The objective of this study was to compare the effect on intraocular pressure (IOP) of latanoprost 0.005% once daily with timolol 0.5% twice daily in patients with open angle glaucoma or ocular hypertension. The study was designed as a single-centre, randomised, double-masked parallel-group comparison of latanoprost with timolol after 12 weeks of treatment. 60 patients with open angle glaucoma or ocular hypertension with IOP of at least 22 mm Hg were included. Administration of previous ocular hypotensive medication necessitated a wash-out period of 5 to 21 days before the start of the study treatment. The patients were randomised to treatment with latanoprost 0.005% once daily or timolol 0.5% twice daily. Mean diurnal IOP was measured at baseline and after 6 and 12 weeks of treatment. After 6 weeks of treatment, the diurnal IOP reduction (mean± standard error of the mean [SEM]) in the latanoprost group was 12.1±1.1 mm Hg (41%;p<0.001; analysis of covariance [ANCOVA]) and 8.7 ± 1.1 mm Hg (30%; p < 0.001; ANCOVA) in the timolol group. The difference of 3.4 ± 1.6 mm Hg was statistically significant in favour of latanoprost (p = 0.034; ANCOVA). A 30% reduction or more in mean diurnal IOP was achieved by 71 % of patients in the latanoprost group and by 34% of patients in the timolol group. After 12 weeks of treatment, the diurnal IOP reduction (mean± SEM) in the latanoprost group was 11.1±1.2 mm Hg (39%; p < 0.001; ANCOVA) and 9.1 ± 1.1 mm Hg (32%; p < 0.001; ANCOVA) in the timolol group. Most side effects observed were mild and transient and no serious adverse events were reported. Latanoprost 0.005% administered once daily in the evening was at least as effective as timolol 0.5% twice daily in reducing the mean diurnal IOP after 6 and 12 weeks of treatment. Both medications were well tolerated during the study period.


Recently, the exploration of new alternatives to common organic solvents in combination with non-conventional energy sources is a subject of intense research and development as tools for green extraction of plant-derived natural products. This paper deals with the use of low frequency ultrasound (100 W, 32 kHz) and pulsed electrical fields (0.86 kV cm-1, 13 Hz) to raise the efficiency of the extraction of selected plant species rich in valuable phenolic compounds.Four types of natural deep eutectic solvents were applied for the ultrasound-assisted extraction of silymarin from milk thistle among which a choline-chloride-based mixture with glycerol was proved to be the most promising one. Additionally, the usage of high ultrasound power significantly increased the concentration of sylimarin as compared to traditional ethanol extraction, generating rapidly for 10 min considerable temperature rise as a side effect under non-cooling conditions. The application of PEF as a pre-treatment for 0.8 s to the extraction allowed reducing the ethanol percentage in the ethanol/water mixtures giving comparable phenolic yields, without any, or very little, increase in temperature. As such, optimized power intensity in conjunction with appropriate solvent system provides a potential to improve the release of thermally unstable bioactive compounds under mild processing conditions.


New global forest restoration initiatives present an unparalleled opportunity to reverse the trend of deforestation and forest degradation in the coming years. This effort will require the collaboration of stakeholders at all levels, and most importantly, the participation and support of local people. These ambitious restoration initiatives will also require monitoring systems that allow for scalability and adaptability to a range of local sites. This will be essential in understanding how a given restoration effort is progressing, determining why or why not it is succeeding and learning from both its successes and failures. Participatory monitoring could play a crucial role in meeting international monitoring needs. The potential of participatory monitoring in forest restoration and related forest management activities is explored in this review through multiple case studies, experiences, field tests and conceptual discussions. The review seeks to deepen and broaden our understanding of participatory monitoring by teasing out the lessons learned from existing knowledge and mapping a possible path forward, with the aim of improving the outcomes of forest restoration initiatives.


Scientific objective of this paper is to analyse how advanced are Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to fight successfully information disorder. More specifically, this is an overview and ranking on existing tools based on AI in this specific area. Research method is comparative analytics. We compare the most developed and publicly available fake-news detecting and fact-checking AI based solutions (intelligent machines). The comparison is based on two key parameters: accuracy and comprehensiveness. Results and conclusions: Analyse show that a third of the examined AI systems are, in terms of comprehensiveness, in the top category, while the majority are in the medium category. As far as accuracy is concerned, very few AI machine developers are interested in providing further details about their products and functionalities for studies such as ours which raises suspicions about their actual performance. Surprisingly, one of the most discussed AI systems among EU leaders seems to actually belong to the least developed. Cognitive value: There is a need for a larger and more detailed study with involvement of AI specialists who would be able, and allowed, to test all available AI machines with their key features and functionalities.


In this PhD thesis, we consider two problems that are related to finite simple groups of Lie type. First of them is a problem mentioned in the Kourovka notebook: describe the finite simple groups in which every element is a product of two involutions. We consider the simple orthogonal groups in even characteristic, and solve the problem for them. Since other groups have been dealt with elsewhere, the problem is then solved completely. The second part of the thesis is related to Lie algebras. Every complex simple Lie algebra has a compact real form that is associated with a compact Lie group. In this thesis, we consider the Lie algebra of type E8, and give a new construction of its compact real form. The Lie product is defined using the irreducible subgroup of shape 25+10 ·GL5(2) of the automorphism group.


The aim of this paper is a new synthesis of the results obtained in Italy and in the surrounding areas during more than thirty years (1956-1987) by the seismic exploration method of wide angle reflection - refraction generally known as DSS - Deep Seismic Soundings. Italy is among the countries most intensively surveyed by this method. During the long period of application, the techniques experienced remarkable modifications with regard to the instrumentation (from analog to digital), the acquisition procedures (density and type of layouts), as well as processing and interpretation (ray-tracing and modelling). Despite the low resolving power and the constraints given by the large distance between the shots and by the low density of recorders, the method is particularly well-suited to describe the pattern of the crust-mantle boundary and is the unique way to obtain the distribution of the seismic velocity in the lower crust. A rich literature was produced both during and after the long period of data acquisition. However, we feel that a further comprehensive survey, compiled using homogeneous criteria, could be useful to discuss and update the geodynamic schemes of the central Mediterranean. We have prepared synthetic cross-sections based on the most reliable interpretations and compiled using homogeneous criteria of presentation. A new map of the Moho boundary is also presented. In addition to the depth contour lines of the boundary, which show the complexity of the deep structure, we also describe the crustal types found in the area: besides the two main interacting domains of the Adriatic and European plates, the oceanic-sub oceanic type is present in the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian seas. Moreover, a further type is defined: the Ligurian-Tuscan-Peri-Tyrrhenian strip of a thinned, anomalous crust. The thickness and structure of this intermediate crustal type was produced by a multi-phase geodynamic evolution: in the area beneath the Ligurian sea, Corsica and Tuscany, by the opening of the Provencal Basin and the counter clockwise rotation of the Sardinian-Corsican microplate; in the south, by the opening of the Tyrrhenian sea. The structure of the crust-mantle boundary and of the lower crust beneath the Alpine range is outlined in detail, clearly revealing the contrast between the fairly homogeneous European crust beneath the central Alps and the complex northern and north western edge of the Adriatic-Padan crust; the latter is witness to the effect of the push-and-pull stages responsible of the Alpine evolution.


Background: Cancer caregiving is a distressing experience and loss of a loved one can lead to intense grief and other adverse effects. However, the prevalence of grief disorders among families associated with cancer-related deaths remains unknown. Aim: This study aimed to determine the prevalence of grief disorders among families of patients with cancer to better inform clinicians, researchers, and policymakers. Design: Meta-analysis, PROSPERO number CRD42020209392. Data sources: The databases of CINAHL, Embase, MEDLINE, PubMed, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science were comprehensively searched with no language restrictions. The quality of included studies was assessed with Hoy's criteria. Results: Among the 3046 records screened, 19 studies were eligible for meta-analysis, with a total of 14,971 participants. The pooled prevalence rate of grief disorders was estimated at 14.2% (95% CI, 11.7%–16.7%), ranging from 7% to 39%. The prevalence was higher in females (10%; 95% CI, 8.2%–12.1%), those who are religious (9.55%; 95% CI, 8.97%–10.16%), spouses of the deceased (7.78%; 95% CI, 6.08%–9.69%), and families of patients with neurological cancers (6.4%; 95% CI, 0.10%–19.9%). Educational levels, study locations, diagnosis tools, time post-after loss, and study methods seemed not to affect the prevalence of grief disorders in families of patients with cancer. Conclusions: As the prevalence of grief disorders in cancer-related bereavement is substantial, therefore, support including palliative care is important to reduce the burden of caregiving. In addition, future studies are needed to identify and explore effective strategies that can help reduce the burden caused by grief disorders after the death of the patient.


