SUMMARY Accession of the Central and Eastern European countries to the European Union involved considerable institutional changes in the field of environmental governance that undermined existing policy practices. Such changes in biodiversity governance are examined through two case studies from Poland concerning road development schemes in ecologically sensitive areas. Documentary material and semi-structured interviews are analysed and interpreted in light of the policy arrangement approach and historical institutionalism. After the EU accession there was a rapid shift from a government-monopolized arrangement towards a multi-level governance arrangement with regard to conflicts between infrastructure and natural areas. Previously, the government controlled practically all aspects of environmental policymaking, despite potential routes for greater involvement of non-state actors. Only the formal rules of Natura 2000 and environmental impact assessment, guarded by a coalition of powerful supranational bodies, non-governmental organizations and scientists, changed the pattern of governmental policy-making. New policy arrangements have increased capacity and legitimacy in the implementation of the European Union rules.


Any form of paralysis due to spinal cord injury or other medical condition, can have a
significant impact on the quality and life expectancy of an individual. Advances in
medicine and surgery have offered solutions that can improve the condition of a patient,
however, most of the times an individual's life does not dramatically improve. Implanted
neuroprosthetic devices can partially restore the lost functionalities by means of
functional electrical stimulation techniques. This involves applying patterns of electrical
current pulses to innervate the neural pathways between the brain and the affected
muscles/organs, while recording of neural information from peripheral nerves can be
used as feedback to improve performance.

Recording naturally occurring nerve signals via implanted electrodes attached to
tripolar amplifier configurations is an approach that has been successfully used for
obtaining desired information in non-acute preparations since the mid-70s. The neural
signal (i.e. ENG), which can be exploited as feedback to another system (e.g. a
stimulator), or simply extracted for further processing, is then intrinsically more reliable
in comparison to signals obtained by artificial sensors. Sadly, neural recording of this
type can be greatly compromised by myoelectric (i.e. EMG) interference, which is
present at the neural interface and registered by the recording amplifier. Although current
amplifier configurations reduce myoelectric interference this is suboptimal and therefore
there is room for improvement. The main difficulty exists in the frequency-dependence of
the electrode-tissue interface impedance which is complex.

The simplistic Quasi-Tripole amplifier configuration does not allow for the complete
removal of interference but it is the most power efficient because it uses only one
instrumentation amplifier. Conversely, the True-Tripole and its developed automatic
counterpart the Adaptive-Tripole, although minimise interference and provide means of
compensating for the electrode asymmetries and changes that occur to the neural
interface (e.g. due to tissue growth), they do not remove interference completely as the
insignificant electrode impedance is still important. Additionally, removing interference
apart from being dependent on the frequency of the interfering source, it is also subject to
its proximity and orientation with respect to the recording electrodes, as this affects the
field. Hence neutralisation with those two configurations, in reality, is not achieved in the
entire bandwidth of the neural signal in the interfering spectrum. As both are less power
efficient than the Quasi-Tripole an alternative configuration offering better performance
in terms of interference neutralisation (i.e. frequency-independent, insensitive to the
external interference fields) and, if possible, consume less power, is considered highly
attractive.

The motivation of this work is based on the following fact: as there are models that
can mimic the frequency response of metal electrodes it should be possible, by
constructing a network of an equivalent arrangement to the impedance of electrodes, to fit
the characteristic neutralisation impedance – the impedance needed to balance a recording tripole – and ideally require no adjustment for removing interference. The
validity of this postulation is proven in a series of in-vitro preparations using a modified
version of the Quasi-Tripole made out of discrete circuit components where an
impedance is placed at either side of the outer electrodes for balancing the recording
arrangement. Various models were used in place of that impedance. In particular,
representing the neutralisation impedance as a parallel RC reduced interference by a
factor of 10 at all frequencies in the bandwidth of the neural signal while removed it
completely at a spot frequency. Conversely, modelling the effect of the constant phase
angle impedance of highly polarisable electrodes using a 20 stages non-uniform RC
ladder network resulted in the minimisation of interference without the initial
requirement of continuous adjustment. It is demonstrated that with a model that does not
perfectly fit the impedance profile of a monopolar electrochemical cell an average
reduction in interference of about 100 times is achieved, with the cell arranged as a
Wheatstone bridge that can be balanced in the ENG band.


Features ads from the space age. With the consumerist euphoria of the fifties still going strong and the race to the moon at its height, the mood of advertising in the sixties was cheerful, optimistic, and at times, revolutionary. The decade's ads touted perceived progress (such as tang and instant omelets-"just add water") while striving to reinforce good old American values. Stars like Sean Connery, Woody Allen, Salvador Dali, and Sammy Davis Jr. endorsed everything from bourbon to handmade suits in an attempt by Madison Avenue to urge Americans to open their wallets and participate in one giant consumer binge. Social change at the end of the era brought psychedelic swirls and liberated women and minorities to a newly conscious public. Keep an eye out for some of the more surprising and controversial ads-such as Tupperware billing its storage container as a "wifesaver." From forgotten cars such as the Dodge Dart, to cigarettes ("This Christmas give cartons of Luckies") to food (mmml TV dinners!) and much more, this colorful collection of print ads explores the wide, wonderful world of 60s Americana.


The Microsoft .NET Micro Framework is a small and efficient .NET runtime environment used to run managed code on devices that are too small and resource constrained for Windows CE and the Compact Framework. Expert .NET Micro Framework will teach you everything you need to know to use the .NET Micro Framework to create effective embedded applications. It begins with the basics of accessing hardware and networking before delving deep into the less-known areas such as cryptography and globalization, and how to use technologies such as wireless communication that are not directly supported by the .NET Micro Framework. This book is a must if you want to get as much as possible out of the .NET Micro Framework to write powerful embedded applications. Expert .NET Micro Framework also describes how to use resources and write globalized and multilingual embedded applications. You will learn how to effectively use binary serialization to store data permanently in flash memory or exchange data with a PDA or PC. Topics like cryptography and encrypted data exchange with a .NET or Compact Framework application are covered. What you'll learn Get an overview of the .NET Micro Framework 3.0 and its tools. Explore the available devices and development kits. Use and write managed drivers to access the hardware components such as GPIO ports, serial ports, I2C and SPI components, network sockets, and file systems. Provide web services on devices with the new Device Profile for Web Services (DPWS). Master advanced and undocumented topics such as cryptography, secure sockets, multithreading and synchronization, binary serialization, extended weak references, execution constraints, globalization and localization using resources, and implementing a USB client. Write applications with a rich graphical user interface based on a mini Windows Presentation Foundation that supports touch displays and gesture input. Effectively extend or write hardware emulators using undocumented features of the configuration engine and emulator components. Who is this book for? This book is for anyone with an interest in creating embedded systems. Primarily, it is written for the benefit of .NET developers with a background in C#, but it will equally appeal to hardware developers with a background in Assembler, C, or C++ who will be impressed by the benefits that managed code can bring to their devices.


The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role and place of oil and gas politics in the Iraqi Federation. This aspect is investigated in its relationship to ethnic conflict. These two features are considered in their interplay, which permeates the whole Iraqi constitutional experience. The 2005 Iraqi Constitution embodies specific but vague dispositions related to the ownership and the 'management' of oil and gas revenue sharing. In addition, other disputes are shaking the relationship between the Kurdistan Region and the central government, especially the status of Kirkuk, which is strictly connected to the ownership of natural resources. Therefore, the 'imported' Iraqi Constitution is critically examined, above all in those ambiguous and carefully drafted dispositions and where the Constitution has not been implemented. Two specific sections are devoted to federalism, decentralisation and oil and gas revenue sharing. An analytical framework of such dispositions is provided, as well as their cumulative reading within the federal structure. In the last sections, it is argued that the interplay between oil and gas disputes and ethnic conflict are shaping the asymmetric Iraqi Federation, especially between the Kurdistan and the Iraqi central government. This issue is highlighted by the unsolved status of Kirkuk and the impossibility to address the constitutional shortcomings through constitutional amendments' rule. Therefore, the Constitution is caught in between the informal agreements and the undefined horizon of the Iraqi (un)constitutional politics


Since January 1, 2005 all European companies are required to apply International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in their consolidated accounts. One major decision of real estate companies adopting IFRS is whether to apply the cost model or the revaluation model for measuring their investment property. For a sample of European real estate companies, we investigate (1) the determinants of applying the cost model versus the fair value model and (2) the impact of applying these models on the stock market value and performance. The preliminary results of the first analysis indicate that in particular company characteristics like ownership structure, market-to-book ratio, size, profitability and the relative value of investment property influence the propensity to apply the fair value model. In the second analysis we use a value relevance approach to examine whether the decision to apply one of these models for measuring the value of investment property i nfluences the market valuation of companies and what factors have an impact on this influences. Our study contributes to the literature by exploring the revaluation of fixed assets by real estate companies across different countries applying the same accounting regime. Moreover, we provide evidence on the interaction between the determinants and consequences of applying fair value accounting.


BACKGROUND
This study investigated if motor proficiency (MP) in preschool age associate with physical activity (PA) in adolescence.

METHODS
In 2004, the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency-Short Form (BOTMP-SF) (7) was administered to 413 children, aged 4-6 years, who were classified to MP groups according to their BOTMP-SF total score (TS). In 2014, the PA of 106 former participants (47 boys, 59 girls) was measured with Omron pedometers. MP [three (high; above average; average)] × gender (two) ANOVA and Bonferroni tests were computed on average of steps/week.

