Section 12(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996 ('the Constitution)' protects the right to freedom and security of the person, which includes the right not to be deprived of freedom arbitrarily or without just cause (s 12(1)(a)), and the right not to be detained without trial (s 12(1)(b)). The rights of arrested, detained and accused persons are in turn protected by s 35 of the Constitution, which provides that every accused person has the right to a fair trial. This requires not only a physical presence in court, but also a 'mental presence' and, in particular, the person concerned must be able to understand the proceedings so as to be able to make a proper defence (E Du Toit et al Commentary on the Criminal Procedure Act Juta Publishers, 2015, ch13-p5 and further authorities cited therein). A person who cannot do this, is considered unfit to stand trial. Section 77 of the Criminal Procedure (Act 51 of 1977 ) ('the CPA') deals with the treatment of an accused who is unfit to stand trial due to a mental illness or intellectual disability (the generic term 'mental disability' will be used to refer to both types of mental condition, except where it is necessary to distinguish). While such an accused cannot be tried, they are not acquitted and discharged, since s 77(6) of the CPA enjoins the court to determine whether the person concerned committed the actus reus of the offence with which he has been charged. If the court finds that the accused committed an act of murder, culpable homicide, rape, compelled rape, or some other offence involving serious violence, or if the court considers it in the public interest, s 77(6)(a)(i) of the CPA further enjoins it to order the accused's detention in a psychiatric hospital or prison, pending release by a judge in chambers, in terms of s 47 of the Mental Health Care (Act 17 of 2002) ('the MCHA'). If the court finds that the accused committed some other form of unlawful act, or no unlawful act at all, s 77(6)(a)(ii) of the CPA enjoins it to commit the accused to an institution as an involuntary mental health care user, as contemplated in s 37 of the MCHA. The provisions of the section are peremptory, in that, once the court has found the accused unfit to stand trial, it is left with no option but to order their detention in one form or another. The provisions of s 77(6)(a) differ from those of s 78(6) of the CPA, which apply when an accused has been tried and found not guilty by reason of pathological criminal incapacity. In terms of s 78(6)(b), the court, as an alternative to ordering the accused's detention, is empowered to order his release, either on appropriate conditions, or even unconditionally. These options are not available in terms of s 77(6)(a)(i) or (ii). In essence therefore, s 77(6)(a) provides for  detention without trial on the merits of the charge. There is only what could be termed a trial of the facts. Consequently, concern has been expressed regarding the constitutionality of these provisions. The constitutionality of s 77(6)(a)(i) and (ii) was in fact recently challenged in De Vos NO v Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development CCT 150/14) [2015] ZACC 21 (26 JUNE 2015).


On 21 October 2005 the EC Regulation on European Enforcement Order for uncontested claims became applicable. According to this Regulation a judgment of a court of a Member State can be certified as a European Enforcement Order in the Member State of origin. A certified judgment is to be enforced in another Member State without any need of an intermediate procedure for recognition and enforcement. The exequatur procedure from the Brussels I Regulation is abolished in certain cases. In the Member State of enforcement there are only very limited possibilities of refusal of enforcement of a certified judgment. In this article the Regulation is discussed, as well as the further possibilities of simplification of cross border enforcement of civil judgments in the European Union. It is argued that for a further simplification of cross border enforcement a harmonization of the procedural laws of the Member States is necessary.


Understanding of the vaginal microbiome in health and disease is essential to screen, detect and manage complications in pregnancy. One of the major complications of pregnancy is preterm birth, which is the leading world-wide cause of death and disability in children under five years of age. The aetiology of preterm birth is multifactorial, but a causal link has been established with infection. Despite the importance of understanding the vaginal microbiome in pregnancy in order to evaluate strategies to prevent and manage PTB, currently used culture based techniques provide limited information as not all pathogens are able to be cultured. The implementation of culture-independent high-throughput techniques and bioinformatics tools are advancing our understanding of the vaginal microbiome. New methods employing 16S rRNA and metagenomics analyses make possible a more comprehensive description of the bacteria of the human microbiome. Several studies on the vaginal microbiota of pregnant women have identified a large number of taxa. Studies also suggest reduced diversity of the microbiota in pregnancy compared to non-pregnant women, with a relative enrichment of the overall abundance of Lactobacillus species, and significant differences in the diversity of Lactobacillus spp. A number of advantages and disadvantages of these techniques are discussed briefly. The potential clinical importance of the new techniques is illustrated through recent reports where traditional culture-based techniques failed to identify pathogens in high risk complicated pregnancies whose presence subsequently was established using culture-independent, high-throughput analyses.


In the present study Tridax procumbens, Murraya koenigii and Pongamia pinnata leaves extracts of water, ethanol, methanol and acetone were prepared using 'Green extraction' methods such as microwave assisted and ultrasonic assisted solvent extraction. The extracts were screened for phytochemicals like alkaloids, phenolic compounds, flavonoids, tannins, terpenoids and diterpenoids. Further, phytochemical composition of microwave assisted extracts was compared with the ultrasonic assisted extracts. The results reveal that phytochemical composition of leaves extracts highly varied with the extraction method as well as solvent used for extraction. The present study may be useful to select an appropriate solvent and method for isolation of phytochemicals from T. procumbens, M. koenigii and P. pinnata leaves.


Geofoam, an XPS polystyrene with a unit weight of 1 to 3 lb/ft³, was used as embankment fill for Minnesota Trunk Highway (TH) 100 segment 3 (SP 2735-159) in 2000. It was also used at Technology Drive in 2002 to correct a slope failure that had occurred in a large embankment near a ramp. The TH 100 segment consisted of a 10 in. dowelled jointed plain concrete pavement (JPCP) and the Technology Drive section was a 7 in. bituminous pavement. Concerns about the vibration issues during and immediately after paving led to a retrofit of the sites with multi-depth deflectometers (MDD) and a two-year study of pavement response. The authors seasonally investigated flexible and rigid pavement response to Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) loads, loaded and calibrated snow and ice trucks through the MDDs, and a seismograph. This study compared seasonal deflection basins, elastic moduli, and dominant frequencies of flexible and rigid pavements built with Geofoam fill to their corresponding contiguous control sections built without Geofoam fill. The 3 ft of granular fill above the 4 in. concrete cap covering the Geofoam compounded the process of layer moduli computations. The report concludes with interesting findings, particularly that the response of Geofoam pavements may exhibit higher deflections and vibration amplitudes and they are in a time series. However, these are not resonant vibrations that would require design changes from the current practice.


