding to the activation of specific memory representations. A system of representation that is based on the activation of polychronous groups is an interesting idea that has not been adequately investigated. I therefore examine this idea in a series of experiments and theoretical discussions. The investigation of this claim has also motivated the development of two new tools. The first is a software tool called Spinula that is the foundation of all simulation experiments in this thesis. The second is a new probabilistic method for the study of PNG activation called Response Fingerprinting (Guise et al., 2013c, 2014). Using these tools I show that PNGs can meet a number of demanding criteria that I deem as necessary for a robust PNG-based representational system.


We use data from the European Community Household Panel to investigate the impact of obesity on wages in 9 European countries, ranging from Ireland to Spain. We find that the common impact of obesity on wages is negative and statistically significant, independently of gender. Given the nature of European labor markets, however, we believe that a common impact is overly restrictive. When we allow this impact to vary across countries, we find a negative relationship between the BMI and wages in the countries of the European "olive belt" and a positive relationship in the countries of the "beer belt". We speculate that such difference could be driven by the interaction between the weather, BMI and individual (unobserved) productivity.


Background Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a major public and economic health problem. Coronary angiography is a gold standard for diagnosing CAD and is indicated in patients with 61–90% pre-test probability of the disease when the diagnosis cannot be made on clinical grounds alone and when revascularisation is being considered. The natural history of normal coronary angiogram is poorly understood. Objectives To evaluate the progression of disease in patients with normal coronary angiography and to assess the overall survival and event-free survival from acute myocardial infarction (MI) in these patients. Methods We interrogated the Central Cardiac Audit Database (CCAD) between November 2005 and December 2013 to identify patients with normal or 'near-normal' coronary angiography. Demographic, clinical and angiographic data was recorded. This database was linked with the Patient Episode Database for Wales (PEDW) and the datasets from the Office for National Statistics (for mortality) using the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) databank. This allowed for the extraction of information from all the sources above on the basis of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) using the Structured Query Language (SQL). Results Out of over 20,000 patients undergoing coronary angiography between November 2005 and December 2013, 5032 patients had normal coronaries and minor CAD. Of 5032 patients, 136 underwent repeat angiography, with 131 (96.3%) and 5 (3.7%) patients having two and three repeat investigations respectively. Mean time between procedures was 3.3 (±1.82) years. Of those 136 patients, at the median follow up of 6.8 years, no change in disease progression was demonstrated in 108 (79.4%) patients on the follow up studies. In the remaining 28 (20.6%) patients, normal coronaries progressed to minor CAD. No patients progressed beyond minor CAD. Patients with normal coronaries had significant better survival than patients with minor CAD (p < 0.05), but survival free from MI was >99.5% in both groups at the median of 5 years follow up. (p = 0.09) Conclusions Normal coronary angiography and minor CAD is unlikely to progress to significant disease at 7 years and the incidence of MI in these patients is rare at 5 years. Therefore, repeating coronary angiography within at least 5 years is not indicated.


Globular clusters (GCs) are known to harbor multiple stellar populations. To explain these observations Bastian et al. suggested a scenario in which a second population is formed by the accretion of enriched material onto the low-mass stars in the initial GC population. The idea is that the low-mass, pre-main sequence stars sweep up gas expelled by the massive stars of the same generation into their protoplanetary disc as they move through the GC core. We perform simulations with 2 different smoothed particle hydrodynamics codes to investigate if a low-mass star surrounded by a protoplanetary disc can accrete the amount of enriched material required in this scenario. We focus on the gas loading rate onto the disc and star as well as on the lifetime of the disc. We find that the gas loading rate is a factor of 2 smaller than the geometric rate, because the effective cross section of the disc is smaller than its surface area. The loading rate is consistent for both codes, irrespective of resolution. The disc gains mass in the high resolution runs, but loses angular momentum on a time scale of 10^4 yrs. Two effects determine the loss of (specific) angular momentum in our simulations: 1) continuous ram pressure stripping and 2) accretion of material with no azimuthal angular momentum. Our study and previous work suggest that the former, dominant process is mainly caused by numerical rather than physical effects, while the latter is not. The latter process causes the disc to become more compact, increasing the surface density profile at smaller radii. The disc size is determined in the first place by the ram pressure when the flow first hits the disc. Further evolution is governed by the decrease in the specific angular momentum of the disc. We conclude that the size and lifetime of the disc are probably not sufficient to accrete the amount of mass required in Bastian et al.'s scenario.


