Hippeastrum (Hippeastrum hybridum), a native of Central and South America, is a bulbous ornamental flowering plant in the Amaryllidaceae family. However, the correct balance of NH4 to NO3-nitrogen in a fertilizer mix for Hippeastrum plants is largely unknown. Nitrogen was applied 2x weekly following irrigation at either 0.6 g (high), 0.3 g (medium) or 0.15 g (low) total N every four months. Nitrogen was supplied in different combinations of NO3 and/or NH4. Nitrate:NH4-N ratios were either 100% NO3:0% NH4 (100NO3), 70% NO3:30% NH4 (70NO3), 50% NO3:50% NH4 (50NO3) (second group only), 30%NO3:70%NH4 (30NO3), or 0% NO3/100% NH4 (100NH4). Growth in bulb diameter after one year of fertilizer treatments not only increased from 0.15 to 0.6 g N (low to high level), but also differed with the form of N supplied to the plant. The largest diameter bulbs were produced in the 70NO3 and 50NO3 high N treatments. Within any NO3/NH4-N ratio grouping, fertilization at the high N rate resulted in larger diameter bulbs. No significant differences existed between treatments in the number of bulbs produced. Bulb growth was greater with a portion of N supplied as NO3 than with NH4-N alone. These results indicate that application of N as a mixture of NH4 and NO3 at 0.6 g per 4 months produces the largest increase in bulb diameter.


Abstract: Recently, additive manufacturing is one of the most focused research topics due to its explosive development, especially in manufacturing engineering and medical science. In order to build 3D complex scaffolds with multi-biomaterials for clinical application, a new 3D multi-nozzle system with dual-mode drives, i.e. ejection and extrusion was developed. In this paper, much effort was made to gain fine control of droplet and excellent coordination during fabrication. Specifically, the parameters that influence the size and stability of droplet most was intensively studied. Considering that the biomaterials used in the future may have much difference in properties, the combination of parameters was investigated to facilitate the settings for certain-sized droplets, which are potentially eligible for bio-printing. The dispensing nozzles can work well both in independent and convergent mode, which can be freely switched. Outstanding to the most currently used 3D bio-printing techniques, this system can fabricate scaffolds with multi-materials of both low viscosity (by pneumatic dispensing) and high viscosity (through motor extrusion). It is highly expected that this system can satisfy clinical application in the near future.


Modern image detection techniques such as micro computer tomography
(μCT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) provide us with high resolution images of the microstructure of materials in a non-invasive and convenient way. They form the basis for the geometrical models of high-resolution analysis, so called image-based analysis.
However especially in 3D, discretizations of these models reach easily the size of 100 Mill. degrees of freedoms and require extensive hardware resources in terms of main memory and computing power to solve the numerical model. Consequently, the focus of this work is to combine and adapt numerical solution methods to reduce the memory demand first and then the computation time and therewith enable an execution of the image-based analysis on modern computer desktops. Hence, the numerical model is a straightforward grid discretization of the voxel-based (pixels with a third dimension) geometry which omits the boundary detection algorithms and allows reduced storage of the finite element data structure and a matrix-free solution algorithm.
This in turn reduce the effort of almost all applied grid-based solution techniques and results in memory efficient and numerically stable algorithms for the microstructural models. Two variants of the matrix-free algorithm are presented. The efficient iterative solution method of conjugate gradients is used with matrix-free applicable preconditioners such as the Jacobi and the especially suited multigrid method. The jagged material boundaries of the voxel-based mesh are smoothed through embedded boundary elements which contain different material information at the integration point and are integrated sub-cell wise though without additional boundary detection. The efficiency of the matrix-free methods can be retained.


DR M. J. Le Bas offered his congratulations to Dr Walker on his lucid presentation of the role of density during magmatic ascent. However, density effects alone cannot explain the majority of continental basalts which have been extruded through less dense materials. That density control can be important is shown at Carlingford and Skye, where layered gabbros intrude as sheets above sialic crust and at the base of the Tertiary lava pile: Bailey's mechanism for ring dyke formation is almost impossible here. Dr Walker likened the inclined sheets of Iceland to cone sheets, but the former are planar and dip to the riftzone which gives a different stress field from that of the conical sheets in the Hebrides. It seems that cone sheets raise their central mass of country rock as a result of vertical forces, and that this mechanism is well exemplified by highlevel carbonatite complexes. How did he reconcile the fact that his model appears to depend on acid preceding basic magma, contrary to the relations at most Hebridean centres? Had he considered the mechanical strength of the crust through which magma penetrates: the nature and extent of joints and fractures in strata along which magma can find weaknesses? Finally, did he distinguish between the different effects, apart from viscosity, of 'wet' and 'dry' magmas, which can either soften the envelope of an intrusive boss followed by deformation and folding, or give brittle-type fracture of the country rocks permitting sheet intrusion? DR R. R. Skelhorn: It was very


Abstract Malnutrition has traditionally been thought to involve deficiencies in protein and energy (macronutrients); however, we know that specific key nutrients, when deficient. can also lead to significant morbidity and mortality. Large studies performed with replacement of single nutrients, such as zinc, in malnourished populations in Africa and other developing countries has led to reductions in respiratory infections and diarrhoeal diseases. In this regard, It is being increasingly that acutely ill hospitalized patients may not only be malnourished from a macronutrient standpoint, but that such patients may also be deficient in a number of key functional pharmaconutrients. This new knowledge creates a new era in nutritional support, where nutritional therapy is presenting the surgical and critical care community with a "unique opportunity" to improve patient outcomes with a safe, relatively inexpensive and effective intervention. Our vision for the future of nutritional pharmacology in surgery and critical care is one where there will be initiation of early (< 24–48 hours post-surgery or ICU admission) nutrient delivery, preferentially via the enteral route. This should be supplemented by parenteral nutrition in "at risk" patients, when adequate energy cannot be provided enterally. Pharmaconutrients to target therapy to specific disease states in such should be administered as separate components, in a manner similar to that of administering an antibiotic or drug.


Traditional law and economics has no place for price controls. Yet public support for anti-gouging legislation has led to the enactment of a variety of legal regimes to control price hikes following natural and man-made disasters such as hurricanes and terrorist attacks. This Essay provides an economic justification for such laws. First, the Essay surveys the existing models of anti-gouging legislation. Then, the Essay describes the traditional economic critique of price caps, a critique applied to laws that attempt to control post-disaster prices. Finally, the Essay argues that anti-gouging laws enhance economic efficiency by ensuring a functioning consumer market after the collapse of electronic payment systems on which the American economy now depends. The externalities of consumption in post-disaster environments mean that the costs of consumers forgoing needed products are not adequately captured by a reliance on market mechanisms. This analysis suggests that current anti-gouging laws should be restructured to include a more discrete focus on areas actually affected by physical damage from natural or man-made disasters.


Effective youth participation in social development and civic life can enhance young peoples' health and well-being. Yet many obstacles stand in the way of such involvement. Drawing on 105 interviews, 52 focus groups and fieldworker diaries, this paper reports on a study of a rural South African project which sought to promote effective youth participation in HIV/AIDS management. The paper highlights three major obstacles which might be tackled more explicitly in future projects: (i) reluctance by community adults to recognise the potential value of youth inputs, and an unwillingness to regard youth as equals in project structures; (ii) lack of support for meaningful youth participation by external health and welfare agencies involved in the project; and (iii) the failure of the project to provide meaningful incentives to encourage youth involvement. The paper highlights five psycho-social preconditions for participation in AIDS projects (knowledge, social spaces for critical thinking, a sense of ownership, confidence and appropriate bridging relationships). We believe this framework provides a useful and generalisable way of conceptualising the preconditions for effective 'participatory competence' in youth projects beyond the specialist HIV/AIDS arena.


Although the Antarctic ice pack and some offshore islands had been sighted and even landed upon briefly as early as the 1820s, it was not until an eccentric Anglo-Norwegian explorer, Carsten F. Borchgrevink, went ashore in 1895 that a human being set foot on the Antarctic continent. Borchgrevink, snubbed by the British establishment, had stolen a march on several planned competing expeditions from Germany and Scandinavia. Borchgrevink returned to Antarctica in 1899 with a party that was the first to winter over on the continent. Regrettably, bad weather and unscalable mountains limited their forays inland. Borchgrevink's survival was proof that with adequate supplies, the Antarctic winter was survivable, and that with a better geographic position, the enormous unknown of the continent could be investigated. Borchgrevink galvanized the British geographical authorities who had come to consider polar exploration their exclusive province. Led by Sir Clements Markham of the Royal Geographic Society, the British keenly felt his blow to their national pride delivered by an explorer they regarded as an arrogant upstart. The RGS pushed forward with its plans, and a tragic competition to be the first to reach the South Pole was set in motion between the British and the Scandinavians. This work is an account of the first tentative human gropings in Antarctica, concentrating on the coalescing of official and popular attitudes that later resulted in the polar races of Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen, which dominate the story of the "Heroic Era" of Antarctic exploration, from 1901 to 1922.


Juvenile Delinquency refers to the antisocial and criminal behaviour involving individuals below the age of 18. Juvenile Delinquency has consistently been a problem in the world, Nigeria inclusive. In Nigeria, juvenile offenders are treated differently from adults, although this has not always been the case. This paper discussed the emergence of the Child's Right act in Nigeria in 2003 which was designed to ameliorate the plight of children and young persons who found themselves on the justice corridor. This paper analysed the major content of the CRA as it relates to Juvenile delinquency, from arrest to committal procedures. This paper revealed that the important first step of legislative reform has been successfully achieved and some machinery has also been put in place at the Federal level and in a few States of Federation (Lagos State in particular), to adequately implement and restore the dignity of young offenders to become good ambassadors of the society. The paper therefore concluded that there is likely to be gaps between the laws on the books and the law in practice in juvenile justice system. There is need for government to set up Monitoring and evaluation apparatus to ensure compliance to the law. Keywords : Juvenile, Child Rights Act, dignity, offender, justice.