RESULTS
A significant interaction between the two factors was revealed (F = 15.27, p < .001, η2=.153), indicating that MP influenced male and female PA differently. Only in average MP group, males presented higher PA than females, whereas there were no differences between the two genders in the higher MP groups. Moreover, the only significant difference in PA among male groups was that between high and above average MP groups, while in females there were significant differences among all groups.

CONCLUSION
High MP at preschool age positively associated with the PA in adolescence, especially in females. Emphasis on the development of proficient young movers might be beneficial for lifelong PA.


Romer (1993) suggests that universities should undertake experiments that would test the value of mandatory attendance for economics courses. He presents evidence showing that those who attended his classes received higher grades on his exams and concluded that ^San important part of the relationship [to the course grade] reflects a genuine effect of attendance.^T This conclusion is likely to be welcomed by some economics professors. In this note, I address two issues. First, what does prior research imply about a relationship between attendance and learning? Second, does Romer^Rs own evidence support his conclusion that mandatory attendance is beneficial?


Patent law tries to spur the development of new, better, innovative technology. But it focuses much more on "new" than "better" — and it turns out that "new" carries real social costs. I argue that patent law promotes innovation that diverges from existing technology, either a little (what I call "differentiating innovation") or a lot ("exploring innovation"), at the expense of innovation that tells us more about existing technology ("deepening innovation"). Patent law's focus on newness is unsurprising, and fits within a well-told narrative of innovative diversity accompanied by market selection of the best technologies. Unfortunately, innovative diversity brings not only the potential benefits of technological advances, but also costs: incompatibility between different technologies; a spread-out, shallow pool of knowledge; and the underlying costs of developing parallel technologies that aren't actually better. These costs matter.

Biomedical innovation illustrates the high costs of divergence. Although pharmaceuticals are touted as a poster child for patents, the world is rife with me-too drugs that drive up costs with little to show. Biomedical innovation often suffers from a particular trap: Patent incentives push innovators toward "new," but incentives from Food and Drug Administration approval and insurer reimbursement push innovators toward "not too new," because products that are very different are harder to get approved and reimbursed. And in this space, artificially constricted markets do a poor job of selecting better technologies. The result is a proliferation of technologies that are "new for the sake of new," giving us the costs of divergence without much in the way of benefits.

This Article presents an original spectrum of innovative divergence, illuminates how various patent doctrines drive divergence, and lays out the substantial costs of divergence through biomedical examples. It analyzes the complex interactions between three different incentives for biomedical innovation, and presents policy prescriptions to help avoid the trap of "new for the sake of new." In the process, it lays out how innovation scholars and policymakers alike should take into account the cost of novelty.


Sweeteners are one of the components which are often added to foodstuffs. Synthetic sweeteners are widely circulated in the community is cyclamate. Consumption of cyclamate that exceeds the dose will lead to bladder cancer. It will also cause lung, liver, and lymph tumors. The purpose of this study was to determine the presence of cyclamate in ice cream that exceeded the required threshold. The type of this research is the descriptive survey. The sample of this research is ice cream that produced by household companies from all ice cream traders in North Banjarbaru with 11 ice cream sellers. The variables in this study were cyclamate content found in ice cream. The results showed that 11 samples of ice cream were examined, 9 samples containing cyclamate with the highest level of 7.37 g / kg as cyclamic acid. The conclusion of this study is ice cream containing cyclamate found as much as 82% (9 samples), while 18% (2 samples) others negative, from 9 samples containing cyclamate positive, 89% did not qualify the requirements of PERMENKES Number 208 in 1985 that exceeds 2 gr/Kg as cyclamate acid. More specific checks are required for the analysis of cyclamate levels by other methods such as High Performance Liquid Chromatography.


Beckground: Francisella tularensis is a gram-negative zoonotic pathogen primarily of animals and occasionally of humans. The disease is now recognized as tularemia in most parts of the world, but it has been called rabbit fever, deer-fly fever, and market men's disease in the United States; wild hare disease (yato-byo) and Ohara's disease in Japan; and water-rat trappers' disease in Russia. Tularemia continues to be responsible for significant morbidity and mortality, despite the availability of numerous antibiotics active against the organism. The first cases of tularaemia in Kosovo are reported in the south-western part of Kosovo, in the region of Gjakova in April 2000 in the village of Brovina - 22 patients who were infected through contaminated well water. In the meantime disease is spread in villages of Skivjan, Korenica, Batusha and later throughout Kosovo. Aim: The aim of this study is presentation of characteristics of Tularemia in Kosovo in 2010 and analyzes of the epidemiological, clinical and treatment features of Tularaemia in Kosovo. Methods: We analyzed 53 cases of tularaemia (from 320 patients with tularaemia in Kosovo in 2010) that were from 12 municipalities of Kosovo. The largest number of patients were from Municipality of Vushtria (11 patients) and municipality of Skenderaj (9 patients). All these cases were from rural areas; this confirms that social and epidemiological conditions are very important for appearance of this disease. We have analyzed the data from their medical histories, which includes their medical anamnesis, clinical examination, laboratory tests and their treatment. Results: The mean age of patients was 22 years, 13 patients were children under the age of 10 years. Patients were hospitalized an average of 14.7 days, while incubation time of the disease was an averaging of 28 days. Social and epidemiologic conditions were important factors in the appearance of the disease; 29 patients were water supplied only from wells. All patients were from rural areas. Clinical manifestations were temperature, neck pain, neck and axillary lymphadenopathy, and apathy. Clinically, glandular form has dominated. From laboratory tests, 51 of patients had high erythrocyte sedimentation rate, 13 cases had a slight anemia, and 34 patients had leukocytosis. Other laboratory tests were in normal values. Agglutination test in all cases was positive. All cases were treated with antibiotics; 31 patient were treated with gentamicin, 8 patients were treated with streptomycin and 14 patient were treated with other antibiotic. Incision and drainage of the gland as adjuvant therapy was applied in 27 patient. Conclusions: In this late decade in our country, tularemia continues to be a disease that represents a healthcare problem. Glandular forms of tularemia dominate in Kosovo. Treatment with gentamicin has had good effects. Incision and drainage of the inflamed glands has shown to be a good method in accelerating the recovery of patient. Prophylaxis has to be applied for prevention of the disease.


As a representative advanced imaging technique, the digital image correlation (DIC) method has been well established and widely used for deformation measurements in experimental mechanics. This methodology, both 2D and 3D, provides qualitative and quantitative information regarding the specimen's non-uniform deformation response. Its full-field capabilities and non-contacting approach are especially advantageous when applied to heterogeneous material systems such as fiber-reinforced composites and integrated chip (IC) packages. To increase understanding of damage evolution in advanced composite material systems, a series of large deflection bending-compression experiments and model predictions have been performed for a woven glass-epoxy composite material system. Stereo digital image correlation has been integrated with a compression-bending mechanical loading system to simultaneously quantify full-field deformations along the length of the specimen. Specifically, the integrated system is employed to experimentally study the highly non-uniform full-field strain fields on both compression and tension surfaces of the heterogeneous specimen undergoing compression-bending loading. Theoretical developments employing both small and large deformation models are performed. Results show (a) that the Euler–Bernoulli beam theory for small deformations is adequate to describe the shape and deformations when the axial and transverse displacement are quite small, (b) that a modified Drucker's equation effectively extends the theoretical predictions to the large deformation region, providing an accurate estimate for the buckling load, the post-buckling axial load-axial displacement response of the specimen and the axial strain along the beam centerline, even in the presence of observed anticlastic (double) specimen curvature near mid-length for all fiber angles (that is not modeled), (c) for the first time show that the quantities σeff εeff are linearly related on both the compression and tension surfaces of a beam-compression specimen in the range 0 ≤ εeff < 0.005 as the specimen undergoes combined bending-compression loading. In addition, computational studies also show the consistency with the experimental σeff εeff results on both surfaces. In a separate set of studies, SEM-based imaging at high magnification is used with 2D-DIC to measure thermal deformations at the nano-scale on cross-sections of IC package to improve understanding of the highly heterogeneous nature of the deformations in IC chips. Full-field thermal deformation experiments on different materials within an IC chip cross-section have been successfully obtained for areas from 50x50 μm to 10x10 μm and at temperatures from RT to ≈ 200C using images obtained with a Zeiss Ultraplus Thermal Field Emission SEM. Initially, polishing methods for heterogeneous electronic packages containing silicon, Cu bump, WPR layer, substrate and FLI (First level interconnect) were evaluated with the goal of achieving sub-micron surface flatness. Studies have shown that surface flatness of 700nm is achievable, though this level is unacceptable when using e-beam photolithography for nanoscale patterning. Fortunately, a novel self-assembly technique was identified and used to obtain a dense, randomly isotropic, high contrast pattern over the surface of the entire heterogeneous region on an IC package for SEM imaging and DIC. Experiments performed on baseline materials for temperatures in the range 25°C to 200°C demonstrates that the complete process is effective for quantifying the thermal coefficient of expansion for nickel, aluminum and brass. The experiments on IC cross-sections were performed when viewing 25μm x 25μm areas and correcting image distortions using software developed at USC. The results clearly show the heterogeneous nature of the specimen surface and non-uniform strain field across the complex material constituents for temperatures ranging from RT to 200°C. Experimental results confirm that the method is capable of measuring local thermal expansion in selected regions, improving our understanding of these heterogeneous material systems under controlled thermal-environmental conditions.