Age-related patterns of survival and reproduction have been explained by accumulated experience ('experience hypothesis'), increased effort ('effort hypothesis'), and intrinsic differences in phenotypes ('selection hypothesis'). We examined the experience and effort hypotheses using a 40-year data set in a population of Leach's storm-petrels Oceanodroma leucorhoa, long-lived seabirds for which the effect of phenotypic variation has been previously demonstrated. Age was quantified by time since recruitment ('breeding age'). The best model of adult survival included a positive effect of breeding age (1, 2, 3+ years), sex (male > female), and year. Among-individuals variation (fixed heterogeneity) accounted for 31.6% of the variance in annual reproductive success. We further examined within-individual patterns in reproductive success (dynamic heterogeneity) in the subset of individuals with at least five breeding attempts. Three distinct phases characterized reproductive success – early increase, long asymptotic peak, late decline. No effect of early reproductive output on longevity was found, however, early success was positively correlated with lifetime reproductive success. Reproductive success was lower earlier than later in life. Among the few natally philopatric individuals in the population, age of first breeding had no effect on longevity, lifetime reproductive success, or early reproductive success. No support for the effort hypothesis was found in this population. Instead, age-specific patterns of survival and reproduction in these birds are best explained by the experience hypothesis over and above the effect of intrinsic differences among individuals.


Purpose: To describe ophthalmic manifestations of systemic amyloidosis, a group of devastating conditions. Methods: A retrospective chart review including patients who had ocular examinations at Mayo Clinic between January 1, 1985, and April 1, 2014, and a diagnosis of light-chain (AL), secondary (AA), or nontransthyretin familial amyloidosis was undertaken. Sixty-eight patients with AL amyloidosis, eight patients with AA amyloidosis, and five patients with nontransthyretin familial amyloidosis were included. Results: Of 68 patients, 8 patients (14 eyes) with AL amyloidosis had ocular involvement secondary to conjunctiva, temporal artery, extraocular muscle, trabecular meshwork, and cranial nerve deposition. One of the five patients with nontransthyretin familial amyloidosis had gelsolin-related corneal dystrophy. No patients with AA amyloidosis (n = 8) had ophthalmic manifestations. Conclusion: Systemic amyloidosis can lead to ocular morbidity. Patients with AL amyloidosis had involvement of the temporal artery, conjunctiva, extraocular muscles, trabecular meshwork, and cranial nerves. Those with gelsolin nontransthyretin familial amyloidosis were susceptible to corneal dystrophy. Patients with AA amyloidosis did not manifest ophthalmic involvement. Finally, if ocular amyloidosis is detected, patients should be referred for systemic workup.


BACKGROUND & AIMS
Gastroparesis is a complication of diabetes with few treatment options. Relamorelin (also referred to as RM-131) is a selective, prokinetic agonist of ghrelin. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of relamorelin on symptoms and gastric emptying (GE) in a 12-week, phase 2B study of diabetic patients with moderate to severe gastroparesis symptoms (DG).

METHODS
We performed a study of 393 patients with DG (37.7% male; 9.9% with type 1 diabetes; median age, 58.2 years [range 20-76]; median body mass index, 31.4 kg/m2 [range, 18.2-60.1]; HbA1c level, 7.6%, [range, 5.2-11.0]). All participants had 13C-spirulina GE breath test T1/2 values of 79 minutes or more (with 89.8% delayed relative to 90th %ile of normal, 85.75 minutes), recent vomiting, and gastroparesis cardinal symptom index-daily diary scores of 2.6 or more. Patients were randomly assigned to groups given placebo (n=104) or relamorelin (10 μg [n=98], 30 μg [n=109], or 100 μg [n=82] twice daily) for 12 weeks, following a 2-week, single-blind, placebo run-in period. Patient-reported outcomes were determined from DG Symptom Severity daily e-diaries, in which patients recorded vomiting frequency and symptom scores (nausea, abdominal pain, postprandial fullness, and bloating) on a 0-10 scale. Endpoints were change from baseline in vomiting frequency, composite DG Symptom Severity score, GE, and safety. We performed longitudinal, mixed-effects model analysis using repeated measures, with baseline and baseline-by-week interaction values as covariates.