The EU-funded project, TECHNEAU, is intended (among other tasks) to develop a new water treatment simulator, in part to implement new process models to be developed within TECHNEAU. Before beginning any software development there has been a review of existing water treatment simulators, to identify what would be needed for a new system. This review has identified that there has been little usage of water treatment modelling, with the two main objections being the quantity of data required to calibrate the models, and the fragility of the models when applied outside the calibration region.


Law and economics scholars have long argued that efficiency is best served when a firm's capital structure is arranged as a single hierarchical value waterfall. In such a regime, claimants with seniority are made whole before the next-junior stakeholders receive anything. To implement this single waterfall approach, those scholars envision a property-based mechanism: a blanket lien on all of a firm's assets, and therefore all of its value (including as a going-concern). This view informs current proposals for contractual bankruptcy and relative priority. Coincident with this scholarship, lawyers, scholars, and judges have largely accepted at face value the proposition that Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code implements the single waterfall. In other words, they assume that the law allows a secured lender to write contracts that enable it to capture all of a distressed company's going-concern value. This assumption has placed "senior" secured lenders firmly in the driver's seat when a firm falls into distress. So-called "senior" creditors claim priority in all of the value, and control over all of the cash. They often advocate a quick sale of the firm as a going concern, or liquidation of its assets, followed by a structured dismissal of the case, giving all of the value to the secured lender.
In this article, we illustrate that Article 9 does not, in fact, implement the single waterfall principle. Instead, both Article 9 and the federal Bankruptcy Code maintain a distinction between priority based on the firm's assets and claims to the residual value of the firm. Whenever the firm continues in operation, there will be two value waterfalls – one tied to assets, and the other not. The second waterfall consists of the going-concern and other value of the firm Chapter 11 preserves.
The key legal (often forgotten) concept that maintains this distinction is "equitable tracing" – required by both Article 9 and Chapter 11. The terms "equitable principles" in Article 9 and "equities of the case" in Chapter 11 refer to equitable tracing principles, that, in turn, inform secured creditors' "fair and equitable" baseline entitlement in a Chapter 11 plan. On the petition date, the value of the firm is therefore divided into two categories: value traceable to encumbered assets; and, other value. This relationship must then be managed over time, as the value of the firm changes.
Chapter 11, accordingly, treats realization of value as a two-step process that we call "Equitable Realization." Equitable Realization uses tracing principles to allocate a firm's value between asset-based and firm-based claimants and to preserve that allocation over time. First, it fixes the relative positions of secured and unsecured claims when a bankruptcy petition is filed. Second, it delays the fixing of the value of secured claims until collateral is sold or a Chapter 11 plan is confirmed. The value of the secured creditor's collateral may increase, but the secured creditor's entitlement to any bankruptcy-created value extends only to "identifiable proceeds" – value that can be traced to assets encumbered on the petition date. As a result, increases in going-concern value of the company in this period, and other bankruptcy-created value more generally, are not within a lender's collateral package. Any going-concern value created or preserved by Chapter 11 is allocated to the bankruptcy estate for the benefit of all stakeholders—workers, retirees, customers, and more.
We then address whether Article 9 and the Bankruptcy Code took the right approach by choosing Equitable Realization over the single waterfall. Many scholars, all the way back to Grant Gilmore, have questioned the wisdom of the single waterfall. Joining and expanding on those scholars' concerns, we explain the benefits of Equitable Realization, and how the concept resonates with a large family of corporate and commercial law rules that guard against undercapitalization and judgment proofing. Equitable Realization not only implements the Bankruptcy Code's core goal of equitable treatment of creditors, but, by properly identifying firms' residual claimants, limits a firm's ability to externalize risk and increases the prospect of reorganizing troubled companies.
The last task of this article is to test our insights against the value-allocation proposals in the Final Report of the American Bankruptcy Institute Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11, as well as priority-related proposals in academic scholarship. Many of the Commission's proposals are consistent with Equitable Realization. But one proposal in particular, redemption option priority, allocates too much to secured creditors relative to our interpretation of current law.


This paper describes an architectural framework and a prototype implementation of a web-based multi-channel e-Learning application that allows students, lecturers and the research communities to collaborate irrespective of the communication device a user is carrying. The application was developed based on the concept of 'right once run on any browser' for different range of devices including WAP Phones, Laptop/Personal Computer(PC), Pocket PC and Personal Digital Assistants(PDAs), on a three tier architecture – the client tier, web server tier and database tier. As supported in traditional classroom, some requirements for e-Learning were acquired and corresponding application modules to service each requirement were identified. A prototype application was developed for one of the modules – File Transfer module using Microsoft Visual Studio.Net platform. The architecture will serve as a reference for the research communities and software developers in the area of multi-channel support for e-Learning web application. The eLearning application when fully implemented will provide a basic platform for learning and enable students in remote locations have access to costly and scarce scientific equipment for carrying out experiments in the laboratory.


We propose a method to guide a Monte Carlo search in the initial moves of the game of Go. Our method matches the current state of a Go board against clusters of board configurations that are derived from a large number of games played by experts. The main advantage of this method is that it does not require an exact match of the current board, and hence is effective for a longer sequence of moves compared to traditional opening books. We apply this method to two different open-source Go-playing programs. Our experiments show that this method, through its filtering or biasing the choice of a next move to a small subset of possible moves, improves play effectively in the initial moves of a game.