We present a novel message passing algorithm for approximating the MAP problem in graphical models. The algorithm is similar in structure to max-product but unlike max-product it always converges, and can be proven to find the exact MAP solution in various settings. The algorithm is derived via block coordinate descent in a dual of the LP relaxation of MAP, but does not require any tunable parameters such as step size or tree weights. We also describe a generalization of the method to cluster based potentials. The new method is tested on synthetic and real-world problems, and compares favorably with previous approaches.


For several years at the Joint Research Centre-Ispra laboratories, cyclic adsorption processes have been developed for the purification of the plasma exhaust stream of a deuterium-tritium fusion reactor. A purification process consisting of two coupled thermal swing adsorption systems seemed to be the most convenient process. In this context, a screening study was carried out to select the most suitable adsorbent materials and appropriate working temperatures. This was mainly done by experimental measurements of adsorption isotherms of the single components of the plasma exhaust stream and by a careful evaluation of the multicomponent adsorption equilibria. Experiments on adsorption dynamics were carried out in a pilot plant to demonstrate the feasibility and to evaluate the performance of the process. The experimental apparatus was designed to treat gas mixture flow rates up to 20 to 30 standard temperature and pressure l/h. A mathematical model was developed and tested against the experimental results to describe the adsorption process and, in particular, to evaluate and to optimize the process cycle time. 27 refs., 4 figs., 9 tabs.


Nereidid worms are well known to be key prey species for aquatic organisms, including economically important fish (e.g. plaice) and invertebrates (shrimps). Food regimes which include nereidids improve the reproductive fitness of cultured animals, i.e. the 'nereidid effect'. Aquaculture produces huge amounts of sludge, which might be recycled by feeding to the ragworm Nereis diver- sicolor. Here we analysed the fatty acid profiles in N. diversicolor over 1 yr for a wild population and for ragworms fed with commercial fish food or eel sludge. The omega-3 (ω-3) eicosapentanoic acid (20:5n3) was the most abundant fatty acid followed by palmitic (16:0), stearic (18:0) and oleic (18:1) acids. Biomass of the ragworms increased by 205% in worms fed with fish food and remained stable in worms fed with eel sludge, indicating the good adaptation of individuals to the culture conditions. Only under fish food regimes were significant increases observed in saturated and total unsaturated fatty acids compared to natural food regimes. However, the ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids did not differ among food regimes, indicating that sludge from aquaculture is a good nutritive resource for N. diversicolor. This suggests the potential use of ragworms in aquaculture to reduce the production of waste and increase the reproductive fitness of cultivated animals.


This paper outlines an interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein's remark in the Big Typescript in which he compares the philosopher bewitched by the workings of language to "the suffering of an ascetic". The interpretation takes as its starting point Friedrich Nietzsche's terse account of the philosopher, the history of philosophy, and his diagnosis of ascetic self-misunderstanding, from the Third Essay, "What do ascetic ideals mean?", in On the Genealogy of Morality . In its assumption of an affinity between Wittgenstein's remark and Nietzsche's descriptions, and in its analysis, this paper introduces a "method of voice borrowing" to approach the question: "Wittgenstein and Nietzsche?" The juxtaposition of Wittgenstein's conception of the philosopher's linguistic self-misunderstanding with Nietzsche's notion of the ascetic self-misunderstanding leads finally to the question of what is gained by introducing this method, and hence by reading Wittgenstein's remark on the suffering of an ascetic with the help of Nietzsche's voice.


The anti-osteoporotic effect of sialoglycoprotein isolated from the eggs of Carassius auratus (Ca-SGP) has previously been demonstrated in vivo. However, the mechanism by which this macromolecular substance regulates bone metabolism remains unclear. Given the correlation between gut microbiota and the homeostasis of bone metabolism, the current study applied real-time PCR and 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing to investigate the influence of Ca-SGP on gut microbiota in ovariectomized rats. Real-time PCR analysis showed that Ca-SGP treatment significantly reversed the increase of Escherichia coli and Bacteroides fragilis, and the decrease of Clostridium leptum, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, and Lactobacillus induced by ovariectomy. Subsequent high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA further demonstrated that Ca-SGP not only partly recovered the alterations of gut microbiota to baseline levels in OVX rats, but also significantly increased the relative abundance of Lactobacillus, which may support the protection of bone metabolism. The present study may contribute towards our understanding of the mechanism by which Ca-SGP seemingly preserves bone mass.


This guide is intended to assist with research into the experiences of peoples of African origin both in Africa and in the African Diaspora.


A promising approach to meeting the need in many jurisdictions for timely, in-depth qualitative health systems experience data, is to elicit feedback through smartphone and web applications (apps). Apps offer an appealing tool to elicit data from patients and family members who may feel stigma when receiving some services and a power imbalance when providing feedback to health-care providers. In this article, we examine the effectiveness of a suite of smartphone and web apps called myExperience (myEXP) that were created to gather care experiences of youth, family members, and service providers as part of an experience-based co-design (EBCD) study in Ontario involving youth with mental disorders. We analyzed data from 12 triads of youth (aged 16–24), family members, and service providers gathered between August 2015 and December 2016. We used qualitative content analysis to understand participant feedback on the myEXP apps and identify thematic categories that emerged from experience data elicited through the myEXP apps. We found overall that the myEXP apps were more effective at eliciting experience data from youth compared with family members and service providers. Rich experience data were gathered from youth about treatment plans in real time through the apps. The apps also showed important promise as reflective tools for all participants. They may offer advantages in research that seeks to improve responsiveness in service delivery and build mutual understanding. The apps also offer choice in how data are elicited, encourage more candid feedback and help to overcome stigma, which are important considerations for some vulnerable populations. For service redesign research using approaches such as EBCD, apps offer real-time data gathering that can complement and enhance traditional approaches such as retrospective interviews and observation.


Objective To assess the value of the 28-joint Disease Activity Score (DAS28) in evaluating disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) associated with fibromyalgia (FM). In this situation, because of the weight of the subjective measures included in the DAS28 equation, the patient's status may be overestimated, leading to inappropriate treatment. We analyze the relationship between RA and FM and discuss whether the association is random or a marker of poor prognosis. Methods A questionnaire, developed when biologic therapies were introduced, was administered and the results analyzed in a consecutive, female outpatient population including 105 patients with RA, 49 with RA and FM (RAF), and 28 with FM. Psychosocial characteristics, disease presentation, and radiographic joint destruction evaluation were compared in the 3 populations. Results The presentation of RA was the same in patients with RA and RAF, but the 2 populations differed by socioprofessional characteristics, significantly higher disease activity in patients with RAF, and significantly more severe joint destruction in patients with RA. The RAF group was similar to the FM control population in socioprofessional and some physical characteristics. Regression analysis using the DAS28 measures differed significantly in the weight allowed to 28-joint counts for pain and swelling, but the constant factor was higher in patients with RAF. Conclusion DAS28 overestimated objective RA severity in patients who also had FM. The association between RA and FM does not appear to be a marker of worse prognosis, but rather a fortuitous association between the 2 diseases and one that may afford these patients some protection against joint destruction.


This Special Communication summarizes the key points raised at the Society of Surgical Chairs mentorship panel sessions held at the 2014 and 2015 annual meetings of the society. Highlights of these expert panel discussions include senior chairs' insights into successfully dealing with increasingly complex academic medical organizations and horizontal department management expectations in the context of the arrival of the Millennial Generation into the work force. Three key tenets of effective surgery leadership that arose from these sessions deal with the importance of (1) collaboration and cooperativity, (2) humanized relationships and mentorship, and (3) operational efficiency. Overall, the panel consensus for the future of surgery leadership was optimistic while recognizing that the demands of chairmanship are considerable.


Blood on the Pavement 1984 is a ten-minute musical composition for clarinet in B-flat (doubling bass clarinet), grand piano, violin, viola, and cello. This thesis will address key concerns regarding the generative pitch materials and numerical constructs that govern the overall form of the piece. First I provide aesthetic context for the work by exploring its influence, primarily the works of Irish-born artist Francis Bacon. This composition is as much an ode to the artist as it is a portrait of myself. Secondly, I describe the pitch, rhythmic and numerical constructs that dictate the gestural and registral aspects of the composition, as well as the symmetries that are built into the tone rows that serve as the armature for the composition. After outlining these major structural, I relate them to the aleatoric timbral trajectories of the composition, and describe how the harmonic and rhythmic cells are mutated and transformed by extended techniques and microtones.


Study for the effect of share trading days to the daily share returns in Stock Exchange has been carried out most invarious countries. Overseas studies produce consistent findings that the daily share returns results in negative impact on Monday (Monday Effect) and resulting inpositive impact on Friday (Week End Effect). Those effects are called as day of the week effect. The similar studies carried out Indonesia have not obtained consistent findings as similar as overseas including overseas studies make use of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS). Whereas this study does not utilize this approach, as most of the assumptions could not be fulfilled. Technical Approaches dealt with the share returns calculation dominantly affect to the amount of daily share return. These are due to the facts that the irrational factors also used by the investors to do the transactions. Consequently, the demand and supply of the share are also influenced by the behaviour of the investors them elves. Statistical approach used for examining the day effects is Autoregressive Moving Average (ARIMA) Approach. This approach is chosen as there is no hetero scedasticity or there is an existence of stationary data. To examine the difference of share trading day effects to the share returns this study utilizes Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), 244 daily aggregate share price indexes (IHSG) and LQ45 Indexes are used for this study. The findings of this study suggest that (1) all of the share trading days give a positive impact on the share returns, (2) daily aggregate share price indexes (IHSG) do significantly affect the share returns on Thursday and (3) LQ45 Indexes do significantly affect the share returns on Thursday and Friday. These findings imply that the investors should consider the day effects in deciding to be involved in share trading so that they could maximize their future returns.