RESULTS
Patients given relamorelin had a 75% reduction in vomiting frequency compared with baseline, but this difference was not significant compared with the placebo group. All 4 symptoms of DG (composite or individual symptoms) were significantly reduced over the 12-week study period in all 3 relamorelin dose groups compared with the placebo group (all P < .05, based on longitudinal analysis over 12 weeks). Relamorelin significantly accelerated GE from baseline compared with placebo (by 12%, P < .05 for the 10 μg and 30 μg groups; P = .051 for the 100 μg group). Dose-related worsening of glycemic control was noted in 14.5% of patients who received relamorelin; some required insulin or other diabetes drug dosage adjustments.

CONCLUSIONS
In a phase 2B randomized trial of patients with moderate to severe DG, relamorelin significantly reduced core symptoms of DG and overall composite score compared with placebo, accelerated GE, and was generally safe and well tolerated. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02357420.


Task-based language teaching (TBLT) promises natural, efficient language acquisition through meaningful communication reflecting real-world interaction, while task-based assessment (TBA) evaluates performance in communicative tasks. Neither is without critics, and the implementation of both TBLT and TBA signifies opportunities and challenges. This research investigates learner and teacher perceptions towards adult learner progress on non-linear, student-led, task-based courses in northern Portugal, exploring what factors are perceived as influencing learner performance in assessed tasks, and asking to what extent navigation through non-linear, task-based lessons is perceived to prepare learners for external English examinations. Data was collected through a mixed methods approach, ninety-eight participants completing questionnaires and thirteen participants attending subsequent focus groups. The findings show that students and teachers are happier with perceived progress in some aspects of English than others. Among students, task topic and type influence task performance, while lesson materials and class size are key influences among teachers. Assessment procedures, but not level progression, are understood, and potential examination students expressed more happiness with perceived progress than students overall. Possible implications of these findings are also discussed, as are measures to address the issues identified.


In this article, the authors examine the role of vicarious racism in the experiences of doctoral students of color. The researchers conducted semi-structured individual interviews with 26 doctoral students who self-reported experiencing racism and racial trauma during their doctoral studies. The analysis generated four themes that detail the different ways in which doctoral students of color in the study experienced vicarious racism and the consequences of this secondhand racism. These themes are (a) observed racism, (b) trickledown racism, (c) normalization of racism, and (d) racial resistance. The article concludes with implications for future research and practice.


Since the mid-1970's it had become clear that the calculus of relations is a fundamental conceptual and methodological tool in Computer Science just as much as in Mathematics. A number of seemingly distinct areas of research have in fact this much in common that their concepts and/or techniques come from the calculus of relations. However, it had also become clear that many opportunities for cross-pollination are being lost simply because there was no organised forum of discussion between researchers who, though they use the same concepts and methods, nonetheless perceive themselves as working in different fields. The aim of this Dagstuhl Seminar was, therefore, to bring together researchers from various subdisciplines of Computer Science and Mathematics, all of whom use relational methods in their work, and to encourage the creation of an active network continuing after the Seminar to exchange ideas and results. The talks focussed in particular on Relational Models of Program Semantics, Kripke Semantics of Program Logic (including relational approaches to e. g. dynamic logics, temporal logics, and modal logics), Jónsson-Tarski Relation Algebras, and Relational Calculi and Methods in Application Fields such as Databases, Computational Linguistics, Semantic Nets and Knowledge Representation. It was felt that the meeting was a really necessary one to bring people together. A successor seminar is loosely planned to take place in Rio de Janeiro around July/August 1995. It is planned to have a collection of papers around the topic of the seminar published in a separate volume thereby trying to do some work in the direction of standardizing notation. We want to thank all participants for their presentations and discussions. Our special thanks go to the Dagstuhl board for accepting this seminar to be held in SchloßDagstuhl. As always, Dagstuhl proved to be a perfect site with regard to lodging, leisuring, and lecturing. We appreciated the work of the Dagstuhl staff, who made us feel comfortable and enabled us to concentrate on our work. The technical staff in our home institutions greatly helped us in preparing the meeting and we owe them our sincere gratitude. Finally, thanks go to Claudia Hattensperger, who edited this report, based on the abstracts of the participants.