Future intranet: functional study, comparison of products and practical implementation 1. Introduction The project has fulfilled three goals: 1) To perform a study of the functionalities which have to be covered in a modern intranet (web 2.0, unified communication, collaboration, etc) 2) To perform a comparison of tools of the market which can be used to implement intranets (commercial and open source products) 3) To test three of these tools (Oracle WebCenter, Liferay Portal and Microsoft SharePoint) and develop a prototype with Oracle WebCenter. In addition, it includes a research about the evolution of the Intranets among the time, as well as a work to discover the current state of this kind of platforms over the entire world. In this introductory research it is also convenient to include other topics which are not strictly technical involving the use of this Intranet. To be more concrete, there is an analysis of the importance of the human role and management of the Intranet, the process of deploying a new Intranet in an organization and methods to evaluate the performance of this new system. 2. Functional study The approach taken to fulfil this goal is to develop a theoretical model describing the relationship between the Intranet and its users, and a complete set of functionalities which could be covered in the Intranet of the future. These functionalities are categorized in groups. The project describes these groups and the functionalities included on them. 3. Comparison of products The project will describe and compare several technologies which can be used to develop an Intranet that we have previously modelled. The purpose here is to discover the strong points and weaknesses of each technology if it was used to develop the Intranet we desire. After having done such a review, the project focuses on three technologies and performs an extensive evaluation of them. Finally, an extensive comparison between these three technologies is done, highlighting where they offer better solutions and performance compared to the other possibilities. 4. Practical implementation The project focuses on three technologies: Oracle WebCenter, Liferay Portal and Microsoft SharePoint. Then, a prototype which covers a set of functionalities of the modelled Intranet has been built with Oracle WebCenter.


With the extensive use of pulse modulation methods in telecommunications, much work has been done in the search for a better utilisation of the transmission channel.The present research is an extension of these investigations. A new modulation method, 'Variable Time-Scale Information Processing', (VTSIP), is proposed.The basic principles of this system have been established, and the main advantages and disadvantages investigated. With the proposed system, comparison circuits detect the instants at which the input signal voltage crosses predetermined amplitude levels.The time intervals between these occurrences are measured digitally and the results are temporarily stored, before being transmitted.After reception, an inverse process enables the original signal to be reconstituted.The advantage of this system is that the irregularities in the rate of information contained in the input signal are smoothed out before transmission, allowing the use of a smaller transmission bandwidth. A disadvantage of the system is the time delay necessarily introduced by the storage process.Another disadvantage is a type of distortion caused by the finite store capacity.A simulation of the system has been made using a standard speech signal, to make some assessment of this distortion. It is concluded that the new system should be an improvement on existing pulse transmission systems, allowing the use of a smaller transmission bandwidth, but introducing a time delay.


In the majority of cancers, secondary tumors (metastases) and associated complications are the main cause of death. To design the best therapy for a given patient, one of the major current challenge is to estimate, at diagnosis, the burden of invisible metastases and the future time of emergence of these, as well as their growth speed. In this talk, I will present the current state of our research efforts towards the establishment of a predictive computational tool for this aim. I will first shortly present the model used, which is based on a physiologically-structured partial differential equation for the time dynamics of the population of metastases, combined to a nonlinear mixed-effects model for statistical representation of the parameters' distribution in the population. Then, I will show results about the descriptive power of the model on data from clinically relevant ortho-surgical animal models of metastasis (breast and kidney tumors). The main part of my talk will further be devoted to the translation of this modeling approach toward the clinical reality. Using clinical imaging data of brain metastasis from non-small cell lung cancer, several biological processes will be investigated to establish a minimal and biologically realistic model able to describe the data. Integration of this model into a biostatistical approach for individualized prediction of the model's parameters from data only available at diagnosis will also be discussed. Together, these results represent a step forward towards the integration of mathematical modeling as a predictive tool for personalized medicine in oncology


Both originalists and nonoriginalists alike often assume that background assumptions widely held when the Constitution or its amendments were enacted are part of the original meaning of the text. Originalists sometimes appeal to these background assumptions to render the meaning of more abstract words or phrases more determinate; nonoriginalist point to odious or outmoded assumptions as proof that original meaning is objectionable and should be rejected. In this paper, I examine the proper role of background assumptions in constitutional interpretation when ascertaining the meaning of the terms, and in constitutional construction when applying this meaning to particular cases and controversies. Rather than present a normative argument on behalf of originalism, I merely try to identify what the original meaning of the text really is - in particular, the circumstances in which background assumptions become a part of that meaning. While this analysis should be of obvious interest to originalists, it should also be of interest to any nonoriginalist who believes that the original meaning of the text is at least one factor or "modality" of constitutional interpretation to be balanced against other considerations. In Part I, I explain how express and implied in fact terms provide the meaning of both written contracts and written constitutions. In Part II, I distinguish this meaning of the text from the background assumptions that can result in the failure of a contract when circumstances arise about which the text is silent. Unlike contracts, however, with constitutions "failure" is not an option. Further, while background assumptions can be relevant to interpreting the meaning of ambiguous terms in both contracts and constitutions, most sustained disputes over constitutional terms concern, not the interpretation of ambiguity, but the construction of terms whose meaning is vague. In Part III, I consider how one's approach to the construction of vague terms will depend on one's theory of constitutional legitimacy - that is, what makes a constitution "binding." If, like contracts, the legitimacy of constitutions is based on original consent of the governed then, as with contracts, background assumptions can be viewed as silently conditioning that consent. On the other hand, if constitutional legitimacy is based on the justice of imposing laws on a nonconsenting public, then odious background assumptions are irrelevant to construing vagueness. This divide is illustrated by the antebellum debates over the constitutionality of slavery. Finally, in Part IV, I apply this analysis to three background assumptions: (1) that there are unenumerated natural rights, (2) that there is an unenumerated police power of states, and (3) that certain interpretive methods would be employed by courts.


Increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 will alter regional rainfall and evapotranspiration regimes that drive groundwater recharge. Improved methods of simulation and analysis are needed for assessing the potential sensitivities of soil–water–vegetation systems to climate change. This study demonstrates methods for generating climates and simulating soil–water and vegetation dynamics in response to current and double CO2 climate sequences. Climate change scenarios came from dynamic equilibrium (constant CO2) runs of a general circulation model (GCM). Based on historical climate and GCM output, a stochastic point weather generator produced realizations of the cross‐correlated daily climate variables. A numerical model of infiltration, variably saturated flow, and evapotranspiration produced temporal distributions of groundwater recharge rates for various soil–vegetation environments. Climate change scenarios were simulated for two climatic zones in Australia: subtropical (North Stradbroke Island, Queensland) and Mediterranean (Gnangara, Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia) having summer‐ and winter‐dominated rainfall regimes, respectively. In these simulations, groundwater recharge values were affected by the dynamic growth and senescence of vegetation, as changes in temperature and rainfall regimes affected growth rates and leaf areas. The temperature regime dominated the hydrologic response in the Mediterranean climate, and the rainfall frequency–duration regime dominated in the subtropical climate. For the simulated Mediterranean climate change (14% rainfall increase), changes in mean recharge values ranged from −34% to +119%, while subtropical climate change (37% rainfall increase) caused increases from 74 to > 500%. Changes in mean recharge rate, interannual variability, and temporal persistence were related to the soil and vegetation characteristics. The model was useful for quantifying complex, nonlinear responses to climate change that require further exploration.


IDDM in humans and in nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice is a T-cell–dependent autoimmune disease in which the β-cells of the pancreatic islets are destroyed. Several putative β-cell autoantigens have been identified, but insulin and its precursor, proinsulin, are the only ones that are β-cell specific. (Pro)insulin may be a key autoantigen in IDDM. To address the role of proinsulin in the development of IDDM, we generated NOD mice transgenic for the mouse proinsulin II gene driven off a major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II promoter to direct expression of the transgene to MHC class II bearing cells, including those in the thymus, with the aim of deleting proinsulin-reactive T-cells. The mononuclear cell infiltration of the islets (insulitis) is almost completely absent, and diabetes is prevented in these transgenic NOD mice. The mononuclear cell infiltration of the salivary glands (sialitis) and immune responses to ovalbumin (OVA) are not altered, indicating that the protective effect of the transgene is specific for islet pathology and not due to general immunosuppression. We conclude that autoimmunity to proinsulin plays a pivotal role in the development of IDDM.


In The High Church Revival in the Church of England the author reassesses the nature and impact of High Churchmanship, asserting its creativity and complexity as an enduring element of Anglican tradition.


Arm wrestling is a popular activity enjoyed by men and women of all ages. Although uncommon, several cases of arm wrestling injuries have been reported in the medical literature. Fractures of the humerus sustained during arm wrestling are rare clinical entities that can be confused with pathologic fractures. A butterfly fragment subtype of comminuted humeral fracture is an even more exceptional presentation of arm wrestling injury. We herein present a case of comminuted oblique fracture with a large butterfly fragment of the distal humerus in a 25-year-old man who had been involved in arm wrestling. Midway during the struggle while straining to overcome his opponent, the patient heard a loud snapping noise and felt sudden intense pain in his right arm. Radiologic findings revealed a comminuted oblique fracture at the distal third of the humeral shaft with a large butterfly fragment. It is thought that fracture of the humeral shaft during arm wrestling is the result of bending moment, axial compression and torsional forces applied to the humerus. This type of fracture may occur in anyone of any age engaging in this type of sport. The author suggests awareness of this entity and recommends appropriate radiologic and neurologic examination for injuries involving intense muscular contractions. Because of the possibility of participants sustaining such an injury, arm wrestling should not be considered a totally benign injury. Arm wrestlers should be conscious of the risks of practicing this activity.