International Civil Tribunals and Armed Conflict explores the greatly increased involvement of the International Court of Justice and other international civil tribunals in conflict situations during the past three decades, and assesses their impact on the law relating to armed conflict.


Introduction. Part I: The Basics of Politics. Chapter 1: Taking in the Political Universe. Chapter 2: Understanding Why Politics and Politicians Are Important. Chapter 3: Looking at Participatory Democracy. Chapter 4: Examining Political Ideologies. Chapter 5: Forming the British Political State. Part II: Elections and Britain's Parties. Chapter 6: Counting the Votes: Differing Electoral Systems. Chapter 7: Voting Behaviour and Trends. Chapter 8: Homing in on Political Parties. Chapter 9: Piling On the Pressure Groups. Chapter 10: Scrutinising Politics and the Media. Part III: The Ins and Outs of Parliament. Chapter 11: Examining Britain's Constitution. Chapter 12: Britain's Parliamentary Democracy. Chapter 13: Gazing at the Summit: The PM and Cabinet. Chapter 14: Assessing Ministers and Civil Servants. Chapter 15: Taking in the Courts and Judiciary. Chapter 16: Laying Bare Local Government and Devolution. Chapter 17: Joining the Lawmakers: Becoming a Politician. Part IV: Politics Worldwide. Chapter 18: Understanding Britain's Place in the World. Chapter 19: Taking In the International Stage. Chapter 20: Expanding Horizons: Europe and the EU. Chapter 21: Leading the Free World: US Politics. Part V: The Part of Tens. Chapter 22: Ten Great Prime Ministers. Chapter 23: Ten Major Political Scandals. Chapter 24: Ten Political Events that Shaped the Modern World. Chapter 25: Ten Political Trends for the Future. Index.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of a local intraurethral anesthetic on the pain perceived by the patient during flexible cystoscopy.

METHODS
An observational, prospective, nonrandomized, study was conducted on 142 males subjected to a flexible cystoscopy. The patients were divided into two groups: Group 1: 70 patients with intraurethral anesthetic (lidocaine 2%), and Group 2:72 patients without intraurethral anesthetic. The results were scored on a visual analog scale and a pain questionnaire and analyzed. The statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 17.0 and with a statistical significance of p≤0.05.

RESULTS
The mean age of Group 1 was 64.7±10.3 years compared to 66.7±10.8 years in Group 2, with no significant differences. The score on the visual analog scale in Group 1 was 2.23±2.20 versus 1.69±1.74 in Group 2 (p=0.1). The overall and current pain intensity in the pain questionnaire was 1.81±0.87 and 1.66±1.65, respectively, in Group 1, and 1.72±0.72 and 1.21±1.45, respectively, in Group 2 (no significant differences). After dividing the patients into groups according to a visual analog scale score ≤2, it was observed that the cause that led to cystoscopy was an independent factor associated with the perception of pain, increasing the risk of perceiving more pain by 1.89.

CONCLUSION
The use of local anesthetic as a lubricant prior to flexible cystoscopy does not appear to reduce pain, and we consider that its routine use is not indicated.


The crystal and molecular structures of two nitrophenylpyrazolines have been determined. The geometries have been used as starting geometries for density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The differences in conformation between both molecules and between the solid state and gas phase are explained in terms of steric effects. An attractive intramolecular N···N interaction between the nitro group and the pyrazoline N2 nitrogens has been found. Absolute shieldings have been calculated (GIAO) and compared with experimental 1H and 13C chemical shifts.


We propose a method for bounding the demand elasticity in growing, homogeneous-product markets that requires only minimal data—market price and quantity over a time span as short as two periods. Reminiscent of revealed-preference arguments using choices over time to bound the shape of indifference curves, we use shifts in the equilibrium over time to bound the shape of the demand curve under the assumption that growing demand curves do not cross. We apply the method to assess the effectiveness of the antitrust remedy in the 1952 Du Pont decision, ordering the incumbent manufacturers to license their patents for commercial plastics. Commentators have suggested that the incumbents may have preserved the monopoly outcome by gaming the licensing contracts. The upper bounds on demand elasticities that we compute are significantly less than 1 in many post-remedy years. Such inelastic demand is inconsistent with monopoly, suggesting the remedy may have been effective.


Visual odometry shows excellent performance in a wide range of environments. However, in visually-denied scenarios (e.g. heavy smoke or darkness), pose estimates degrade or even fail. Thermal cameras are commonly used for perception and inspection when the environment has low visibility. However, their use in odometry estimation is hampered by the lack of robust visual features. In part, this is as a result of the sensor measuring the ambient temperature profile rather than scene appearance and geometry. To overcome this issue, we propose a Deep Neural Network model for thermal-inertial odometry (DeepTIO) by incorporating a visual hallucination network to provide the thermal network with complementary information. The hallucination network is taught to predict fake visual features from thermal images by using Huber loss. We also employ selective fusion to attentively fuse the features from three different modalities, i.e thermal, hallucination, and inertial features. Extensive experiments are performed in hand-held and mobile robot data in benign and smoke-filled environments, showing the efficacy of the proposed model.


Noam Chomsky and I dialogue about various topics grounded in the context of the mass media, democracy, and the neoliberal privatization of education. The topics discussed were understood in terms of dichotomies (i.e., at ends of a spectrum) related to paradigms with different purposes of education, different conceptions and functions of democracy, and different types of thinking that are ingrained in our patterns of thought. These patterns serve the function of gatekeeping by imposing constraints on thinking that is "supportive of power that just becomes second nature. Just like the air you breathe, so you can't question it." Thus, this dialogue works to clear the air of secondhand smoke clogging our potential to reach what it might do to think about "bad education"—that is, to maximizing the air (advantage) of the least advantaged in society.


Neutralization tests were done on a variety of human and animal anti-LCM sera utilizing the mouse f.p. inoculation route, which proved to be more sensitive than the i.c. or i.p. route in detecting antibody. The animal's immune status paralleled its f.p. response and refinement of doubtful results with poorly neutralized sera could be obtained by challenging survivors i.c. to determine the immunity end point. If rapid information was desired the mouse i.p. route combined with assay by weight change measurement proved only slightly less sensitive than the f.p. route. Salt-free bovine serum albumin as a virus and serum diluent increased the sensitivity of the f.p. neutralization test approximately 600 times.
 Neutralization was demonstrated following inoculation of virus and antisera in different f.p. of the mouse on the same or on different days, but this method was not as quantitatively sensitive as the inoculation of mixtures. Protection was also noted when the serum was given by the i.p. route and the virus by the f.p. route.
 Low levels of antibody were detected in LCM immune mouse sera 20 to 60 days after infection using the SFA diluent-f.p. method. No neutralizing antibody was detected in PTI (LCM neonatally inoculated) mice. High titers of neutralizing antibody were found in mice which had suppressed LCM virus infection several months previously. This reverses the previously held view that mice could not normally develop significant neutralizing LCM antibody, and shows that their response in this respect is normal, but extremely slow. These results are discussed in relation to their bearing on the pathogenesis of slow virus disease.


SUMMARY

The whole territory of Ecuador is exposed to seismic hazard. Great earthquakes can occur in the subduction zone (e.g. Esmeraldas, 1906, Mw 8.8), whereas lower magnitude but shallower and potentially more destructive earthquakes can occur in the highlands. This study focuses on the historical crustal earthquakes of the Andean Cordillera. Several large cities are located in the Interandean Valley, among them Quito, the capital (∼2.5 millions inhabitants). A total population of ∼6 millions inhabitants currently live in the highlands, raising the seismic risk. At present, precise instrumental data for the Ecuadorian territory is not available for periods earlier than 1990 (beginning date of the revised instrumental Ecuadorian seismic catalogue); therefore historical data are of utmost importance for assessing seismic hazard. In this study, the Bakun & Wentworth method is applied in order to determine magnitudes, locations, and associated uncertainties for historical earthquakes of the Sierra over the period 1587–1976. An intensity-magnitude equation is derived from the four most reliable instrumental earthquakes (Mw between 5.3 and 7.1). Intensity data available per historical earthquake vary between 10 (Quito, 1587, Intensity ≥VI) and 117 (Riobamba, 1797, Intensity ≥III). The bootstrap resampling technique is coupled to the B&W method for deriving geographical confidence contours for the intensity centre depending on the data set of each earthquake, as well as confidence intervals for the magnitude. The extension of the area delineating the intensity centre location at the 67 per cent confidence level (±1σ) depends on the amount of intensity data, on their internal coherence, on the number of intensity degrees available, and on their spatial distribution. Special attention is dedicated to the few earthquakes described by intensities reaching IX, X and XI degrees. Twenty-five events are studied, and nineteen new epicentral locations are obtained, yielding equivalent moment magnitudes between 5.0 and 7.6. Large earthquakes seem to be related to strike slip faults between the North Andean Block and stable South America to the east, while moderate earthquakes (Mw≤ 6) seem to be associated with to thrust faults located on the western internal slopes of the Interandean Valley.


