A multiscale modeling framework is developed to study damage evolution and failure in carbon nanotube (CNT)-reinforced nanocomposites with different CNT configurations. The framework models the constituents of the nanocomposite explicitly, combines it in a single representative unit cell (RUC), and describes the evolution of damage in these systems under loading. The damage evolution methodology integrates information from atomistic simulations pertaining to polymer chain sliding and bond dissociation using continuum damage mechanics. Two different CNT architectures - randomly dispersed CNTs and radially grown CNTs are investigated and damage initiation sites and damage evolution trends are observed under quasi-static loading conditions. Results indicate that the presence of CNTs cause a unique stress state at the sub micro scale which can lead to accelerated damage progression and can be mitigated by architectural reconfiguration of the CNTs.


LABOR PRODUCTIVITY in the private business sector grew at an annual rate of 1 percent from 1973 to 1978, about one-third of its rate of growth from 1948 to 1965. The effects of this slowdown were both substantially reduced economic growth and higher prices. A comprehensive analysis of recent economic growth has been made by Edward F. Denison, who examined the effects of regulation on growth in a framework that assesses the contributions from various potential causal factors.' Our approach is different from his in several respects, depending primarily on the definition of output and the measurement of capital input.2 Several other studies have focused on particular issues in the productivity puzzle, such as analyses of the effects of capital formation, energy, labor force composition, and intersectoral shifts of labor.3


Action Recognition in Spectator Crowds During the Football Association competitions held in 2013 in UK, 2,273 people were arrested due to the events of lawlessness and disorder, according to the statistics collected by the UK Home Office [1]. According to a survey on the major soccer stadium disasters around the world, more than 1500 people have died and more than 5000 are injured since 1902 to 2012 [2]. Therefore understanding spectator crowd behaviour is an important problem for public safety management and for the prevention of dangerous activities. Computer Vision is the platform used by researchers for efficient crowd management research through video cameras. However most of the research efforts primarily show results on protest crowds or casual crowds while the spectator crowds have not been focussed. On the other hand the action recognition research has mostly addressed actions performed by one or two actors while the actions performed by individuals in the dense spectator crowds has not been addressed and is still an unsolved problem. Action recognition in dense crowds pose very difficult challenges mostly due to the low resolution of subjects and significant variations in the action performance by the same individuals. Also different individuals perform the same action quite differently. Spatial distribution of performers varies with time. Scene contains multiple actions at the same time. Thus compared to the single actor action recognition, noise and outliers are significantly large and action start and stop are not well defined making action recognition very difficult. In this work we target to recognize the actions performed by individuals in spectator crowds. For this purpose we consider a recently released dataset consisting of spectators in the 26th Winter Universiade held in Italy in 2013 [3]. Data was collected during the last four matches held in the same ice stadium using 5 cameras. Three high resolution cameras focussed on different parts of the spectator crowd with 1280 × 1024 pixel resolution and 30 fps temporal resolution. Figure 1 shows an example spectator crowd dataset image. For action recognition in the spectator crowds, we purpose to compute dense trajectories in the crowd videos by using optical flow [4]. Trajectories are initiated on a dense grid and the starting points satisfy a quality measure based on KLT feature tracker (Fig. 2). Trajectories exhibiting motion lower than a minimum threshold are discarded. Along each trajectory shape and texture is encoded using Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HOG) features [5] and motion is encoded using Histogram of Flow (HOF) features [6]. The resulting feature vectors are grouped using the person bounding boxes provided in the dataset (Fig. 4). Note that person detectors which are especially designed for detection and segmentation of persons in dense crowds can also be used for this purpose [7]. All trajectories corresponding to a particular person are considered to encode the actions performed by that person. These trajectories are divided into overlapped temporal windows of width 30 frames (or 1.00 second time). Two consecutive windows has an overlap of 66%. Each person-time window is encoded using bag-of-words technique as explained below. The S-HOCK dataset contains 15 videos of spectator crowds. For the purpose of training we use 10 videos and the remaining 5 videos are used for testing. From the training videos 100,000 trajectories are randomly sampled and grouped to 64 clusters using k-means algorithm. Each cluster center is considered as an item in the code-book. Each trajectory in a person-time group of trajectories is encoded using this code-book. This encoding is performed in the training as well as the test videos using bag-of-words approach. The code-book is considered as a part of the training process and saved. For the purpose of bag-of-words encoding, distance of each trajectory in the person-time trajectory group is measured from all items in the code-book. Here we follow two approaches. In the first approach, only one vote is casted at the index corresponding to the best matching code-book item. In the second approach, 5 votes are casted corresponding to the 5 best matching code-book items. These votes are given weights inversely proportional to the distance of trajectory from each of the five best matching code-book items. In our experiments we observe better action recognition performance of the multi-voting strategy compared to the single weight scheme. It is because more information is captures in the multi-voting strategy. In the SHOCH dataset, each person is manually labelled as performing one of the 23 actions, including the 'other' action which covers all actions not included in the first 22 categories (Fig. 3). Each person-time group of trajectories is given an action label from the dataset. Once this group is encoded using code-book, it becomes a single vector histogram. Each of these vectors is given the same action label depending upon the label assigned to the corresponding person-time trajectory group. The labelled vectors obtained from the training dataset are used to train both linear and kernel SVM using one verses all strategy. The labels of the vectors in the test data are used as ground truth and the learned SVM are used to predict the label of each test vector independently. The predicted labels are then compared with the ground truth labels to establish action recognition accuracy. We observe an accuracy increase of 3% to 4% when SVM with Gaussian RBF was used. Results are shown in Table 1 and precision recall curves are shown in Figs. 5 & 6. In our experiments we observe that applauding and shaking flag actions have obtained more accuracy compared with other actions in the dataset (Table 1). It is mainly because of the fact that these actions have higher frequency and consist of significant discriminative motion. While other actions have low frequency of occurrence and also in some actions the motion is not discriminative. For example in using device action, when someone in the crowd use a mobile phone or a camera, the motion based detection is not very efficient. References [1]Home Office and The Rt Hon Mike Penning MP, "Football-related arrests and banning orders, season 2013 to 2014", published 11 September 2014. [2]Associated Press, "Major Soccer Stadium Disasters", The Wall Street Journal (World), published 1 February 2012. [3]Conigliaro, Davide, et al. "The SHock Dataset: Analyzing Crowds at the Stadium." Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. 2015. [4]Wang, Heng, et al. "Action recognition by dense trajectories." Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2011 IEEE Conference on. IEEE, 2011. [5]Dalal, Navneet, and Bill Triggs. "Histograms of oriented gradients for human detection." Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2005. CVPR 2005. IEEE Computer Society Conference on. Vol. 1. IEEE, 2005. [6]Dalal, Navneet, Bill Triggs, and Cordelia Schmid. "Human detection using oriented histograms of flow and appearance." Computer Vision–ECCV 2006. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2006. 428–441. [7]Idrees, Haroon, Khurram Soomro, and Mubarak Shah. "Detecting Humans in Dense Crowds using Locally-Consistent Scale Prior and Global Occlusion Reasoning." IEEE TPAMI 2015.


Summary Neutrophil recruitment to sites of injury or infection is essential for host defense, but it needs to be tightly regulated to prevent tissue damage. Phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K), which generates the phosphatidylinositol (3,4,5)-trisphosphate [PI(3,4,5)P3], is necessary for neutrophil motility in vivo; however, the role of SH2-domain-containing 5-inositol phosphatase (SHIP) enzymes, which hydrolyze PI(3,4,5)P3 to phosphatidylinositol 3,4-bisphosphate [PI(3,4)P2], is not well understood. Here we show that SHIP phosphatases limit neutrophil motility in live zebrafish. Using real-time imaging of bioprobes specific for PI(3,4,5)P3 and PI(3,4)P2 in neutrophils, we found that PI(3,4,5)P3 and PI(3,4)P2 accumulate at the leading edge while PI(3,4)P2 also localizes to the trailing edge of migrating neutrophils in vivo. Depletion of SHIP phosphatases using morpholino oligonucleotides led to increased neutrophil 3D motility and neutrophil infiltration into wounds. The increase in neutrophil wound recruitment in SHIP morphants was rescued by treatment with low dose PI3K&ggr; inhibitor, suggesting that SHIP limits neutrophil motility by modulating PI3K signaling. Moreover, overexpression of the SHIP phosphatase domain in neutrophils impaired neutrophil 3D migration. Taken together, our findings suggest that SHIP phosphatases control neutrophil inflammation by limiting neutrophil motility in vivo.


Since the inception of the first permanent American bankruptcy law in 1898, the intellectual and political understanding of consumer bankruptcy has been anchored in a model that views bankruptcies as resulting from household financial distress. For much of the Twentieth Century, this traditional model provided a plausible explanation of bankruptcy filing patterns and clear normative policy implications. Moreover, the widespread intellectual and social consensus on the traditional model was reflected in the enactment of the current Bankruptcy Code in 1978, which rests on the intellectual foundation of the traditional model. To this day, leading bankruptcy scholars adhere to the traditional model and its implications. Over the past twenty-five years, however, the traditional model has broken down. During a period of unprecedented prosperity and economic stability, personal bankruptcies have soared, raising fundamental questions about the validity of the traditional model. This article argues that there has been an unacknowledged sea-change in the economics of consumer bankruptcy in America. This article first provides a scientific analysis of the traditional model to determine whether these new trends can be accommodated within the traditional model. It focuses on the key variables offered by the traditional model as components of household financial distress: first, high levels of household indebtedness, including the influences of credit cards and home mortgages; second, unemployment and downsizing; third, divorce; and fourth, health problems, health care costs, and lack of health insurance. A scientific analysis of the evidence demonstrates that although these factors can explain part of the background exogenous level of bankruptcies, as well as some regional variation in bankruptcy filing rates, they cannot explain the upward trend in bankruptcy filing rates over the past twenty-five years. The article then briefly discusses an alternative model of consumer bankruptcy that can explain the increased propensity for consumers to file bankruptcy through an examination of the legal, social, and economic institutions of the consumer bankruptcy system.