Civil engineers are increasingly called upon to design according to codes of practice
which are foreign, or otherwise unfamiliar to the engineer. Some form of 'tool' to aid such
engineers in the safe and effective use of unfamiliar codes, is therefore highly desirable. The
argument presented in this thesis, is that a specialised 'knowledge-based system' (KBS) can
be successfully constructed in order to provide various sons of insights into the design
methods used in certain codes of practice.
Three key ideas were used in the implementation produced during the research: the
development of a novel set of complementary 'facilities' for examining the design methods
used in codes; the support of comparison between the examination of two different codes;
and ensuring the system's representation of codes and their examination, could be made
readily comprehensible to engineers by using familiar human language phrases. Seven different facilities were developed in the research, including: the ability to
view the codes installed in the system in a form close to a human language (such as English
or French); the ability to perform parts of a code-based design procedure to various levels of
detail; and the ability to inspect the interdependences of design parameters within codes. Use
of these symbolic and numerical methods could provide the engineer with the information
required to understand how and why an unfamiliar code would specify surprising, or
otherwise unusual design parameters in some particular situation. They could also be used in
a more exploratory fashion, with t1ie same broad aim of greater understanding of an
unfamiliar code.
A KBS is a sophisticated computer program that uses the idea of processiilg
knowledge information. A characteristic feature of KBSs is that one of their primary
components is a 'knowledge base' - a store of human expertise. The KBS built in this
research, 'COPES' used an existing abbreviated form of the reinforced concrete (RC) beam
design codes as its knowledge base. In particular, it contained 'procedural knowledge'. COPES was implemented using conventional computer systems and progranuning
languages (pascal and FORTRAN on a Sun workstation). This is in contrast to most
contemporary KBSs, which are often built using a 'shell', or an unconventional declarative
programming language such as Prolog. One reason for this choice was that COPES used
parts of previous computing work done with RC beam design codes, that had also used
conventional computing techniques. However, our research did cover an investigation into
the prospects for an alternative approach using a modem expert system shell. (It was
confirmed that such an approach was generally less suitable in this particular application.)
The COPES system proved to be a useful prototype 'toolbox' of various procedural
knowledge extraction operations, which could help an engineer's understanding of an
unfamiliar code of practice. To provide a practical system, the various explanatory methods
developed could potentially be incorporated into an overall CAD (Computer-Aided Design)
environment, or alternatively, wrapped up in a more sophisticated interactive program.


Abstract Current management recommendations for grassland birds in North America emphasize providing large patches of grassland habitat within landscapes that have few forest or shrubland areas. These Bird Conservation Areas are being proposed under the assumption that large patches of habitat in treeless landscapes will maintain viable populations of grassland birds. This assumption requires that patch size and landscape features affect density and nesting success of grassland birds, and that these effects are consistent among years and regions and across focal species. However, these assumptions have not yet been validated for grassland birds, and the relative importance of local vegetation structure, patch size, and landscape composition on grassland bird populations is not well known. In addition, factors influencing grassland bird nesting success have been investigated mostly in small-scale and short-duration studies. To develop management guidelines for grassland birds, we tested the spatial and temporal repeatability of the influence of patch size and landscape composition on density and nesting success of 3 grassland passerines, after controlling for local-scale vegetation structure, climate, and—when analyzing nest success—bird density. We conducted our study during 4 years (1998–2001) in 44 study plots that were set up in 3 regions of the northern tallgrass prairie in Minnesota and North Dakota, USA. In these study plots we measured density and nesting success of clay-colored sparrows (Spizella pallida), Savannah sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis), and bobolinks (Dolichonyx oryzivorus). Statistical models indicated that density was influenced by patch size, landscape, region, and local vegetation structure more so than by local vegetation structure alone. Both magnitude and direction of the response of density to patch size varied among regions, years, and species. In contrast, the direction of landscape effects was consistent among regions, years, and between Savannah sparrows and bobolinks. In each species, this landscape effect was independent of patch size. Nesting success was not clearly influenced by patch size or landscape composition, and none of the factors that influenced avian density also influenced nesting success in any of the 3 species. General statements on "optimal habitat" for grassland birds should therefore be viewed cautiously. Instead, long-term studies in different regions as well as a deeper understanding of the local system are needed to determine which factors are most important for grassland birds in a particular area.


Abstract Objective: The construction of a questionnaire, in the format of a test, to determine knowledge on dietary fat of higher-educated young adults. Design: The topics on dietary fat included were in accordance with those tested in other studies. Forty multiple-choice items were drafted as questions and incomplete statements following the item construction rules. The items were reviewed by nutrition and food science professionals for content- and face-related evidence (n = 4 respectively) and by students representing the study population for face-related evidence (n = 16) of validity. Twenty items were removed as the panel questioned their relevance and replaced with 17 items reviewed by them. The items now largely focused on food sources of fat. These 37 items formed the preliminary test that was administered to two groups of higher-education students expected to differ in nutrition knowledge level. The completed and scored items were statistically analysed to determine which items could be retained for the test. Items meeting the item analysis criteria formed the test. The Mann-Whitney statistic was used to determine the construct-related evidence of validity and the Kuder-Richardson (K-R) 20 formula for the reliability of the test. Results: The 37-item preliminary test was completed by 99 and 87 students respectively forming the knowledgeable and less knowledgeable groups. Eighteen items remained after the statistical item analysis. Eight items did not meet the difficulty and discrimination index criteria respectively, nine the item-to-total correlation criteria and 13 the answer distribution criteria. The 18-item test was found to be reliable (K-R20 = 0.8997), as well as valid, since a significant difference (p < 0.001) in knowledge was found between the groups in the expected direction. Conclusion: The test can be used to compare the knowledge scores of groups and of individuals as it met the reliability coefficient of 0.75 and 0.85 respectively to make such score decisions.


Conference proceedings are collections of papers or collections of abstracts of papers presented at local, national or international conferences, meetings, congresses, symposia, seminars, workshops or colloquia Conference papers are a rapid means of communicating new research to a wide audience of scientists. Not all papers presented at conference are published, or may only be published as abstracts Printer-friendly version PDF version


Abstract The effects of various fabrication processes, such as compaction and swaging, during the fabrication of a cable-in-conduit conductor on the mechanical and metallurgical properties of jacket material (SS316LN) are discussed in this paper. Microstructure analysis of various samples is carried out, and the change in microstructures has been studied using scanning electron microscopy image analysis. The variation in hardness for the jacket material is also tested after swaging and compaction operations. The jacket samples are tested for their tensile strength, reduction in area, elongation, and impact strength as per applicable American Society for Testing and Materials standards. The ultimate tensile strength (UTS) is observed to be decreased for a sample compacted to 733 MPa when compared to virgin samples. On the contrary, the UTS increased significantly up to 1027 MPa in swaged samples. There is no linear relationship between tensile strength of SS316LN after cold working operations. The effect of thermal shock on the mechanical and metallurgical properties of the jacket material is also investigated.


Fertilin, a member of the ADAM family, is found on the plasma membrane of mammalian sperm. Sperm from mice lacking fertilin beta were shown to be deficient in sperm-egg membrane adhesion, sperm-egg fusion, migration from the uterus into the oviduct, and binding to the egg zona pellucida. Egg activation was unaffected. The results are consistent with a direct role of fertilin in sperm-egg plasma membrane interaction. Fertilin could also have a direct role in sperm-zona binding or oviduct migration; alternatively, the effects on these functions could result from the absence of fertilin activity during spermatogenesis.


In the summer of 2016, Gettysburg College's Musselman Library piloted the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship (DSSF), a library-led, student-centered introduction to digital scholarship. For 10 weeks, a cohort of three undergraduate student fellows were introduced to digital tools, project management, research skills, and the philosophy behind digital scholarship, with the culmination the creation and presentation of a digital scholarship project. While the DSSF program is a library initiative, it drew support from partners from across campus, leveraging instructional support and the experience of digital scholarship practitioners from multiple departments to implement a broad curriculum in digital scholarship. The partners—who included the Educational Technology department, the Civil War Institute, and Gettysburg College faculty with a history of using digital pedagogy techniques in the classroom—worked with librarians to teach digital tools, discuss digital scholarship concepts, and help the student fellows realize the potential of their digital projects. The fellowship was a success, and the work of the Digital Scholarship Fellows continued into the fall and spring semesters as they acted as peer mentors, supporting digital scholarship work in the classroom by leading workshops, providing one-on-one consultations, and assisting with project management. Crossdepartmental support for digital scholarship continued beyond the summer program, as librarians and educational technologists worked closely with faculty during the academic year to support digital classroom assignments when the fellows were supporting a class. Librarians R.C. Miessler and Janelle Wertzberger discuss the program, now in its 2nd year, with an emphasis on the ways in which the digital scholarship community of practice has been strengthened on the Gettysburg College campus through collaborative partnerships, student mentoring, and increased awareness of the value of digital scholarship activity in the classroom.