The design of resilient supply chains under the risk of disruptions at candidate locations for distribution centers (DCs) is formulated as a two-stage stochastic program. The problem involves selecting DC locations, determining storage capacities for multiple commodities, and establishing the distribution strategy in scenarios that describe disruptions at potential DCs. The objective is to minimize the sum of investment cost and expected distribution cost during a finite time horizon. The rapid growth in the number of scenarios requires the development of an effective method to solve large-scale problems. The method includes a strengthened multicut Benders decomposition algorithm and the derivation of deterministic bounds based on the optimal solution over reduced sets of scenarios. Resilient designs for a large-scale example and an industrial supply chain are found with the proposed method. The results demonstrate the importance of including DC capacity in the design problem and anticipating the distribu...


We provide new evidence that large firms or establishments are more sensitive than small ones to business cycle conditions. Larger employers shed proportionally more jobs in recessions and create more of their new jobs late in expansions, both in gross and net terms. The differential growth rate of employment between large and small firms varies by about 5% over the business cycle. Omitting cyclical indicators may lead to conclude that, on average, these cyclical effects wash out and size does not predict subsequent growth (Gibrat's law). We employ a variety of measures of relative employment growth, employer size and classification by size. We revisit two statistical fallacies, the Regression and Reclassification biases, that can affect our results, and we show empirically that they are quantitatively modest given our focus on relative cyclical behavior. We exploit a variety of (mostly novel) U.S. datasets, both repeated cross-sections and job flows with employer longitudinal information, starting in the mid 1970's and now spanning four business cycles. The pattern that we uncover is robust to different treatments of entry and exit of firms and establishments, and occurs within, not across broad industries, regions and states. Evidence on worker flows suggests that the pattern is driven at least in part by excess layoffs by large employers in and just after recessions, and by excess poaching by large employers late in expansions. We find the same pattern in similar datasets in four other countries, including full longitudinal censuses of employers from Denmark and Brazil. Finally, we sketch a simple firm-ladder model of turnover that can shed light on these facts, and that we analyze in detail in companion papers.


Under what circumstances should we understand government's racist or otherwise hateful speech to violate the equal protection clause? Government speech that communicates hostility or animus on the on the basis of race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, or other class status can facilitate private parties' discriminatory behavior, deter its targets from certain important behavior, and communicate a message of exclusion and second-class status. Contemporary equal protection doctrine, however, does not yet fully address the harms potentially posed by such government expression. The recent emergence of the Court's government speech doctrine — which to date has emphasized the value of government expression without yet fully addressing its potential costs — offers an important new opportunity to consider the situations in which government speech might offend equal protection values.This Article offers a framework for assessing the equal protection implications of government speech that expresses hatred on the basis of class status. To this end, it first identifies the ways in which such speech might inflict a range of behavioral and expressive harms. The Article then describes lower courts' general failure to address these potential harms when considering equal protection challenges to such government expression, and contrasts courts' more expansive understanding of the constitutionally salient harms potentially posed by government's religious speech in the establishment clause context.Drawing from the establishment clause experience, the Article then proposes two alternatives for determining when government's hateful speech runs afoul of equal protection values. First, under a behavioral harm approach, we might understand the equal protection clause to prohibit hateful government expression when it would facilitate private parties' discrimination or cause its targets to alter their behavior — e.g., by discouraging class members from pursuing a government job or petitioning the legislature because they reasonably conclude that such efforts would be pointless or unwise. Second, under an expressive meaning analysis, we might understand the equal protection clause to prohibit government speech that communicates that class members are outsiders or second-class citizens. After addressing possible objections, the Article concludes that both approaches more accurately recognize those situations in which government speech may inflict harms repugnant to equal protection values than does the status quo, which largely ignores or dismisses those harms.


The Medinet Habu Records of the Foreign Wars of Ramesses III is a new translation in metric format, and commentary, of the texts describing the attempted invasions of Egypt by the Sea Peoples and their congeners.


This study analyzes the potential viability of the photosynthetic bacterium Rhodospirillum rubrum for producing electricity via microbial fuel cell (MFC), as prior research has not investigated this capacity. A prototype for a photoMFC was developed using clear PVC along with carbon cloth and steel electrodes. Initial testing revealed that R. rubrum could produce power utilizing the photoMFC (peak power of approximately 1.25 W/m²). Having established R. rubrum 's capacity for photoMFC performance, the wavelength of exposed light and resistance were modified to determine the ideal conditions. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that the differences in power outputs under varied wavelengths were statistically significant (p < 0.0001). Power curves were calculated to determine the optimal resistance via regression analysis (r² = 0.93, p < 0.0001, optimized resistance: 231 Ω). The fuel cell was lastly monitored under sunlight (in a greenhouse) over a 10-day trial, with results showing that the photoMFC could perform effectively under practical outdoor conditions. Under optimal conditions, the R. rubrum photoMFC was predicted to produce maximum instantaneous power of 1.25 W/m². In comparison to other high-power output photoMFCs, the R. rubrum photoMFC performed about 44% as effectively. Although the R. rubrum photoMFC did not perform as efficiently as other reported photoMFCs, its abundance in facilities that invite practical MFC implementation such as wastewater treatment coupled with the fact that R. rubrum is both a heterotrophic and photosynthetic bacteria support its usefulness in realistic, large-scale industrial MFC models.


ABSTRACT Current evaluations of the vulnerability of a road network tend to focus on the probability of damage and the change of traffic demand. The forecasting of low-probability but high-consequence events is a major difficulty. In this paper, a new theory, using a systems-thinking approach, for examining the vulnerability of the form of the network is presented. Our purpose is not to simulate traffic flow but to identify high-consequence scenarios that may arise from vulnerable weaknesses in the form of the network. Such scenarios are independent of models of traffic demand or the source of the damage and can subsequently be combined with specific demands to assess risk. A hierarchical model with clusters of road circuits formed at various levels of granularity of a road network is developed for use in a search process. Only free uncongested flow is considered. A search algorithm for finding vulnerable failure scenarios is described. A vulnerability index is proposed as a measure of the disproportionateness of the consequences of a series of events within a failure scenario in relation to the damage causing those events. The theory is illustrated with two examples.


This study measured the prevalence of religious self-disclosure in public MySpace profiles that belonged to a subsample of National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) wave 3 respondents (N = 560). Personal attributes associated with religious identification as well as the overall quantity of religious self-disclosures are examined. A majority (62 percent) of profile owners identified their religious affiliations online, although relatively few profile owners (30 percent) said anything about religion outside the religion-designated field. Most affiliation reports (80 percent) were consistent with the profile owner's reported affiliation on the survey. Religious profile owners disclosed more about religion when they also believed that religion is a public matter or if they evaluated organized religion positively. Evangelical Protestants said more about religion than other respondents. Religiosity, believing that religion is a public matter, and the religiosity of profile owners' friendship group were all positively associated with religious identification and self-disclosure.


ABSTRACT Under the Paris Agreement, countries are encouraged to submit long-term low greenhouse gas emissions development strategies. Such strategies will merge emissions goals with socio-economic objectives and enable countries to increase their ambition over time, thus offering an opportunity to close the gap between the current emissions trajectory and the Agreement's 'well below 2°C' target. China is in the process of preparing its own long-term strategy. We argue in this article that non-CO2 greenhouse gases (NCGGs) should be an essential component of China's long-term low-emissions strategy. To incorporate NCGGs into China's long-term low-emissions development strategy, key scientific and institutional challenges should be addressed, such as uncertainty about the accuracy of NCGG emissions inventories; uncertainty about future projections of NCGG emissions; and institutional coordination deficits and imbalanced policy approaches. Overcoming these barriers will have significant implications for climate change mitigation and can open a path for the development of concrete follow-up actions. Key policy insights Non-CO2 greenhouse gases (NCGGs) make up around 17% of China's GHG emissions, but China has no quantified target to limit or reduce these gases. NCGG emissions mitigation should be an essential component of China's long-term low-emissions strategy, which is currently under development. Considerable uncertainty exists over both historical NCGG emissions data and forecasts. This poses challenges to developing a comprehensive multi-gas strategy. Institutional challenges must also be addressed, such as fragmentation of responsibility for NCGGs.


Some disulfides have previously been shown to possess antifungal and/or antileukaemic activity. Importantly, this cytotoxicity can be selective. We have previously shown that a subset of these compounds does not block the proliferative potential of normal, non-transformed cells. Based on these results and proposed mechanisms of action, a new set of structurally modified organosulfur compounds, including α-substituted disulfides and a thiosulfonate ester, have been prepared and evaluated for their potential as antileukaemic agents. Compounds were screened for antiproliferative activity against a panel of human cells derived from acute lymphocytic and acute myelogenous leukaemia, as well as non-transformed cells. We have identified five new disulfides and a thiosulfonate that can trigger tumour cells to undergo cell death by an apoptotic mechanism in a sensitive and specific manner.


This paper presents an improved version of KAMFEE cipher [1]. The proposed cipher (KAMFEE-64x) is designed to be compatible with the new 64 bits microprocessors unlike the old cipher (KAMFEE) which is designed for systems based on x86 microprocessors. KAMFEE-X64 has a key dependent block length and key dependent rounds, enhanced by a rotor. The number of rotor's wheels depends on key length too, rotor is implemented using successive 64 bits affine transformations. Its block is divided into basic blocks of 64 bits length. 264 modulo addition and 64 bits XORING are used. It uses 64 bits sboxes implemented using 64 bits affine transformation. Two steps of permutation are used, first step is basic block permutation and second step is basic block mixing. The strength of this system is compared with the KAMFEE and the well-known RC6, and RIJNDAEL ciphers. KAMFEE-X64 cipher gives excellent results from security characteristics and statistical point of view of. So authors suggests to use KAMFEE-X64 in the area of banking and electronic fund transfer.