Context: The workload at seaport container terminal is increasing gradually. We need to improve the performance of terminal to fulfill the demand. The key section of the container terminal is container stacking yard which is an integral part of the seaside and the landside. So its performance has the effects on both sides. The main problem in this area is unproductive moves of containers. However, we need a well-planned stacking area in order to increase the performance of terminal and maximum utilization of existing resources.Objectives: In this work, we have analyzed the existing container stacking system at Helsingborg seaport container terminal, Sweden, investigated the already provided solutions of the problem and find the best optimization technique to get the best possible solution. After this, suggest the solution, test the proposed solution and analyzed the simulation based results with respect to the desired solution.Methods: To identify the problem, methods and proposed solutions of the given problem in the domain of container stacking yard management, a literature review has been conducted by using some e-resources/databases. A GA with best parametric values is used to get the best optimize solution. A discrete event simulation model for container stacking in the yard has been build and integrated with genetic algorithm. A proposed mathematical model to show the dependency of cost minimization on the number of containers' moves.Results: The GA has been achieved the high fitness value versus generations for 150 containers to storage at best location in a block with 3 tier levels and to minimize the unproductive moves in the yard. A comparison between Genetic Algorithm and Tabu Search has been made to verify that the GA has performed better than other algorithm or not. A simulation model with GA has been used to get the simulation based results and to show the container handling by using resources like AGVs, yard crane and delivery trucks and container stacking and retrieval system in the yard. The container stacking cost is directly proportional to the number of moves has been shown by the mathematical model.Conclusions: We have identified the key factor (unproductive moves) that is the base of other key factors (time & cost) and has an effect on the performance of the stacking yard and overall the whole seaport terminal. We have focused on this drawback of stacking system and proposed a solution that makes this system more efficient. Through this, we can save time and cost both. A Genetic Algorithm is a best approach to solve the unproductive moves problem in container stacking system.


This study revisits the problem of the tragedy of the commons. Extracting agents participate in an evolutionary game in a complex social network and are subject to social pressure if they do not comply with the social norms. Social pressure depends on the dynamics of the resource, the network and the population of compliers. We analyze the influence the network structure has on the agents' behavior and determine the economic value of the intangible good - social pressure. For a socially optimal management of the resource, an initially high share of compliers is necessary but is not sufficient. The analysis shows the extent to which the remaining level of the resource, the share of compliers and the size, density and local cohesiveness of the network contribute to overcoming the tragedy of the commons. The study suggests that the origin of the problem – shortsighted behavior - is also the starting point for a solution in the form of a one-time payment. A numerical analysis of a social network comprising 7500 agents and a realistic topological structure is performed using empirical data from the western La Mancha aquifer in Spain.


Ever since 2011, Dolomiti Contemporanee (DC) has been operating on the contemporary identity of the mountain, and on the state of the Landscape, as well as the cultural, historic, and architectural Heritage inside the region of UNESCO's Dolomites. Its research takes shape in the reactivation of large, issue-heavy industrial archaeology sites and compounds: former factories, former social villages, iconic architectural creations, with a great historical or aesthetic value, abandoned and underutilized, immersed in the powerful nature of the Dolomitic region. DC works on the redefinition of the mountain's identity, building re-innovative and thematic critical images. In this sense, we refuse to recognize as an acceptable identity for the Alpine landscape the hotchpotch of stereotypical reductions which deliver a bland and reified vision of it, one that almost always involves plain and simple economic and touristic exploitation of the asset, to the detriment of its real potential's nourishment. DC's practice puts at the centre the need for re-enhancement and functional re-use of a few exceptional sites, which must be re-processed and re-activated. It is a responsible necessity of care and an opportunity for the regeneration of extraordinary underdeveloped sources of potential at the same time. Contemporary art, innovation culture, network strategies, those are some of the "techniques" through which such sites, so important in the past and now lifeless, are tackled, and morphed into cultural and artistic production centres, finally operative again, engines able to represent and provide new value to the territory.


In Sudan, electricity reaches only about 30% of the population, mainly in urban areas. Hence, a major problem for rural people is the inadequate supply of power for lighting, heating, cooking, cooling, water pumping, radio or TV communications and security services. Petroleum product supplies, including diesel, kerosene and liquid petroleum gas are irregular and often subject to sudden price increases. Because of the inadequate supply of these fuels, women trek great distances into the forest to collect fuel wood, charcoal and biomass residues from animals and agriculture, which account for more than half of total energy consumption. Most of this is used for cooking and heating water in rural and semi-urban areas and by the urban poor. There is a need to provide alternative renewable energy sources to enhance women's participation in, and benefit from development. Household energy was the first energy sector that paid explicit attention to women and their energy needs. The contribution of women to environmental policy is largely ignored. Decision-making and policy formulation at all environmental levels, i.e. conservation, protection and rehabilitation and environmental management, are more or less a male preserve. Women have been involved in the promotion of appropriate energy technologies, primarily for rural population, over the past 15 years. This article highlights the experience of working with rural women in seeking solutions for community energy needs through renewable, environmentally friendly, energy technologies.


Purpose We develop a methodology for designing perimetric screening procedures, using Octopus perimeters as a case study. Methods The process has three stages: analytically determining specificity and number of presentations required for different multisampling suprathreshold schemes at a single location of the visual field, ranking visual field locations by their positive predictive value (PPV) for glaucoma, and determining a pass/fail criteria for the test. For the case study the Octopus G-program visual field test pattern is used, and a dataset of 385 glaucoma and 86 normal patients. Results Using a 1-of-3 sampling strategy at a level equal to the 95 percentile of normal observers gave the most robust specificity under the influences of false-negative responses using an average of 1.5 presentations per location. The PPV analysis gave 19 locations that completely classified our glaucomatous data. A further 9 points were added to screen for nonglaucomatous loss. The final stage found that insisting that 3 locations are missed for the screening to fail gave a simulated specificity and sensitivity of approximately 95% for unreliable responders. Conclusions Our method gives a principled approach to choosing between the many parameters of a visual field screening procedure. We have developed a procedure for the Octopus that should terminate in less than 1 minute for normal observers with high specificity and sensitivity to glaucoma. Translational Relevance Visual field screening is used in community settings and eye care practice. This study provides a principled approach to the development of such screening procedures and details a new procedure.


To understand where digital governance is going, we must take stock of where it's been, because the timbre of mainstream thinking around digital governance today is dramatically different than it was when study of "Internet governance" coalesced in the late 1990s.

Perhaps the most obvious change has been from emphasizing networked technologies' positive effects and promise – couched around concepts like connectivity, innovation, and, by this author, "generativity" – to pointing out their harms and threats. It's not that threats weren't previously recognized, but rather that they were more often seen in external clamps on technological development and upon the corresponding new freedoms for users, whether government intervention to block VOIP services like Skype to protect incumbent telco revenues, or in the shaping of technology to effect undue surveillance, whether for government or corporate purposes.

The shift in emphasis from positive to negative corresponds to a change in the overarching frameworks for talking about regulating information technology. We have moved from a discourse around rights – particularly those of end-users, and the ways in which abstention by intermediaries is important to facilitate citizen flourishing – to one of public health, which naturally asks for a weighing of the systemic benefits or harms of a technology, and to think about what systemic interventions might curtail its apparent excesses.

Each framework captures important values around the use of technology that can both empower and limit individual freedom of action, including to engage in harmful conduct. Our goal today should be to identify where competing values frameworks themselves preclude understanding of others' positions about regulation, and to see if we can map a path forward that, if not reconciling the frameworks, allows for satisfying, if ever-evolving, resolutions to immediate questions of public and private governance.


This paper examines the dynamic efficiency of direct and indirect payments for habitat conservation, as well as the preferences of donors who make the payments. A direct (or performance) payment is an annual payment to a landowner based on the number of hectares of undisturbed habitat that the landowner has preserved. An indirect payment is an annual payment to a landowner that subsidizes the use of other, non-habitat, inputs to an "eco-friendly" activity (e.g., eco-tourism). Direct payments are dynamically efficient. They can achieve a desired level of preserved habitat at lower levels of the other, non-habitat, inputs. Direct payments, however, may not be preferred by the donor who funds the conservation effort. The analytical model is calibrated to the Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar. For the amount of funds invested in Ranomafana by international conservation organizations, direct payments generate dramatically lower costs for the conservation agent and higher profit levels for the rural residents who control the fate of the ecosystem.


Introduction The significant investments necessary to integrate a new technology or service often create a financial barrier. To convince a hospital board to invest, it is important to demonstrate a return on investment (ROI). As many pharmacists are not used to estimating an ROI, this short report proposes a simple methodology and a free practical tool to download. Methods Determining an ROI requires a calculation of all the expenses linked to the initial investments and the annual running costs of the equipment or service. When possible, real costs must be used in this calculation, but the costs of some parameters can only be estimated. The methodology involves three steps: (A) calculation of the initial balance (on shot costs and savings), (B) calculation of the annual balance (valid in the years after the investment) and (C) final calculation of time to recovery (duration until the initial investments are reimbursed by the annual savings) and ROI (the net benefit in euros at the end of the amortisation period). Results This methodology was applied to the installation of automated dispensing cabinets in our hospital. The initial balance (€32 500±€4200) included equipment acquisition costs, installation costs and initial savings (stock-value reduction and non-investment in traditional ward pharmacy). The annual balance (€8622±3564) included amortisation and maintenance costs as well as human resources, medication, logistics and safety savings. We estimated a 3.8-year (min 2.7–max 6.4) time to recovery and an ROI of €36 476 (min €7964–max €64 988) after 8 years. Conclusions Large investments for innovative equipment or service will be harder and harder to obtain if no economic evaluation is provided. The method proposed here is simple and provides useful input for discussions with a hospital board. The case study highlights a positive ROI related to automated dispensing cabinets.