Abstract. δ18O measurements in precipitation and stream waters were used to investigate hydrological flow paths and residence times at nested spatial scales in the mesoscale (233 km2) River Feugh catchment in the northeast of Scotland over the 2001-2002 hydrological year. Precipitation δ18O exhibited strong seasonal variation, which although significantly damped within the catchment, was reflected in stream water at six sampling sites. This allowed δ18O variations to be used to infer the relative influence of soil-derived storm flows with a seasonally variable isotopic signature, and groundwater of apparently more constant isotopic composition. Periodic regression analysis was then used to examine the sub-catchment difference using an exponential flow model to provide indicative estimates of mean stream water residence times, which varied between approximately 3 and 14 months. This showed that the effects of increasing scale on estimated mean stream water residence time was minimal beyond that of the smallest (ca. 1 km2) headwater catchment scale. Instead, the interaction of catchment soil cover and topography appeared to be the dominant controlling influence. Where sub-catchments had extensive peat coverage, responsive hydrological pathways produced seasonally variable δ18O signatures in runoff with short mean residence times (ca. 3 months). In contrast, areas dominated by steeper slopes, more freely draining soils and larger groundwater storage in shallow valley-bottom aquifers, deeper flow paths allow for more effective mixing and damping of δ18O indicating longer residence times (>12 months). These insights from δ18O measurements extend the hydrological understanding of the Feugh catchment gained from previous geochemical tracer studies, and demonstrate the utility of isotope tracers in investigating the interaction of hydrological processes and catchment characteristics at larger spatial scales.


A project report submitted to the Faculty of Computing and Information Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Computer Science of Makerere University.


Achievement of a low-carbon society is becoming extremely important. In this report, we introduce an example of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emission reductions and energy savings, using a local energy-control system. Our research is focused on the town of Shinchi in the Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. Shinchi is pursuing initiatives to create a low- carbon, energy-efficient society and a disaster-resilient community. The National Institute for Environmental Studies provides academic support for the design and planning of low-carbon community energy systems by the local government of Shinchi, based on the Basic Cooperation Agreement. For the redevelopment of the Japan Railway (JR) Shinchi Station district that is being carried out, construction of a cogeneration-type district heat- ing and cooling system is currently in progress. CO 2 reductions of about 20% can be expected by introducing this community energy system. To support these initiatives, we have developed an information and communication technology (ICT) system that shares a wide range of local information to support energy conservation. By analyzing electricity consumption data from the ICT, we evaluated the pattern of residential power consumption and confirmed that the project supports energy-saving behavior within the community. Additionally, the community energy project in the JR Shinchi Station district enables adjustment of the supply and demand balance.


The effectiveness of using carbon textile-reinforced mortar as an innovative technique to improve the shear response of reinforced concrete beams has been investigated. The research comprised double-shear bond testing on bond behavior of textile-reinforced mortar, large-scale beam testing on shear response of reinforced concrete beams strengthened with textile-reinforced mortar, and nonlinear finite element modeling of the tested beam specimens. Test variables of the double-shear bond testing were the matrix type, and width/length of the bonded area, whereas for the large-scale beam testing, the variables included the number of textile-reinforced mortar layers, matrix type, and amount of internal stirrups. Results of the double-shear bond tests demonstrated that delamination of the textile fabric governed the failure of the specimens without debonding at the concrete/matrix interface. The bond stress of the specimens with a cementitious mortar-based matrix was on average 28% lower than that of their counterparts with an epoxy-based matrix. For the same bonded area, the bond stress tended to decrease with an increase in the bonded length of the fabric. Results of the large-scale beam testing demonstrated that the shear strength gain caused by strengthening was in the range of 51% to 145% depending on the amount of internal stirrups and number of textile-reinforced mortar layers. The shear strength gain decreased with an increase in the amount of internal stirrups. Increasing the number of textile-reinforced mortar layers increased the shear capacity but the additional shear strength gain was not proportional to the added amount of layers. The use of epoxy adhesive rather than a cementitious mortar as a matrix slightly increased the shear strength gain. The effect of increasing the amount of textileviii reinforced mortar and varying the matrix type was less pronounced for the specimens with internal stirrups. The finite element models developed in this study were able to predict the nonlinear shear response of the tested specimens. A comparison between the predicted and experimental results confirmed the accuracy and validity of the developed finite element models.