Significant advances have recently been made concerning the integration of symbolic knowledge representation with artificial neural networks (also called connectionist systems). However, while the integration with propositional paradigms has resulted in applicable systems, the case of first-order knowledge representation has so far hardly proceeded beyond theoretical studies which prove the existence of connectionist systems for approximating first-order logic programs up to any chosen precision. Advances were hindered severely by the lack of concrete algorithms for obtaining the approximating networks which were known to exist: the corresponding proofs are not constructive in that they do not yield concrete methods for building the systems. In this paper, we will make the required advance and show how to obtain the structure and the parameters for different kinds of connectionist systems approximating covered logic programs.


[1] Power laws have long been used to describe the spectral dependence of aerosol extinction, and the wavelength exponent of the aerosol extinction law is commonly referred to as the Angstrom exponent. The Angstrom exponent is often used as a qualitative indicator of aerosol particle size, with values greater than 2 indicating small particles associated with combustion byproducts, and values less than 1 indicating large particles like sea salt and dust. In this study, we investigate the relationship between the Angstrom exponent and the mode parameters of bimodal aerosol size distributions using Mie theory calculations and Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) retrievals. We find that Angstrom exponents based upon seven wavelengths (0.34, 0.38, 0.44, 0.5, 0.67, 0.87, and 1.02 μm) are sensitive to the volume fraction of aerosols with radii less then 0.6 μm but not to the fine mode effective radius. The Angstrom exponent is also known to vary with wavelength, which is commonly referred to as curvature; we show how the spectral curvature can provide additional information about aerosol size distributions for intermediate values of the Angstrom exponent. Curvature also has a significant effect on the conclusions that can be drawn about two-wavelength Angstrom exponents; long wavelengths (0.67, 0.87 μm) are sensitive to fine mode volume fraction of aerosols but not fine mode effective radius, while short wavelengths (0.38, 0.44 μm) are sensitive to the fine mode effective radius but not the fine mode volume fraction.


Background Osteoporosis and associated fragility fractures are a major health problem; they are more common in women over 50 years old. Fracture liaison nurses have been widely used in secondary care to promote the recognition of fragility fractures and to promote the use of bone-sparing medication to reduce the risk of recurrent facture. Objective Audit the impact of a primary care based fracture liaison nurse on the detection of fragility fractures in people with osteoporosis and their treatment with a bone-sparing medication. Method This audit took place in 12 GP practices using 'before and after' cross-sectional extractions of anonymised routine data. We report, for females 50–74 years and ≥75 years old, socio-economic deprivation index, the prevalence of osteoporosis, recording of fragility fractures, dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), smoking, and body-mass index (BMI) and use of appropriate bone-sparing medication. We used Altman's test of independent proportions to compare before and after data. Results Recording of the diagnosis of osteoporosis increased from 1.5% to 1.7% (p = 0.059); the rate of DXA scans fell (1.8% to 1.4%; p = 0.002); recording of fractures and fragility fractures more than doubled (0.8% to 2.0%; p<0.001 and 0.5% to 1.5%; p<0.001, respectively) with approximate doubling of the recording of smoking, and BMI (p<0.001 level). Fragility fracture recording rose from 8.8% to 15% in females aged 50 to 74, and from 0.8% to 2.3% in people aged ≥75years old (p<0.001). There appeared to be inequity in the service, people who were least deprived were more likely to receive DXA scans and the more deprived to be prescribed bone sparing agents. Conclusion A fracture liaison nurse in primary care has been associated with a period of improved management. Liaison nurses based in different parts of the health system should be tested in a prospective trial.


Abstract The causes of speciation in the sea are rarely obvious, because geographical barriers are not conspicuous and dispersal abilities or marine organisms, particularly those of species with planktonic larvae, are hard to determine. The phylogenetic relations of species in cosmopolitan genera can provide information on the likely mode of their formation. We reconstructed the phylogeny of the pantropical and subtropical sea urchin genus Diadema, using sequences of mitochondrial DNA from 482 individuals collected around the world, to determine the efficacy of barriers to gene flow and to ascertain the history of possible dispersal and vicariance events that led to speciation. We also compared 22 isozyme loci between all described species except D. palmeri. The mitochondrial DNA data show that the two deepest lineages are found in the Indian and West Pacific Oceans. (Indo-Pacific) Diadema setosum diverged first from all other extant Diadema, probably during the initiation of wide fluctuations in global sea levels in the Miocene. The D. setosum clade then split 3–5 million years ago into two clades, one found around the Arabian Peninsula and the other in the Indo-West Pacific. On the lineage leading to the other species of Diadema, the deepest branch is composed of D. palmeri, apparently separated when the climate of New Zealand became colder and other tropical echinoids at these islands went extinct. The next lineage to separate is composed of a currently unrecognized species of Diadema that is found at Japan and the Marshall Islands. Diadema mexicanum in the eastern Pacific separated next, whereas D. paucispinum, D. savignyi, and D. antillarum from the western and central Atlantic, and (as a separate clade) D. antillarum from the eastern Atlantic form a shallow polytomy. Apparently, Indo-Pacific populations of Diadema maintained genetic contact with Atlantic ones around the southern tip of Africa for some time after the Isthmus of Panama was complete. Diadema paucispinum contains two lineages: D. paucispinum sensu stricto is not limited to Hawaii as previously thought, but extends to Easter Island, Pitcairn, and Okinawa; A second mitochondrial clade of D. paucispinum extends from East Africa and Arabia to the Philippines and New Guinea. A more recent separation between West Indian Ocean and West Pacific populations was detected in D. setosum. Presumably, these genetic discontinuities are the result of water flow restrictions in the straits between northern Australia and Southeast Asia during Pleistocene episodes of low sea level. Diadema savignyi is characterized by high rates of gene flow from Kiribati in the central Pacific all the way to the East African Coast. In the Atlantic, there is a biogeographic barrier between the Caribbean and Brazil, possibly caused by fresh water outflow from the Amazon and the Orinoco Rivers. Diadema antillarum populations of the central Atlantic islands of Ascension and St. Helena are genetically isolated and phylogenetically derived from Brazil. Except for its genetic separation by the mid-Atlantic barrier, Diadema seems to have maintained connections through potential barriers to dispersal (including the Isthmus of Panama) more recently than did Eucidaris or Echinometra, two other genera of sea urchins in which phylogeography has been studied. Nevertheless, the mtDNA phylogeography of Diadema includes all stages expected from models of allopatric differentiation. There are anciently separated clades that now overlap in their geographic distribution, clades isolated in the periphery of the genus range that have remained in the periphery, clades that may have been isolated in the periphery but have since spread towards the center, closely related clades on either side of an existing barrier, and closely related monophyletic entities on either side of an historical barrier that have crossed the former barrier line, but have not attained genetic equilibrium. Except for D. paucispinum and D. savignyi, in which known hybridization may have lodged mtDNA from one species into the genome of the other, closely related clades are always allopatric, and only distantly related ones overlap geographically. Thus, the phylogenetic history and distribution of extant species of Diadema is by and large consistent with allopatric speciation. Corresponding Editor: R. Burton


Presented in this paper is a method for the design of modular reconfigurable machine tools (MRMTs). An MRMT is capable of using a minimal number of modules through reconfiguration to perform the required machining tasks for a family of parts. The proposed method consists of three steps: module identification, module determination, and layout synthesis. In the first step, the module components are collected from a family of general-purpose machines to establish a module library. In the second step, for a given family of parts to be machined, a set of needed modules are selected from the module library to construct a desired reconfigurable machine tool. In the third step, a final machine layout is decided though evaluation by considering a number of performance indices. Based on this method, a software package has been developed that can design an MRMT for a given part family.


Conflict is inherent in human nature and universities cannot escape this fact. Indeed, being a community with its own identity traits generates its own conflictive dynamics. The close and prolonged daily contact between people and groups with different functions, the wide range of roles assigned to their members or the limited resources can represent a source of conflict directly affecting the personal and professional relations of those there. All conflict requires specific intervention, and this need not always be developed through the disciplinary system. This process is obviously necessary, but insufficient, if we want to resolve the root cause of the conflict. This requires working on values and needs or modifying organisational structures in terms of the interests of the parties involved, and this system is not designed to these ends. This is why it is important to introduce a cooperative conflict management and mediation project in these higher education organisations with awareness raising and training for their members, and the creation and provision of a technical support service for conflict management, mediation and resolution for the whole of the university community. This article looks at these questions in terms the pioneering experience developed to this end at the Universidad Compultense of Madrid.


The primary objective of this study was to assess the impact of two grassland soils and precipitation regimes on soil‐moisture dynamics. We set up an experiment in a greenhouse and monitored the soil moisture dynamics in mesocosms planted with Avena barbata, an annual species found in California grasslands. By repeating the precipitation input at regular intervals, we were able to observe plant manipulation of soil moisture during well‐defined periods during the growing season. We found that the amount of water partitioned to evapotranspiration, seepage, and soil storage varied among different growth stages. Furthermore, both soil type and precipitation regime had a significant impact on redistributing soil moisture. Whereas in the low‐precipitation treatments most water was released to the atmosphere as evapotranspiration, major losses from the high‐precipitation treatment occurred as gravity drainage. Observations from this study emphasize the importance of understanding intraseasonal relationships between vegetation, soil, and water.


Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine the efficacy of corporate governance systems in enhancing earnings quality during the recent global financial crisis (GFC). The literature provides insight into the corporate governance–accruals quality relationship during periods of relative financial stability. However, little is known about periods of unexpected financial shocks such as the GFC. Design/methodology/approach - The sample consists of 340 companies (1,020 firm years) listed on the ASX during 2007-2009. Factor analysis is used to compute corporate governance factors. Seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) is used to test the impact of pre-GFC corporate governance on accruals quality during the GFC. Findings - Consistent with prior research, the findings suggest that good corporate governance is positively related to accruals quality before the GFC. More importantly, the impact of good governance intensifies during the GFC, where the mitigating role of governance is arguably under pressure. Furthermore, during the GFC, good corporate governance also affects the level of asset impairment. Research limitations/implications - The study provides empirical evidence that the relationship between good corporate governance practices and accruals quality is amplified during the GFC. The results support the efforts of market regulators to improve the governance of companies and make them stronger during financial crises. Originality/value - The study is an important addition to corporate governance research because it tests governance dynamics in a unique crisis period and establishes that corporate governance structures are effective when most needed.


For over a decade, there has been growing concern that opportunities for higher education to the weaker/minority sections of the society are rapidly getting eroded. The persistence of inequities is manifest in local and regional disparities of access, gender discrimination, non-affordable fee structures, confusing eligibility requirements, bewildering admission procedures, reduced government support, unabashed commercial practices, and lack of socially sensitive government policies on higher education. More opportunities are available to the urban population and those with higher economic status. Since the days of Kerala Education Bill case , there has been much controversy on the constitutional dimension of minority rights to set up institutions of higher education, catering to religious and linguistic minorities. While, St. Xavier's case, which held the field for a long time. However, the situation underwent a change after Unni Krishnan case. But now, after TMA Pai Foundation case the entire jurisprudence has been changed. It is to be agreed that education, now occupies the center-stage of jurisprudence and for a long time to come, will remain an "occupation" or "business" rather than a welfare activity of national importance. Of course, the new view of private education with profit making incentives is necessity. This is in terms with the World Bank's Privatisation Policy or Philosophy that State should withdraw from the field of education. The TMA Pai verdict virtually opens the constitutional door wide to the private unaided educational institutions. Private education is one of the most dynamic and fast growing segments of post-secondary education at the turn of the twenty-first century. A combination of unprecedented demand for access to higher educational institution and inability or unwillingness of government to provide the necessary support has brought the private higher educational institutions to the forefront.


This report concludes my six-months internship within the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)'s Systemwide Livestock Programme. I was involved in the project "Optimizing livelihood and environmental benefits from crop residues in smallholders crop–livestock systems in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia". During my internship, I have been involved in a large scale agricultural survey focused on crop residues uses. I have also developed a tool to conduct automated analysis of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from different optical satellite instruments (AVHRR, Spot Vegetation). Land Surface Phenology metrics can be computed for every season as well as vegetation anomaly maps to study agricultural landscapes. Finally, my internship has been concluded by the development of a package and the submission of a scientific article. The aim of this documents is to explain and present the package ndvits. First, I will detail the specificity of the NDVI dataset and the methods used for its analysis. Then, I will comment some examples of applications of the package.


Ferritic-martensitic Oxide Dispersion Strengthened (ODS) steels are potential materials for fuel pin cladding in Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR) and their optimisation is essential for future industrial applications. In this paper, a feasibility study concerning the generation of tensile specimens using a quenching dilatometer is presented. The ODS steel investigated contains 9%Cr and exhibits a phase transformation between ferrite and austenite around 870 °C. The purpose was to generate different microstructures and to evaluate their tensile properties. Specimens were machined from a cladding tube and underwent controlled heat treatments inside the dilatometer. The microstructures were observed using Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) and tensile tests were performed at room temperature and at 650 °C. Results show that a tempered martensitic structure is the optimum state for tensile loading at room temperature. At 650 °C, the strengthening mechanisms that are involved differ and the microstructures exhibit more similar yield strengths. It also appeared that decarburisation during heat treatment in the dilatometer induces a decrease in the mechanical properties and heterogeneities in the dual-phase microstructure. This has been addressed by proposing a treatment with a much shorter time in the austenitic domain. Thereafter, the relaxation of macroscopic residual stresses inside the tube during the heat treatment was evaluated. They appear to decrease linearly with increasing temperature and the phase transformation has a limited effect on the relaxation.


This paper builds on previous work where dynamic Bayesian networks (DBN) were proposed as a model for articulatory feature recognition. Using DBNs makes it possible to model the dependencies between features, an addition to previous approaches which was found to improve feature recognition performance. The DBN results were promising, giving close to the accuracy of artificial neural nets (ANNs). However, the system was trained on canonical labels, leading to an overly strong set of constraints on feature co-occurrence. In this study, we describe an embedded training scheme which learns a set of data-driven asynchronous feature changes where supported in the data. Using a subset of the OGI Numbers corpus, we describe articulatory feature recognition experiments using both canonically-trained and asynchronous-feature DBNs. Performance using DBNs is found to exceed that of ANNs trained on an identical task, giving a higher recognition accuracy. Furthermore, inter-feature dependencies result in a more structured model, giving rise to fewer feature combinations in the recognition output. In addition to an empirical evaluation of this modeling approach, we give a qualitative analysis, investigating the asynchrony found through our data-driven method and interpreting it using linguistic knowledge.


In this article we make the case that Research in Practice (RiP) is intrinsic to the role of the professional teacher and as such should be an ongoing (supported) entitlement for all teachers throughout their career trajectory. This is not in itself a new call; what is different is our contention that the current policy context of post-compulsory education makes such demands more urgent, more purposeful and, crucially, of new pedagogical significance. We argue that the consequences of Equipping our Teachers for the Future (DfES, 2004) may be highly restrictive for teacher educators and the teachers they work with. We consider how RiP might facilitate new vantage points from the lived experience of working in the sector, and how the latter might be (re)viewed. We go on to suggest that RiP may also yield important pedagogical benefits for teachers and their communities, as well as contributing to knowledge and understanding about the sector more broadly. In conclusion we argue that teacher educators must take seriously the responsibility to nurture RiP as an everyday habit of professionalism and to give serious thought to providing spaces and places for RiP. We ask whether the new opportunities provided by the Institute for Learning framework can be exploited to support longitudinal research practices.


We describe the design space for real-time photon density estimation, the key step of rendering global illumination (GI) via photon mapping. We then detail and analyze efficient GPU implementations of four best-of-breed algorithms. All produce reasonable results on NVIDIA GeForce 670 at 1920 × 1080 for complex scenes with multiple-bounce diffuse effects, caustics, and glossy reflection in real-time. Across the designs we conclude that tiled, deferred photon gathering in a compute shader gives the best combination of performance and quality.


Ischemic stroke is one of the major causes of death and disability, but predictive parameters such as CPR in this disease are not yet clear. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between serum levels of CRP and different types of CVA and its severity. In this case-control study, 161 patients with stroke (ischemic and hemorrhagic) were included. Stroke severity was measured based on NIHSS modified on admission and CRP was measured on admission (first 48 hours) and four days later. Then, T test and chi-square tests were used to compare the studied variables among various groups. The results showed that the highest and lowest CRP 48 hours after admission were seen respectively in severe stroke groups (22.56), minor ischemic (10.7), and hemorrhagic group (10.08) and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.001). Four days later, considering the CRP levels, the highest and lowest values were seen respectively in severe stroke (73) and mild (9.25) groups, which this difference was significant. In addition, significant difference (P<0.001) was seen between three severe, moderate and mild groups in terms of CRP rate (P<0.001). Studied groups characteristics including severity of CVA (severe, moderate, mild and hemorrhagic), age of patients, blood platelets, TG and CRP rate at first 48 hours and four days after admission to hospital were effective in MNIHSS amount of patients (P<0.05) .The results of this study indicated that the level of CRP on admission and four days after the admission of patients with stroke is closely correlated with ischemic stroke severity so that increasing severity of stroke causes an increase in level of CRP.