There is increased interest in building modern roundabouts in Georgia and in the United States because of the safety and operational benefits that can be realized from this type of intersection. With this interest comes the increasing need to be able to estimate the capacity that a roundabout can provide after it is built. In the early 2000s, a National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) study was conducted that, among other tasks, developed single-lane and multi-lane roundabout capacity estimation equations. These equations, presented in the Highway Capacity Manual 2010 (HCM 2010), can be calibrated using locally determined values of follow-up headway and critical headway.

This study was designed to calibrate the HCM 2010 roundabout capacity equation for single-lane roundabouts to driving conditions in Georgia. In order to develop estimates of the calibration parameters, video imagery was recorded for 13 approaches at six roundabouts in Georgia for approximately two hours during the peak period. A total of 29.5 hours of video was recorded. Data from three of these roundabouts forms the basis of this thesis. The videos were processed by a Java program to collect time stamps that were subsequently used in Microsoft Excel to calculate the follow-up and critical headway values required for calibration.

The values of critical headway and follow-up headway that were found from the video data are presented in the results as well as the single-lane capacity equations calibrated from the data. Two types of analysis were done, one that includes exiting vehicles and one that does not include exiting vehicles. When exiting vehicles were excluded, the weighted average of follow-up and critical headway were found to be 3.46 and 4.17 seconds respectively and when exiting vehicles were included in the analysis the weighted averages of the follow-up and critical headway were found to be 2.80 seconds and 3.34 seconds respectively. It was found that exiting vehicles do have an impact on the operations at the roundabout in most cases, and including exiting vehicles in the analysis tends to increase the capacity predicted by the calibrated equations.


The 2008 presidential election was celebrated around the world as a seminal moment in U.S. political and racial history. White liberals and other progressives framed the election through the prism of change, while previously acknowledged demographic changes were hastily heralded as the dawn of a "post-racial" America. However, by 2011, much of the post-election idealism had dissipated in the wake of an on-going economic and financial crisis, escalating wars in Afghanistan and Libya, and the rise of the right-wing Tea Party movement. By placing Obama in the historical context of U.S. race relations, this volume interrogates the idealized and progressive view of American society advanced by much of the mainstream literature on Obama. Barack Obama and the Myth of a Post-Racial America takes a careful look at the historical, cultural and political dimensions of race in the United States, using an interdisciplinary analysis that incorporates approaches from history, political science, and sociology. Each chapter addresses controversial issues such as whether Obama can be considered an African-American president, whether his presidency actually delivered the kind of deep-rooted changes that were initially prophesised, and whether Obama has abandoned his core African-American constituency in favour of projecting a race-neutral approach designed to maintain centrist support. Through cutting edge, critically informed, and cross-disciplinary analyses, this collection directly addresses the dimensions of race in American society through the lens of Obama's election and presidency.


The article maps Romania's involvement with the International Theatre Institute during its first decade of membership. The argument revolves around a number of East–West convergence high points such as the 1959 Helsinki Congress or the 1964 Bucharest Symposium. It analyzes the connections developed by Romanian theatre specialists within the framework provided by iti, the specialized networks they helped create and the domestic impact of these interactions. The article examines the multifaceted Romanian involvement with these projects in national and international context. It begins in 1956, Romania's first participation at the Dramatic Art Festival in Paris, the forerunner of iti's Theatre of Nations Festival. It closes the arc of the story with the 1969 international symposium on training young theatre directors. The article shows that soon after joining iti ranks, Romanian theatre artist were propelled into the international limelight and were recognized by their Western peers. It advances the idea that East European theatre practitioners had a role in shaping their respective community of knowledge as much as their Western counterparts did.


This study presents the development of a non-linear control strategy for a semi-active suspension controller using a gain-scheduling structure controller. The aim of the study is to overcome the constraints of conventional control strategies and improve semi-active suspension to achieve performance close to that of full active control. Various control strategies have been investigated to improve the performance of semi-active vibration control systems. A wide range of semi-active control strategies have also been experimentally tested by researchers in the attempt to enhance the performance of semi-active suspension systems. However, the findings published in the literature indicate that there appears to be a ceiling to performance improvements with the control strategies that have been proposed to date, which is about the half of what could be achieved with full active control. The main constraint for semi-active devices such as Magnetorheological (MR) dampers is that they are only capable of providing active control forces by dissipating energy, in their active mode, and they switch to work as simple passive dampers, the passive mode, when energy injection is demanded by the associated control laws. The split in durations of time between the active and passive modes for the conventional semi-active control strategies is around 50:50. This study will focus on the development of a novel semi-active control strategy that aims to extend the duration of the active mode and hence reduce the duration of the passive mode for semi-active suspensions by using a gain-scheduling control structure that dynamically changes the control force demanded by the operating conditions. The proposed control method is applied to both vertical and lateral suspensions of a railway vehicle in this study and the improvements in ride quality are evaluated with several different track data. For the purpose of performance comparison, a semi-active controller based on skyhook damping control integrated with MR dampers and also a vehicle with passive suspensions are used as the benchmark, and are used as a reference case for assessment of the proposed design. Numerical simulations are carried out to assess the performance of the proposed gain-scheduling controller. The simulation results obtained illustrate the performance improvement of the proposed control strategy over conventional semi-active control approaches, where the ride quality of the new controller is shown to be significantly improved and comparable with that of full active control. Potentially, this kind of adaptive capability with variable control approaches can be used to deliver the level of the performance that is currently only possible with fully active suspension without incurring the associated high costs and power consumption.


Several recent results of a time-resolved photoelectron imaging experiment are presented. Following a broad introduction into the area of femtochemistry and time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy, a detailed description of the spec- trometer is given. This utilises an electrospray ionisation source, coupled to an electrostatic ion trap. Ions are mass selected using time-of-flight methods and investigated using photoelectron imaging in a velocity-mapping geometry. Ultrafast dynamics are investigated by pump-probe spectroscopy with femtosec- ond laser pulses.
Recent results are separated into three distinct projects:
(i) The investigation of electron acceptor radical anions based on the quinone backbone. These commonly exhibit electron transfer rates exceeding those pre- dicted by Marcus theory by orders of magnitude. We show that an alternative pathway to electron transfer could involve the participation of electronic excited states, as these couple strongly to the anion ground state. Specifically, for p- Benzoquinone we show that electronic resonances located in the detachment continuum primarily undergo internal conversion via a number of conical inter- sections.
(ii) Several polyanions have been investigated in the gas-phase. These systems exhibit unusual electronic properties, due to the presence of multiple excess charges, leading to the formation of a repulsive Coulomb barrier to photode- tachment. We investigate the effect of excess internal energy on this barrier and how it affects outgoing photoelectrons. We show that the trajectories of electrons are strongly influenced by this potential and demonstrate its use as a probe for large amplitude structural dynamics in polyanions.
(iii) The isolated chromophore of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) has been studied, and the vertical and adiabatic detachment energies determined for the first time. Using time-resolved spectroscopy the excited state dynamics are in- vestigated. We show that the first singlet excited state of the anion primarily decays through internal conversion, explaining the absence of fluorescence in the gas-phase. Using high level quantum chemistry calculations we show the specific motion involved and hence confirm the function of the protein back- bone in GFP.
This thesis is concluded with a few suggested experimental improvements and ideas for future studies of anions using the presented spectrometer.


One of the central themes in finance is to explain how financial risks affect asset prices and returns. A good understanding of the pricing implications of risks is important for several reasons. First, prices might contain information that could be useful for risk analyses and being able to distill such information could be beneficial for risk management purposes. Second, it helps in understanding why there are cross-sectional differences in average returns across assets: Investors are typically risk averse and therefore not only price in their risk expectations, but also demand compensation for being exposed to unpredictable deviations of underlying risk factors from these expectations. In principle, these so-called risk premia are larger for riskier assets and, hence, cross-sectional differences in risk exposures can explain why some assets tend to earn higher average returns than others. This dissertation, consisting of three main chapters, analyzes the pricing implications of several 'macro-financial' risks in different contexts. In particular, the first of these chapters investigates the dynamic interplay between credit and liquidity risk in the US corporate bond market. The second chapter considers the modeling and pricing of sovereign credit risk. The third chapter examines the relationship between labor and financial markets and studies the impact of aggregate labor income risk on stock returns.


By international and historical standards, Australia does not appear to be under-capitalised. Nevertheless, the past decade has seen a clear reversal of the steady upward trend in capital intensity; this reversal was most marked after the short-lived increase in capital spending associated with improved prospects in Australia's resource-intensive industries in the early 1980s. Since then, there has been a sharp decline in investment relative to GDP, as reductions in real labour costs relative to capital costs encouraged the substitution of labour for capital. The existence of excess capacity in the early 1980s meant that substitution of labour for investment in new capital was possible without a major slowdown in growth of economic activity or employment. The prospects for continued economic growth depend, in part, on the resumption of investment spending to complement the growth of labour. It will be important for investment to occur in those industries where recent gains in competitiveness have been greatest. Prospects for achieving these outcomes will be enhanced if government policies are directed towards further reducing distortions in investment incentives, encouraging the expansion of technology and providing a mix of overall stabilisation policies that reduces pressures on capital markets.