This case tells the story of a newly founded development management company, Palisades Real Estate (PRE), which takes over a challenging residential development project on behalf of its owner. The project is plagued by several onerous developer obligations and outstanding entitlements that have complicated the owner's exit ambitions, which has led the owner to seek the expertise of a highly talented development management firm that can guide the project to a successful conclusion. After agreeing to a risky compensation structure that defers much of its compensation to the sale of the project, PRE undertakes a complex assortment of restructuring efforts in order to make the project feasible, including the renegotiation of a development agreement, the pursuit of difficult permits, and arrangements for phasing and bond financing. Led by one of its principals, Hal Orin, PRE demonstrates what development managers can do when they're at the top of their game, and the value that they can add to even the most seemingly doomed projects. The case provides an opportunity for students to learn about what development managers do, how they add value, and how they are compensated.


A system to make atmospheric measurements from a moving trolley suspended by a stretched cable has been developed. At present, these measurements consist of wind velocity, temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide concentration, though other sensors may be added. The track consists of cable segments attached to turns mounted on standard triangular towers. Using this approach, the path can be a closed (three dimensional) polygon of arbitrary length. This tool allows continuous, high spatial and temporal resolution sampling in environments, such as within forest canopies, not possible with other platforms. This system was used at the Niwot Ridge AmeriFlux site to obtain insight into the spatial and temporal structure of CO2, wind, and humidity fields in a natural forest ecosystem. Specifically, cool, moist, and CO2-rich air was observed to move in thin blobs downslope along the local water drainage through the subcanopy space at night.


Biostimulants are a better alternative to expensive organic fertilizers used in certified organic crop production. Seaweed extracts (Stimplex®)6, derived from brown algae (Ascophyllum nodosum) present in marine water, can be used as a "biostimulant" in agriculture to enhance plant yield and improve plant growth. The aim of this study was to elucidate the effect of Stimplex® on the yield of leafy green vegetables produced in an organic farming system. A Stimplex® greenhouse trial was conducted in fall 2015 and spring 2016 at the Tennessee State University organic research farm. Six leafy greens –lettuce, mustard, kale, Swiss chard, amaranths and collards– were foliar sprayed with Stimplex® (treated) bi-weekly for six weeks at the recommended dose of 3.2 ml/L (0.4 oz/gal of water), and six were untreated (control). Seedlings were raised in the greenhouse from organic seeds in pots, and organic management practices were followed per National Organic Program standards throughout the study. For each leafy green, a total of five treated potted plants and five untreated potted plants were used in three replications. Results showed that plants treated with Stimplex® were more vigorous, healthier and increased yield over untreated plants, except for amaranths. The percentage increase in plant yield of all crops was between 11% and 35%. The highest and lowest increase in plant yield was observed in the mustard greens (35.8 %) and Swiss chard (11.0%). Results suggest Stimplex® stimulates higher yields in leafy greens.


This article examines the long‐stating importance of refugee issues in international politics and underlines the changing emphasis given to these issues by policy makers and academic researchers, both in the immediate post‐Cold War and post‐9/11 periods. The authors then address the manner in which the relationship between forced migration and state security has been addressed in the past decade. The article highlights how this area of research continues to over‐emphasize the migration‐related security of Western states and the presence of armed elements in refugee movements in the Third World. In contrast, the literature largely neglects the security concerns of states hosting protracted refugee populations. Ironically, chronic refugee situations in regions of refugee origin constitute the overwhelming majority of the world's refugee population.


This paper reports on a study into the whipping behaviour of large high-speed aluminium catamarans and its influence
on fatigue life. Full-scale measurements of slam events and exciter tests have been conducted on two large high-speed
catamarans to investigate the modes, frequencies and damping of their vibratory whipping response. A corresponding
theoretical modal analysis was also conducted utilising finite element analysis and including fluid-structure interaction.
Good correlation between the predicted and measured frequencies and mode shapes was found. The influence of forward
speed on the added mass formulation was found to be negligible, while vessel loading conditions were found to have a
significant influence on modal frequencies. Results are also presented from a fatigue study which highlight the influence
of whipping on fatigue life.