ABSTRACT The notion of critical thinking and its theoretical complexity are used as a case for an epistemological critique of the model of intended learning outcomes. The conclusion is that three problems of learning outcomes, previously discussed in the literature, become even more challenging when seen in the light of critical thinking. The first problem concerns interpretations, as the use of learning outcomes is dependent on advanced but implicit interpretative frameworks. The second is the problem of educational goals that cannot be expressed through learning outcomes, and the third is the risk that learning outcomes may establish a ceiling for student ambitions. It is argued that the example of critical thinking shows the seriousness of the epistemological critique of learning outcomes and how the use of learning outcomes can divert teachers' and students' attention away from important goals.


Extracting information on fluid motion directly from images is challenging. Fluid flow represents a complex dynamic system governed by the Navier-Stokes equations. General optical flow methods are typically designed for rigid body motion, and thus struggle if applied to fluid motion estimation directly. Further, optical flow methods only focus on two consecutive frames without utilising historical temporal information, while the fluid motion (velocity field) can be considered a continuous trajectory constrained by time-dependent partial differential equations (PDEs). This discrepancy has the potential to induce physically inconsistent estimations. Here we propose an unsupervised learning based prediction-correction scheme for fluid flow estimation. An estimate is first given by a PDE-constrained optical flow predictor, which is then refined by a physical based corrector. The proposed approach outperforms optical flow methods and shows competitive results compared to existing supervised learning based methods on a benchmark dataset. Furthermore, the proposed approach can generalize to complex real-world fluid scenarios where ground truth information is effectively unknowable. Finally, experiments demonstrate that the physical corrector can refine flow estimates by mimicking the operator splitting method commonly utilised in fluid dynamical simulation.


Sample size determination is an important issue in the experimental design of biomedical research. Because of the complexity of RNA-seq experiments, however, the field currently lacks a sample size method widely applicable to differential expression studies utilising RNA-seq technology. In this report, we propose several methods for sample size calculation for single-gene differential expression analysis of RNA-seq data under Poisson distribution. These methods are then extended to multiple genes, with consideration for addressing the multiple testing problem by controlling false discovery rate. Moreover, most of the proposed methods allow for closed-form sample size formulas with specification of the desired minimum fold change and minimum average read count, and thus are not computationally intensive. Simulation studies to evaluate the performance of the proposed sample size formulas are presented; the results indicate that our methods work well, with achievement of desired power. Finally, our sample size calculation methods are applied to three real RNA-seq data sets.


It is known that aflatoxin is produced by some Aspergillus fungal strains. Incidence of this toxin in food and feeds is as a result of contaminations by these fungal strains. Aspergillus strains are common in human environment, and their effects on foods are issues of global concern. First, we need an adequate knowledge of aflatoxin, then we can design proper control and regulatory strategies for its control. In this chapter, we present importance of street-vended foods and their possible health risk on the populace due to possible aflatoxin contamination; we took insights into types and incidences of reported aflatoxin contaminations in street-vended foods and reviewed the chemical nature, structures, and metabolism of aflatoxins and their actions as chemical poisons to human (mycotoxicosis) with deep insight into their toxicology. In addition, we review different environmental factors that may affect aflatoxin production in foods and also considered economic impact of aflatoxin contaminations of foodstuffs. In this chapter, we also discussed different aflatoxin aflatoxin detection methods in foods and examined available or possible regulations to best control its incidence in street-vended food. Adequate understand- ing of these important information about aflatoxin will form a bedrock for its control in street-vended food.


This article analyses the possible significance of arbitration in the insurance practice. It will assess the pros and cons of arbitration in the insurance practice. It follows from this assessment that arbitration as a dispute resolution mechanism offers opportunities for insurers, insured and injured parties (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3 a model will be introduced by means of which it could be ensured that the three parties possibly involved in an insurance dispute (insurer, insured and injured person/claimant) have the legal relationships between them determined by arbitrators in a multi-party arbitration. This model will than be further assessed in the context of the pros and cons of arbitration discussed earlier (Chapter 4).


Abstract Background Paediatric penetrating cardiac injury is extremely rare, precluding published management guidelines, therefore warranting a case-by-case approach with learning points gleaned from each case. Case summary A 7-year-old boy presented to a rural hospital with a stab wound to the chest by a Withaak (Vachellia tortilis) thorn. The patient was haemodynamically stable on presentation, but a 2 cm subcutaneous, pulsatile mass was present at the cardiac apex. Echocardiography revealed a foreign body penetrating from the apex into the heart, with evidence for a fistula between a cardiac chamber and the pulsatile mass. Angiography confirmed the existence of the fistula between the right ventricle (RV) and the pulsatile mass. A controlled extraction under general anaesthaesia via median sternotomy was performed in-theatre, with blood products and cardiac bypass on standby. The patient recovered without complications and was discharged after 4 days. Discussion Our case illustrates the limitations of echocardiography in identifying the precise anatomical definition of penetrating cardiac injuries. Angiography is therefore indicated in such cases. The injury to the RV and the haemostatic effects of the in situ thorn were favourable prognostic factors. We believe that the mortality risk reduction of extraction under full control warrants the minor morbidity of a median sternotomy.


The development of the Internet challenges traditional conceptions of information rights. The discourse surrounding these rights and the Internet typically deals with each right in isolation and attempt to adapt long established understandings of each right to the new technological environment. We contend there is a need to address information rights within a comprehensive human rights framework, specifically, a right to communicate. This paper examines the development of a right to communicate and how it can be defined and implemented.


The article considers the original concepts regarding democratisation of culture, created in Poland in the interwar period within the movement of so-called people'stheatre. In particular, are theatre manifestos by Jedrzej Cierniak, an organiser of the folk-theatre movement, and of both Antonina Sokolicz and Witold Wandurski, founding directors of working-class theatre companies. These three original concepts for communal theatre share primarily the ambitious fusion of political and artistic postulates. The theatre-makers under discussion were not just educators but bold theatre experimentalists who refused to work with cut-and-dried dramatic scripts, introduced improvisation in the course of rehearsals as well as during performance, allowed outsiders to observe the artistic process, called for collective creation and demolished the theatre as a box. Their manifestos also consider ethical and technical issues linked to the opportunities and constrictions engendered in collective creation. Their projects anticipate numerous strands over twentieth-century theatre history, including collective creation, "on-stage writing", and devised theatre. They can also be justifiably considered an original domestic variant of such later phenomena as theatre of the oppressed, community theatre and participatory theatre. Jedrzej Cierniak, Antonina Sokolicz and Witold Wandurski, each in their own way, consciously instilled a political dimension in their creative practice, convinced of the transformative power of theatre in the context of rebuilding the Polish state after 1918 [when independence was regained, after over a century under partitions and occupation] and the redevelopment of civil society. Thanks to new artistic solutions, the communal theatre they masterminded was to become a laboratory for people's emancipation and for a bottom-up shaping of political reality.


Opalescent squid, Loligo opalescens, captured from central and southern California fisheries were examined for long-term changes in size, sex ratio, and fecundity. Samples were collected in Monterey from 1948 to 2006 and in the Channel Islands and Catalina Island from 1999 to 2007. A significant (P<0.0001) decline in opalescent squid size and fecundity occurred in Monterey. The trend in monthly mean sizes was similar among locations. Monthly mean sizes were negatively correlated with fishing pressure; when fishing pressure was strong, smaller individuals were captured the following fishing season. Body size was also negatively correlated with hatch-month sea surface temperature (SST). Negative correlations between anomalies for monthly mean SST and sizes were found—individuals grew larger if a winter was anomalously cooler. In addition, monthly mean upwelling and body sizes were positively correlated during the juvenile stage. The ratio of males to females captured in the fishery fluctuated in all areas.


As junction depths in advanced semiconductor devices move to below 20 nm, the process of disorder evolution during ion implantation at ultra low energies becomes increasingly influenced by the surface. This may also hold for shallow regrowth and dopant redistribution processes during subsequent thermal annealing of the substrate. The investigation of these near-surface processes requires analytical techniques with a depth resolution of≤1 nm. Medium energy ion scattering (MEIS) has the unique capability of simultaneously providing quantitative, high-resolution depth distributions of implant disorder (displaced Si lattice atoms) and of implanted atoms, albeit not of light species. We report here a comparative MEIS investigation into the growth mode of shallow disordered/amorphised layers during≤1 keV B+ and 2.5 keV As+ ion implantation into Si. In both cases the growth of the damage depth profiles differs significantly from the energy deposition function, as it is strongly determined on the one hand by the proximity of the surface acting as a nucleation site for migrating point defects formed during implantation, which results in planar growth of the amorphous layer, and on the other by the dynamic annealing processes operating at room temperature. When such defect recombination processes are inhibited, e.g. for low dose, ultra shallow 200 eV B+ implants, MEIS shows that defect production yields exceeding the Kinchin–Pease model predictions are achieved. For As implants, a correlation is observed between the movement of the As and the depth of the growing, planar amorphous layer. Thermal annealing of As implanted samples at different temperatures and durations leads to solid phase epitaxial regrowth. During regrowth, MEIS shows that there is a close correlation between damage dissolution, the movement of nearly half of the As dopant into substitutional sites and the snowploughing of a fraction of the As in front of the advancing amorphous/crystalline interface leading to the formation of a less than 1 nm wide As pile-up layer trapped under the oxide.