Abstract Following the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis the world has witnessed a re-accommodation of the global financial system. In the particular case of middle-income countries they have disentangled themselves from the conditionality of the IMF and grown into more assertive actors in international forums, proposing new alternative mechanisms to become more financially independent and for the provision of development assistance. This article critically reviews the new reality by assessing the strategies deployed by developing countries to reduce the IMF's influence, and explores the potential consequences of the rise of middle-income nations for Law and Development.


Osteonecrosis of the femoral head (ONFH) is a debilitating hip disorder, which often produces a permanent femoral head deformity and osteoarthritis. The local delivery of biological agents capable of stimulating bone healing offer potential new treatment options for patients with ONFH. Previous studies from our laboratory have shown that a local intraosseous infusion of bone morphogenic protein-2 (BMP-2) was effective in stimulating new bone formation in a piglet model of ischemic ONFH. However, infusion of BMP-2 solution was associated with unwanted dissemination of BMP-2 out of the femoral head and produced heterotopic ossification in the hip capsule. Injectable hydrogels offer a potential method to control the dissemination of biological molecules in vivo. In the present study, we evaluated the potential of a peptide-based, self-assembling hydrogel called RADA16 to transition from a solution to a gel following infusion into the femoral head, thereby preventing backflow, as well as its potential use as a delivery vehicle for BMP-2. Cadaver pig femoral heads were used to study the backflow and the distribution of RADA16 following an intraosseous infusion. Microcomputed tomography analysis following the infusion of RADA16 mixed with a radiocontrast agent revealed a significant decrease in the amount of back flow of radiocontrast agent down the needle track compared to the soluble infusion of radiocontrast without RADA16. Furthermore, RADA16 mixed with radiocontrast agent showed good distribution within the femoral head. In addition, in vitro experiments revealed that higher concentrations of RADA16 decreased the rate of BMP-2 dissemination out of the hydrogel. The BMP-2 that was released from RADA16 maintains its biological activity, inducing the phosphorylation of SMAD1/5/8 in pig primary bone marrow stromal cells. Lastly, pig primary bone marrow stromal cells showed significantly increased in vitro proliferation on RADA16 hydrogels over 1 week compared to tissue culture plastic, suggesting that it is a suitable matrix for supporting cellular proliferation. In conclusion, RADA16 showed potential for use as a drug delivery vehicle to control the delivery of BMP-2 within the femoral head. This novel therapy may be able to provide benefits to patients suffering from debilitating conditions such as osteonecrosis of the femoral head.


A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a recognizable sign, design, or expression which identifies products or services of a particular source from those of others, although trademarks used to identify services are usually called service marks. The trademark owner can be an individual, business organization, or any legal entity. A trademark may be located on a package, a label, a voucher, or on the product itself. For the sake of corporate identity, trademarks are often displayed on company buildings.


The effective management of digital rights is a crucial challenge in many industries making the transition from physical to digital products. We present an economic model that characterizes the value of digital rights when products are sold both embedded in tangible physical artifacts and as pure digital goods, and when granting digital rights may also affect the extent of digital piracy. Our model indicates that in the absence of piracy, digital rights should be unrestricted, since a seller can use their pricing strategy to optimally balance sales between physical and digital goods. However, the threat of piracy limits the extent to which digital rights should be granted: the value of digital rights is determined not only by their direct effect on the quality of legal digital goods, but by their effect on the differential quality of legal and pirated digital goods. When the latter effect is negative, granting digital rights may have a detrimental effect on value; our model indicates that this kind of effect is more likely to be observed for digital rights that aim to replicate the consumption experience of physical goods, rather than enhancing a customer's digital experience. We test the predictions of our analytical model using data from the ebook industry. Our empirical evidence supports our theoretical results, showing that four separate digital rights each have a significant impact on ebook prices, and establishing that those two that are most strongly associated with digital piracy have a negative impact on seller value. We also show, both analytically and empirically, that sellers should increase the prices of digital goods as the prices of their physical counterparts increase, but decrease them as the technological sophistication of their potential customers increases. Our results represent new evidence of the importance of an informed and judicious choice of the different digital rights permitted by one's DRM platform, and provide a framework for guiding managers in industries that are progressively being "digitized."


A method is given of correcting the asymmetry of an interferogram, caused by either defects in the interferometer or off-center sampling. The method makes use of the phase error, which can be derived from the central portion of the interferogram or from a separate calibration. The technique avoids the disadvantages of the double-sided transform, normally used to derive the spectrum from such interferograms.


Dealing with the volume, complexity, and diversity of data currently being generated by scientific experiments and simulations often causes scientists to waste productive time. Scientific Data Management: Challenges, Technology, and Deployment describes cutting-edge technologies and solutions for managing and analyzing vast amounts of data, helping scientists focus on their scientific goals. The book begins with coverage of efficient storage systems, discussing how to write and read large volumes of data without slowing the simulation, analysis, or visualization processes. It then focuses on the efficient data movement and management of storage spaces and explores emerging database systems for scientific data. The book also addresses how to best organize data for analysis purposes, how to effectively conduct searches over large datasets, how to successfully automate multistep scientific process workflows, and how to automatically collect metadata and lineage information. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of the latest techniques for managing data during scientific exploration processes, from data generation to data analysis. Enhanced by numerous detailed color images, it includes real-world examples of applications drawn from biology, ecology, geology, climatology, and more. Check out Dr. Shoshani discuss the book during an interview with International Science Grid This Week (iSGTW): http://www.isgtw.org/?pid=1002259


Feature extraction is the first and most critical step in image classification. Most existing image classification methods use hand-crafted features, which are not adaptive for different image domains. In this paper, we develop an evolutionary learning methodology to automatically generate domain-adaptive global feature descriptors for image classification using multiobjective genetic programming (MOGP). In our architecture, a set of primitive 2-D operators are randomly combined to construct feature descriptors through the MOGP evolving and then evaluated by two objective fitness criteria, i.e., the classification error and the tree complexity. After the entire evolution procedure finishes, the best-so-far solution selected by the MOGP is regarded as the (near-)optimal feature descriptor obtained. To evaluate its performance, the proposed approach is systematically tested on the Caltech-101, the MIT urban and nature scene, the CMU PIE, and Jochen Triesch Static Hand Posture II data sets, respectively. Experimental results verify that our method significantly outperforms many state-of-the-art hand-designed features and two feature learning techniques in terms of classification accuracy.


A bold and profoundly new way of governing environmental problems is palpable around the globe and aims to overcome the limitations of the interventionist state and its market alternative to offer more effective and legitimate solutions to today's most pressing environmental problems. The 'new environmental governance' (NEG) emphasises a host of novel characteristics including participation, collaboration, deliberation, learning and adaptation and 'new' forms of accountability. While these unique features have generated significant praise from legal and governance scholars, there have been very few systematic evaluations of NEG in practice, and it is still unclear whether NEG will in fact 'work', and if so, when and how. This book offers one of the most rigorous research investigations into cutting edge trends in environmental governance to date. Focusing its inquiry around some of the most central, controversial and/or under researched characteristics of NEG, the book offers fresh insights into the conditions under which we can best achieve successful collaboration, effective learning and adaptation, meaningful participatory and deliberative governance and effective forms of accountability. The book synthesizes its findings to identify seven key pillars of 'good' NEG that are central to its success and will provide useful guidance for policymakers and scholars seeking to apply new governance to a wide range of environmental and non-environmental policy contexts. The book also advances our understanding of State governance and will be a valuable reference for scholars, researchers and students working in law and regulation studies - especially in the field of environmental law.


The high temperature behavior of solute strengthening has previously been treated approximately using various scaling arguments, resulting in logarithmic and power-law scalings for the stress-dependent energy barrier ΔE(τ) versus stress τ. Here, a parameter-free solute strengthening model is extended to high temperatures/low stresses without any a priori assumptions on the functional form of ΔE(τ). The new model predicts that the well-established low-temperature, with energy barrier ΔEb and zero temperature flow stress τy0, transitions to a near-logarithmic form for stresses in the regime 0.2<τ/τy0⩽0.5 and then transitions to a power-law form at even lower stresses τ/τy0<0.03. ΔEb and τy0 remains as the reference energy and stress scales over the entire range of stresses. The model is applied to literature data on solution strengthening in Cu alloys and captures the experimental results quantitatively and qualitatively. Most importantly, the model accurately captures the transition in strength from the low-temperature to intermediate-temperature and the associated transition for the activation volume. Overall, the present analysis unifies the different qualitative models in the literature and, when coupled with the previous parameter-free solute strengthening model, provides a single predictive model for solute strengthening as a function of composition, temperature, and strain rate over the full range of practical utility.


Human capital is one of the most important channels via which universities
positively affect regional development. This paper analyzes the relationship between
university characteristics and graduation rates, and the role of regional characteristics in
this process. We assemble a dataset for the entire public university system in Spain over the
last decade. Observing the same university over several years helps us address the problem
of unobserved heterogeneity. The main findings that can be drawn from our results are that
university features, such as expenditure, student-teacher ratio and financial-aid to students
are important in accounting for graduation rates. Likewise, regional characteristics such as
labour market conditions appear to matter when generating graduate students.