This paper examines the complexities of being trapped in a space of technocratic approaches to teacher education. We begin to unfold possibilities of permeating the boundaries amassed by Technicity through the conjoinder of mystery and the body. The binaries of perceptual and conceptual knowing are problematized through our admission of the pervading dualisms in education despite monistic efforts. As an antidote to "technocratic" training, place-based experiences were provided in order to foreground the body as a conduit to knowing while maintaining mystery, create spaces for reflective practice, enliven the imagination, and more holistically assist teacher candidates in becoming teachers. Ways of engaging the bodymind in order to bring about a broader, critical educative focus in teacher education are discussed.


The propagation of sonic booms is from high above the ground to ground level, and over the path the dominant acoustic length scales in the signatures fall within what is known as the inertial subrange, for which there is a considerable body of basic theoretical knowledge. Any model of boom–turbulence interaction that requires a value for an outer scale has very weak theoretical basis. However, the range of turbulence scales within the inertial subrange is huge and different scales have different effects. The present paper argues that the turbulence can be split in a well‐defined and logical manner, with the resulting scale at which the split occurs serving as an outer scale with respect to the turbulence that affects the rise times of sonic booms. Although molecular relaxation accounts for a substantial fraction of the rise times, the bulk of the thickening during daytime overflights is associated with turbulence. A theory for such thickening that simultaneously took both nonlinear steepening and turbulence into account had been proposed in the early 1970s by Plotkin and George, but had been criticized for its dependence on the choice of an outer scale. The proposed partitioning removes this objection and combines the salient ideas of Plotkin and George with others proposed by the author during the same epoch for the effects of inertial‐subrange‐scale turbulence on rise times.


We present the Balloon family of password hashing functions. These are the first cryptographic hash functions with proven space-hardness properties that: (i) use a password-independent access pattern, (ii) build exclusively upon standard cryptographic primitives, and (iii) are fast enough for real-world use. Space-hard functions require a large amount of working space to evaluate efficiently and, when used for password hashing, they dramatically increase the cost of offline dictionary attacks. The central technical challenge of this work was to devise the graph-theoretic and linear-algebraic techniques necessary to prove the space-hardness properties of the Balloon functions (in the random-oracle model). To motivate our interest in security proofs, we demonstrate that it is possible to compute Argon2i, a recently proposed space-hard function that lacks a formal analysis, in less than the claimed required space with no increase in the computation time.


The aim of the study was to evaluate the possible effect of dried Thyme (Thymbra spicata L.) pulp (DTP) on first-cut meadow grass (Poa trivialis L.) and alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) silage fermantation parameters and in vitro organic matter digestility. Experimental silage consisted of four replicates for each silage group (Grass, (G) and Alfalfa (L), respectively). Each silages groups were supplemented with DTP at 0, 0.5, 1.0, 3.0, and 5.0% level, respectively. The silos were stored for 60 d at room temperature (about 22°C). Results showed that silages added with DTP had higher amounts of NDF, acetic acid and propionic acid whlist lower amounts of lactic acid and NH3N-TN compared to those of control (P<0.001). DTP significantly reduced microbial load of silage opened at 60 days without changing lactobacilli (P<0.001). It was concluded that the reducing in the load of undesirable microorganisms (Enterobacter, yeast and mould) without causing a decline in the number of lactobacilli could be provided significantly advantages in terms of improving the aerobic stability of the silages.


From the author of "Al-Qaeda", Jason Burke's "The 9/11 Wars" is an essential book for understanding the dangerous and unstable world of the twenty-first century. On September 11th 2001, in a series of coordinated suicide attacks, terrorists destroyed New York's World Trade Center and a substantial portion of the Pentagon. Since the Twin Towers fell, the world has seen the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the downfall of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, bombings, battles and riots. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in the 'war on terror'. Whether reporting on the riots in France or the attack on Mumbai, suicide bombers in Iraq or British troops fighting in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, Jason Burke's "The 9/11 Wars", named 2011 Book of the Year by the "Daily Telegraph", "Economist" and "Independent", tells the story of a world that changed forever when the hijacked planes flew out of the brilliant blue sky above Manhattan on September 11th. "The best overview of the 9/11 decade so far in print". ("Economist"). "A magisterial history of the last decade". (Pankaj Mishra, "Guardian"). "At a time when there are more books out on terrorism than ever before ...this is likely to be among the best". ("Sunday Telegraph"). "Potent ...journalism of a high order ...essential for understanding the past decade". (Sherard Cowper-Coles, "Sunday Times"). Jason Burke is the South Asia correspondent for the "Guardian". He has reported around the world for both the "Guardian" and the "Observer". He is the author of two other widely praised books, both published by Penguin: "Al-Qaeda" and "On the Road to Kandahar". He lives in New Delhi.