The undemocratic origin of most international human rights law greatly reduces the desirability of allowing it to change the domestic law of democratic states. Most international law is made through highly undemocratic procedures. Thus, on average, the quality of what we call raw international law rules that have not been ratified by domestic democratic processes is likely to be lower than that of domestic legal rules established by liberal democracies. Our article does not rest on theoretical arguments alone. We describe several concrete effects of the nondemocratic generation of international human rights law. For example, we show how the influence of unrepresentative legal elites and authoritarian states has led to the establishment of potentially harmful international law norms with respect to hate speech, the humanitarian law of war, and comparable worth.Nevertheless, our conclusions about international human rights law are not wholly negative. Our embrace of democratic processes as an effective generator of human rights naturally leads to a willingness to consider domestic enforcement of international human rights that directly strengthen citizens' control over government policy. We thus seek to reorient international human rights law from generating controversial substantive rights to protecting norms that will facilitate the leverage of citizens in controlling their own governments. As an example, we advocate more ample protection and enforcement for migration rights because these allow citizens around the world to vote with their feet and thus help them control the actions of the governments under which they live.


One of the great challenges facing healthcare professionals today is the effective and efficient management of an ever-increasing amount of clinically related health information. An important dimension of this challenge is the accessibility of information at times of decision making. Mobile information terminals, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), have the potential to address this challenge by bringing the most relevant information directly to the point of care. Providing information through convenient electronic sources may address some of the barriers that inhibit access and clinical use of new and relevant research by nurses.

The purpose of this Notebook is to explore the use of PDAs to increase nurses' access to and use of evidence-based resources in practice. It will explore how information and communication technologies, such as PDAs, can support evidence-based practice and will examine the role of information and communication technologies within the context of established knowledge-translation approaches. Recognising that information technologies alone will not change evidence-based practice, the limitations of current technologies will be discussed, drawing on research evidence to argue the importance of considering technological innovation within the context of other knowledge-translation strategies.

New or enhanced competencies that will be needed to ensure quality health care were outlined in the publication Crossing the quality chasm .1 They included expertise in evidence-based practice, quality improvement, informatics, and patient-centred care. Each of the skills identified represents a key component of evidence-informed decision making, and they all come together where nurses and patients meet—at the point of care. Nurses must be engaged in continuous learning to acquire patient-centred and treatment-focused information in new and more rewarding ways. Our team has been studying the effectiveness of PDAs and mobile tablet personal computers (tablet PCs) for improving nurses' access to evidence-based resources at the point of care. Point of care in …


The INTERACT Conferences are an important platform for researchers and practitioners in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) to showcase their work. They are organised biennially by the International Federation for Information Processing Technical Committee on Human–Computer Interaction (IFIP TC13), a committee of 30 member national societies and 9 Working Groups. The 17th IFIP TC13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT 2019) took place during 2-6 September 2019 in Paphos, Cyprus. The conference was held at the Coral Beach Hotel Resort, and was co-sponsored by the Cyprus University of Technology and Tallinn University, in cooperation with ACM and ACM SIGCHI. With an emphasis on inclusiveness, these conferences work to lower the barriers that prevent people in developing countries from participating in conferences. As a multidisciplinary field, HCI requires interaction and discussion among diverse people with different interests and backgrounds. This volume contains the Adjunct Proceedings to the 17th INTERACT Conference, and comprises a series of papers from the workshops. It follows the INTERACT Conference tradition of the publication of adjunct proceedings by a University Press which has a connection to the conference itself. This tradition has been established to enhance the outreach and reputation of the University Press chosen. For INTERACT 2019, both the Conference Program Chair, Dr Fernando Loizides, and the Adjunct Proceedings Chair of the conference, Dr Usashi Chatterjee, work at Cardiff University which is the home of Cardiff University Press.


My project sought to address the problem of passive, unmotivated students who leave labs and class activities still holding on to misconceptions. In this investigation, guided-inquiry labs and class activities were implemented with the purpose of improving student understanding in high school chemistry. Process Oriented Guided-Inquiry activities, guided-inquiry labs, and online investigations were completed during the stoichiometry and gas laws units in two chemistry classes with 57 students. Pre and postunit assessments, pre and postunit student interviews, pre and postintervention student surveys, unit tests, instructor field observations, colleague observations, instructor weekly journaling, and pre and postintervention teacher surveys were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. Overall, students showed increased conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills, with low and middle-achieving students showing the most growth in those areas. While postunit assessments and unit tests did not show measurable improvement in higher order thinking skills following intervention, students demonstrated increased engagement during class activities. Both the students and the teacher also experienced an increase in motivation as a result of the guidedinquiry intervention. The results of this study encourage increased use of guided inquiry in all units of chemistry and the rewriting of existing labs and activities to promote more higher-order thinking and studentdirected learning.


The Federal Railroad Administration has sponsored the Rail Transportation and Engineering Center (RailTEC) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's (Illinois) to conduct a comprehensive investigation into timber crosstie spike fastener failures on North American railroads. As a part of this project, researchers conducted a field evaluation of fastening systems and an accompanied modelling effort between September 2019 and June 2020. The field evaluation subjected control and alternative fastening systems to 170 million gross tons (MGT) of Heavy Axle Load (HAL) freight traffic at the Transportation Technology Center (TTC). The alternative system exhibited no component failures while the control system suffered multiple broken spikes. The results from this evaluation were compared with data from a finite element analysis (FEA) providing insight into the key fastener characteristic (i.e., tie-plate to crosstie clamping force) that likely lead to reduced spike stress and improved performance with the alternative fastening system.


Size reduction in the aftermath of the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event has repeatedly been described for various marine organisms, including gastropods (the Lilliput effect). A Smithian gastropod assemblage from Utah, USA, reveals numerous large-sized specimens of different genera as high as 70 mm, the largest ever reported from the Early Triassic. Other gastropods reported from Serbia and Italy are also as large as 35 mm. Size frequency distributions of the studied assemblages indicate that they were not unusually small when compared with later Mesozoic and modern faunas. The occurrence of large-sized gastropods less than 2 Ma after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction refutes the Lilliput hypothesis in this clade, at least for the last ~75% of the Early Triassic.


In the mid-1960s, fertilization (with nitrogen) had a breakthrough as a promising forest management method in Swedish company owned forests. The activity grew and peaked during the 1970s but then lost ground and stabilized at a low level in the 1990s and early 2000s. Over the last five years, however, interest in fertilizing Swedish forests has increased again. In this article both the forestry industry's, and the environmental movement's, attitudes toward forest fertilization over time are investigated. Furthermore, conflicting persistent ideas about nature and future, i.e., "figures of thought", within interest groups, representing forestry and the environmental movement respectively, are identified and analyzed in relation to the debate on fertilization. The analysis reveals mainly three figures of thought that have influenced this debate during the period, "the idea of progress", "the idea of decay" and "the idea of the great chain of being". The study thus sheds light on how the relationship between forestry and the environmental movement has evolved from the 1960s until today and uncovers thought patterns that have stood, and continue to stand, in opposition to one another.


This paper will tell the story of the smallgroup of people who, in France, have been in charge of the measurement and theappreciation of the audience of television, and had to invent audience research,to organize it and to communicate its results to "clients" whodepended on it much earlier than usually assumed: television managers andprofessionals, public authorities, and, last but not least, advertisers. The paper will explore both change andcontinuity. First, change: the professional origin and training of measurerschanged much over the years. In the early days, they could have an almostliterary profile. The first person in charge of the audience at the RadioTelevision Francaise was a teacher of philosophy. His followers had a formationin sociology and semiology. They all insisted on the fact that they were not"simply" measurers, and also worried about appreciation, quality,culture. They always figures did produce figures, but rarely only about thenumber of people present in front of the screen, mostly about satisfaction,appreciation, preferences for given genres, viewing habits. As there was onlyone channel – until 1964, with the number of TV sets rising sharply, ratings,in the modern sense, were not critical.Things started to change gradually. In 1974,the public broadcasting corporation was divided into several companies,including three competing channels. The service in charge of measuring audiencewas put under the direct authority of the Prime Minister. Audience figuresplayed a part in the distribution of resources, not only advertising but throughthe license fee sharing. However, the law also provided a clause about an indexof quality, which never functioned satisfactorily, although the service incharge of audiences put much effort into it. In 1985, around the time of deregulation,change came. From outside, this was translated into the rise of daily,detailed, fast produced figures of the audience through audimeters, thenpeoplemeters. Those figures become highly controversial; a popular book on TVwore the title: "The dictatorship of the audimat". But audiencemeasurers did not turn into dictators. They were, undoubteldy, more consideredas technicians. Their competence in statistics became crucial. But they werealso negotiatiors, consensus builders who have to work in an atmosphere ofgrowing suspicion as the revenues of television depended now mainly, if not only,on audience figures. However, continuity was there aswell. The need for effective mediations of the audience existed from the start.Those mediators, figures, reports, played several roles. Particularly, and thisis true until two days, they provided channels managers with a source of"para-democratic legitimacy". For the "profession" of measurers, this meansthat they have always played an important roles, as spokespersons of theaudience, equipped with an almost magical kind of knowledge: the power to"read" the will and whims of a mysterious, anonymous mass of viewers.