Background: Pleomorphic adenoma of the salivary gland (PA) is essentially a benign neoplasm. However, patients with recurrent PA are difficult to manage. There are rare reports on useful immunohistochemical markers to detect a high risk of recurrence when the primary lesions are resected. Aims: To find a new marker to predict the recurrence of PA. Methods: Primary lesions of PA were collected from nine patients showing subsequent recurrence and from 40 patients without recurrence during at least 10 years of follow up of the disease. Paraffin wax embedded tumour samples of the two groups were examined for the expression profiles of MUC1 (differentially glycosylated forms), MUC2, MUC4, MUC5AC, and MUC6 using immunohistochemistry. Several clinicopathological factors were also examined. Results: In univariate analysis of the factors examined, MUC1/DF3 high expression (more than 30% of the neoplastic cells stained) in the primary lesions was seen more frequently in patients with recurrence (four of nine) than in those without recurrence (three of 40; p  =  0.011). Larger tumour size (more than 3.0 cm) of the primary PA was also a significant (p  =  0.035) risk factor for the recurrence of PA. In multivariate analysis, only high expression of MUC1/DF3 was found to be a significant independent risk factor for the recurrence of PA (p  =  0.021). Conclusions: Expression of MUC1/DF3 in PA is a useful marker to predict its recurrence. Those patients with PA showing positive MUC1/DF3 expression should be followed up carefully.


Defective folding diseases have emerged in the last decade as prevalent in an ageing population. In this respect any increased knowledge of folding mechanisms could be crucial for preventing, treating or even curing these neurodegenerative processes. In the present work we have used bovine serum albumin (BSA), the most abundant macromolecule in the circulatory system, displaying a reversible conformational transition at low pH. Moreover it is a carrier protein for ligands and more than 70% of commonly administered drugs. The aim of our work is to investigate the correlation existing between the protein conformation and its compressibility measured by an ultrasonic technique developed in the laboratory (LIP). Indeed, variations of partial specific volume and adiabatic compressibility are macroscopic observables, exquisitely sensitive to protein (BSA) hydration and conformational changes (unfolding/ refolding). We have examined the behaviour of BSA during its unfolding and its refolding at low pH, with the help of small neutral molecules called osmolytes. In addition we have studied the binding of amphiphile molecules to the protein. All together, our results demonstrate the very close correlation existing between these methods and circular dichroi'sm as well as the precision and the high sensibility of ultrasonic techniques to characterize protein conformational alterations, and ligand binding. They also underline the importance of hydration in protein design, for example of de novo drug carriers, modelled on albumin.


Credit constraints are central to development economics theory. However, there is scant direct evidence that supports the existence of such constraints. Traditional tests observe how consumption changes after an unexpected income shock. Such changes can also result from myopic behavior or precautionary savings. This study uses a randomized control trial to explore the effects of enabling savings as a tool to smooth consumption, keeping income constant. The study focuses on community instructors in Mexico. Instructors have to deal with idiosyncratic shocks and shocks related to settling in to new communities. For a group of instructors participating in this study, administrators switched 34 percent of monthly payments to quarterly payments. The switch reduced abandonment of service from 23 to 18 percent. This behavior is consistent with the standard model with credit constraints. It is not consistent with a model without credit constraints or one with myopic individuals.


Driven by our recent mapping of the human genome, genetics research is increasingly prominent and beginning to reintersect with education research. We describe previous intersections of these fields, focusing on the ways that they were harmful. We then discuss novel features of genetics research in the current era, with an emphasis on possibilities deriving from the availability of molecular genetic data and the proliferation of genome-wide association studies. We discuss both the promises and potential pitfalls resulting from the convergence of molecular genetic research and education research. The floodgates of genetic data have opened. Collaboration between those in the social and biomedical sciences; open conversation among policy makers, educators, and researchers; and public engagement will all prove critical for enacting regulations and research designs that emphasize equity.


We evaluate the effect of performance-based scholarship programs for post-secondary students on student time use and effort and whether these effects are different for students we hypothesize may be more or less responsive to incentives. To do so, we administered a time-use survey as part of a randomized experiment in which community college students in New York City were randomly assigned to be eligible for a performance-based scholarship or to a control group that was only eligible for the standard financial aid. This paper contributes to the literature by attempting to get inside the "black box" of how students respond to a monetary incentive to improve their educational attainment. We find that students eligible for a scholarship devoted more time to educational activities, increased the quality of effort toward and engagement with their studies, and allocated less time to leisure. Additional analyses suggest that students who were plausibly more myopic (place less weight on future benefits) were more responsive to the incentives, but we find no evidence that students who are arguably more time constrained were less responsive to the incentives.


Abstract The objective of this study is to extend previous research on total quality management (TQM)-context-performance relationships and 'fit' using multiple methods. We combine artificial neural networks (ANNs) with structural equation modelling (SEM) to analyse several hypotheses and propositions. This is the first study in this area of research that utilises ANNs and a triangulation technique in the presence of several contextual factors. The SEM analyses suggest that company size and industry type may have contingency effects on some of the TQM practices and/or TQM-performance relationships. However, the ANN models have shown that these two contingency factors do not moderate TQM outcomes, implying that all organisations can benefit from TQM regardless of size and type. As well, these models show that formal TQM implementation and/or ISO certifications do not add any predictive power to the ANN models except in one case: TQM implementation and/or ISO certification added to organisational effectiveness and customer results to predict financial and market (F&M) results. The results further indicate that even though implementing TQM alone has a bigger impact on F&M results than obtaining ISO certification alone, combining the two will have an even greater impact on these results. Joint implementation leads to greater improvements in organisational effectiveness, which, in turn, has a positive effect on customer results and consequently F&M results. This is a unique finding within the context of moderator effects on TQM-performance relationships.


There have been extensive outreach programs to educate people about the realities of animal food production. However, there has been relatively little attention to measuring what people actually know about the production of animal food products and the conditions in which those animals exist. A reliable measure of knowledge of animal products is required to determine if making people more knowledgeable about the condition of animals reduces animal product consumption. In four studies, we developed an objective measure of knowledge of animal consumption — the Knowledge of Animals as Food Scale (KAFS). Study 1 (N = 265) used Item Response Theory to analyze 35 knowledge-based items. Based on Study 1, Study 2 (N = 243) tested the 11 best knowledge-based items and demonstrated that the scale had convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity. The KAFS successfully predicted fewer numbers of days per the average week one consumes meat. Study 3 (N = 289) refined the instrument to nine items and replicated the results of Study 2. Study 4 (N = 201) replicated the results and provided causal evidence that a very brief educational intervention can increase knowledge measured by the scale (d = .28). In Studies 2, 3, and 4, the KAFS was often a unique or best predictor of consumption of animal products compared to other values concerning animals. Having a valid, reliable measure of knowledge of animals used as food has important psychological and ethical implications including providing insight on whether education works and ways to help promote individual autonomy.


The Job selection process in today's global economy can be a daunting task for prospective employees no matter their experience level. It involves a detailed search of newspapers, job websites, human agents, etc, to identify an employment opportunity that is perceived compatible to abilities, anticipated remuneration and social needs. Search sites such as Seek, Academickeys.com, Careerbuilder.com, Job-hunt.org, Monster.com, etc allow prospective employees to register online and search and apply for employment. However most do very little to profile employers against employees or even attempt to confirm the validity of the data submitted by prospective employees. Also no information exists on feedback of the employer too on various criteria submitted by employees. Taking all these into consideration we here have proposed an intelligent agent (instead of the human agent) to perform the same search operations by interacting with the employer and job search coordinator agents. The proposed solution would involve the creation of an applicant, job search and employer agents that would use fuzzy preference rules to make a proper decision in getting a list of jobs based on the user's search criteria and also feed the rating of the employer based on feedback submitted by the past & current employees which is unique and first of its kind. All results applicable are organized based on a dynamic calculation of expected utility from highest to lowest and displayed as the job search listing. The system would use ANDROID 2.2, JADE-LEAP and the Google API to provide a robust, user friendly solution.


We propose a new method to perform novelty detection in dynamical systems governed by linear autoregressive models. The method is based on a perturbative expansion to a statistical test whose leading term is the classical F-test, and whose O(1/n) correction can be approximated as a function of the number of training points and the model order alone. The method can be justified as an approximation to an information theoretic test. We demonstrate on several synthetic examples that the first correction to the F-test can dramatically improve the control over the false positive rate of the system. We also test the approach on some real time series data, demonstrating that the method still retains a good accuracy in detecting novelties.


We examine the optimal labor market-policy mix over the business cycle. In a search and matching model with risk-averse workers, endogenous hiring and separation, and unobservable search effort we first show how to decentralize the constrained-efficient allocation. This can be achieved by a combination of a production tax and three labor-market policy instruments, namely, a vacancy subsidy, a layoff tax and unemployment benefits. We derive analytical expressions for the optimal setting of each of these for the steady state and for the business cycle. Our propositions suggest that hiring subsidies, layoff taxes and the replacement rate of unemployment insurance should all rise in recessions. We find this confirmed in a calibration targeted to the U.S. economy.