Cell adhesion and focal complex formation require signalling complexes linking cell adhesion molecules to the cytoskeleton. To understand morphogenetic changes associated with tumour cell spreading, migration and tumour cell metastasis, the molecular mechanisms responsible for the regulation, formation and dissolution at the cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) interface need to be identified. In order to achieve this, an improved axial resolution is desirable. We report on the development of a multi-photon (MP) total internal reflection (TIR) fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) system that allows the selective excitation of fluorophores, with such an improved axial resolution. Results from initial experiments are presented. High excitation efficiency is achieved by the use of a Nikon 1.45 NA TIRF objective using annular illumination.


This study examined the impact of gender on the propensity to trust, responses to the violation of trust and apologies, and the pace of subsequent trust restoration. It was hypothesized that women would respond more positively to an apology but restore their trust at a slower pace than men. Results revealed no gender differences in level of trust immediately after an apology for trust violation, but there was a significant difference in the pace of trust restoration, with women returning to their pre-violation levels of trust later than men as hypothesized. There were also significant gender differences in levels of trust before trust violation and after an apology.


Significance Diversity of information and expertise among group members has been identified as a crucial ingredient of collective intelligence. However, many factors tend to reduce the diversity of groups, such as herding, groupthink, and conformity. We show why the individual incentives in financial and prediction markets and the scientific community reduce diversity of information and how these incentives can be changed to improve the accuracy of collective forecasting. Our results, therefore, suggest ways to improve the poor performance of collective forecasting seen in recent political events and how to change career rewards to make scientific research more successful. Collective intelligence is the ability of a group to perform more effectively than any individual alone. Diversity among group members is a key condition for the emergence of collective intelligence, but maintaining diversity is challenging in the face of social pressure to imitate one's peers. Through an evolutionary game-theoretic model of collective prediction, we investigate the role that incentives may play in maintaining useful diversity. We show that market-based incentive systems produce herding effects, reduce information available to the group, and restrain collective intelligence. Therefore, we propose an incentive scheme that rewards accurate minority predictions and show that this produces optimal diversity and collective predictive accuracy. We conclude that real world systems should reward those who have shown accuracy when the majority opinion has been in error.


Abstract. Chamber secondary organic aerosol (SOA) from low-NOx photooxidation of naphthalene by hydroxyl radical was examined with respect to its redox cycling behaviour using the dithiothreitol (DTT) assay. Naphthalene SOA was highly redox-active, consuming DTT at an average rate of 118 ± 14 pmol per minute per μg of SOA material. Measured particle-phase masses of the major previously identified redox active products, 1,2- and 1,4-naphthoquinone, accounted for only 21 ± 3% of the observed redox cycling activity. The redox-active 5-hydroxy-1,4-naphthoquinone was identified as a new minor product of naphthalene oxidation, and including this species in redox activity predictions increased the predicted DTT reactivity to 30 ± 5% of observations. These results suggest that there are substantial unidentified redox-active SOA constituents beyond the small quinones that may be important toxic components of these particles. A gas-to-SOA particle partitioning coefficient was calculated to be (7.0 ± 2.5) × 10−4 m3 μg−1 for 1,4-naphthoquinone at 25 °C. This value suggests that under typical warm conditions, 1,4-naphthoquinone is unlikely to contribute strongly to redox behaviour of ambient particles, although further work is needed to determine the potential impact under conditions such as low temperatures where partitioning to the particle is more favourable. Also, higher order oxidation products that likely account for a substantial fraction of the redox cycling capability of the naphthalene SOA are likely to partition much more strongly to the particle phase.