Experiments are performed to investigate the effects of wake galloping on the range of flow speeds over which a galloping-based piezoaeroelastic energy harvester can be effectively used. Two different upstream cylinders and a wide range of spacing between the upstream and downstream cylinders are considered. Bifurcation diagrams and type of instability for different setups are determined. The results show a complex relation between the upstream circular cylinder size, the spacing between the two cylinders, the flow speed, and the load resistance on one hand, and the level of harvested power on the other hand.


Title of thesis: SCHOOL PEERS AND DELINQUENCY: AN INTERACTIONAL THEORY APPROACH TO EXAMINING RACIAL DIFFERENCES Daniel Wonho Jang, Master of Arts, 2015 Thesis directed by: Professor Terence P. Thornberry Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice Using an approach based on Thornberry's interactional theory, this paper focuses on testing whether or not the theory is valid in explaining racial differences. This paper focuses on two variables of the theory, which previous studies indicate are more likely to explain race differences in delinquency than the others: commitment to school and peer delinquency. In accordance with interactional theory, this paper intends to examine the relationship between each set of variables and how they influence one another over time, whether or not these relationships are similar across racial groups, expanding on findings that use general theories such as social control and social learning to explain racial differences in offending, and, ultimately, implications regarding the application of theories to explain racial differences in offending. This paper will utilize structural equation modeling to conduct a multi-wave analysis using data from the Rochester Youth


Abstract High-pressure minerals—majorite-pyrope garnet and jadeite—were found in the Pervomaisky L6 ordinary chondrite. Majorite-pyrope (79 mol% majorite) was observed within the fine-grained silicate matrix of a shock-melt vein (SMV), coexisting with olivine and high-Ca pyroxene. This is the first report of a garnet–olivine–high-Ca pyroxene assemblage that crystallized from the melt in the SMV matrix of meteorite. P-T conditions of the formation of the SMV matrix with olivine fragments are 13.5–15.0 GPa and 1750–2150 °C, the lowest parameters among all known majorite-bearing (H,L)-chondrites. The estimated conditions include the olivine/(olivine + ringwoodite) phase boundary and there is a possibility that observed olivine is the result of wadsleyite/ringwoodite back-transformation during a cooling and decompression stage. In the framework of this hypothesis, we discuss the problem of survival of the high-pressure phases at the post-shock stage in the meteorites and propose two possible P-T paths: (1) the high-pressure mineral is transformed to a low-pressure one during adiabatic decompression above the critical temperature of direct transformation; and (2) quenching below the critical temperature of direct transformation within the stability field of the high-pressure phase and further decompression. The aggregates with plagioclase composition (Ab81.1An14.9Or4.1) occur in host-rock fragments near (or inside) of the SMV, and have a radial, concentric "spherulite-like" microstructure previously described in the Novosibirsk meteorite, and that is very similar to the texture of tissintite in the Tissint martian meteorite. It is likely that jadeite is related to crystallization of the SMV and could have formed from albitic feldspar (plagioclase) melt at 13.5–15.0 GPa and ~2000 °C.


Purpose: This article investigates female vocational students' strategies for becoming part of a workplace community, what these strategies are and how they are tied to the formation of vocational identities within male-dominated industrial work. Of particular interest is how female students enrolled on Swedish upper secondary industrial programmes experience workplace-based learning at industrial workplaces as part of their vocational education. The theoretical framework derives from Wenger's concept of community of practice, but his theoretical concept does not explicitly include gender dimensions. Therefore, the concept of community of practice is also combined with Paechter's assumption of gender, whereby femininity and masculinity can be considered as different communities of practice. Methods: The article draws on evidence from a Swedish study based on interviews with 20 female students enrolled on the industrial programme at six upper secondary schools. In this vocational programme, there is a distinct gender distribution and only a small minority of the students on the programme are girls. In the analysis, the focus is on the female students' strategies used during workplace-based learning to become part of the work community which consists almost exclusively of male workers.Findings: The female students deliberately negotiated vocational identities as female industrial workers to become accepted in the male-dominated work community. The findings highlight three specific strategies that the female students used: Acting like gender does not matter, acting like boys (not like drama queens), and acting tough and joking around. The female students' strategies were part of – and tied to – a complex vocational identity formation process that featured contradictory requirements. By taking individual responsibility, they identified relevant information for becoming industrial workers and chose to act like boys. The female students saw no problem with being a girl, yet they struggled with implicit, diffuse and hidden gender structures and prejudices in the male-dominated industrial companies. Nevertheless, they strived for what they perceived to be an attractive vocational identity as industrial workers; it was an alternative, atypically feminine way of being that attracted the female students. Conclusions: The study concludes that female students mostly rely on their individual agency when interacting with others in the male-dominated workplace community. A "gendered vocational identity" is formed which shows that the identity formation of female students is a complex double process, in which vocational and gender identities are formed simultaneously and in parallel within the male-dominated workplace.


The convergence of the Neoplatonic/Neopythagorean approach with the Aristotelian organization of the sciences is one of the most interesting features that characterizes the two influential mathematical treatises on On Arithmetics (De institutione arithmetica) and On Music (De institutione musica) by Severinus Boethius. Basing his reasoning on Nicomachus and Ptolemy, Boethius follows the philosophical tradition that had tried to reconcile Plato's and Aristotle's views. This attitude is examined in the present paper as regards Boethius' response concerning the relation between numbers, ethics and aesthetics. His view emerges as coming out of a rather complex construction, which assigns the ethical scope of mathematics in indicating to the human mind how to correct the ratios that realize the best relationship in movements of the soul and the body. More precisely, its ethical aim is to correct the specific form of movement of human beings, that is their actions, exemplified in the way in which mathematical ratios represent the forms of government and musical ratios evoke and heal psychophysical affections. More complex, on the other hand, is the relationship between mathematics and beauty. In clear antithesis to the position taken by Augustine on the beauty of the rhythmic patterns that better represent the beauty of unity, Boethius does not relate the mathematical ratios of the consonances to an esthetical judgment by making use of the category of beauty. For him, the physical world is totally immersed in changes and movements, and this cannot but impede things from expressing the stable unity, which is required for contemplating the beautiful.


Aim: While the impact of major depression on diabetes has gained increasing attention, the role of minor depression is less well investigated. This observational study compared three groups of adults with Type 1 (T1DM) or Type 2 (T2DM) diabetes mellitus: with me) no depressive symptoms (NODEP), ii) mild depressive symptoms (MILD) and iii) moderate-to-severe symptoms (MOD/SEVERE)-on diabetes distress, psychological distress, anxiety and somatic symptoms, quality of life and HbA1c levels.
Methods: 245 outpatients attending two hospital diabetes services (27% with T1DM; 73% with T2DM) completed self-report measures including patient health questionnaire (PHQ), problem areas in diabetes (PAID) scale and short form health survey (SF12). Participants were interviewed by a psychiatrist and HbA1c levels recorded.
Results: Half the sample reported depressive symptoms on the PHQ-9 (29% in the MILD group, 21% in MOD/ SEVERE and the remaining 50% in the NODEP group). Compared to the NODEP group, MILD group participants had significantly higher levels of diabetes distress, psychological distress, anxiety and somatic symptoms and significantly lower mental-health related quality of life. Participants in the MOD/SEVERE group had significantly higher levels of diabetes distress, psychological distress, anxiety, and somatic symptoms than either of the other two groups, and significantly lower quality of life. The groups did not differ significantly on HbA1c.
Conclusions: Mild symptoms of depression in patients with diabetes are common and are associated with higher levels of diabetes distress, psychological distress, anxiety and somatic symptoms and lower quality of life. Addressing mild depression provides a potential avenue for preventing clinical depression in patients with diabetes.


The distribution of income and wealth resulting from risk-taking behavior significantly affects cooperation and risk-sharing in many areas in many governmental programs, including health insurance and agricultural production. This paper studies redistributive decision making and fairness preferences under different rooted risks using a laboratory experiment, in the treatment of which the subjects can endogenously determine whether they want to buy insurance before they face one of three possible outcomes that will be realized with equal probability. If the first outcome is realized, a high payment will be delivered regardless of whether the subject buys insurance or not. The second risk is an avoidable loss contingent upon the subject buying insurance. The third outcome is an inevitable loss, i.e., minimum payment will be delivered no matter if the subject has or does not have insurance. Then we investigate fairness preferences of randomly paired subjects who are informed about the choices and outcomes for both parties and are asked to make redistributive tasks. The experimental design mimics the scenario of risk-sharing in health insurance and agricultural production. We find that how people make redistributive decisions depends on the insurance purchase decisions and income inequality. The results provide some policy implications for improving insurance efficiency.