Objectives Controlling seizures in children approaching death can be difficult, and there is a limited evidence base to guide best practice. We compared current practice against the guidance for seizure management produced by the Association of Paediatric Palliative Medicine (APPM). Methods Retrospective case note review of episodes of challenging seizure management in children receiving end-of-life care over a 10-year period (2006–2015) in the south-west region of England. Results We reviewed 19 admissions, in 18 individuals. Six (33%) had a malignancy, nine (50%) had a progressive neurodegenerative condition and three (17%) had a static neurological condition with associated epilepsy. Thirteen (72%) died in their local hospice, four (22%) at home, and one (6%) in hospital. Seventeen of 19 episodes involved the use of subcutaneous or intravenous midazolam infusion, for a mean of 11 days (range 3–27). There was a wide range of starting doses of midazolam, and 9/17 (53%) received final doses in excess of current dose recommendations. Six individuals received subcutaneous phenobarbital infusions, with four of these (67%) receiving final doses in excess of current dose recommendations. Plans for adjustments of infusion rates, maximal doses or alternative approaches should treatment fail were inconsistent or absent. In 16/18 (88%) cases seizures were successfully controlled prior to the day of the child's death. Staff found the experience of managing seizures at end of life challenging and stressful. Conclusions Pharmacological approaches to seizure management in end-of-life care are variable, often exceeding APPM dose recommendations. Despite this, safe and effective seizure control was possible in all settings.


Designing a unified framework for simulating a broad variety of human behaviors has proven to be challenging. In this article, we present an approach for control system design that can generate animations of a diverse set of behaviors including walking, running, and a variety of gymnastic behaviors. We achieve this generalization with a balancing strategy that relies on a new form of inverted pendulum model (IPM), which we call the momentum-mapped IPM (MMIPM). We analyze reference motion capture data in a pre-processing step to extract the motion of the MMIPM. To compute a new motion, the controller plans a desired motion, frame by frame, based on the current pendulum state and a predicted pendulum trajectory. By tracking this time-varying trajectory, the controller creates a character that dynamically balances, changes speed, makes turns, jumps, and performs gymnastic maneuvers.


Objective To support standardise concussion recognition, diagnosis, treatment and management through an evaluated online resource based upon the Zurich Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport and other evidence-based resources. The online Concussion Awareness Training Tool (CATT–www.cattonline.com) includes three free toolkits providing training for: Medical Professionals–MP; Parents, Players and Coaches–PPC; School Professionals–SP. Design Pre-post intervention survey with sample size of at least 33 for power to detect a large effect size of 0.5. Setting British Columbia, Canada. Participants MP: 42 physicians and 33 nurses practising in BC; PPC: 35 parents in BC with a child registered in organised sport; SP: 43 K-12 teachers working in BC. Intervention CATT MP aims to standardise practice in a clinical setting with a focus on the paediatric patient. CATT PPC speaks to concussion identification and management, with Smartphone accessible resources: Concussion Response Tool and Questions to Ask Your Doctor. CATT SP includes Return-to-Learn protocol and resources for teachers, administrators, counsellors and others in the school setting. Outcome measures Change in knowledge, attitudes and practices. Results CATT MP was launched April 2013. Physicians demonstrated significant positive change in concussion practices (p=0.001), and significant change in knowledge by those treating more than 10 concussions per year (p=0.039). Nurses had significant positive change in practices (p=0.005) and attitudes (p=0.035). CATT PPC was launched June 2014. Parents demonstrated significant positive change in concussion knowledge (p=0.002). CATT SP was launched February 2016; evaluation in process. Conclusions CATT increases concussion knowledge and awareness among target audiences. Competing interests None.


This research, undertaken in highly structured software-intensive organizations, outlines challenges associated to agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles adoption. The approach collected data via a series of thirty (30) interviews, with practitioners from the EMEA region (Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Georgia, Greece, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, UAE, UK), working in nine (9) different industry domains and ten (10) different countries. A set of agile, lean and DevOps practices and principles, which organizations choose to include in their DevOps adoption journeys were identified. The most frequently adopted structured service management practices, contributing to DevOps practice adoption success, indicate that those with software development and operation roles in DevOps-oriented organizations benefit from existence of highly structured service management approaches such as ITIL.


Suspended particle composition has a large influence on light scattering by small (<20 µm) particles. Inorganic particles and organic phytoplankton cells, both common in natural waters, have very different indices of refraction. This can affect results from laser diffraction particle size analyzers, which measure light scattering and assume an index of refraction to calculate the particle size distribution. Here we examine the effect of the assumed index of refraction on laser diffraction data. A Laser In‐situ Scattering and Transmissometry (LISST) 100X instrument is used to record scattered light distributions from glass microspheres, phytoplankton monocultures, and natural particle samples of mixed composition. The scattering distributions are processed with kernel matrices, derived using Mie theory, assuming either organic or inorganic compositions. Resulting particle size distributions are compared against microscope images. Processing with an assumed inorganic index of refraction was found to produce the most accurate results over the majority of the samples tested. The effect of scattering by particles having diameters outside the instrument inversion range was also assessed. The presence of significant concentrations of particles exceeding the upper limit of the LISST range (>250 µm) produced little effect; however, particles smaller than the lower limit (<1.25 µm) influenced concentrations over the entire LISST size range and produced counterintuitive effects, such as increased concentrations in the largest size bins.