The scope of the thesis is to demonstrate the feasibility to examine magnetization profiles of
thin films and multilayer systems via magnetic soft and hard x-ray reflectivity. The focus here
is on 3d transition metals, which are used mainly for development of numerous noval magnetic
devices, that are both technologically and scientifically interesting. Complementary to Neutron
diffraction, which is the standard tool for the examination of magnetic structures in matter,
magnetic x-ray diffraction permits to study small samples and exhibits better Qz-resolution due
its small and only slightly divergent beam. The biggest advantage is its element specificity,
which enables one to probe different magnetic sites separately. The method of magnetic x-ray
reflectivity combines the strong magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) effect, significantly
enhancing the magnetic sensitivity of x-rays, with the technique of conventional specular
reflectivity, a well established tool for the structural studies of the chemical makeup of thin
films and artificial multilayer systems. The theory of resonant magnetic scattering within
dipole approximation combined with the specular reflectivity condition suggests that the
strongest effects are in the lower incident angle regime using circularly polarized x-rays. By
using soft and hard x-rays structures on a scale of a few to several hundreds of A are probed,
which is the dimensions of the thicknesses of the layers of most thin film and multilayers
systems.
In order to retrieve quantitative information from the measured magnetic reflectivity curves, an
approach for visible light magneto-optical effects based on known dielectric tensors of the
sample has been adopted and applied for soft and hard x-ray resonant scattering. Sample
absorption and polarization changes in the sample are accounted for. Besides the structural
composition, the thickness of the individual layers and the index of refraction, also the
magnetic spin configuration can be chosen with arbitrary moment direction and magnitude by
modifying the off-diagonal terms in the dielectric tensor. The magnetic optical constants,
which determine the magnitude of the magnetic moments, are experimentally determined via
MCD absorption measurements and then retrieving the real part through the Kramers-Kronig
transformation of the measured imaginary part. This is shown in this work for several 3d
transition metals and edges. The simulations are sensitive to a variety of different spin
configurations: spiral spin structures, magnetic dead layers and of collinear alignment.
Experimentally the magnetic reflectivity of 3d transition metals has to distinguish between the
two available possible absorbtion edges, L and K, lying in different x-ray regions. The L-edges
are situated in the soft x-ray region and exhibit large enhancements of the magnetic cross
section, while the K-edges lie in the hard x-ray regime and show much smaller effects. In spite
of this handicap, the latter can be important due to the much larger penetration depth and better
Qz-resolution. The X13 beamline at the NSLS at Brookhaven National Laboratory consisting
of two branches for soft and hard-x ray operations, respectively, uses an elliptical polarized
wiggler (EPW), which produces circularly polarized x-rays in the orbit plane and allows fast
switching between left and right circular polarization. Lock-in detection is used to improve the
signal-to-noise ratio at the soft x-ray branch and single photon detection at the hard x-ray
branch to measure the magnetic signal. The EPW and the experimental setup was
commissioned to demonstrate the feasibility of magnetic x-ray experiments. Especially at the
hard x-ray beamline branch the small magnetic effects, less than 0.1% of the charge scattering,
were possible to detect. In order to satisfy the need for high flux the CMC-CAT beamline at the
APS in Argonne was used for magnetic hard x-ray reflectivity, providing an undulator
beamline where the high flux of linear polarized photons was converted into circular
polarization via a diamond phase plate, delivering much higher flux and better circular
polarization.
The sample used to demonstrate the feasibility of the method of magnetic reflectivity consists
of two multilayer structures of Fe/Cr on top of each other, where the iron spins of the upper are
ferromagnetically and of the lower antiferromagnetically coupled, representing an exchange
bias system. The sample was characterized with conventional x-ray reflectivity and MOKE
measurements in order to accurately determine the structural composition and magnetic
configuration (hysteresis loops), respectively. Magnetic reflectivity experiments on the L-edges
at the X13A beamline showed strong magnetic effects, which could be clearly identified as
ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic Bragg peak contributions and simulation confirmed the
collinear alignment and full magnetization of the iron spins throughout the iron layers. Energyand
magnetic field dependent measurements complete the picture. By tuning the x-ray energy
to the chromium L-edge, a signal 20 times weaker compared with iron, demonstrates that the
weak magnetic moment in the chromium layers could be detected. Especially the AFM
contribution shows strong effects which could be qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated.
Simulation show clearly that the magnetic moment is concentrated at the interfaces and could
be approximated to a magnetic layer with an effective thickness of about 0.5 A assuming a step
function in the magnetization profile.
Soft x-ray data usually suffer from strong absorption and the limited Qz-range and resolution
and therefore the use of hard x-rays seems desirable to probe the whole sample. Magnetic hard
x-ray reflectivity measurements on the Fe/Cr double multilayer carried out at the CMC
beamline by switching the magnetic field on the sample show clear magnetic Bragg reflection
at the ferromagnetic structural peaks. They are very well reproduced by simulations and thus
confirm the collinear alignment of the iron spins. In order to probe the AFM spin configuration
the helicity of the photon beam has to be switched with constant magnetic field. In spite of
complications in the reflectivity spectra it was possible to extract the relative orientation of the
AFM to FM spin configuration in the two multilayers.
In summary the work showed for the example of an Fe/Cr double multilayer that magnetic soft
and hard x-ray reflectivity can be applied to retrieve information about the magnetization
profile of thin magnetic films and multilayer, and can compliment polarized neutron scattering.


Abstract The failure behaviour of fibreglass sandwich panels with structured internal cores (z-cored panels) was studied in bending. A finite element model was developed for the simulation of three point bending tests and this has been validated against experimental results. The model was able to predict both the elastic response and, more importantly, the failure behaviour of the structure. It is therefore suitable for use in the optimising the design of z-core sandwich panels for transport applications. The same modelling approach was also applied to the structural behaviour of a larger sandwich panel with a metallic insert which was employed in the design of a semitrailer as part of a demonstration of the viability of the technology.


Biochemical and functional characterization of RhoSAP: A Rho GAP of the postsynaptic density By Janine Dahl Ulm University Glutamatergic synapses in the central nervous system are characterized by an electron dense network of proteins underneath the postsynaptic membrane including cell adhesion molecules, cytoskeletal proteins, scaffolding and adaptor proteins, membrane bound receptors and channels, G-proteins and a wide range of different signalling modulators and effectors. This so called postsynaptic density (PSD) resembles a highly complex signaling machinery. We performed a yeast two-hybrid (YTH) screen with the PDZ domain of the PSD scaffolding molecule ProSAP2/Shank3 as bait and identified a novel interacting protein. This molecule was named after its Rho GAP domain: RhoSAP (Rho GTPase Synapse Associated Protein), which was shown to be active for Cdc42 and Rac1 by a GAP activity assay. Besides its Rho GAP domain, RhoSAP contains an N-terminal BAR domain that might facilitate membrane curvature in endocytic processes. At the C-terminus RhoSAP codes for several proline rich motifs that could possibly act as SH3 binding regions. Therefore, a second YTH screen was carried out with RhoSAP's proline rich Cterminus as bait to discover putative interacting proteins. As an interacting partner syndapin I, a molecule involved in vesicle endocytosis via direct interaction with dynamin I was found. Furthermore, syndapin I contains a C-terminal SH3 domain that is most likely the binding motif for RhoSAP's proline rich region. This novel interaction as well as the interaction with the ProSAP2 PDZ domain was verified by pull-down assays and coimmunoprecipitations. Coming from the finding that RhoSAP is associated with an endocytosis molecule, an FM4-64 endocytosis assay was performed in cell line to delineate the molecule's significance in endocytic processes in general. Taken together, RhoSAP is a novel ProSAP2/Shank3 interacting PSD protein, which displays several protein/protein interaction domains. Due to the N-terminal BAR domain, and the interaction with syndapin I, RhoSAP might act within endocytic processes of the postsynaptic membrane.


The question addressed in this paper is: Is non-sequential internationalization process solely technology enabled or a product of mutually interdependent forces? It is shown in this paper that even though the sequential approach in the process model is intuitively appealing, not all firms follow such a path. This void is filled by explaining how the international market entry process has changed with respect to the sequential approach. Data collection entails 60 Swedish SMEs operating in other countries and foreign SMEs operating in Sweden that tends not to develop in incremental stages with respect to their international. Findings include: that the sequential model is by no means reflective of, or appropriate for all firms' approaches to international business; the usefulness gained by using an international relationship approach to study the international activity of a firm; and the interplay between the identified driving forces behind a non-sequential internationalization process. Knowledge acquired from the empirical study is used to develop an integrated framework which aptly depicts that non-sequential internationalization process is not solely enabled by technology, as commonly envisaged in literature, but a product of mutually interdependent forces. Implications include: all firms are exposed to irrecoverable transaction costs that hamper their behaviours and complicate export supply responses in international markets. However, the magnitude of the costs and speed of internationalization is dependent on the ability of the firms to take advantage of the enablers of non-sequential internationalization pattern. This is particularly important for firms to and from developing countries and emerging markets and their propensities to succeed in their internationalization endeavours.


Civic technology should empower us as citizens. Despite its breadth as a field, civic technology often takes its lead from Silicon Valley companies that espouse design goals potentially hazardous to participatory democracy. In this dissertation, I explore: How might we design civic technologies for citizen empowerment and evaluate their impact on this goal? With their growing role as mediators of democracy, it is insufficient for civic technology designers to evaluate their designs in terms of ease of use and increased engagement with their platform. Research from political and developmental psychology shows the importance to lifelong civic engagement of learning experiences that cultivate a citizen's perception they can make change (political efficacy) and their belief in having responsibilities to the public good (civic identity). To achieve these positive feedback loops, we need a richer framework for civic technology design. This dissertation proposes two solutions: 1) empowerment-based design principles for civic technology and 2) a prototype toolkit for evaluating the impact of civic technology on political efficacy. Because empowerment is contextual, the proposals here focus on tools and platforms built to support "monitorial citizenship," an increasingly popular form of civic engagement aimed at holding institutions accountable. To see these solutions in action, I report on a case study of SeeClickFix, a civic technology company that builds tools enabling citizens to report infrastructure problems to local governments. Two surveys of political efficacy and a randomized experiment with active users of SeeClickFix, followed by interviews with SeeClickFix staff, indicate the validity and utility of evaluating political efficacy as a measure of empowerment as well as the limitations of testing for incremental improvements. Thesis Supervisor: Ethan Zuckerman Title: Associate Professor of the Practice Program in Media Arts and Sciences


This chapter offers critical reviews of the explanatory power of identity and culture in understanding international relations in the Middle East. It focuses on Arabism and other regional ethnicities as sources of political identity. The importance of these identities within the region has been accentuated because of the poor fit between identity and states and regimes — a colonial legacy, but one that remains pertinent today, as revealed in the Arab uprisings. Indeed, the persistence of conflict in the Middle East must be understood through this 'incongruence of identity and material structures'. Focusing on pan-Arabism, as well as the irredentist and separatist movements that have characterized the history and political development of the region, the chapter shows how the interaction of identity with state formation and development has contributed to numerous wars, and most recently to the evolution of regional developments following the Arab Spring.