How do literary works access the iconic potential inherent in language to construct their fictional world view? A case study of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms is presented to show that instead of its commonly accepted dual themes of love and war, the novel's overriding theme is war – the universal and pervasive condition of human existence, itself cast as a war against the forces that conspire to make life shorter. The burning world of war is produced by the iconic force of literary language, from lexical choice to syntactic structure, from internal paragraph patterning to the patterning of paragraph sequences, from chapter level to the overarching narrative structure itself. Through quantitative and sequential iconic means, the abstract theme is made accessible, and the formless fictional world is given shape.


This paper considers submodular function minimization with \textit{noisy evaluation oracles} that return the function value of a submodular objective with zero-mean additive noise. For this problem, we provide an algorithm that returns an $O(n^{3/2}/\sqrt{T})$-additive approximate solution in expectation, where $n$ and $T$ stand for the size of the problem and the number of oracle calls, respectively. There is no room for reducing this error bound by a factor smaller than $O(1/\sqrt{n})$. Indeed, we show that any algorithm will suffer additive errors of $\Omega(n/\sqrt{T})$ in the worst case. Further, we consider an extended problem setting with \textit{multiple-point feedback} in which we can get the feedback of $k$ function values with each oracle call. Under the additional assumption that each noisy oracle is submodular and that $2 \leq k = O(1)$, we provide an algorithm with an $O(n/\sqrt{T})$-additive error bound as well as a worst-case analysis including a lower bound of $\Omega(n/\sqrt{T})$, which together imply that the algorithm achieves an optimal error bound up to a constant.


There is an increasing prevalence of poor health behaviors during childhood, particularly in terms of physical activity and nutrition. This trend has occurred alongside a growing body of evidence linking these behaviors to cognitive function. B-vitamins are thought to be particularly important in the neural development that occurs during pregnancy, as well as in healthy cognitive aging. However, much less is known regarding the role of B-vitamins during childhood. Given that preadolescent childhood is a critical period for cognitive development, this study investigated the relationship between specific aspects of nutrition, particularly B-vitamins, and related health factors (e.g., body mass, fitness) on selective attention in children. Children (n = 85; 8–11 years) completed a selective attention task to assess inhibition. Participant's dietary intake was collected using the Automated Self-Administered 24-h dietary assessment tool. Correlations between specific nutrients, BMI, fitness, and task performance were investigated. After accounting for demographic variables and total caloric intake, increased B-vitamin intake (i.e., thiamin and folic acid) was associated with shorter reaction times (p's < 0.05), fitness was associated with greater response accuracy (p < 0.05), and increased BMI was related to increased variability in reaction times (p < 0.05). Together, these findings suggest that aspects of health may have unique contributions on cognitive performance. Proper physical health and nutrition are imperative for effective cognitive functioning in preadolescent children. Targeted efforts aimed at health education amongst this population could ensure proper cognitive development during school-age years, providing a strong foundation throughout life.


Mathematical models of the urine concentrating mechanism consist of large systems of coupled differential equations. The numerical methods that have usually been used to solve the steady-state formulation of these equations involve implicit Newton-type solvers that are limited by numerical instability attributed to transient flow reversal. Dynamic numerical methods, which solve the dynamic formulation of the equations by means of a direction-sensitive time integration until a steady state is reached, are stable in the presence of transient flow reversal. However, when an explicit, Eulerian-based dynamic method is used, prohibitively small time steps may be required owing to the CFL condition and the stiffness of the problem. In this report, we describe a semi-Lagrangian semi-implicit (SLSI) method for solving the system of hyperbolic partial differential equations that arises in the dynamic formulation. The semi-Lagrangian scheme advances the solution in time by integrating backward along flow trajectories, thus allowing large time steps while maintaining stability. The semi-implicit approach controls stiffness by averaging transtubular transport terms in time along flow trajectories. For sufficiently refined spatial grids, the SLSI method computes stable and accurate solutions with substantially reduced computation costs.


This paper critically examines the theory and practice of public-private partnerships (PPPs) through the example of information and communication technologies and development (ICT4D) in India. The paper compares the roles of, and relationships between, the state and small scale entrepreneurs in ICT4D efforts in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Through this comparison it shows how the political economy within which PPP models operate, and in particular the state's relative emphasis on financial versus social goals, determines who benefits most from current ICT4D projects. It finds that, despite pro-poor intentions, and regardless of levels of state involvement in projects, the benefits of these projects are mainly captured by the middle classes. Micro-entrepreneurs who run ICT enabled businesses and maintain close connections with the state are also likely to benefit from PPPs through increased incomes. The paper further argues that, through these ICT4D projects, states in India are trying to reshape themselves into market friendly, efficient entities that traditionally defined the private sector. It finds that in this negotiation, the state is not dasiaprivatizedpsila, but retains a sense of its own development agenda and remains necessary for the credibility of PPPs in civil society.


Western barred bandicoots (Perameles bougainville) from five Western Australian colonies were examined during 2006. Bandicoots were trapped or netted, then examined under isoflurane (Isorrane: Baxter Healthcare, Old Toongabbie, NSW, Australia) general anaesthesia. Fleas, ticks and larval trombiculid mites (chiggers) were collected from bandicoots and their handling bags and preserved in ethanol. Chiggers were mounted and cleared in Hoyer's medium. Fleas were boiled in potassium hydroxide, dehydrated through graded alcohols, cleared in methyl salicylate and mounted with Canada balsam. Ticks were identified using a dissecting microscope. Schoutedenichia emphyla chiggers were found on periscrotal, peripouch and aural skin in many P. bougainville from Dryandra. The ticks Haemaphysalis humerosa and H. ratti were collected from Bernier and Dorre Islands. In all, four flea species have been identified on P. bougainville. Echidnophaga gallinacea and Pygiopsylla tunneyi were common at Heirisson Prong and the Islands colonies, respectively. Xenopsylla vs. vexabilis was occasionally identified on bandicoots from Bernier Island and Heirisson Prong. Leptopsylla segnis and P. tunneyi were found on a bandicoot from Kanyana. No Austrochirus dorreensis (a fur mite) or Haemaphysalis lagostrophi were collected in 2006, despite previous literature reports. Apart from localized dermatitis with chigger infestation and mild blood loss from tick and flea attachment, the significance of ectoparasitism in P. bougainville remains unresolved. The potential role of these ectoparasites as disease vectors is under current investigation. This is the first report of S. emphyla, E. gallinacea, P. tunneyi, Xenopsylla vs. vexabilis and L. segnis in P. bougainville.


Sports-related concussion is a major public health problem in the United States that is estimated to occur in 1.6–3.8 million individuals annually, and is particularly common in football. Despite the significance and growing concerns about the potential long-term consequences of concussion, its biomechanical mechanisms are not fully understood. Since 1970's computational head modeling has proved to be an efficient tool for establishment of health injury criteria and studies on head injury mitigation. One important step in the computational modeling of the human head is to develop the mathematical material models (constitutive models) for the tissue. There have been many attempts to develop an accurate constitutive model for brain tissue. Recent experimental studies have highlighted the significant influence of axonal fibers on the non-linear and anisotropic behavior of brain tissue. Tractography based on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been used in various previous studies to develop a constitutive model for human brain by including the anisotropic properties. Though DTI provides a macro scale information about the axonal fibers in the brain, it cannot directly describe multiple fiber orientations within a single voxel. To address this limitation within the DTI tractography, Diffusion Spectrum imaging (DSI), a variant of Diffusion Weighted Imaging, is used. DSI is generally used in deriving connectome sets and is sensitive to intravoxel heterogeneities of fiber orientation in diffusion direction caused by crossing fiber tracts and thus allowing for more accurate mapping of axonal trajectories than other diffusion methods. Thus more accurate constitutive models can be developed from the structural information about the human brain using DSI. This paper extends, the anisotropic constitutive models developed previously, for two family of fibers which will be useful in the computational modeling of the human brain using DSI.


Giselle Reid The institutions of higher education in the United States face the dilemma of deciding whether to admit and matriculate students without legal immigration status. This public policy question involves careful interpretation of federal and state law, general public sentiment, the effects on the individual institutions, as well as the plight of undocumented immigrant students and their parents. The purpose of this research was to analyze the ethical dilemma facing colleges and universities concerning whether to allow or deny admission to undocumented immigrant students, utilizing the ethics triangle. This research argued that the benefits of facilitating higher education for undocumented students would result in the betterment of society in the United States and the world as a whole because it is inequitable to discriminate against students based upon their immigration status. Finally, this research contends that it is morally unacceptable to deny any human being access to an education under any circumstances.


The now-clearly-accelerating decline of summer ice—punctuated by exceptional losses in 2007 and now in 2012—has persuaded everyone that summer Arctic sea ice will be a goner far sooner than the end of the century, as current models predict. So the full knock-on effects of an ice-free Arctic Ocean—from the loss of polar bear habitat to possible increases of weather extremes at mid-latitudes—could be here in many people9s lifetimes. How far wrong the models might be, however, is still very much in dispute.


Wilson's disease fibroblasts have an elevated intracellular copper concentration as compared to cultured control cells. A decreased ratio of copper to protein was observed in cytoplasmic protein (or proteins) having a molecular weight greater than or equal to 30,000 in Wilson's disease cells. The results of this culture study indicate its potential importance in the early unequivocal diagnosis of this disorder.