Many physical and biological systems involve inextensible fibers immersed in a fluid; examples include cilia, polymer suspensions, and actin filament transport. In such systems, the dynamics of the immersed fibers may play a significant role in the observed macroscale fluid dynamics. In this study, we simulate the dynamics of an approximately inextensible semi‐flexible fiber immersed in a two‐dimensional cellular background flow. The system is modeled as an immersed boundary problem with the fluid dynamics described using the Stokes equations. The motion of the immersed fiber is computed by means of the method of regularized Stokeslets, which allows one to calculate fluid velocity, pressure, and stress in the Stokes fluid flow regime because of a collection of regularized point forces without computing fluid velocities on an underlying grid. Simulation results show that, for some parameter values, the fiber may buckle when approaching a stagnation point. These results provide insight into the stretch–coil transition and macroscale random walk behavior that have been reported in mathematical and experimental literature. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Morphologic characters are of primary importance in identifying foraminifera.Within the last few decades, the use of either dilute acidic (acetolysis) or basic solutions has become widespread for extracting microfossils exhibiting less than optimum preservation in strongly lithified rocks, particularly limestones and claystones. Previous studies have involved the use of different acid or basic solutions for micropaleontologic purposes. This study proposes a new method (Dilute acidic and basic solutions; DAB), which is based on the consecutive use of acidic and basic solutions to free benthic and planktic foraminifera from carbonate rocks (argillaceous limestones, marls, phosphatic limestones, chalks) and fine-grained siliciclastics (claystone). It has been successfully employed to prepare micropaleontologic samples from Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) deposits of the Dababiya Quarry Corehole (Upper Nile Valley, Egypt) of which carbonate content varies between 10-80%. The successive use of these solutions yielded good recovery for quantitative analysis but the effects on preservation (i.e. etching) still remain problematic in some cases. Additional heating of solutions provided promising results to reduce the disaggregation time. Processing time may vary depending upon the terrigenous and organic material content for carbonates and claystones. It can be reduced by monitoring the process, or using some other equipment such as a magnetic stirrer.


Abstract The advanced limiter-divertor plasma-facing system (ALPS) has been studied for several years, but the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability of free surface jet flow in a gradient transverse magnetic field is one of the key remaining issues. Recently, some experiments on jet flow were performed with a 0.2- to 1.95-T gradient magnetic field and 2.9, 3.24, and 4.10 m/s velocities for a flow diameter of 6 mm. The results indicated that the transverse gradient magnetic field strongly shortens the jet flow range and the shape of the cross section of the jet flow deforms from round to elliptical and finally becomes a bowed-down shape in the jet flow downstream under these experimental conditions. This paper includes simple modeling of jet flow MHD stability in a gradient transverse magnetic field, which derives the velocity and the area of the cross section of the jet flow along the flow path. The theoretical expected values are in good agreement with experimental results.


We present the efficient implementation of phase sensitive-optical low-coherence interferometry to evaluate key performances (like dispersion law, coupling coefficient, optical losses, etc.) of photonic devices in general, and in particular of components based on optical micro-resonators, for both transverse electric and magnetic polarizations. Our setup was used for the characterization of vertically-coupled polymer micro-racetrack resonators. A mathematic model was developed to enhance the reliability of theoretical fitting to experimental curves, by taking into account first-order dispersion in the device under test.


ABSTRACT Constructive alignment (CA) has become internationally established as an educational approach linking strategic planning and corporate policy to discipline and course teaching and learning practice. The literature to date has focused predominantly on either single institutional or specific discipline settings and curriculum level initiatives. This research study seeks to broaden the conceptual and methodological perspective on constructive alignment with a cross-institutional study from two Australian universities. The case study learnings from a top-down institutional implementation of CA at one university and the bottom-up teaching and learning approach within the other have been jointly investigated. By mapping the implementation process of constructive alignment, the key strengths and constraints for both approaches have been identified. These findings offer new insights for institutional managers as well as academics and teaching and learning professionals. In addition, a potential 'gap in the middle' at faculty level is highlighted. It is within this nexus that the transitions from institutional policy and targets to successful discipline-specific teaching and learning practices and outcomes are shaped. This research seeks to raise the awareness that CA design, planning and implementation should be conceptualised from the outset as a dynamic, multi-directional and iterative process, irrespective of whether a predominantly top-down or bottom-up approach for implementation is chosen.


No longer can the offline remain separate from the online. Integrated, customer-centric, cross-channel marketing campaigns persuade customers to act, provide greater ROI, and ultimately improve your organization's bottom line. This must-have guide synthesizes the successful methods and metrics that online, direct, and brand marketers have employed for years so that you can develop, implement, and measure successful cross-channel campaigns. Multichannel marketing expert Akin Arikan takes you from customer acquisition to customer relationship management with strategic advice, effective case studies, and proven metrics.


Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) represents a condition sine qua non for a sustainable development of Romania, taking into consideration the fact that the domestic capital is not enough to assure a positive and significant growth. The present study uses the multiple linear regression to determine the main factors which influence FDI level in Romania. The international reserve and the capital market index BET have a direct and positive impact on the foreign investment flow, while the short, medium and long private and public external debt proved to influence direct, but in a negative way, the FDI.


The world's increased dependence on software-enabled systems has raised major concerns about software reliability and security. New cost-effective tools for software quality assurance are needed. This paper presents an automated test generation technique, called Model-based Integration and System Test Automation (MISTA), for integrated functional and security testing of software systems. Given a Model-Implementation Description (MID) specification, MISTA generates test code that can be executed immediately with the implementation under test. The MID specification uses a high-level Petri net to capture both control- and data-related requirements for functional testing, access control testing, or penetration testing with threat models. After generating test cases from the test model according to a given criterion, MISTA converts the test cases into executable test code by mapping model-level elements into implementation-level constructs. MISTA has implemented test generators for various test coverage criteria of test models, code generators for various programming and scripting languages, and test execution environments such as Java, C, C++, C#, HTML-Selenium IDE, and Robot Framework. MISTA has been applied to the functional and security testing of various real-world software systems. Our experiments have demonstrated that MISTA can be highly effective in fault detection.