This thesis examines approaches consultants use to assist organizational leaders in moving strategically towards sustainability. The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD), is examined to understand how one can overcome and address the complex challenges that consultants face in assisting leaders to develop appropriate leadership skills and sustainability knowledge that will allow them to lead their organizations strategically towards sustainability. Two consulting firms located in London are reviewed. From this research, an ideal way of using the FSSD called the Strategic Leadership Training Framework (SLTF) is proposed as a tool to guide and supplement current approaches used by consulting firms to improve their leadership training programs. A gap analysis compares the SLTF and the current approaches used by consultants. The SLTF can be used as a tool to assist consultants to find the gaps between the approaches they use and the SLTF. Finally, emotional intelligence and a definition of sustainability are found to be a key factor for a leader to be successful when moving their organization strategically towards sustainability.


The rise of behavioural approaches in economics has been one of most significant developments in the study of economic decision-making in recent years. The increasingly acknowledged failings of standard models of choice to explain economic decisions has prompted economists to incorporate into their analysis psychological insights into individual behaviour, such as social cognitive and emotional biases. This book introduces the topic of behavioural economics to a beginning readership, explaining its approach and methodology and assessing its successes and weaknesses. The book begins by tracing the evolution of the field from its origins in Adam Smith's moral sentiments through the work of Herbert Simon to Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler today. The book explores how behavioural economics has advanced our understanding of human preferences including notions of fairness, reciprocity and inequality aversion, and the mental processes involved in decision making, which vary with the complexity of the decision and the ability of the decision-maker to process the information. The decision-making of individuals within social and economic groups is explored, including financial practitioners and what this can mean for financial markets. Finally, the book looks at the ways in which findings from behavioural economics have been used to alter the decisions people make, such as the nudge approach, and the ethics of such persuasion.


In situ hybridization is a widely employed technique allowing spatial visualization of gene expression in fixed specimens. It has proven to be essential to our understanding of biological processes, including developmental regulation. In situ protocols are today routine in numerous laboratories, and although details might change, they all include a hybridization step, where specific antisense RNA or DNA probes anneal to the target nucleic acids strand. This step, in general, is carried out at high temperatures and in a denaturing solution, the hybridization buffer, commonly containing 50% (v/v) formamide. An important drawback is that hot formamide poses a significant health risk and so must be handled with great care. We were prompted to test alternative hybridization solutions for in situ detection of gene expression in the medusa of the hydrozoan Clytia hemisphaerica, where traditional protocols caused extensive deterioration of the morphology and texture during hybridization, hindering observation and interpretation of results. Inspired by optimized protocols for Northern and Southern blot analysis, we substituted the 50% formamide with an equal volume of 8 M urea solution in the hybridization buffer. The new protocol yielded better morphologies and consistency of tissues, and also notably improved the resolution of the signal, allowing more precise localization of gene expression, as well as reduced staining at non-specific sites. Given the improved results using a less toxic hybridization solution, we tested the urea protocol on a number of other metazoans: two brachiopod species (Novocrania anomala and Terebratalia transversa) and the worm Priapulus caudatus, obtaining a similar reduction of aspecific probe binding. Overall, substitution of formamide by urea in in situ hybridization offers safer alternative protocols, potentially useful in research, medical and teaching contexts. We encourage other workers to test this approach on their study organisms, and hope that they will also obtain better sample preservation, more precise expression patterns and fewer problems due to aspecific staining, as we report here for Clytia medusae and Novocrania and Terebratalia developing larvae.


Large-scale robotic self-assembly When individuals swarm, they must somehow communicate to direct collective motion. Swarms of robots need to deal with outliers, such as robots that move more slowly than the rest. Rubenstein et al. created a large swarm of programmed robots that can form collaborations using only local information. The robots could communicate only with nearby members, within about three times their diameter. They were able to assemble into complex preprogrammed shapes. If the robots' formation hit snags when they bumped into one another or because of an outlier, additional algorithms guided them to rectify their collective movements. Science, this issue p. 795 A thousand-robot swarm can self-assemble into complex shapes through programmed local interactions. Self-assembly enables nature to build complex forms, from multicellular organisms to complex animal structures such as flocks of birds, through the interaction of vast numbers of limited and unreliable individuals. Creating this ability in engineered systems poses challenges in the design of both algorithms and physical systems that can operate at such scales. We report a system that demonstrates programmable self-assembly of complex two-dimensional shapes with a thousand-robot swarm. This was enabled by creating autonomous robots designed to operate in large groups and to cooperate through local interactions and by developing a collective algorithm for shape formation that is highly robust to the variability and error characteristic of large-scale decentralized systems. This work advances the aim of creating artificial swarms with the capabilities of natural ones.


This is the first report in the Cybercrime in Australia series, which aims to provide a clearer picture of the extent of cybercrime victimisation, help-seeking and harms among Australian computer users. It is based on a survey of 13,887 computer users conducted in early 2023. In the 12 months prior to the survey, 27 percent of respondents had been a victim of online abuse and harassment, 22 percent had been a victim of malware, 20 percent had been a victim of identity crime and misuse, and eight percent had been a victim of fraud and scams. Overall, 47 percent of respondents experienced at least one cybercrime in the 12 months prior to the survey—and nearly half of all victims reported experiencing more than one type of cybercrime. Thirty-four percent of respondents had experienced a data breach. Cybercrime victimisation was not evenly distributed, with certain sections of the community more likely to have been a victim, and certain online activities associated with a higher likelihood of victimisation. Most cybercrime victimisation went unreported to police or to ReportCyber, meaning official statistics significantly underestimate the size of the problem. Satisfaction with the outcomes of these reports was mixed, and relatively few reports resulted in an offender being apprehended. Rates of help-seeking varied and were influenced by the perceived seriousness of cybercrime and knowledge of how and where to report it. The financial losses experienced by victims were wide ranging. Some victims reported losing large sums of money, but most victims reported relatively small financial losses. This report measures, for the first time, the harms experienced by individual victims and small businesses that extend beyond these financial costs. Twenty-five percent of respondents were negatively impacted by cybercrime in the 12 months prior to the survey, while 22 percent of respondents who owned or operated a small to medium business said their business was negatively impacted by cybercrime.


ICP27 is an HSV-1 immediate early protein required for the switch from early to late gene expression. ICP27 binds viral and cellular RNAs, and recently a yeast three-hybrid (Y3-H) analysis has identified an array of viral RNA sequences that interact with ICP27.

Presented here are analyses of functional assays using a selection of the Y3-H identified RNA sequences inserted into the 5' untranslated region (UTR) of a chloramphenicol acetyl transferase (CAT) reporter plasmid. A set of plasmids was transfected into baby hamster kidney (BHK) cells and CAT assays carried out to analyse the effects of the sequences on gene expression. Results indicated that expression was increased when ICP27-binding sequences were present even though no viral proteins were present. Comparison of sequences revealed that no common activation code or RNA structure was present that could be responsible for the increase in CAT gene expression. The levels of expression were further determined in the presence of wild type (wt), ICP27-null or ICP27 mutant HSV-1 infection to investigate whether ICP27 had any affect on CAT expression when ICP27-binding sequences were present. Interestingly, enhanced expression was observed during wt HSV-1-infection when ICP27-binding sequences were present, whereas little to no enhancement was observed during ICP27-null or mutant virus infections. However, a higher fold increase in CAT gene expression was observed during a HSV-1 infection when ICP27-binding sequences were not present. This indicated that an inhibitory effect on CAT expression observed during wt HSV-1 infection when ICP27-binding sequences were present was ICP27-depdnent. As a control, a noncoding, protein binding regulatory HPV RNA sequence was inserted into the CAT reporter plasmid, transfected into BHK cells and then infected with wt HSV-1, ICP27-null or ICP27 mutant viruses. Surprisingly, CAT expression was increased, albeit to only a limited extent, indicating that the previously observed increase in gene expression was not HSV-1 sequence specific. However, upon transfection of plasmids with the HPV control sequence inserted in the reverse orientation and a subsequent infection of cells no increase in CAT expression was observed.

Analysis of the control sequence in the reverse orientation identified a shortage in G residues, which led to the construction of CAT reporter plasmids containing homopolymer sequences to inserted into the 5'UTR. A series of transfections and subsequent mock, wt HSV-1 or ICP27-null virus infections were carried out using this set of constructs. CAT assay analysis revealed an increase in CAT expression, to levels similar to those observed when the HSV-1 sequences were present, when poly(G) homopolymers were used as inserts during wt HSV-1 infection, whereas poly(A), (C) and (T) gave low levels of expression.


Traffic Management Initiative was a petition-based referendum that sought to limit traffic impacts of proposed or planned development through the use of more stringent transportation planning guidelines. ICU analysis compares the volume of traffic at an intersection to its estimated capacity. This paper provides an evaluation of the two level of service methodologies, namely the delay and ICU level of service, and their relationship to each other.


Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were academic, social, political and emotional incubators for newly emancipated and free born African Americans. Towards, this end the pedagogical formation of these institutions greatly impacted discussions of race, character and uplift. Early enrollments included students from a variety of regional/cultural backgrounds, academic abilities and innate desire. During these formative years Kelly Miller, a South Carolinian, attended Howard University and in 1886 graduated with an A.B. degree. From 1890 to 1934 Kelly Miller and Howard University were mutually exclusive; so much so that Howard in many circles became known as Miller's University. Alumnus, instructor, administrator, dean and founder of the department of sociology, Kelly Miller's pleasure, passion, and at times peril centered around racial uplift. Thus, the focus of this article will be an examination of the HBCU community during the era of the Niagara Movement, as reflected in select writings of Dean Kelly Miller. Kelly Miller was born on July 18,1863 in Winnsboro, South Carolina to a formally enslaved mother and a freeborn father. He received his early education in the schools of the Reconstruction era. Northern missionaries and government agents working to reconstruct southern cities that had been decimated by the Civil War operated many of these schools. During his formative years, teachers quickly recognized young Miller's intellectual gifts. He was adept at math and proficient in comprehending mathematical formulas. Initially, Miller pursued mathematics as a career. In 1880 he won a scholarship to Howard University's Preparatory Department, where he completed the intensive curriculum in two years. The Preparatory Department was created to prepare students for college life and course work. This department was a three intensive program that plied prospective college students with Greek, Latin, arithmetic and algebra. In 1886 he received a A.B degree from Howard University and was the first African American student to attend Johns Hopkins University for post graduate work in mathematics. His relationship with Howard University would continue after graduation, when he returned to Howard in 1890 and was appointed professor of Mathematics. After five years work in mathematics, Miller's interests shifted to the field of sociology, and he served as a professor of Sociology at Howard University. Miller's migration to the field of sociology coincided with its early professionalization. The failure of Reconstruction led many academics to conclude that African American people were unfit for citizenship. The professionalization of many social sciences inadvertently contextualized the racism of the day through quantitative means. In part, sociologists often employed the scientific judgment that African Americans culturally inferior. This belief was reinforced by regional bigotry that stigmatized rural, southern and ethnic communities as backward. Therefore, Miller as an educator sought to refute racism notions about African American culture, intellect and ability. Concurrently, Booker T. Washington's philosophy of self-help, and W.E.B. DuBois's philosophy of the talented tenth provided fertile ground to implement the tool of sociology. Miller's mathematical insight provided him with a binocular vision on the solution to the race problem, fusion. He believed that each student should be allowed to cultivate his/her innate talents. Thus, Miller devoted the next 40 plus years of his Howard career to writing insightful and well-researched articles and treatise on race relations, political ideologies, military campaigns and an array of other topics. Like other contemporaries, Miller sought to contribute to racial uplift of the "undeveloped" African race through self-improvement and orchestrated educational effort. "[T]he salvation of any overshadowed race will depend upon what they are rather than what they do, upon character more than enterprise, upon endurance rather than endeavor. …


One hundred years ago, two states had criminal laws addressing collegiate hazing. Today, hazing is a crime in thirty-nine states. However, this flood of legislation has failed to stem the tide of hazing injuries and deaths. The current criminal law approach to hazing has failed because the claimed benefits of specialized hazing laws are illusory. Moreover, the rare cases in which hazing laws provide a benefit over general criminal statutes are the very cases in which the hazing laws are most vulnerable to legal challenge. The current approach also fails on policy grounds. A pure enforcement approach that does not engage with students' values and beliefs about hazing may have the unintended effect of entrenching pro-hazing norms. The creation of sweeping criminal liability also increases the danger of hazing by driving it further underground.This Comment argues for jettisoning the current, failed approach to hazing and instead imposing a duty of mutual aid on members of collegiate student groups. Under this Comment's proposal, if a student becomes helpless as a result of a group activity and is unable to protect himself, other group members must protect him from injury until he is once again able to take care of himself. Criminal liability attaches when a member who knows of the other student' s helplessness breaches the duty and an injury results.


Current limits from the Large Hadron Collider exclude a standard model-like Higgs mass above 150 GeV, by placing an upper bound on the Higgs production rate. We emphasize that, alternatively, the limit could be interpreted as a lower bound on the total decay width of the Higgs boson. If the invisible decay width of the Higgs is of the same order as the visible decay width, a heavy Higgs boson could be consistent with null results from current searches. We propose a method to infer the invisible decay of the Higgs by using the width of the measured h {yields} ZZ {yields} 4 {ell} line shape, and study the effect on the width extraction due to a reduced signal strength. Assuming the invisible decay product is the dark matter, we show that minimal models are tightly constrained by limits from Higgs searches at the LHC and direct detection experiments of dark matter, unless the relic density constraint is relaxed.


This paper discusses two aspects of Crime, Shame and Reintegration
(Braithwaite, 1989) concerning the parents of young offenders
in reintegrative shaming ceremonies. First, the paper tackles Braithwaite's
assumption that parents of young offenders are substantively similar
to any other participants in the ceremony. Two sources of evidence are
drawn upon: psychology literature regarding parental self-efficacy
(Bandura, 1989; Coleman & Karraker, 1997) and qualitative observations
of 34 community conferences in Tasmania, to suggest that in community
conferences parents are likely to feel personally judged by other adult
participants and even "on trial". Second, the paper considers the dangers
inherent in Braithwaite's assertion that directing shame at parents
of young offenders can be conducive to reintegrative shaming. The
dangers discussed include the stigmatisation of parents, in some cases
critical damage to the confidence of parents in their parenting abilities,
and the disruption of parent–child relationships. Ultimately, shaming
parents may worsen the environment of the young offender concerned.


A number of proposals today support a substantial increase in foreign aid levels to subSaharan Africa even though this region already receives a historically unprecedented volume of aid. This essay reviews the evidence regarding the potentially negative effects of aid dependence on state institutions, a topic which has received relatively little attention. We note several pathways through which political institutions might be adversely affected and devote particular attention to fiscal and state revenue issues. In addition to reviewing the economic literature on the aid-revenue relationship, this essay brings in the longstanding political science literature on state-building to consider the potential impact of aid dependence on the relationship between state and citizen. We conclude that states which can raise a substantial proportion of their revenues from the international community are less accountable to their citizens and under less pressure to maintain popular legitimacy. They are therefore less likely to have the incentives to cultivate and invest in effective public institutions. As a result, substantial increases in aid inflows over a sustained period could have a harmful effect on institutional development in sub-Saharan Africa.


"In this paper we develop a dynamic CGE model to examine the impact of CAFTA on production, employment and poverty in El Salvador. We model four aspects of the agreement: tariff reductions, quotas, changes in the rules of origin for maquila and more generous treatment of foreign investment. The model shows that CAFTA has a small positive effect on growth, employment and poverty. Tariff reduction under CAFTA adds about .2% to the growth rate of output up to 2020. Liberalizing the rules of origin for maquila has a bigger positive effect on growth and poverty mainly because it raises the demand for exportables produced by unskilled labor. We model the foreign investment effect by assuming that capital inflows go directly to capital formation. This raises the growth rate of output by over 1% per year and lowers poverty incidence in 2020 by over 25% relative to what it would be in the baseline scenario. These simulations say something important about the growth process in a country like El Salvador in which it seems reasonable to assume that there is idle unskilled labor willing and able to work at a fixed real wage. In such an economy, growth can be increased in one of three ways. First, already employed resources can be moved to sectors where they are more productive. That is what the tariff reductions under CAFTA do, and the result is positive but small. Second, the structure of demand can be changed in such a way as to increase the demand for previously unemployed unskilled labor. That is what the maquila simulation does, because maquila uses a lot of unskilled labor relative to skilled labor and capital. Finally the supply of capital can be increased by increasing the rate of capital formation. That is what happens in the FDI simulation." from Authors' Abstract


Large-head metal-on-metal (MoM) total hip replacements (THR) have given rise to concern. Comparative studies of small-head MoM THRs over a longer follow-up period are lacking. Our objective was to compare the incidence of complications such as infection, dislocation, revision, adverse local tissue reactions, mortality and radiological and clinical outcomes in small-head (28 mm) MoM and ceramic-on-polyethylene (CoP) THRs up to 12 years post-operatively. A prospective cohort study included 3341 THRs in 2714 patients. The mean age was 69.1 years (range 24 to 98) and 1848 (55.3%) were performed in women, with a mean follow-up of 115 months (18 to 201). There were 883 MoM and 2458 CoP bearings. Crude incidence rates (cases/1000 person-years) were: infection 1.3 vs 0.8; dislocation 3.3 vs 3.1 and all-cause revision 4.3 vs 2.2, respectively. There was a significantly higher revision rate after ten years (adjusted hazard ratio 9.4; 95% CI 2.6 to 33.6) in the MoM group, and ten of 26 patients presented with an adverse local tissue reaction at revision. No differences in mortality, osteolysis or clinical outcome were seen. In conclusion, we found similar results for small-head MoM and CoP bearings up to ten years post-operatively, but after ten years MoM THRs had a higher risk of all-cause revision. Furthermore, the presence of an adverse response to metal debris seen in the small-head MOM group at revision is a cause for concern.


OBJECTIVE
The study aimed to assess tendon thickness in patients with chronic occupational lead exposure by using ultrasonography.

METHODS
Twenty-seven male workers (mean age 32.9 ± 6.2 years, range 25-44 years) with occupational lead exposure and 27 age- and body mass index (BMI)-matched healthy male subjects (mean age 33.1 ± 5.6 years, range 25-44 years) were enrolled. Ultrasonographic measurements were obtained from the supraspinatus and Achilles tendons by using a linear probe (5-10 MHz).

RESULTS
Mean Achilles tendon values at long axis (p = 0.034) and tendon cross-sectional area (p = 0.013) were significantly smaller in the lead-exposed group than the control group. On the other hand, no significant difference was found regarding the thickness of the supraspinatus tendon (p > 0.05).

CONCLUSION
Our preliminary results imply that subjects with occupational lead exposure have smaller Achilles tendons than healthy subjects. Chronic lead exposure may affect the tendons due to reduction of collagen synthesis. Further studies are definitely needed to confirm our initial findings.