As part of an ongoing program to examine subcritical flaw growth in candidate steels for proposed coal gasifier pressure vessels, an initial study is made of characteristics of ultralow growth rate fatigue crack propagation in thick-section, normalized 2 1/4 Cr-1Mo pressure vessel steel (ASTM A387, Class 2 Grade 22). Crack propagation data are generated over a wide range of growth rates, from 10−8 to 10−2 mm/cycle, for load ratios between 0.05 and 0.80 at ambient temperatures in low pressure environments of moist air, dry hydrogen gas and dry argon gas. Particular emphasis is placed on behavior at near-threshold growth rates, below 10−6 mm/cycle, approaching the so-called threshold stress intensity for fatigue crack growth, ΔK0 . Near-threshold growth rates, in addition to showing a marked sensitivity to load ratio, are found to be significantly enhanced in gaseous hydrogen compared to air. Similar environmentally-enhanced growth is observed in argon gas. To account for such results, previous models of threshold behavior based on environmental factors (e.g., hydrogen embrittlement) are questioned, and a new approach is presented in terms of the role of oxide debris from moist environments in promoting crack closure. This oxide-induced closure model is found to be consistent with most experimental observations of near-threshold fatigue crack propagation behavior and is proposed as a mechanism for environmental effects at ultra-low growth rates.


A Mo(V) electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) study of the periplasmic respiratory nitrate reductase of the denitrifying bacterium Thiosphaera pantotropha has revealed that the molybdenum centre of this enzyme is very similar to that in the assimilatory nitrate reductase of Azotobacter vinelandii but is somewhat different from that of the membrane-bound bacterial respiratory nitrate reductases such as those of Escherichia coli and Paracoccus denitrificans. We have identified the Mo(V) species most likely to be the catalytically relevant one and characterised two other sets of Mo(V) EPR signals. As well as exhibiting EPR signals with g values typical of bacterial molybdenum-containing reductases, molybdenum-hydroxylase-like EPR signals can be elicited in the nitrate reductase of T. pantotropha upon treatment with excess dithionite. The only other enzyme known to display this phenomenon is the periplasmic dimethylsulphoxide reductase of Rhodobacter capsulatus. A mechanism for the generation of these signals is proposed which invokes reduction of the pterin ring of the molybdenum cofactor linked to GMP from the dihydro to the tetrahydro state. The possibilities and implications of there being cysteine ligands to the molybdenum centres of these two enzymes are discussed.


Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is broadly defined as a suite of integrated applications used by organisations to store, collect and interpret data. It has a modular set up and typically integrates the financial, sales & distribution, procurement and materials management activities of a business. ERP has been adopted by companies of all sizes and ERP implementations and has become a multi-billion dollar industry.

Its aim of the study is to investigate what impact, if any, company size has on the factors influencing Irish companies to adopt ERP.

The author adopts a case study methodology to interview people experienced in multi-ERP implementations across a wide variety of industries in Ireland. The interviews follow a case study protocol and were carried out in a conversational manner, structured around a set of pre-defined questions.

In each interview, the author presented factors influencing ERP adoptions to each interviewee. The author asked interviewees to give their opinion as to what impact each influencing factor has on a company's ERP adoption decision.

The findings of the study reveal that company size has a large bearing on the importance Irish companies give to factors influencing ERP adoption, with like-sized companies sharing similar influences. The study finds that small companies are mainly influenced by current considerations when adopting ERP, such as its overall cost and money saving potential. Large companies, in contrast, are influenced by factors such as growth and stakeholder perception, using ERP adoption as a basis to ensure future viability. The study also reveals that implementation decisions in small companies tend to be influenced by specific operational issues. In large companies, the decision to implement is normally part of a broader corporate strategic initiative.


How accurate is the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau (CWB) regional spectral model (RSM)? An assessment is conducted by numerical simulation of Mei-Yu fronts and their associated precipitation patterns during May to August of 1998 using CWB RSM, driven by analysis from the CWB global forecast system. For this assessment, three episodes of East Asian Summer Monsoon heavy rainfall shown by Ding and Liu (2001) and an additional transition period from 26 May to 10 June were chosen to test the respective roles of domain size and model resolution sensitivity. Results indicate that the small domain (~3500 by 3000 km^2) simulation, but not the larger domain (≥7000 by 6000 km^2) simulations, simulated the monsoon and Mei-Yu front heavy precipitation events accurately for all of the above periods. By comparing experimental results from various combinations of domain size and model resolution, we demonstrate that the simulated large-scale circulation and precipitation distribution were more sensitive to model domain size than to model horizontal resolution, whereas finer structures could only be achieved in the higher resolution simulations. Local characteristics of the precipitation over Taiwan Island, especially over the Central Mountains, were reasonably reproduced in the 20 km resolution simulation in terms of averages taken during the transition period and over the seasonal period from May to August. However, the CWB RSM with 20 km resolution might still be insufficient to resolve the severe precipitation events in southern Taiwan.


Charles Darwin was born 200 years ago this year and his monumental work On the origin of species, laying the foundation of modern evolutionary theory driven by natural selection, was published 150 years ago. Earlier in 1759, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, were established. This year's special issue of Bradleya celebrates these anniversaries with the principal theme of evolution of succulents. Bradleya 27 includes the following articles:

•Editorial: Darwin and Kew anniversaries by Colin Walker
•Charles Darwin's succulent plants by Gordon D Rowley
•Living under temporarily arid conditions - succulence as an adaptive strategy by Urs Eggli and Reto Nyfeller
•Evolution of cacti driven by genetic drift not selection bt Root Gorelick
•Evolution of characters in the Opuntioideae by M Patrick Griffith
•Insect flower visitors and pollinators of cacti from the southwest USA by Zlatko Janeba
•On the evolution of nectaries in the Aizoaceae by H.E.K Hatrmann and I.M.Niesler
•Kew and its collections of succulent plants by David Hunt and Nigel Taylor
•The composite structure of cactus spines by Urs Schlegel
•Stapelia hirsuta L. and early portrait by H.A.Jonkers
•Rectification of a mistake by G.W.Reynolds on a Malagasy Aloe (Asphodelaceae) and description of a new species by Jean-Bernard Castillon
•The identity of Sansevieria arborescens (Ruscaceae), with an amplified description and description of a new species by Leonard E.Newton
•Priority of Aloe teissieri over Aloe andohahelensis by Susan Carter and John Lavranos
•Ceropegia thailandica (Asclepiadoideae-Ceropegieae), a spectacular new Thai species by Ulrich Meve
•Aloe arborescens Miller (Asphodelaceae) is spreading in Portugal by Gideon F.Smith and Estrela Figueiredo


The thesis analyses the evolution of Hong Kong as an autonomous international actor and how that has been sustained under Chinese sovereignty, in the context of the wider debate on paradiplomacy and the increasing international participation of Non-Central Governments (NCG). The opening chapter offers a review of the literature on non-state actors (NSA) and emphasises the limitations of the new literature on NCGs that emerged in the 1990s which fails to deal with the heterogeneity of NCGs, the specific characteristics that differentiate them from other NSA and their impact on the international system. The next two chapters examine the factors behind the process of HK's emergence as an international player in the early 1960s: textile trade interests and reaction to proteccionism; HK elite bureaucracy legitimisation strategy; flexibility of the international system for what accounted the Dominions' historical precedent and the pragmatic interests of influential states. HK's emergence as an international financial centre, the development of a system of external representation in the 1970s and the creation of the new framework for external relations inserted in the 1984 Joint Declaration, further contributed to consolidate and expand HK's autonomy into new areas, including political ones, at the same time they introduced a note of ambiguity in HK's international status. Fresh insights into the negotiation of the JD international affairs chapter are offered. Chapter Four examines HK's post-1997 implementation of the new external relations' framework and how far external autonomy was preserved demonstrating that the level of external autonomy HK enjoys is determined not merely by the relation with the Central Government but by the interplay between this, HK's own strategy and actions and the attitude of external players. The logic of "autonomy cum isolation" that prevails in HK-Beijing relations, deviant practices concerning "specific authorisations" and excessive govemmentalisation of external affairs are identified as the main risks for future autonomy in a context where the SAR has been able to preserve the core of its external autonomy in relation to China. Chapter Five deals with HK's legitimacy basis and sources of influence as an international player looking at its participation in WTO. To assert its influence HK uses not one but a combination of sources of influence, namely technical expertise, economic power, and above all the performance of a systemic broker role associated with its dual identity. The final chapter discusses the research results and concludes that, unlike other NCG, HK has been able to have a direct impact on the international system, namely through the participation in the process of international rules-making in trade and financial matters. This capacity is determined by the triangle "external autonomy-legitimacy-influence" which conditions the ability of NCG to take advantage of the opportunities created by the globalisation-localisation process to enhance their international role and contribute to a better global governance.


Whether in court decisions or law review articles, Wikipedia is being used as a reference resource, and most likely will continue to be used as such. Only recently have commentators turned their attentions to this phenomenon. However, the main focus of these writers has been on the use of Wikipedia in the judicial process, whether by litigants relying on Wikipedia in their pleadings or judges relying on it in their decisions. No one, as of yet, has examined the use of Wikipedia in the legal scholarship context. Considering that most judges, and practically all judicial law clerks, honed their writing, researching, and editing skills while members of law reviews, we should examine this practice in that environment. The purpose of this paper is to shine a light on the citation aspect of the Wikipedia-as-authority phenomenon by providing detailed statistics on the scope of its use and critiquing or building on the arguments of other commentators.Part II provides an overview of the debate regarding the citation of Wikipedia. After discussing the purposes of citation generally, this article examines why authors choose to cite to Wikipedia and explains why such citation is nonetheless problematic despite its perceived advantages. Part III then discusses a citation analysis performed on works published by nearly 500 American law reviews between 2002 and 2008. First, the methodology for the analysis is described, from how the law reviews were selected to how the individual citations were organized and classified. Then, the results of the analysis are announced along with any trends that may be discerned from the statistics. Finally, Part IV delves into the question of the propriety of citing to Wikipedia, culminating in a call for tighter editorial standards.