Single particle tracking allows probing how biomolecules interact physically with their natural environments. A fundamental challenge when analysing recorded single particle trajectories is the inverse problem of inferring the physical model or class of models of the underlying random walks. Reliable inference is made difficult by the inherent stochastic nature of single particle motion, by experimental noise, and by the short duration of most experimental trajectories. Model identification is further complicated by the fact that main physical properties of random walk models are only defined asymptotically, and are thus degenerate for short trajectories. Here, we introduce a new, fast approach to inferring random walk properties based on graph neural networks (GNNs). Our approach consists in associating a vector of features with each observed position, and a sparse graph structure with each observed trajectory. By performing simulation-based supervised learning on this construct [1], we show that we can reliably learn models of random walks and their anomalous exponents. The method can naturally be applied to trajectories of any length. We show its efficiency in analysing various anomalous random walks of biological relevance that were proposed in the AnDi challenge [2]. We explore how information is encoded in the GNN, and we show that it learns relevant physical features of the random walks. We furthermore evaluate its ability to generalize to types of trajectories not seen during training, and we show that the GNN retains high accuracy even with few parameters. We finally discuss the possibility to leverage these networks to analyse experimental data.


This is the first scholarly article to explore the recent prevalence of go-shop provisions in merger agreements. Unlike no shop provisions which prevent target companies from actively soliciting proposals post-signing, go-shops allow the active solicitation of superior proposals. In effect, go-shops move the pre-signing auction process to post-signing, when deal protection devices act to prevent third parties from bidding. This Article examines the development and effectiveness of go-shops and contends that since the Delaware Supreme Court's landmark holding in Revlon, Inc. v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc. that directors have a duty to obtain the highest price for stockholders, Delaware courts have consistently failed to take affirmative steps to promote the maximization of stockholder value. Despite the seminal ruling in Revlon, the courts have sidestepped the question as to whether the sale methods utilized, including an exclusive reliance on no shops and go-shops, adequately maximizes stockholder value. In essence, this Article argues that the rise of the go-shop signals the death of the movement toward a more pure bidding process signaled by Revlon.


This thesis attempts to extend the life cycle allocation models by including religion as a factor influencing an individual's economic choices. The study uses Islamic time horizon that extends the individual's worldly life span to include the concerns about life after death. The study generates a few testable propositions, some of which are also tested with data. An econometric model is also developed for the determination of households' resource allocation in an Islamic society. This model is subsequently transformed to make it empirically estimable.

Islamic beliefs on reward and punishment in life here and life after death are found to have considerable economic consequences and lead to a systematically different allocation of individuals' financial and time resources than that commonly understood under conventional microeconomic theory. In particular, the allocation of time and monetary resources for others in the form of voluntary work and donation emerges as an important component of economic decision-making in the Islamic context.

The study uses primary data on 302 households collected through a survey for estimating the empirical model. The data on religiosity levels of respondents has been generated on the basis of religiosity indices developed in the study.

In the empirical analysis it is found that religious activities, volunteering and charity are similar to other economic variables and respond to the factors like prices and income, household size, etc. Another important finding of this study is that more religious persons, on average, give relatively less time to market activities, and allocate proportionately more time to other activities ordained by Allah (leisure, voluntary work, religious duties), as compared to less religious persons. Such a behavior emerges from the belief that necessities of life for which an individual works in the market are promised by Allah to everyone, whereas comforts and luxuries require special human effort. Since Islam instills contentment, a more religious person would make only moderate efforts to earn livelihoods and at the same time live a balanced life blended with moderate consumption, altruistic concerns and religious obligations. This result provides a point of departure from conventional economics. Thus due to the integrated nature of life in Islamic framework, individuals are tempted to allocate time to all the activities concerning self, home, society and religion in a more balanced way.


Enabling teachers to continually update their subject skills, knowledge and understanding is of vital importance, but we are all aware of the difficulties involved that arise in attending training due to issues relating to funding or 'rarely cover'. Building on the success of the 2010 North West Design and Technology event held at Daresbury Laboratories, this year's free event for teachers aims to provide even more opportunities for delegates to gain new and update existing skills. Having presented a Technological Textiles Workshop at Daresbury,in helping to plan for this year we contacted several delegates from
last year's conference to see what, if any, impact our workshop had on their classroom practice and we were delighted to uncover many examples of good practice where the workshop had impacted directly upon classroom activity.


OBJECTIVES
Previous studies have identified behavioral phenotypes that predispose genetically vulnerable youth to a later onset of bipolar I or II disorder, but few studies have examined whether early psychosocial intervention can reduce risk of syndromal conversion. In a one-year open trial, we tested a version of family-focused treatment adapted for youth at high risk for bipolar disorder (FFT-HR).

METHODS
A referred sample of 13 children (mean 13.4±2.69 years; 4 boys, 9 girls) who had a parent with bipolar I or II disorder participated at one of two outpatient specialty clinics. Youth met DSM-IV criteria for major depressive disorder (n=8), cyclothymic disorder (n=1), or bipolar disorder not otherwise specified (n=4), with active mood symptoms in the past month. Participants were offered FFT-HR (12 sessions in four months) with their parents, plus psychotropic medications as needed. Independent evaluators assessed depressive symptoms, hypomanic symptoms, and global functioning at baseline and then every four months for one year, with retrospective severity and impairment ratings made for each week of the follow-up interval.

RESULTS
Families were mostly adherent to the treatment protocol (85% retention), and therapists administered the FFT-HR manual with high levels of fidelity. Youth showed significant improvements in depression, hypomania, and psychosocial functioning scores on the Adolescent Longitudinal Interval Follow-up Evaluation. They also showed significant improvements in Young Mania Rating Scale and Children's Depression Rating Scale scores.

CONCLUSIONS
FFT-HR is a promising intervention for youth at high risk for BD. Larger-scale randomized trials that follow youth into young adulthood will be necessary to determine whether early psychosocial intervention can reduce the probability of developing bipolar I or II disorder among genetically vulnerable youth.


Abstract : This document contains the results of the first CERT(sm) Invitational Workshop on Research in Incident Handling, held at the Software Engineering Institute in November 1992. The workshop was convened to address a wide spectrum of computer, network, and information security topics from the perspective of incident handling, both in the present and in the future. The intent was to bring together researchers, incident handling specialists, users, system administrators, and managers to encourage an exchange of information and experience. Specifically, it was intended to identify lucrative areas for research and development in improving the practice of incident handling and in applying the experience and information base that the CERT Coordination Center has amassed during its existence.