The thesis is divided into four chapters. They are: introduction, experimental, results and discussion about the free ligands and results and discussion about the complexes. The First Chapter, the introductory chapter, is a general introduction to the study of solid state reactions. The Second Chapter is devoted to the materials and experimental methods that have been used for carrying out tile experiments. TIle Third Chapter is concerned with the characterisations of free ligands (Picolinic acid, nicotinic acid, and isonicotinic acid) by using elemental analysis, IR spectra, X-ray diffraction, and mass spectra. Additionally, the thermal behaviour of free ligands in air has been studied by means of thermogravimetry (TG), derivative thermogravimetry (DTG), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements. The behaviour of thermal decomposition of the three free ligands was not identical Finally, a computer program has been used for kinetic evaluation of non-isothermal differential scanning calorimetry data according to a composite and single heating rate methods in comparison with the methods due to Ozawa and Kissinger methods. The most probable reaction mechanism for the free ligands was the Avrami-Erofeev equation (A) that described the solid-state nucleation-growth mechanism. The activation parameters of the decomposition reaction for free ligands were calculated and the results of different methods of data analysis were compared and discussed. The Fourth Chapter, the final chapter, deals with the preparation of cobalt, nickel, and copper with mono-pyridine carboxylic acids in aqueous solution. The prepared complexes have been characterised by analyses, IR spectra, X-ray diffraction, magnetic moments, and electronic spectra. The stoichiometry of these compounds was ML2x(H20), (where M = metal ion, L = organic ligand and x = water molecule). The environments of cobalt, nickel, and copper nicotinates and the environments of cobalt and nickel picolinates were octahedral, whereas the environment of copper picolinate [Cu(PA)2] was tetragonal. However, the environments of cobalt, nickel, and copper isonicotinates were polymeric octahedral structures. The morphological changes that occurred throughout the decomposition were followed by SEM observation. TG, DTG, and DSC measurements have studied the thermal behaviour of the prepared complexes in air. During the degradation processes of the hydrated complexes, the crystallisation water molecules were lost in one or two steps. This was also followed by loss of organic ligands and the metal oxides remained. Comparison between the DTG temperatures of the first and second steps of the dehydration suggested that the water of crystallisation was more strongly bonded with anion in Ni(II) complexes than in the complexes of Co(II) and Cu(II). The intermediate products of decomposition were not identified. The most probable reaction mechanism for the prepared complexes was also Avrami-Erofeev equation (A) characteristic of solid-state nucleation-growth mechanism. The tempemture dependence of conductivity using direct current was determined for cobalt, nickel, Cl.nd copper isonicotinates. An activation energy (ΔE), the activation energy (ΔE ) were calculated.The ternperature and frequency dependence of conductivity, the frequency dependence of dielectric constant, and the dielectric loss for nickel isonicotinate were determined by using altemating current. The value of s paralneter and the value of'density of state [N(Ef)] were calculated. Keyword Thermal decomposition, kinetic, electrical conduclion, pyridine rnono~ carboxylic acid, cOlnplex, transition metal compJex.


Forest insects and pathogens are major disturbance agents that have affected millions of hectares in North America in recent decades, implying significant impacts to the carbon (C) cycle. Here, we review and synthesize published studies of the effects of biotic disturbances on forest C cycling in the United States and Canada. Primary productivity in stands was reduced, sometimes considerably, immediately following insect or pathogen attack. After repeated growth reductions caused by some insects or pathogens or a single infestation by some bark beetle species, tree mortality occurred, altering productivity and decomposition. In the years following disturbance, primary productivity in some cases increased rapidly as a result of enhanced growth by surviving vegetation, and in other cases increased slowly because of lower forest regrowth. In the decades following tree mortality, decomposition increased as a result of the large amount of dead organic matter. Net ecosystem productivity decreased immediately following attack, with some studies reporting a switch to a C source to the atmosphere, and increased afterward as the forest regrew and dead organic matter decomposed. Large variability in C cycle responses arose from several factors, including type of insect or pathogen, time since disturbance, number of trees affected, and capacity of remaining vegetation to increase growth rates following outbreak. We identified significant knowledge gaps, including limited understanding of carbon cycle impacts among different biotic disturbance types (particularly pathogens), their impacts at landscape and regional scales, and limited capacity to predict disturbance events and their consequences for carbon cycling. We conclude that biotic disturbances can have major impacts on forest C stocks and fluxes and can be large enough to affect regional C cycling. However, additional research is needed to reduce the uncertainties associated with quantifying biotic disturbance effects on the North American C budget.


As a result of movements for labeling food with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) Congress enacted a mandatory labeling requirement in 2016. These movements, and the legislation, raise recurring questions about mandatory product labels: whether there is a market failure, neoclassical or behavioral, that justifies them, and whether the benefits of such labels justify the costs. The first goal of this essay is to identify and to evaluate the four competing approaches that agencies now use to assess the costs and benefits of mandatory labeling in general. The second goal is to apply those approaches to the context of GM food.Assessment of the benefits of mandatory labels presents especially serious challenges. Agencies have (1) claimed that quantification is essentially impossible; (2) engaged in breakeven analysis; (3) projected various endpoints, such as health benefits or purely economic savings; and (4) relied on private willingness to pay for the relevant information. All of these approaches run into serious normative and empirical challenges. In principle, (4) is best, but in practice, (2) is sometimes both the most that can be expected and the least that can be demanded.Many people favor labeling GM food on the ground that it poses serious risks to human health and the environment, but with certain qualifications, the prevailing scientific judgment is that it does no such thing. In the face of that judgment, some people respond that even in the absence of evidence of harm, people have "a right to know" about the contents of what they are eating. But there is a serious problem with this response: there is a good argument that the benefits of such labels would be lower than the costs. Consumers would obtain no health benefits from which labels. To the extent that they would be willing to pay for them, the reason (for many though not all) is likely to be erroneous beliefs, which are not a sufficient justification for mandatory labels. Moreover, GMO labels might well lead people to think that the relevant foods are harmful and thus affirmatively mislead them.Some people contend that GMOs pose risks to the environment (including biodiversity), to intelligible moral commitments, or to nonquantifiable values. Many people think that the key issue involves the need to take precautions in the face of scientific uncertainty: Because there is a non-zero risk that GM food will cause irreversible and catastrophic harm, it is appropriate to be precautionary, through labels or through more severe restrictions. The force of this response depends on the science: If there is a small or uncertain risk of serious harm, precautions may indeed be justified. If the risk is essentially zero, as many scientists have concluded, then precautions are difficult to justify. The discussion, though focused on GM foods, has implications for disclosure policies in general, which often raise difficult questions about hard-to-quantify benefits, the proper use of cost-benefit balancing, and the appropriate role of precautionary thinking.


We theoretically investigate the X-ray supercontinuum generated by interaction of multi-cycle, chirped polarization gating pulses with the helium gas. It is shown that with this scheme, an isolated sub-50-attosecond pulse can be obtained straightforwardly without any phase compensation. Interestingly, if one selects an extremely broad spectral range near the high-order harmonic cutoff, an isolated and intense sub-24-attosecond pulse can be generated after phase compensation, which could be used to detect and control the electronic dynamics inside the atoms. Furthermore, it is found that the generation of such a broad and smooth X-ray supercontinuum is not so stringent on the selection of the simulated parameters, allowing for the experimental demonstration of this technique in the future.


The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the need for indirect Extension programming To ensure a consumer-focused response, we gathered data from 452 survey respondents regarding how the pandemic was affecting their food-related and health behaviors The majority reported obtaining their food from a grocery store as they had prior to the pandemic, albeit less frequently, and having increased their home food preparation Due to the pandemic, respondents were less physically active and more stressed and were seeking reliable nutrition and wellness information We describe how we were able to facilitate an immediate response by repackaging and adapting existing programming to meet pressing client needs, and we identify broader implications of our work


Simultaneous switching noise (SSN) has become an important issue in the design of the internal on-chip power distribution networks in current very large scale integration/ultra large scale integration (VLSI/ULSI) circuits. An inductive model is used to characterize the power supply rails when a transient current is generated by simultaneously switching the on-chip registers and logic gates in a synchronous CMOS VLSI/ULSI circuit. An analytical expression characterizing the SSN voltage is presented here based on a lumped inductive-resistive-capacitive RLC model. The peak value of the SSN voltage based on this analytical expression is within 10% as compared to SPICE simulations. Design constraints at both the circuit and layout levels are also discussed based on minimizing the effects of the peak value of the SSN voltage.


A novel simulation strategy is proposed for searching for semiconductor quantum devices that are optimized with respect to required performances. Based on evolutionary programming, a technique that implements the paradigm of genetic algorithms in more-complex data structures than strings of bits, the proposed algorithm is able to deal with quantum devices with preset nontrivial constraints (e.g., transition energies, geometric requirements). Therefore our approach allows for automatic design, thus avoiding costly by-hand optimizations. We demonstrate the advantages of the proposed algorithm through a relevant and nontrivial application, the optimization of a second-harmonic-generation device working in resonance conditions.