This study investigates the relationship between institutional ownership and company performance of listed companies in Egypt. The study used the multiple regressions and a sample data of Eight years panel data of 73 Egyptian companies listed in the Egyptian Stock Market were examined. The results showed that institutional ownership had positive and significant relationship with firm performance. Therefore, the involvement of institutional ownership in monitoring and controlling activities reduced agency conflict and enhanced corporate performance in the emerging economy. While for the effect of different institutional ownership patterns on the performance of companies in term of ROE, It has been shown that the ownership of holding companies (HC), that represent the government ownership, had positive significance effect on firm performance. Besides, each of the following Institutional ownership patterns has positive effect on companies' performance: Bank ownership, insurance ownership, mutual funds ownership (even that the effect is insignificant for banks and investment funds). in aspect of questionnaire of the indicator characteristics of institutional ownership shares, It has been shown that each of the following characteristics have positive role on institutional ownership: company size, law type (the company legal classification according to the law governing it), and the number of board members representatives of institutions , which indicate that institutional owners care about these variables when determining their participations and contributions in joint stock companies.


We report measurements of the dependence on magnetic field and array size of the resistive transition of Josephson junction arrays with long-range interaction. Because every wire in these arrays has a large number of nearest neighbors (9 or 18 in our case), a mean-field theory should provide an excellent description of this system. Our data agree well with this mean-field calculation, which predicts that Tc (the temperature below which the array exhibits macroscopic phase coherence) shows very strong commensurability effects and scales with array size.


Message passing and shared memory are two techniques parallel programs use for coordination and communication. This paper studies the strengths and weaknesses of these two mechanisms by comparing equivalent, well-written message-passing and shared-memory programs running on similar hardware. To ensure that our measurements are comparable, we produced two carefully tuned versions of each program and measured them on closely-related simulators of a message-passing and a shared-memory machine, both of which are based on same underlying hardware assumptions.
We examined the behavior and performance of each program carefully. Although the cost of computation in each pair of programs was similar, synchronization and communication differed greatly. We found that message-passing's advantage over shared-memory is not clear-cut. Three of the four shared-memory programs ran at roughly the same speed as their message-passing equivalent, even though their communication patterns were different.


This wide-ranging archive, capturing more than four centuries of African American history and culture in one essential volume, is at once poignant, painful, celebratory, and inspiring.The African American Experience is a one-of-a-kind and absolutely riveting collection of more than 300 letters, speeches, articles, petitions, poems, songs, and works of fiction tracing the course of black history in America from the first slaves brought over in the 16th century to the events of the present day. All aspects of African American history and daily life are represented here, from the days of abolition and the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement and the current times. Organized chronologically, here are writings from the great political leaders including Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, and Barack Obama; literary giants including Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, James Baldwin, and bell hooks; scholars such as Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; artists including Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Wynton Marsalis, Run-DMC, the Sugar Hill Gang, and Chuck Berry; athletes such as Muhammad Ali and Jackie Robinson; and many more. A new introduction by Kai Wright provides overall context, and introductory material for each document delineates its significance and role in history. This edition features all new and updated material.


The study has shown the importance of identifying factors that determined the likelihood of using veterinary services in Punjab. Secondary data were used for analysis with the sample size of 1,137 dairy households. Estimates of factors influencing the use of veterinary services are reasonably consistent with the farmer decision to use it. The proportional relationship between veterinary services available within the village and use of veterinary services revealed that, distance of veterinary service availability positively influenced the farmer decision to use the veterinary services. There was a positive relationship between herd size and use of veterinary services. More educated farmers are in a better position to use the veterinary services. The principal source of income from agricultural was positively influenced the likelihood to use veterinary services in study area. The model from empirical point of view is very important to predict whether household will be using the veterinary services or not after incorporating the value of the explanatory variables.


Revivals are powerful explosions of popular religious fervour whih can occur at periodic intervals within the life-cycle of a particular church or denomination. During the nineteenth century, revivals lost much of their spontaneoius and ecstatic character and became routine events within the average church calendar. Starting in 1859, the year of the great revival in Ulster, and ending in 1905, with the outbreak of the revival in Wales, this book examines the phenomenon of revivalism in a period of decline.
Even within this period of decline, revivals continued to be popular events for those within the evangelical community. Prayer services, weekday meetings, alternative venues and popular music were all used by evangelicals to provoke an outburst of revival fervour. Also, revivals were increasingly conducted by a growing number of full-time professionals.
This book explores the changing character of late nineteenth-century revivalism by looking at those who promoted it, such as working-class men, visiting American preachers, like Moody and Sankey, and a small, but significant number of women. This book also explores the response to this more 'professionalised' revivalism from within the evangelical community. Evangelicals had deeply contradictory attitudes towards the purpose and function of revivals. They were torn between their desire for renewed religious vitality and their concern for ecclesiastical structures and spiritual propriety, and as a result, revivalism was consistently marginalised as a method of promoting church growth.


Despite significant advances in the treatment of multiple myeloma (MM), most patients succumb to disease progression. One of the major immunosuppressive mechanisms that is believed to play a role in myeloma progression is the expansion of regulatory T cells (Tregs). In this study, we demonstrate that myeloma cells drive Treg expansion and activation by secreting type 1 interferon (IFN). Blocking IFN &agr; and &bgr; receptor 1 (IFNAR1) on Tregs significantly decreases both myeloma-associated Treg immunosuppressive function and myeloma progression. Using syngeneic transplantable murine myeloma models and bone marrow (BM) aspirates of MM patients, we found that Tregs were expanded and activated in the BM microenvironment at early stages of myeloma development. Selective depletion of Tregs led to a complete remission and prolonged survival in mice injected with myeloma cells. Further analysis of the interaction between myeloma cells and Tregs using gene sequencing and enrichment analysis uncovered a feedback loop, wherein myeloma-cell-secreted type 1 IFN induced proliferation and expansion of Tregs. By using IFNAR1-blocking antibody treatment and IFNAR1-knockout Tregs, we demonstrated a significant decrease in myeloma-associated Treg proliferation, which was associated with longer survival of myeloma-injected mice. Our results thus suggest that blocking type 1 IFN signaling represents a potential strategy to target immunosuppressive Treg function in MM.


Objective
The aims of this study are: To provide an evaluation on the effectiveness of Web 2.0 technologies in particular "Startpages" (Netvibes & Pageflakes) within NHS libraries, and to determine whether the Netvibes page for South Tees Hospital provides NHS staff with evidence and support in clinical decision-making and their CPD.
Evidence suggests that Startpages are commercially successful at delivering a current awareness programme for its users, but there is little research regarding the barriers faced by health librarians when using these technologies within the NHS. The objectives of this research are to explore the use of Web 2.0 technologies within NHS libraries and staff and end user perceptions of "Startpages" as well as to establish the skills sets of library staff in the use of promotion of Web 2.0 resources.

Methods
A comparative case study was conducted to gather information from other NHS libraries that had created a 'Netvibes' or 'Pageflakes' current awareness portal. A reflective questionnaire was used to gather Health Librarians and paraprofessional staffs' attitudes and experiences of using this technology. Consultation with medical and non-clinical staff who use the Netvibes page at The James Cook University Hospital was also conducted via an online survey questionnaire and in-depth interviews.

Results
Users were positive about the value of Netvibes in their own CPD. Few users experience any problems with the site, but time for evaluation and instruction were seen as vital. Librarians from other NHS libraries reported that feedback from their own users was positive but there was a need to focus more on user needs and involve them more in the design and set-up of the pages.

Conclusion
Whilst findings were positive in many aspects of this study several barriers were identified, including lack of staff training in the use of these technologies and also highlighting their knowledge gaps in Web 2.0 buzzwords. These implications along with recommendations for overcoming ICT hurdles, should serve as a future pedagogic tool for other NHS libraries that are considering implementing a Startpage, which favours user engagement.


Much has been said and commented by scholars, journalists and analysts in response to Dr Frank Chikane's book, Eight days in September: The removal of Thabo Mbeki. Several commentators have remarked that Chikane, a former Director General in die Office of the President during the Mbeki presidency, is in no position to write objectively about his term of office and his removal from the Office of the President by the ANC's National Executive Committee on 19 September 2008. This opinion might be valid to some extent, but it does not render Chikane's book insignificant. In fact, Chikane's version of Mbeki's removal is a valuable and noteworthy contribution to the available literature and the way the relevant dynamics have played out in top government circles in recent years.


In OLD WORLD, NEW WORLD Kathleen Burk sets out to tell the story of Britain and America across four hundred years, from colonisation to Iraq. There are two strands to this story. The first is the grand narrative that takes in the British colonisation of America and the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War and the global conflicts of the twentieth century. This is the story of America's inevitable eclipse of its former colonial master as a Great Power, and of the enmities and sympathies, the confusions and understandings born along the way. The second strand is quieter but no less fascinating. Displaying a breathtaking command of her subject, Burk examines the relations between the two countries in many other spheres: economic, religious, cultural, social, even romantic. These two strands taken together make Old World, New World an unprecedented achievement. No one could hope to write the definitive story of these two countries and their relationship, but few will come closer than Kathleen Burk has in this brilliant book.