Automatic audio signal classification is one of the general research areas in which algorithms are developed to allow computer systems to understand and interact with the audio environment. Human utterance classification is a specific subset of audio signal classification in which the domain of audio signals is restricted to those likely to be encountered when interacting with humans. Speech recognition software performs classification in a domain restricted to human speech, but human utterances can also include singing, shouting, poetry and prosodic speech, for which current recognition engines are not designed. Another recent and relevant audio signal classification task is the discrimination between speech and music. Many radio stations have periods of speech (news, information reports, commercials) interspersed with periods of music, and systems have been designed to search for one type of sound in preference over another. Many of the current systems used to distinguish between speech and music use characteristics of the human voice, so such systems are not able to distinguish between speech and music when the music is an individual unaccompanied singer. This thesis presents research into the problem of human utterance classification, specifically differentiation between talking and singing. The question is addressed: "Are there measurable differences between the auditory waveforms produced by talking and singing?" Preliminary background is presented to acquaint the reader with some of the science used in the algorithm development. A corpus of sounds was collected to study the physical and perceptual differences between singing and talking, and the procedures and results of this collection are presented. A set of 17 features is developed to differentiate between talking and singing, and to investigate the intermediate vocalizations between talking and singing. The results of these features are examined and evaluated.


Prostate cancer (PC) is the second leading cause of
male cancer deaths, the advanced form of which continues to be incurable; and
nature of the disease being such that it is highly suitable for gene therapy.
However, therapy is hampered by lack of appropriate gene delivery agents
available. Recently, metal-organic-framework (MOF) biocomposites have seen
increasing applications in DNA technologies, including gene delivery. In this
work, a polymorph of zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) MOF nanoparticles
called ZIF-C are used as gene delivery agents to cause knockdown (KD) of a
protein overexpressed by the gene ribosomal protein SA in PC. Feasibility of ZIF-C mediated KD at
cytoplasmic levels in PC is demonstrated by RNA interference, whereby RPSA
specific siRNA is delivered using ZIF-C. Feasibility of ZIF-C mediated KD at
genomic levels is demonstrated by CRISPR/Cas9, whereby RPSA specific
CRISPR/Cas9 plasmids are delivered using ZIF-C. Specific targeting is further
achieved by coating of ZIF-C with epigallocatechin-gallate (EGCG). Cellular
transfection assays reveal the gradual expression of ZIF-C delivered
RPSA-targeting nucleic acids for up to 96 hours. Quantitative polymerase chain reactions and genomic cleavage
detection demonstrate gradual KD, with ~20% reduction in RPSA expression that
is almost doubled to ~40% on EGCG-mediated targeted cellular uptake.


Abstract Medium-scale waves (zonal wavenumbers 4–7) frequently dominate Southern Hemisphere summer circulation patterns. Randel and Stanford have studied the dynamics of these features, demonstrating that the medium-scale waves result from baroclinic excitation and exhibit well-defined life cycles. This study details the evolution of the medium-scale waves during a particular life cycle. The specific case chosen exhibits a high degree of zonal symmetry, prompting study based upon zonally averaged diagnostics. An analysis of the medium-scale wave energetics reveals a well-defined life cycle of baroclinic growth, maturity, and barotropic decay. Eliassen-Palm flux diagrams detail the daily wave structure and its interaction with the zonally-averged flow.


Recent work on variational autoencoders (VAEs) has enabled the development of generative topic models using neural networks. Topic models based on latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) successfully use the Dirichlet distribution as a prior for the topic and word distributions to enforce sparseness. However, there is a trade-off between sparsity and smoothness in Dirichlet distributions. Sparsity is important for a low reconstruction error during training of the autoencoder, whereas smoothness enables generalization and leads to a better log-likelihood of the test data. Both of these properties are encoded in the Dirichlet parameter vector. By rewriting this parameter vector into a product of a sparse binary vector and a smoothness vector, we decouple the two properties, leading to a model that features both a competitive topic coherence and a high log-likelihood. Efficient training is enabled using rejection sampling variational inference for the reparameterization of the Dirichlet distribution. Our experiments show that our method is competitive with other recent VAE topic models.


To secure a network of small devices using symmetric key cryptography is a non-trivial task. Nevertheless, it is important because public key cryptography is computationally expensive and therefore infeasible to implement on some small, battery-powered devices with limited memory. We study methods for allocating symmetric keys to devices before deployment, known as key predistribution schemes. Using combinatorial techniques, we analyse and design a variety of key predistribution schemes. We provide a correction to the previously stated formula for calculating the resilience of certain random key predistribution schemes, presenting instead a rigorously proved and widely applicable formula. We also present a simplified formula for calculating the connectivity. Next, we examine the role of expander graphs in key predistribution schemes. We demonstrate that good expansion is desirable for robust schemes, and discuss how this can be achieved. In particular, we examine the expansion of key predistribution schemes built from expander graph constructions, which provide perfect resilience. We show that if perfect resilience is not required, key predistribution schemes with higher connectivity and expansion can be created from hypergraphs and designs, and we explore the relationships between these constructions. We argue for the use of hypergraphs to represent and analyse key predistribution schemes, and identify open problems which, if solved, could lead to further suitable and robust constructions for key predistribution schemes. Finally, we study a class of schemes which we call 'broadcast-enhanced key 4 predistribution schemes'. These are schemes which make use of a trusted base station and a broadcast channel to update and revoke keys in a network whilst it is operational. We explore the range of benefits which such schemes can provide, and present and analyse two constructions for particular scenarios: a scheme which allows efficient revocation of devices, and a scheme which creates hierarchy amongst the devices for efficient routing and battery consumption. We demonstrate that our schemes provide effective and flexible trade-offs between the conflicting parameters of connectivity, resilience, key storage and broadcast load.