Positioning is among a marketer's preeminent strategic responsibilities. Positioning helps to clarify brand strengths among competitors and identify potential challenges of similar brands and possible substitutability. Assessments of positioning, from initial marketplace efforts to resources directed at modifications and re-positioning, are frequently assisted by the graphical representations of brands in multidimensional space. Such perceptual maps are constructed to reflect the closeness of brands and therefore the extent to which they are seen as interchangeable, versus distances between brands representing their relative positioning distinctiveness. To create perceptual maps, data are frequently obtained that comprise a sample of respondents rating a series of brands with respect to their perceived similarities and differences, as well as the status of each brand along multiple attributes. This research uses the variability inherent in such three-dimensional data to construct confidence regions around point estimates in perceptual maps. Current maps tend to be simply descriptive, with positions reflected by point estimates, but multivariate models including multidimensional scaling and multi-mode factor analysis can be modified to extract the subject heterogeneity and derive inferential perceptual maps. Confidence regions that overlap will indicate more clearly an inference of brand similarity, whereas non-overlapping regions imply statistically differentiated brand perceptions.


22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) is a copy number variant syndrome affecting approximately 1 in 4000 live births. It has a variable phenotype in terms of its physical, cognitive and psychiatric manifestations. People with 22q11.2DS have a range of cognitive difficulties. They also have extremely high rates of psychopathology, particularly attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, anxiety disorders and psychotic disorders. The mechanisms
underlying the risks of cognitive impairment and psychopathology are not wellunderstood.

The balance between excitation and inhibition in the brain may be affected in 22q11.2DS and could underlie its cognitive and psychiatric features. In this thesis markers of excitatory-inhibitory (E-I) balance were investigated in children with 22q11.2DS (probands) and typically developing children (controls). It was hypothesised that probands would have alterations in E-I balance and that the severity of these alterations would be associated with cognitive and psychiatric features. The phenotypes of children taking part in the brain imaging study was first compared to those of children who did not participate in brain imaging to assess the representativeness of the imaging sample. Resting-state
brain networks and visually-induced gamma oscillations were then investigated using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and gamma-amino-butyric acid (GABA) concentrations were investigated using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS).
Between-group comparisons were performed and the relationships between markers of E-I balance, psychopathology and cognitive impairment were explored
using linear regression.

The phenotypes of children with 22q11.2DS who participated in brain imaging were broadly similar to those who did not participate, suggesting that the imaging sample does not represent a highly-functioning subsample. Compared with controls, probands had alterations in resting-state networks in the delta, alpha
and beta bands which were associated with anxiety, social communication problems and cognitive deficits. In the gamma band, there were reductions in the total induced gamma power in probands, which was similarly associated with social communication and cognitive difficulties. There were no alterations in GABA concentrations in 22q11.2DS, suggesting that further work is needed to
better understand the mechanisms underlying excitatory-inhibitory imbalance in 22q11.2DS.


Editor's Summary

As digital natives, the vast majority of teens are used to cellphones, text messaging, social networking sites and other forms of electronic communications and technologies. Though rooted in the digital world for many of their daily activities, teens lack basic information literacy skills for academic tasks and other demands. Specific instruction through the educational system may not be feasible, but it may be possible to build teens' information competence through interactive virtual learning environments. Game-style virtual environments are highly motivating and engaging, providing opportunities for repeated practice and reward for persistence and achieving goals. A virtual reality library, VRLibrary, was constructed, collaboratively designed by young teens and adults, based on the metaphor of a physical library. Teens could wander the virtual space and browse links to age-appropriate websites presented as virtual books. VRLibrary was very positively received and succeeded at engaging teen users. A librarian avatar could be incorporated to provide help as needed with a user's information seeking.


Background The Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool (CSNAT) intervention identifies and addresses family carer support needs towards end of life.1–3 This person-centred approach involves a change in practice from a practitioner- to carer-led assessment process. Numerous policies recommend carers' needs should be addressed yet there is little guidance on how to achieve this within palliative care. To address this gap and assist a change to a carer-led process, an implementation strategy for the CSNAT intervention was developed, of which facilitation is key. Aims investigate components of facilitation associated with successful implementation of the CSNAT intervention across 36 palliative care services. Methods Qualitative: Interviews three and six months post-CSNAT implementation with 38 practitioners acting as CSNAT 'champion' (internal facilitation) in 32 services. Researcher field notes collected from teleconference support sessions with 'champions' (external facilitation). Results Successful implementation of the CSNAT intervention was associated with: a teamwork approach to facilitation; the 'lead champion' having a leadership role in the service e.g. team manager; presenting a clear rationale why a change in practice was needed; reviewing progress and making changes to overcome identified barriers; 'champions' having good communication skills and authority to make changes. Aspects of context which constrained facilitation included the need to establish a new carer record, and organisational changes e.g. budget cuts, and a culture focused on the patient. Management support assisted with facilitation efforts. Conclusions Establishing a team of practitioners to lead facilitation of the CSNAT intervention and regularly review implementation progress, is recommended to help ensure implementation success. References Ewing G, Brundle C, Payne S, Grande G. The Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool (CSNAT) for use in palliative and end-of-life care at home: A validation study. J Pain Symptom Manage 2013;46(3):395–405 Ewing G, Grande G. Development of a Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool (CSNAT) for end-of-life care practice at home: A qualitative study. Palliat Med 2013;27(3):244–256 Ewing G, Austin L, Diffin J, Grande G. The Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool: A person centred approach to carer assessment and support. Br J Community Nurs 2015;20(12):580–584


Introduction Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a common and heterogeneous disease. Using advanced analytic approaches to explore real-world data may identify different disease characteristics, responses to treatment and progression patterns. Insulin glargine 300 units/mL (Gla-300) is a second-generation basal insulin analogue with preserved glucose-lowering efficacy but reduced risk of hypoglycaemia. The purpose of the REALI pooled analysis described in this paper is to advance the understanding of the effectiveness and real-world safety of Gla-300 based on a large European patient database of postmarketing interventional and observational studies. Methods and analysis In the current round of pooling, REALI will include data from up to 10 000 subjects with diabetes mellitus (mostly T2DM) from 20 European countries. Outcomes of interest include change from baseline to week 24 in haemoglobin A1c, fasting plasma glucose, self-measured plasma glucose, body weight, insulin dose, incidence and rate of any-time-of-the-day and nocturnal hypoglycaemia. The data pool is being investigated using two complementary methodologies: a conventional descriptive, univariate and multivariable prognostic analysis; and a data-mining approach using subgroup discovery to identify phenotypic clusters of patients who are highly associated with the outcome of interest. By mid-2019, deidentified data of 7584 patients were included in the REALI database, with a further expected increase in patient number in 2020 as a result of pooling additional studies. Ethics and dissemination The proposed study does not involve collection of primary data. Moreover, all individual study protocols were approved by independent local ethics committees, and all study participants provided written informed consent. Furthermore, patient data is deidentified before inclusion in the REALI database. Hence, there is no requirement for ethical approval. Results will be disseminated via peer-reviewed publications and presentations at international congresses as data are analysed.


Mothers often report that breastfeeding is an enjoyable and emotionally beneficial experience they share with their infants. However, little research has investigated the role of feeding method in the development of the maternal bond and the mother-infant relationship. This study tested two hypotheses—the bonding hypothesis and the good-enough caregiver hypothesis—regarding the association of breastfeeding with maternal bonding and the mother-infant relationship. Using data from a longitudinal study of 570 mother-infant pairs, bonding and the quality of the mother-infant relationship were measured at 4 and 12 months. Although breastfeeding dyads tended to show higher quality relationships at 12 months, bottlefeeding dyads did not display poor quality or precarious relationships. Such results are encouraging for nonmaternal caregivers and mothers who bottlefeed their children.


We present an approach to recover attenuation-free intensities of a thick sample, that is imaged by a standard confocal microscope from two views (top and bottom). A variational approach simultaneously estimates the local signal attenuation and the real attenuation-free intensity at each position. Compared to earlier work we introduce a refined image formation model, that models photo-bleaching and photon noise using Poisson image statistics. We examine the effects of different regularization methods on the absorption field (Tikhonov-Miller, Total Variation, and sparsity) and the benefit of a constrained optimization in comparison to an orthogonal subspace projection. We quantify the efficacy of the approach on synthetically generated samples, and show its general applicability on two real biological applications, namely the recordings of zebrafish embryos and Arabidopsis thaliana root tips.


The MapReduce framework has become the defacto scheme for scalable semi-structured and un-structured data processing in recent years. The Hadoop ecosystem has evolved into its second generation, Hadoop YARN, which adopts fine-grained resource management schemes for job scheduling. Nowadays, fairness and efficiency are two main concerns in YARN resource management because resources in YARN are shared and contended by multiple applications. However, the current scheduling in YARN does not yield the optimal resource arrangement, unnecessarily causing idle resources and inefficient scheduling. It omits the dependency between tasks which is extremely crucial for the efficiency of resource utilization as well as heterogeneous job features in real application environments. We thus propose a new YARN scheduler which can effectively reduce the makespan (i.e., the total execution time) of a batch of MapReduce jobs in Hadoop YARN clusters by leveraging the information of requested resources, resource capacities and dependency between tasks. For accommodating heterogeneity in MapReduce jobs, we also extend our scheduler by further considering the job iteration information in the scheduling decisions. We implemented the new scheduling algorithm as a pluggable scheduler in YARN and evaluated it with a set of classic MapReduce benchmarks. The experimental results demonstrate that our YARN scheduler effectively reduces the makespans and improves resource utilizations.


Each year, at the start of the winter semester, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff, and invited guests come together to take part in the annual Collaborative Exercise (CEx) held at the Department of Architectural Science at Ryerson University. The five-day event challenges students to address an important contemporary issue.