Muetzelfeldt, R., Robertson, D., Bundy, A. and Uschold, M., 1989. The use of Prolog for improving the rigour and accessibility of ecological modelling. EcoL Modelling, 46: 9-34. We introduce three concepts that offer considerable benefit to the process of ecological modelling: the descriptive representation of models; the explicit representation of knowledge about how to model; and the development of knowledge-based systems that can help ecologists construct models. Prolog, a computer language based on formal logic, has much to offer in realising these ideas. We introduce the concept of a 'model blueprint', a complete. formal specification of the structure of a model, and show how a blueprint can be represented as a Prolog program, basing our analysis on system dynamics models for simplicity. We: consider ways in which the Prolog interpreter can be used selectively to retrieve information about the model, to check for errors in the formulation of the model, and to evaluate the model mathematically. However, there are drawbacks with this approach, so we discuss ways of overcoming these by implementing also in Prolog programs which buffer the user from the difficulties of working at the level of the Prolog interpreter. These include the generation of descriptions of model structure, and the development of a program to help in the construction of simulation models.


Data Clustering is an important and highly utilized data mining technique in various application domains. With ever increasing data volumes in the era of big data, the efficient execution of clustering algorithms is a fundamental prerequisite to gain understanding and acquire novel, previously unknown knowledge from data. To establish an efficient execution, the clustering algorithms have to be re-engineered to fully exploit the provided hardware capabilities. Shared-memory multiprocessor systems like graphics processing units (GPUs) provide extremely high parallelism combined with a high bandwidth transfer at low cost. The availability of such computing units increases with upcoming processors, where a common CPU and various computing units, like GPU, are tightly coupled using a unified shared memory hierarchy. In this paper, we consider density-based clustering for such heterogeneous systems. In particular, we optimize the configuration of CUDA-DClust - a density-based clustering algorithm for GPUs - and show that our configuration approach enables an efficient and deterministic execution. Our configuration approach is based on data as well as hardware properties, so that we are able to adjust the algorithm execution in both directions. In our evaluation, we show the applicability of our approach and present open challenges which have to be solved next.


BACKGROUND
Trait anger, hostility, and serum level of homocysteine are associated with recurrent cardiac events after percutaneous coronary interventions. However, whether trait anger or hostility influences the association between serum level of homocysteine and recurrent cardiac events is unknown.

OBJECTIVES
To examine the relationships among trait anger, hostility, serum level of homocysteine, and recurrent cardiac events after percutaneous coronary interventions.

METHODS
This prospective study included 135 consecutive patients (68% male, mean age 61 [SD, 10] years) undergoing percutaneous coronary interventions during an index hospitalization. Trait anger and hostility were measured with the Spielberger Trait Anger Scale and the Cynical Hostility Scale, respectively. Blood samples were obtained to measure serum levels of total cholesterol, triglycerides, high- and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and homocysteine. Recurrent cardiac events (emergency department visits and rehospitalization) were noted for 6 months after discharge and confirmed by review of hospital records. Hierarchical Cox hazard regression was used for statistical analysis.

RESULTS
Trait anger (hazard ratio = 1.11, 95% confidence interval = 1.03-1.20) and homocysteine level (hazard ratio = 1.10, 95% confidence interval = 1.01-1.21) were independent predictors of recurrent cardiac events after other risk factors were controlled for. Patients with high trait anger (score > or = 24) and high serum level of homocysteine (> or = 11.3 mumol/L) had the shortest time to recurrent cardiac events (P = .01).

CONCLUSION
Trait anger had a combined effect on the link between serum level of homocysteine and recurrent cardiac events. Interventions to reduce trait anger may improve health outcomes by influencing both trait anger and homocysteine level.


Build and test software written in Java and many other languages with Gradle, the open source project automation tool thats getting a lot of attention. This concise introduction provides numerous code examples to help you explore Gradle, both as a build tool and as a complete solution for automating the compilation, test, and release process of simple and enterprise-level applications. Discover how Gradle improves on the best ideas of Ant, Maven, and other build tools, with standards for developers who want them and lots of flexibility for those who prefer less structure. Use Gradle with Groovy, Clojure, Scala, and languages beyond the JVM, such as Flex and C Get started building a simple Java program using Gradle's command line tooling and a small build script Learn how to configure and construct tasks, Gradle's fundamental unit of build activity Take advantage of Gradle's integration with Ant Use Gradle to integrate with or transition from Maven, and to build software more cleanly Perform application unit and integration tests using JUnit, TestNG, Spock, and Geb


ABSTRACT Human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology has opened exciting opportunities for stem-cell-based therapy. However, its wide adoption is precluded by several challenges including low reprogramming efficiency and potential for malignant transformation. Better understanding of the molecular mechanisms of the changes that cells undergo during reprograming is needed to improve iPSCs generation efficiency and to increase confidence for their clinical use safety. Here, we find that dominant negative mutations in STAT3 in patients with autosomal-dominant hyper IgE (Job's) syndrome (AD-HIES) result in greatly reduced reprograming efficiency of primary skin fibroblasts derived from skin biopsies. Analysis of normal skin fibroblasts revealed upregulation and phosphorylation of endogenous signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) and its binding to the NANOG promoter following transduction with OKSM factors. This coincided with upregulation of NANOG and appearance of cells expressing pluripotency markers. Upregulation of NANOG and number of pluripotent cells were greatly reduced throughout the reprograming process of AD-HIES fibroblasts that was restored by over-expression of functional STAT3. NANOGP8, the human-specific NANOG retrogene that is often expressed in human cancers, was also induced during reprogramming, to very low but detectable levels, in a STAT3-dependent manner. Our study revealed the critical role of endogenous STAT3 in facilitating reprogramming of human somatic cells. Summary: By using naturally-occurring mutations in a human disease, we demonstrate the critical role of endogenous STAT3 in modulating reprogramming efficiency in human somatic cells.


This thesis explores aspects of the development of automobilism in the North-West from its beginnings around 1896 to 1939. An investigation of regional source material is used to engage with national and international research on the automobile, and more broadly, science and technology studies and the interaction between technology and society. In doing so, this investigation shows the complexities surrounding the diffusion and technological development of the automobile, focusing on the interactions between users, non-users, designers and dealers. Split into three main chapters, this thesis starts by exploring motoring culture in the North-West, arguing the importance of cultural and social factors in the automobile's diffusion. It then exposes the important role played by commercial prospects and the "imaginaries" surrounding the commercial vehicle in the development of automobilism. Finally, it argues the importance of considering the role of both the small firm and the agent and dealer in the development of automobile technology and automobilism in general. Overall this thesis can be used as a case study for the way in which sociotechnological systems develop, in this case described as "automobilism". It also shows how regional experiences both in design, use, promotion and resistance shape these systems.


This Working Paper is a summary of a workshop which was held at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria in 1992. Small scale privatization (SSP) of shops, restaurants and other consumer services has been accomplished in the first stage of the complex process of privatization in Eastern Europe. It was also an experiment for measuring the demand for previously state owned property and for verifying different techniques of privatization. The Russian Federation is now undertaking the first steps in SSP and may learn much from recent experiences of the other East European economies. In order to facilitate such an exchange, a workshop was organized at IIASA to analyze the pattern of SSP in the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, the former East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. The characteristics at each stage of the privatization processes were thoroughly discussed and compared across the nations, beginning with the emergence of the idea of SSP, through legislation and the rise of unexpected tensions during the implementation phase, to the characteristic features of newly privatized retail and service businesses.


Explosive breaching of walls, demolition of buildings with high structural robustness and non-programmed explosions may be extremely dangerous, the high risk of these events demands continuous researches to support the development of optimized constructive techniques and design. In this context, this work presents a numerical study of the explosive breaching of concrete wall using an optimized contact explosive charge with cilindrical shape, the CFD software Autodyn ® Ansys was used. The results were evaluated in terms of damage pattern of the concrete slab, where was considered the cratering dimensions, the breakthrough hole and concrete spalling. A significant gain of the destructive potential of the explosive was observed by the simple rearrangement of its dimensions when compared to the base model, also the robustness of software to model and simulate a complex experiment that involves the detonation of a contact explosive charge was verified.