An analytical, advanced imaging method has been developed for the initial monitoring and identification of foam debris and similar anomalies that occur post-launch in reference to the space shuttle s external tank (ET). Remote sensing technologies have been used to perform image enhancement and analysis on high-resolution, true-color images collected with the DCS 760 Kodak digital camera located in the right umbilical well of the space shuttle. Improvements to the camera, using filters, have added sharpness/definition to the image sets; however, image review/analysis of the ET has been limited by the fact that the images acquired by umbilical cameras during launch are two-dimensional, and are usually nonreferenceable between frames due to rotation translation of the ET as it falls away from the space shuttle. Use of stereo pairs of these images can enable strong visual indicators that can immediately portray depth perception of damaged areas or movement of fragments between frames is not perceivable in two-dimensional images. A stereoscopic image visualization system has been developed to allow 3D depth perception of stereo-aligned image pairs taken from in-flight umbilical and handheld digital shuttle cameras. This new system has been developed to augment and optimize existing 2D monitoring capabilities. Using this system, candidate sequential image pairs are identified for transformation into stereo viewing pairs. Image orientation is corrected using control points (similar points) between frames to place the two images in proper X-Y viewing perspective. The images are then imported into the WallView stereo viewing software package. The collected control points are used to generate a transformation equation that is used to re-project one image and effectively co-register it to the other image. The co-registered, oriented image pairs are imported into a WallView image set and are used as a 3D stereo analysis slide show. Multiple sequential image pairs can be used to allow forensic review of temporal phenomena between pairs. The observer, while wearing linear polarized glasses, is able to review image pairs in passive 3D stereo.


Because a patentable invention must be novel, and it must embody an advancement that would not have been obvious to persons of ordinary skill, the invention must be compared to the "prior art." Prior art, in the language of the current Patent Act, includes anything that was already "patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public." With certain qualifications, patent law has always required that prior art have been available to the public. A manuscript describing the claimed invention that had never left its author's desk drawer would not qualify as a printed publication. But what of prior art that was accessible, but ignored; or that was available at one time, but snatched away or forgotten? Can "lost art" be used to challenge the novelty of a claimed invention? It is an important question because of the light it sheds on what it means for prior art to be "available to the public," a matter that has been the subject of much attention since the recent adoption of the America Invents Act. It also forces us to consider the character of the public domain as applied in the context of patent law; specifically, whether every addition to the prior art is also a contribution to the public domain and, in consequence, irrevocable. I conclude that courts should be guided by the policy of preserving in the public domain advancements that have already made an enduring contribution to public welfare. Lost art that demonstrably failed to provide any lasting benefit to the public should not count against a later inventor who, in a practical sense, has advanced what the Constitution calls "the Progress of... [the] useful Arts."


The author's premise in this book is that we need the biblical message to understand human dignity and human fallenness as a basis for the pursuit of human rights. He believes that scripture provides sufficient wisdom and guidance to comprehend human rights and the need for their protection. This far surpasses the contribution other faiths may have to make to this issue at a time in human history when there is a surfeit of human rights abuses. This book includes biblical studies in selected texts and offers practical guidance on action that leads to the preservation of human rights.


To increase the confidence that the probability of acquiring (detecting or recognizing) objects from thermal-vision images under normalized conditions is no more nor less than a definite level, it is proposed to make an expert estimate of this probability for images obtained when the distances to the objects are, respectively, more or less than the specified distance. A technique is proposed for calculating the confidence probability corresponding to a specified lower limit of the confidence interval for the probability of acquiring the objects.


This article presents findings from an exploratory study of three programs using the Housing First approach to provide permanent supportive housing for single, homeless adults with serious mental illness and often co-occurring substance-related disorders. This approach provides direct, or nearly direct, access to housing that is intended to be permanent without requiring sobriety or psychiatric treatment. Findings from the three programs examined for this study indicate that the Housing First approach may help the hardest-to-serve chronically homeless population achieve housing stability. Of the 80 participants tracked over 12 months, 84% remained enrolled in the Housing First program for 1 year following program entry. One half of those spent every night in their Housing First unit, while the others spent some time in other living environments. C 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Chelicerata is one of the oldest arthropod phylum, already represented by diverse forms in the Cambrian fossil record, and mites (Acari) are the most diverse representative of the ancient lineage of Chelicerata. Oribatid mites (Acari, Oribatida) are species rich ubiquitous soil arthropods playing an important role in decomposition processes. They are a phylogenetic old taxon, with the oldest fossils dating to the Early Devonian (~380 million years ago), that presumably originated on land. Peculiarly, parthenogenesis is common in oribatid mites and lineages probably radiated while being parthenogenetic. The long-term existence of lineages that reproduce without males contradicts theories about the advantage and maintenance of sexual reproduction and is extremely rare among animals. Less than 1% of all organisms reproduce without sex, whereas in oribatid mites about 10% of the species are parthenogenetic. Using molecular markers we investigated evolutionary processes in oribatid mites at three time-scales. (1) The age of oribatid mites was estimated using 18S rDNA sequences and a Bayesian molecular clock approach. Remarkably, the results suggest that the radiation of oribatid mites fills the gap in the fossil record between the Cambrian explosion (540 mya) and the earliest fossil records of terrestrial ecosystems (410 mya). Therefore, oribatid mites likely were among the earliest colonisers of land, using the interstitial as stepping stone to colonise terrestrial habitats. Presumably, early terrestrial food webs were formed by omnivorous and detritivorous arthropods, thereby facilitating the invasion of terrestrial habitats by later colonisers of higher trophic levels. The ancestral state reconstruction of reproductive modes showed that the colonisation of truly terrestrial soils by oribatid mites resulted in multiple losses of sexual reproduction in basal groups and that some lineages reproduce parthenogenetically for millions of years. (2) The last ice-age lasting from ~115,000-11,000 years ago had major impact on species and genetic diversity of European arthropods. Using a molecular marker with intermediate resolution of several million years, the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene, we investigated the impact of this major climatic influence on soil organisms. Variations in COI of two oribatid mite and two springtail (Hexapoda, Collembola) species were investigated on a pan-European spatial scale. Colonisation patterns and spatial refugia differed between mites and springtails, but genetic diversity was high in each of the species at small and large spatial scale with genetic distances being extraordinarily high (>18% p-distance). The results indicate that the genetic structure of present day soil animal populations reflect pre-Pleistocene colonisation and diversification events. This suggests that the major evolutionary forces that shaped the belowground system differ from those that shaped above-ground ecosystems. (3) Processes that drive speciation in soil are unknown and the widespread occurrence of parthenogenesis among soil-living organisms has received little attention. Microsatellites are molecular markers that enable to resolve the actual genetic structure of populations, to analyse recent evolutionary processes and to infer reproductive modes. Microsatellite markers were used to investigate the population structure and genetic diversity of one sexual and one parthenogenetic oribatid mite species that coexist in the same habitat. The results showed that genetic diversity is high in both species and that gene flow in the sexual species is sufficient to ascribe all individuals in the sampling area to a single population. Parthenogenetic reproduction could be confirmed in the putatively parthenogenetic species with the population being more strongly structured indicating lower mobility of this species. Environmental factors responsible for the patchy distribution of individuals in both species could not be identified. However, microsatellites proved to be promising tools to analyse the genetic constitution of oribatid mite populations allowing to estimate population structure, population size and gene flow as major driving factors of evolutionary processes.