The intention of the exercise is to engage students to collaborate, think and design, while investigating a topic related to architecture and the built environment. Through this experience, students have the opportunity to work with students from other years in the Department's program, to achieve a common design goal.

The Collaborative Exercise ends with an exhibition at the Paul H. Cocker Gallery in the Ryerson University's Architecture Building. This book showcases the outcomes of the 2017 Collaborative Exercise, entitled Heat! Cooling spaces for high-rise places.


Background: Disturbed folate metabolism is associated with an increased risk of some cancers. Our objective was to determine whether blood levels of folate, vitamin B12, and related metabolites were associated with prostate cancer risk. Methods: Matched case-control study nested within the U.K. population–based Prostate testing for cancer and Treatment (ProtecT) study of prostate-specific antigen–detected prostate cancer in men ages 50 to 69 years. Plasma concentrations of folate, B12 (cobalamin), holo-haptocorrin, holo-transcobalamin total transcobalamin, and total homocysteine (tHcy) were measured in 1,461 cases and 1,507 controls. ProtecT study estimates for associations of folate, B12, and tHcy with prostate cancer risk were included in a meta-analysis, based on a systematic review. Results: In the ProtecT study, increased B12 and holo-haptocorrin concentrations showed positive associations with prostate cancer risk [highest versus lowest quartile of B12 odds ratio (OR) = 1.17 (95% confidence interval, 0.95-1.43); Ptrend = 0.06; highest versus lowest quartile of holo-haptocorrin OR = 1.27 (1.04-1.56); Ptrend = 0.01]; folate, holo-transcobalamin, and tHcy were not associated with prostate cancer risk. In the meta-analysis, circulating B12 levels were associated with an increased prostate cancer risk [pooled OR = 1.10 (1.01-1.19) per 100 pmol/L increase in B12; P = 0.002]; the pooled OR for the association of folate with prostate cancer was positive [OR = 1.11 (0.96-1.28) per 10 nmol/L; P = 0.2) and conventionally statistically significant if ProtecT (the only case-control study) was excluded [OR = 1.18 (1.00-1.40) per 10 nmol/L; P = 0.02]. Conclusion: Vitamin B12 and (in cohort studies) folate were associated with increased prostate cancer risk. Impact: Given current controversies over mandatory fortification, further research is needed to determine whether these are causal associations. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 19(6); 1632–42. ©2010 AACR.


This presentation comes from the Trading Strategies and Execution Costs conference held in New York, New York, on December 3, 1987.


— This work describes a Genetic Algorithm for the Capacitated Minimum Spanning Tree (CMST) problem that appears in Telecommu-nications. We suggest a new crossover operator, applied directly on the tree (phenotype) instead of on the chromosome. Without needing repairing techniques, this crossover is capable to produce feasible trees and presents excellent locality and heritability besides other properties that misses in many other tree representations. The new crossover proved to be effective when compared with the Genetic Algorithm of Raidl and Drexel (on benchmark data sets), which presented better performance than various classical methods of the literature. Another characteristic of the new crossover is its flexibility for adaptation in problems with constraints, as for instance, the Degree-Constrained Minimum Spanning Tree Problem.


In the first article in this series, we discussed how critical appraisal is an important step in evidence-based health care because some published healthcare research is too poor in quality to be safely applied to clinical practice. Critical appraisal is made easier by the availability of quality checklists, which can be used to appraise research studies systematically and efficiently. With practice, readers may no longer even need a checklist and should be able to decide whether an article is worth reading in a matter of moments.

Whether your clinical question is one of treatment, diagnosis, prognosis, or causation, there are 3 fundamental questions you should apply in deciding whether the research might help us to provide better care to our patients.1

This question considers whether the results reported in the study are likely to reflect the true size and direction of treatment effect. Was the research conducted in such a way as to minimise bias and lead to accurate findings, or was it designed, conducted, or analysed in such a way as to increase the chances of an incorrect conclusion?

Once you have determined that the results are valid, it is important to gain an understanding of what the results really mean. If the new treatment is shown to be effective, how large is the effect? Is the effect clinically important? How precise is the treatment effect (another way of asking how likely it is that the effect is real and not a result of the play of chance)? The precision of a result is related to whether the study involved large numbers of people (which increases precision) or small numbers (which reduces precision).

There are 2 concepts underlying this question. Firstly, you have to decide if the patients participating in the study are sufficiently similar to your patients, …


In this paper, a novel distributed Kalman filter (KF) algorithm along with a distributed model predictive control (MPC) scheme for large-scale multi-rate systems is proposed. The decomposed multi-rate system consists of smaller subsystems with linear dynamics that are coupled via states. These subsystems are multi-rate systems in the sense that either output measurements or input updates are not available at certain sampling times. Such systems can arise, e.g., when the number of sensors is smaller than the number of variables to be controlled, or when measurements of outputs cannot be completed simultaneously because of practical limitations. The multi-rate nature gives rise to lack of information, which will cause uncertainty in the system's performance. To circumvent this problem, we propose a distributed KF-based MPC scheme, in which multiple control and estimation agents each determine actions for their own parts of the system. Via communication, the agents can in a cooperative way take one another's actions into account. The main task of the proposed distributed KF is to compensate for the information loss due to the multi-rate nature of the systems by providing optimal estimation of the missing information. A demanding two-area power network example is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Pest suppression by natural enemies is an important ecosystem service, which is a valuable resource to poor smallholders in developing countries. Diverse natural enemy assemblages of arthropod predators and parasitoids are documented in various regions in Africa, but our knowledge of their impact on herbivores in agroecosystems remains limited. We conducted experiments in cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L. (Malvaceae), under typical local agronomic practices in Uganda to assess levels of predation pressure ascribed to natural enemies. We measured predation rates on artificial caterpillars made of plasticine glued to cotton plants. Predation pressure on cotton fields varied between 1.96 and 4.1% per day, but was not significantly influenced by cotton treatments (insecticide/no insecticide, monocropping/intercropping with Phaseolus spp.). Predation pressure in non‐crop habitats adjacent to cotton fields was up to 12× higher than in the fields. Marks left on the artificial caterpillars revealed that arthropods and birds were largely accountable for predation in cotton fields, whereas arthropods and small mammals were dominant in non‐cultivated habitats.


Abstract Well-supported molecular phylogenies, combined with knowledge of modern biology, can lead to new inferences about the sequence of character acquisition in early animal evolution, the taxonomic affinity of enigmatic Precambrian and Cambrian fossils, and the Proterozoic Earth system in general. In this paper we demonstrate, in accordance with previous molecular studies, that sponges are paraphyletic, and that calcisponges are more closely related to eumetazoans than they are to demosponges. In addition, our Bayesian analysis finds the Homoscleromorpha, previously grouped with the demosponges, to be even more closely related to eumetazoans than are the calcisponges. Hence there may be at least three separate extant 'poriferan' lineages, each with their own unique skeleton. Because spiculation is convergent within 'Porifera', differences between skeletonization processes in enigmatic Cambrian taxa such as Chancelloria and modern sponges does not mean that these Problematica are not organized around a poriferan body plan, namely a benthic, sessile microsuspension feeding organism. The shift from the anoxic and sulphidic deep ocean that characterized the mid-Proterozoic to the well-ventilated Phanerozoic ocean occurs before the evolution of macrozooplanton and nekton, and thus cannot have been caused by the advent of faecal pellets. However, the evolution and ecological dominance of sponges during this time interval provides both a mechanism for the long-term generation of isotopically-light CO2 that would be recorded in carbon isotopic excusions such as the 'Shuram' event, and an alternative mechanism for the drawdown and sequestration of dissolved organic carbon within the sediment.


Background/Context Although there has been progress in closing the test score gaps among student groups over past decades, that progress has stalled. Many researchers have speculated why the test score gaps closed between the early 1970s and the early 1990s, but only a few have been able to empirically study how changes in school factors and social background characteristics relate to that convergence. The main reason for this is the lack of data for multiple student cohorts—information necessary for the examination of such relationships. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study We analyzed nationally representative data from 1972, 1982, 1992, and 2004, examining the mathematics achievement of four high school senior cohorts, and several school and family background characteristics. We examined how changes in these measures (in terms of means and coefficients) relate to the black-white and Latino-white test score gaps and to changes in school minority composition. Population/Participants/Subjects For our analysis, we used the following nationally representative data sets, which are part of the Longitudinal Studies (LS) program at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES): National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS-72); High School and Beyond senior cohort of 1982 (HSB-82); National Education Longitudinal Study senior cohort of 1992 (NELS-92); and Educational Longitudinal Study senior cohort of 2004 (ELS-04). Research Design Conducting secondary data analyses of these nationally representative data, we estimated a series of regressions for each senior cohort, entering the race dummy variables to estimate the unadjusted predicted mathematics test score difference between black and white students and between Latino and white students. Next, we estimated a series of multilevel regressions for each cohort to analyze how trends in school and social background measures are related to trends in the black-white and Latino-white mathematics test score gaps. Finally, we used the pooled coefficients in the decomposition of the difference between the predicted means of white and black test scores. Findings/Results Our estimates revealed that between 1972 and 2004, increases in school segregation corresponded to significant increases in the black-white and Latino-white test score gaps, outweighing the positive changes in family background measures for these minority groups. Conclusions/Recommendations Understanding how our society can address these countervailing forces—the improving socioeconomic conditions for black and Latino families on the one hand, and the increasing racial isolation of these students in schools on the other— necessitates innovative ideas and experimentation.