Antarctic Arctocephalus gazella and subantarctic A. tropicalis fur seals (Pinnipedia:
Otariidae) have very different lactation strategies (ie. duration of pup rearing periods),
the former taking four months to rear its pups and the latter, ten months. At
Macquarie Island these two species are sympatric, which is unusual for fur seals, and
their lactation periods overlap for the first four months. The aim of this study was to
examine the importance of phylogenetic constraints and environment on the lactation
strategies of these seal species at Macquarie Island. This was undertaken by
comparing their provisioning strategies at this location, primarily in terms of maternal
energy acquisition at sea (foraging behaviour and diet) and on shore energy transfer to
the pup (attendance behaviour, milk composition, milk intake, pup growth and
fasting).
The diet, diving behaviour and foraging location of A. gazella and A. tropicalis
females were compared during the austral summer period when pup-rearing of the
two species overlapped. The prey of the two fur seal species was very similar, with
the myctophid Electrona subaspera being the predominant prey item (94 % numerical
abundance froth identifiable fish remains). There were no major differences in the
diving behaviour, with both species diving almost exclusively at night with very short
and shallow dives averaging 10 - 15 m and 0.5 - 0.9 mm. Both species foraged north
of the island with most activity concentrated at two sites: within 30 km, and around 60
km north. Comparing the foraging strategies of A. gazella and A. tropicalis from
different locations showed their behaviour to be flexible. At Macquarie Island, under
the same environmental conditions, the two species chose a similar diet, and used
similar diving behaviour and foraging locations.The maximum foraging range, area prospected and foraging trip duration were
investigated in lactating A. gazella in relation to central place foraging theory. There
was substantial overlap in area use between years, between foraging trips of different
females and between foraging trips of the same individuals. Distance to foraging
areas, total distance travelled, area foraged and pup mass gain increased with
increasing foraging trip duration. This agrees with the predictions of central place foraging theory: that both energy gained from, and time spent in, a foraging patch
should increase with the increasing distance of that patch from the central place.
The influence of phylogenetic and environmental factors in shaping pup growth
strategies for A. gazella and A. tropicalis were also examined. For A. gazel la and A.
tropicalis respectively, birth mass (6.0 and 5.8 kg), growth rate to 120 days (84 and
83 g/d), and weaning mass (14.8 and 14.8 kg) were similar for both species.
Maximum mass (15.4 and 19.0 kg) age at maximum mass (1 08 and 200d) growth
rates to maximum mass ( 89 and 70 g/d) and weaning (83 and 42 g/d), and age at
weaning (122 and 298 d), for A. gazella and A. tropicalis respectively, varied
significantly between species. Sex-based differences in mass and growth were evident
in both species. Growth rates and weaning mass were relatively high compared to
similar measurements for these species at other locations. Lactation length (weaning
age) did not vary from other populations of these species. The local environment
appeared to have a greater influence on birth mass, growth rates and weaning mass.
Despite phylogenetic differences and differences between current and ancestral
marine environments, the pup growth of the two fur seal species was very similar.
Weaning age, being phylogenetically fixed, however, had the strongest influence on
pup development and growth. The provisioning strategies of the two fur seal species were examined with respect to
the composition of their milk, the amount of energy transferred and the attendance
behaviour of the mothers. Fasting mass loss gave an indication of the energetic cost of
body maintenance in the pups of the two species, and was 23 % lower in A. tropicalis
pups suggesting a lower energy demand. The milk composition of the two species was
similar for the period of overlap and milk lipid increased throughout lactation. Milk
lipid and protein contents averaged for the four month lactation period of A. gazella
were 41.8 ± 0.73 % and 10.8 ± 0.16% (n = 135) respectively, and for the longer
lactation of A. tropicalis, 49.05 ± 2.03 % and 9.5 ± 0.28 % (n = 26) respectively. Milk
and milk energy consumption for the two species was not significantly different.
Attendance behaviour of mothers of both species was similar with respect to the
duration of overnight ( 24 h ) trips and shore attendance, but
the proportions used by each species varied significantly. Lactating A. gazella spent less time in overnight trips, more time at sea and, overall, undertook less foraging
trips than A. tropicalis.
I conclude that the phylogenetically controlled energy demands of the pups drives the
provisioning process but the environment dictates how often and how much energy
can be supplied. Fur seal mothers respond to pup energy demands and environmental
variables through their attendance cycles. The greater energy demands of A. gazella
pups results in their mothers spending more time at sea and undertaking longer
foraging trips. Mothers of A. tropicalis pups can meet lower pup demands with mostly
short foraging trips. The regular use of overnight foraging trips by both species is
possible at Macquarie Island because prey resources are abundant and close to the
island, and the fur seal population is small, reducing competition for nearby resources. Provisioning strategies and pup growth are governed by a combination of
evolutionary and environmental factors. Pup growth strategies have evolved with
physical and physiological limitations on development which they cannot change,
even in a situation of rich prey resources. A. tropicalis pups have evolved with energy
conserving behaviours and/or physiology and cannot change their rate of development
to wean in a shorter time like A. gaze/la. Of the two maternal strategies, it is likely the
strategy of A. gaze/la is more expensive during the period of lactation overlap, but
overall, with a longer lactation period, it is likely to be more expensive for A.
tropicalis to raise a pup.


Understanding the competitive power of small and medium sized firms in emerging economies is a challenging task. This paper aims to analyze internationally successful small and medium sized firms that are so called hidden champions of emerging economies in the same way as they appear in advanced countries such as Germany and Austria. The analysis will shed some light to what makes these hidden champions so competitive in international markets. Knowing that developing country firms struggle to overcome the country-of-origin effects arising from the consumer perceptions on the country products/services, observing the successful practices might help to understand their strategies in overcoming these effects. The assessment of company practices in terms of competition is carried out by using a comprehensive model where the assessment of firm competitiveness is carried out through the outcome/performance of competition (i.e. output), assets/factors (i.e. input) and processes that turn the assets/factors into actual performance. The paper conducts a case study by concentrating in one emerging economy: Turkey. The in-depth analysis of 10 companies by using the firm competitiveness assessment model helps to identify some innovative ways of overcoming the country-of-origin effects. The paper ends with some managerial and policy implications.


Background Diabetes is a chronic illness in which the body cannot manage the levels of sugar, and it affects an estimated 387 million people worldwide. According to World Health Organization it is the 7th leading cause of death in the world. Frequent monitoring (3 to 10 times) of blood glucose is important for diabetes patients to prevent serious health problems, but existing commercial products of blood glucose measurement often cause discomfort and pain. In these products, a lancet is used for pricking the skin to obtain a blood drop and then this blood drop is placed on the test strip for quantification of blood glucose level with a meter. This inconvenient, painful and invasive technology is the main obstacle to achieve high quality health monitoring. Providing a pain-free and noninvasive diabetes monitoring solution at an affordable cost is the major challenge to replace the existing solutions. Objective Based on the recent experimental findings about breath acetone as a potential correlated biomarker for changes in blood glucose, we introduce an electronic nose based breath analyzer solution for identification/ quantification of exhaled acetone and hence, blood glucose level. Method The experimental setup used to acquire the signatures of the acetone with the electronic nose, containing an array of four low-cost gas sensors, is shown in Fig. 1. Mass flow controllers (MFCs) are used to control the concentration of acetone in the gas chamber from 0.25 to 2.5 parts per million (ppm), which corresponds to high point for breath acetone concentration. The sensor array, placed in a gas chamber, is periodically exposed to air for 750 seconds and to acetone for 500 seconds to extract meaningful information or feature vector at each concentration in the target range. The feature vector is formed by taking the ratio (a.k.a. sensitivity) of the change in each sensor resistance during the gas exposure stage with its baseline resistance (resistance at the end of air exposure). The resultant feature vector is further used for acetone identification/quantification. For acetone identification, we form sensitivity codes by arranging their sensitivities in an ascending order and introduce hardware friendly rank-order classifier. After its identification, support vector regression is used for its quantification by utilizing feature vectors. Results Acetone data at 10 different concentrations in the target range of 0.25 to 2.5 ppm is acquired to evaluate the performance of our approach. Figure 2 shows the typical response of the four sensors in the array corresponding to air (from 0 to 750 seconds) and acetone (from 751 to 1250 seconds). On testing with resultant feature vectors from the experimental data, rank-order classifier identifies acetone signature with 100% accuracy, and then support vector regression (SVR) quantifies acetone with a mean square error of 0.0059. Predicted concentration with SVR against true concentration in the target range is shown in Fig. 3. Conclusion We have introduced a breath-based acetone monitoring solution which will not only be eagerly acceptable by the diabetes patients due to its noninvasive and pain-free nature but it will also facilitate high quality health monitoring by acquiring a large number of breath samples at an affordable cost. Test results of the proposed electronic nose system illustrate good response of the sensors to acetone induced by breadth.


In order to reach a goal of universal access to modern energy services in Africa by 2030, consideration of various electricity sector pathways is required to help inform policy-makers and investors, and help guide power system design. To that end, and building on existing tools and analysis, we present several 'high-level', transparent, and economy-wide scenarios for the sub-Saharan African power sector to 2030. We construct these simple scenarios against the backdrop of historical trends and various interpretations of universal access. They are designed to provide the international community with an indication of the overall scale of the effort required. We find that most existing projections, using typical long-term forecasting methods for power planning, show roughly a threefold increase in installed generation capacity occurring by 2030, but more than a tenfold increase would likely be required to provide for full access – even at relatively modest levels of electricity consumption. This equates to approximately a 13% average annual growth rate, compared to a historical one (in the last two decades) of 1.7%.