Background/Aim: The purpose of this retrospective study was to identify the predictive biomarkers of response to pretreatment for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) treated with nivolumab. Materials and Methods: The subjects were 54 patients treated with nivolumab for mRCC with a clear cell component (mccRCC) between September 2016 and February 2018. We analyzed the impact of serum biomarkers (lactate dehydrogenase [LDH], neutrophil–to–lymphocyte ratio, and C-reactive protein) on patients treated with nivolumab. We adopted the International Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma Database Consortium prognostic model using six clinical factors (0=favorable, 1 or 2=intermediate, 3 to 6=poor risk groups, respectively). Results: The prognostic risk classification (non-poor vs. poor) and serum LDH levels were correlated with the objective response of nivolumab treatment for mccRCC. Elevated serum LDH levels at baseline were an independent biomarker for progression-free survival (PFS) of mccRCC patients receiving nivolumab [HR=2.268 (95%CI=1.014-5.051), p=0.046]. Notably, high LDH levels were associated with a poorer PFS for patients in the favorable-risk group. Conclusion: Serum LDH levels at baseline before nivolumab treatment were associated with the objective response and clinical outcome of nivolumab treatment.


The Prop Builder's Molding & Casting Handbook This is the first book to contain, in one comprehensive volume, every molding and casting procedure of use to the theater props builder (no matter what his or her level or proficiency). The author demonstrates the techniques involved in using more than thirty different materials ranging from papier-mache to breakaway glass. While the use of some materials–plaster and polyester resins, for example–is covered to some extent in other publications, information on the selection and use of rubber materials (latex, neoprene, silicone, and the urethanes) and the procedure for making breakaway windows and bottles is available only in The Prop Builder's Molding & Casting Handbook. Written in an easy, conversational style, the book will be useful to anyone involved with theater properties, puppetry, and costuming (as professionals or amateurs). It will also serve admirably the needs of students taking classes in those subjects. Completing the book is a special section on designing and building a vacuum forming machine suitable for use in constructing theater props. More than 450 photographs illustrate the step-by-step procedures explained throughout the entire text.


In this paper, a list decoding algorithm for low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is presented. The algorithm uses a modification of the simple Gallager bit-flipping algorithm to generate a sequence of candidate codewords iteratively one at a time using a set of test error patterns based on the reliability information of the received symbols. It is particularly efficient for short block LDPC codes, both regular and irregular. Computer simulation results are used to compare the performance of the proposed algorithm with other known decoding algorithms for LDPC codes, with the result that the presented algorithm offers excellent performances. Performances comparable to those obtained with iterative decoding based on belief propagation can be achieved at a much smaller complexity.


Background The adverse effects of maternal smoking on the health of pregnant women have been examined mostly on a disease-by-disease basis. The aims of this study were to evaluate simultaneously the effects of smoking during pregnancy on various obstetric complications, using data from a large medical database, and to investigate the expediency of using a case-cohort design for such an analysis. Methods A case-cohort study was conducted within the Japan Perinatal Registry Network database. Perinatal information on infant deliveries was entered into the database at 125 medical centers in Japan. The base population of the study was 180 855 pregnant women registered in the database from 2001 through 2005. The outcome measures were the incidences of 11 different obstetric complications. Logistic regression models were used to estimate age-adjusted risk ratios (aRRs) and relative excess incidence proportions (REIs). Results The overall prevalence of smoking during pregnancy was 5.8% in the base cohort, and the prevalence was higher among younger women. A comparison of the cases and control cohort showed that smokers during pregnancy had statistically significant higher risks for preterm rupture of the membrane (aRR: 1.67, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.43–1.96; REI: 40.2%, 95% CI: 29.9%–49.1%), chorioamnionitis (1.65, 1.36–2.00; 39.4%, 26.4%–50.0%), incompetent cervix (1.63, 1.35–1.96; 38.5%, 25.8%–49.1%), threatened premature delivery (1.38, 1.17–1.64; 27.7%, 14.5%–38.9%), placental abruption (1.37, 1.10–1.72; 27.1%, 8.8%–41.7%), and pregnancy-induced hypertension (1.20, 1.01–1.41; 16.4%, 1.2%–29.3%). Conclusions Maternal smoking was associated with a number of obstetric complications. This highlights the importance of smoking cessation during pregnancy. In addition, case-cohort analysis proved useful in estimating RRs for multiple outcomes in a large database.