Simultaneous measurements of net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NEE) were made in a Florida scrub-oak ecosystem in August 1997 and then every month between April 2000 to July 2001, using open top chambers (NEEO) and eddy covariance (NEEE). This study provided a cross validation of these two different techniques for measuring NEE. Unique characteristics of the comparison were that the measurements were made simultaneously, in the same stand, with large replicated chambers enclosing a representative portion of the ecosystem (75 m2, compared to approximately 1–2 ha measured by the eddy covariance system). The value of the comparison was greatest at night, when the microclimate was minimally affected by the chambers. For six of the 12 measurement periods, night NEEO was not significantly different to night NEEE, and for the other periods the maximum difference was 1.1 µmol m−2s−1, with an average of 0.72 ± 0.09 µmol m−2s−1. The comparison was more difficult during the photoperiod, because of differences between the microclimate inside and outside the chambers. During the photoperiod, air temperature (Tair) and air vapour pressure deficits (VPD) became progressively higher inside the chambers until mid-afternoon. In the morning NEEO was higher than NEEE by about 26%, consistent with increased temperature inside the chambers. Over the mid-day period and the afternoon, NEEO was 8% higher that NEEE, regardless of the large differences in microclimate. This study demonstrates both the uses and difficulties associated with attempting to cross validate NEE measurements made in chambers and using eddy covariance. The exercise was most useful at night when the chamber had a minimal effect on microclimate, and when the measurement of NEE is most difficult.


Abstract Based on detailed stratigraphy, petrology and geochemistry, the initial arc magmatism of the Oman Ophiolite consisting of tholeiitic lavas followed by boninite flows and tephras is studied in the Wadi Bidi area, northern Oman Mountains. An 1110-m-thick V2 sequence is divided into the lower 970 m (LV2) and upper 140 m (UV2) thick subsequences by a 1.0-m-thick sedimentary layer. Pahoehoe flows dominate in the lower part of the LV2, while the upper part consists mainly of sheet flows with sparse interbedded pelagic sediments and a cylindrical plug. In addition to the presence of a feeder conduit, the flow-dominant lithofacies with a few thin sedimentary interbeds in the LV2 indicates that the study area was the centre of a volcano grown in a short period. The UV2 is composed of boninite sheet flows overlain by a 2.0-m-thick pyroclastic fall deposit. A small amount of boninite lavas at the end of the V2 sequence overlain by thick pelagic sediments suggests that the subduction-related arc volcanism was short lived and terminated long before the ophiolite obduction. Supplementary material: Locations, mode of occurrence, phenocryst assemblages and bulk-rock major and trace element compositions of lavas in the Wadi Bidi area are available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18684.


Equatorial Guinea is one of the horror stories of the post-colonial era in the developing world. Consisting of the continental territory of Rio Muni and the island of Fernando Po, it was a small but relatively prosperous Spanish colony until 1968. The successor regime of the Nguema clan is a bloody dictatorship, which has destroyed the economy and driven one-third of the population into exile. Today the country is among the world's poorest, and has dropped out of the international system. In recent years France has replaced Spain as the regime's chief economic backer, with no amelioration of its appalling human rights record. This is the first comprehensive monograph in English on Equatorial Guinea, and the Swiss author, Max Liniger-Goumaz, is the acknowledged international authority on the subject. Contents: Physical and Human Geography; The Colonial Period; Independence Miscarried; Demographic and Cultural Aspects of the Nguema Era; The Economy Under the Nguema Dictatorships; Present and Future; Conclusions; Postscript; Bibliographical Note; Short Bibliography of Post-Independence Publications^R


Service orchestration has become the predominant paradigm that enables businesses to combine and integrate services offered by third parties. For the commercial viability of orchestrated services, it is crucial that they are offered at sharp price-quality ratios. A complicating factor is that many attractive third-party services often show highly variable service quality. This raises the need for mechanisms that promptly adapt the orchestration to changes in the quality delivered by third party services. In this paper, we propose a real-time QoS control mechanism that dynamically optimizes service orchestration in real time by learning and adapting to changes in third party service response time behaviors. Our approach combines the power of learning and adaptation with the power of dynamic programming. The re¬sults show that real-time service re-compositions lead to dramatic savings of cost, while meeting the service quality requirements of the end-users. The challenge here is to respond to signi?cant response-time changes in a timely manner, while not wasting CPU cycles on unnecessary orchestration updates. Experimental results performed in a test-lab environment demonstrate that a few orchestration updates are suf?cient to achieve this.


Thomas Paine The American Crisis: December 23, 1776 ! "THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but "to bind us in all cases whatsoever," and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God."


Pollution from the petroleum oil increases day by day in terms of CO2, CO, NOX, PM and many other gases and particles. Price difference and economy leads people toward the use of alternative fuels. To overcome this problem Tri-fuel is the best suitable fuel for the IC engine because of its clean emission characteristics. It is found that power produced by the Tri-fuelled engine is more and lower NOx emissions compare to Gasoline engine because of the high volumetric efficiency, high compression ratio.


There is strong consensus around the country that talented and capable teachers will be needed in all classrooms in order to accomplish the nation's goals of teaching all students to high standards, and closing the achievement gap. Although there are many policy and practice issues that have to be addressed in order for the nation's education systems to recruit and retain the quality of individuals that are required, including schools and classrooms in many of the country's large urban and poverty impacted districts, the teacher compensation system itself must be changed. Teacher salary levels will have to be hiked in many places to enable school systems to compete for the quality of talent required to be successful, and the salary structures themselves need to be changed in order to pay teachers for the knowledge, skills and responsibilities to be successful, including bonuses for improved student performance.


We propose a novel, semi-supervised approach towards domain taxonomy induction from an input vocabulary of seed terms. Unlike all previous approaches, which typically extract direct hypernym edges for terms, our approach utilizes a novel probabilistic framework to extract hypernym subsequences. Taxonomy induction from extracted subsequences is cast as an instance of the minimum-cost flow problem on a carefully designed directed graph. Through experiments, we demonstrate that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art taxonomy induction approaches across four languages. Importantly, we also show that our approach is robust to the presence of noise in the input vocabulary. To the best of our knowledge, this robustness has not been empirically proven in any previous approach.


Session types are widely accepted as an expressive discipline for structuring communications in concurrent and distributed systems. In order to express infinitely unbounded sessions, session typed languages often include general recursion which may introduce undesirable divergence, e.g., infinite unobservable reduction sequences. In this paper we address, by means of typing, the challenge of ensuring non-divergence in a session-typed π-calculus with general (co)recursion, while still allowing interesting infinite behaviors to be definable. Our approach builds on a Curry-Howard correspondence between our type system and linear logic extended with co-inductive types, for which our non-divergence property implies consistency. We prove type safety for our framework, implying protocol compliance and global progress of well-typed processes. We also establish, using a logical relation argument, that well-typed processes are compositionally non-divergent, that is, that no well-typed composition of processes, including those dynamically assembled via name passing, can result in divergent behavior.


Clinical syndromes of diabetes in tropical countries defy attempts to separate them into reasonably homogeneous groups that are analogous to the traditional classification into IDDM and NIDDM. Their geographical and clinical uniqueness has only been recognized relatively recently. For most of this century, diabetes in the tropics was thought to be no different from the classical form seen in more temperate climates, being found only in the well-nourished elite, but not in the malnourished masses (1). Thus, the WHO, in its first examination of the problem of diabetes from a world-wide perspective in 1965, stated emphatically that "the evidence that malnutrition protects populations from diabetes seems unassailable (2)." Notwithstanding this assertion, evidence had been accumulating for at least a decade that many diabetic individuals in the tropics had unusual features that made it impossible to pigeonhole them into either of the classic varieties of diabetes mellitus. From the earliest descriptions of the two syndromes of diabetes that have come to be recognized as being unique to the tropics (type J diabetes and TPD), the association of both syndromes with malnutrition was emphasized (3,4). Faced with the overwhelming evidence that diabetes did occur in malnourished individuals, WHO reversed its opinion in 1980, acknowledging that "in some societies … malnutrition is probably a major determinant (of diabetes) (5)."


Hannah Arendt: Radical Conservative paints a broad picture of the personal traits and professional achievements in the work of an extremely complex iconographic figure in twentieth-century intellectual life. Writing about Hannah Arendt is an exercise in the biographic intersecting with the academic. It is an effort to bring together contexts of work with contents of thought. This volume was written in response to continuing interest in her work and also to the bitter and sometimes emotional attacks of her toughest critics. Horowitz emphasizes her unique contributions to political philosophy. Hannah Arendt has been described in many ways. She has been called a feminist, a dedicated worker for and writer about Jewish causes, a German advocate of its highest aspirations and assumed superiority to just about any other linguistic and national tradition, and a person whose very name is identified with anti-Nazism. Irving Louis Horowitz conveys the passion Hannah Arendt's scholarship has elicited as well as the diversity of her writings. Hannah Arendt's career is a lesson in the life of the human mind. Her reflections on our political universe are both interesting and compelling. Those who identify themselves firmly within a single tradition or culture may escape the problem of relativism, but they also suffer the problem of absolutism. This long-standing tension between traditions, cultures, and systems is what Horowitz has taken from Arendt's writings. Her sense of nuance has made her a compelling figure in twentieth-century ideas and a controversial voice well into the twenty-first century.