The Subclavian Steal Syndrome is a retrograde flow in the vertebral artery as a result of proximal subclavian artery occlusion or severe stenosis. This retrograde flow presupposes that the vertebral artery is of usual origin from the superior surface of its ipsilateral subclavian artery. We present a rare variant of the right vertebral artery originating as part of a trifurcated brachiocephalic trunk in a 76-year-old female cadaver. Our discussion is focused on the clinical implication of this variant should there be a proximal occlusion to the right subclavian artery or such occlusion occurring in the proximal origin of the brachiocephalic trunk off the aortic arch. Even though aberrant vertebral arteries are often asymptomatic, but a good search should be made to locate their aberrant origins. Good knowledge of the anatomic location of the vertebral artery is important to endovascular, and maxillofacial and neurosurgeons engaged in surgical interventions in the head and neck region to assist in the selection of appropriate surgical interventions and to neuroradiologists, in the interpretation of images. The main thrust of our report is focused on a modeled occlusion in the proximal region of the subclavian artery or in the proximal segment of the brachiocephalic trunk and the clinical outcome of retrograde flow in the variant right vertebral artery originating from a bifurcated brachiocephalic trunk in both circumstances. When a retrograde flow is modeled in a hypothetical proximal occlusion to the subclavian artery only, this does not give any vascularization to the subclavian artery since the occlusion is occurring distally to the retrograde flow. However, in the case of occlusion occurring, the proximal origin of the brachiocephalic trunk before trifurcating, and before the trifurcation, a reversed flow from the variant vertebral artery will send blood to vascularize both the right common carotid and the right subclavian arteries, resulting in a hypothesized combined Common Carotid-Subclavian Steal Syndrome (CC-SSS). This emphasizes clinically that varying origins of the vertebral artery would play dissimilar roles in occlusion or stenosis in the proximal segments of the major supra-aortic vessels.


In this statement, the EFSA GMO Panel responds to a request from the European Commission (EC) to assess the safety of soybean MON 87705 oil for commercial frying. The applicant provided exposure assessments based on total and partial substitutions of conventional soybean, rapeseed and sunflower oils with the soybean MON 87705 oil in foods (salad dressings, margarines and spreads, mayonnaise, crackers and salty snacks and soybean/rapeseed/sunflower oils processed foods). No distinction was made between commercial and domestic use, nor whether the oils were used in frying or not. The EFSA GMO Panel considers that this exposure scenario is the most pertinent in that it addresses not only the question raised by the EC about the possible use of soybean MON 87705 oil in frying, but also other possible food uses. Having assessed total replacement, the most conservative scenario arising from both domestic and commercial use of the oil, the EFSA GMO Panel concluded that the use of soybean MON 80775 oil does not impact on human health and nutrition. The Panel recommends a post-market monitoring plan for the marketed foods and feed.


Objectives: Against the public health implications of untreated mental illness among general hospital inpatients, this study aimed firstly to examine hospital physicians' level of referral to a psychiatric service, and secondly, to explore the extent of these doctors' knowledge of psychiatric issues by comparing their reasons for referring patients with patients' final psychiatric diagnoses. Methods: Over a one-year period, data were collected on all patients referred to a consultation liaison psychiatric service at a multi-disciplinary teaching hospital. Reasons for referral and final psychiatric diagnosis were recorded. Official hospital census data were also used in the calculation of referral rates. Chi -square or Fisher's Exact tests were used as appropriate to explore potential associations between reasons for referral and psychiatric diagnosis. Statistical significance was taken at the 0.05 level. Results : The referral rate was 1.5%. Strange and disruptive behaviour as reasons for referral were strongly associated with the presence of underlying medical conditions as the cause of mental disturbance. Anxiety and psychotic symptoms as reasons for referral were associated with anxiety and psychotic disorders respectively. Depression was often given as a reason for referral when clinical depression was absent, but adjustment issues were prominent. Conclusions : The psychiatric service was underutilized. Generally, the psychiatric knowledge of physicians was fair. However, closer attention to underlying medical conditions as a potential cause for psychiatric disturbance , as well as to the difference between maladjustment and depression , seems warranted. It is possible that clinicians were less able to detect mild to moderate cases of psychiatric illness .


New 40 ArP9 Ar step heating data for amphiboles from three N-S to NNW -SSE-trending alkaline dikes in western Norway yield remarkably consistent plateau ages at about 221 Ma. Together with most previously published amphibole and whole-rock Kl Ar ages from Sunnhordland, which cluster around 220 Ma, the new data provide convincing evidence for a Late Triassic main pulse of dike intrusion. We conclude that most (but not all) of the K-Ar data are reliable and that Permian K-Ar and fission-track ages from four dikes in the region suggest an earlier pulse of intrusion at around 250-260 Ma. However, it is argued that the previously published Jurassic whole-rock age of one of the dikes is caused by hydrothermal alteration of the groundmass. A �220 Ma40 ArP9 Ar plateau (and isochron) age of unaltered homblende is believed to refiect more closely the age of intrusion, in agreement with other ages of late dikes in the region. The Permian (250-260 Ma) and Triassic (220-230 Ma) pulses of dike injection are correlated with Permian and Triassic phases of extension in the North Sea basin to the west. The strong inftuence of Permo- Triassic stretching at the eastem side of the Viking Graben and only mild rejuvenation of Permo- Triassic structures in the late Jurassic help to explain the apparent absence of Jurassic rnagmatism in southwestem Norway.


Sorption characteristics of Bulli seam coal samples were examined with respect to coal particle size, gas type and time. Sorption tests were carried out by the indirect gravimetric method for determining gas content in coal. Various coal particle sizes were tested in addition to 54 mm diameter coal core. The other coal sizes were ±15 mm (-5/8+0.530 mesh) cubical blocks and coal fragments of ±1.18 mm (-0.256+16 mesh), ±6.70 mm (-5/16+0.256 mesh), and ±8.00 mm (-5/8+5/16 mesh). The samples were maintained in specially designed pressure vessels, at constant temperature of 24 °C and subjected to gas pressures up to maximum of 4000 kPa with incremental increasing steps of 500 kPa. All samples were tested with CH4, and CO2. The first group of ±1.18 mm size coal fragments achieved the highest gas adsorption, and the lowest was 54 mm size. Adsorption of carbon dioxide was typically the highest and that of methane was lowest. Furthermore, the tests also showed that the longer it takes to reach the pressure equilibrium the higher the gas adsorption. This study suggests that the gas content in coal depends strongly on gas type, sorption time, and particle size. Sorption time however, appears to be independent of particle size.


Cetacean sightings are reported from opportunistic deployment of observers on fishing boats during 1998–1999 in Galician waters (north-west Spain), a region of high biodiversity, intensive fishing activity and an important cetacean habitat. During 111 trips, a total track length of 8128 km and estimated area of approximately 9840 km2 was surveyed, including both inshore and offshore waters.  The most frequently sighted species were common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) and bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Taking account of biases in the survey data, the former species was most commonly sighted in deeper offshore waters (>200 m depth) with the highest sightings rate in the second quarter of the year. Bottlenose dolphins were seen mainly in inshore waters to the south of Galicia but also in offshore waters further north. Sightings rates were higher when the observers' boats were engaged in fishing than when travelling. Published dietary data suggest that this may simply indicate that dolphins tend to congregate in fishing areas where their main prey occur.  Several different treatments of the data were used to derive relative abundance indices (taking account of observation biases and of spatial variation in survey coverage). These calculations suggest that there may be around 7000–10,000 common dolphins and 600–1000 bottlenose dolphins in Galician waters, although dedicated surveys are needed to produce robust estimates.  Other species seen during surveys included the long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas), harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena), Risso's dolphin (Grampus griseus) and fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus). Incidental observations from boats and land-based surveys supported the high relative abundance of common dolphins and, in inshore waters, of bottlenose dolphins, as well as providing additional records of porpoises and Risso's dolphins.


Aim: mobile Health Technology is rapidly advancing and becoming a cost effective option for intervention delivery particularly for isolated and hard to reach populations, such as people living with HIV/AIDS. We conducted a literature review to evaluate mobile phone technology utilize for HIV prevention and care. Methods: We conducted a literature review using the search Terms from the MESH such as Mobile phone technology, mobile health, AIDS and HIV on the online databases such as PubMed/Medline, Web of Science, ProQuest, Science Direct, SID, IranMedex and WHO databases from 2006 to 2016 and those available in full-text articles were selected and were used in writing this article (totaly25articles). The review was conducted according to CONSORT and STROB guideline. Results: Mobile Health as a subset of e-health, security and confidentiality principles and the ability to produce text messages, voicemail, Internet access and GPS, can be effective in providing health information to people at risk of HIV, encourage and remind AIDS patients to continue treatment and self-care and clinical data collection in AIDS patients. By using this technology doctors and researchers can improve in collecting clinical data from AIDS patients and in their medical researchers. Obstacles and challenges in using mobile technology including : inequality in accessing the internet in all zones , especially in out of the reach zones, inability to pay the phone or internet costs for people in differentn level of society . Also different cultural and social levels. Conclusion: most actions that have been taken place due to controlling and treating people with AIDS, based on mobile phone technologyn .The science and practice of mobile Health for HIV are evolving rapidly, but still in their early stages and needs more rigorous investigations to provide evidence of long-term impact on clinical indicators.


Plagiolepis alluaudi EMERY, 1894 is a tiny Old World ant that has spread to many parts of the world through human commerce. To examine the worldwide distribution of P. alluaudi, I compiled and mapped published and unpublished specimen records from > 450 sites. I documented the earliest known P. alluaudi records for 46 geographic areas (countries, island groups, and US states), including several areas for which I found no previously published records: Anguilla, Barbados, Comoros Islands, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Îles Eparses, Martinique, Nevis, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, and St. Martin. Plagiolepis alluaudi is a primarily tropical species, apparently native to Madagascar and neighboring islands. It has become a pest on Pacific islands and in European greenhouses. Before the present study, the only published reports of P. alluaudi in the New World were several records from Bermuda and one record from California. Recent surveys in Bermuda and California have produced no additional reports of P. alluaudi. My new records of P. alluaudi from nine tropical islands in the West Indies indicate a substantial New World invasion. It may be that the tropical climate of the West Indies is more suitable for P. alluaudi than the subtropical climates of Bermuda and California, where it may have died out.