We present four companion digital models of the age, age uncertainty, spreading rates, and spreading asymmetries of the world's ocean basins as geographic and Mercator grids with 2 arc min resolution. The grids include data from all the major ocean basins as well as detailed reconstructions of back‐arc basins. The age, spreading rate, and asymmetry at each grid node are determined by linear interpolation between adjacent seafloor isochrons in the direction of spreading. Ages for ocean floor between the oldest identified magnetic anomalies and continental crust are interpolated by geological estimates of the ages of passive continental margin segments. The age uncertainties for grid cells coinciding with marine magnetic anomaly identifications, observed or rotated to their conjugate ridge flanks, are based on the difference between gridded age and observed age. The uncertainties are also a function of the distance of a given grid cell to the nearest age observation and the proximity to fracture zones or other age discontinuities. Asymmetries in crustal accretion appear to be frequently related to asthenospheric flow from mantle plumes to spreading ridges, resulting in ridge jumps toward hot spots. We also use the new age grid to compute global residual basement depth grids from the difference between observed oceanic basement depth and predicted depth using three alternative age‐depth relationships. The new set of grids helps to investigate prominent negative depth anomalies, which may be alternatively related to subducted slab material descending in the mantle or to asthenospheric flow. A combination of our digital grids and the associated relative and absolute plate motion model with seismic tomography and mantle convection model outputs represents a valuable set of tools to investigate geodynamic problems.


We propose a novel configuration for a highly integrated and highly sensitive optical biosensor. The basic element of our sensor is a surface plasmon interferometer consisting of a thin layer of gold embedded in a silicon membrane. We investigate the performance of our sensor by simulation using eigenmode expansion. We calculate that refractive index changes in the order of 10-6 RIU (refractive index unit) are detectable for a component of length 10 mum. Moreover, we illustrate that the operation wavelength of our sensor can be tuned to a desired wavelength for a wide range of environmental refractive indices, making our device suitable for chemo- and biosensing


Global polynomial optimization can be a powerful tool when applied to engineering problems. One of the most successful methods for solving such problems is based on convex linear matrix inequality (LMI) relaxations. Software implementations of this approach can be found for example in Matlab toolboxes GloptiPoly and YALMIP. Matlab language makes it very easy when it comes to modelling polynomial problems. However, when using these toolboxes, Matlab is also required for the problem solving. GpoSolver aims at bridging this gap by providing a Matlab-based problem modelling toolbox supplemented by a problem-solving back end in a form of a C++ template library. Once a problem is conveniently modelled and parametrized in Matlab, a C++ class is automatically generated by GpoSolver. This class can be easily included into an existing codebase and used to solve different instances of the problem based on the supplied parameters.


ABSTRACT Studies on media and politics generally find an effect of the media on the symbolic policy agenda. Analysing data from the Hungarian Comparative Agendas Project, we demonstrate that this effect is extremely weak in the Hungarian policy-making process. We identified those issues that received greater than average coverage in the media. However, we found that in the majority of cases governmental initiatives or decisions preceded the media coverage – that is, instead of the media agenda pulling the policy agenda, the general logic is the opposite: the media are talking about the policy initiatives of the government. The ambition of the paper is twofold. First, our findings reinforce those claims in the literature that point to the many institutional and political factors affecting the media-politics nexus. This suggests that policy-making might be very different in new(er) democracies. Second, our research analyses the policy-making side of Viktor Orbán's governance. Changes in the polity, democratic backlash and illiberal tendencies are usually the focus concerning the political changes in Hungary since 2010, but no attention has been devoted to how this type of governance is reflected in policy-making. Our paper seeks to make a contribution also in this respect.


Abstract Not Available – First paragraph follows:
Infectious coryza, a respiratory disease of chickens, is caused by the bacterium Haemophilus gallinarum. The disease has continuously plagued sections of the poultry industry in California for a number of years. Since prevention and control measures have met with relatively little success, new approaches have been made to the study of the disease. Haemophilus organisms associated with recent field cases of coryza and airsac disease have been isolated and characterized for their cultural aspects, biochemical activities, specific antibodies formed against them, and their virulence in causing disease in chickens, chicken embryos, and mice. Similar studies have been made on other microorganisms found associated with H. gallinarum in diseased tissues, especially members of the genus Pasteu-rella. Whether the severe disease observed in field cases was caused by H. gallinarum alone or by a combination of agents is under investigation.


Phenylketonuria patients harboring a subset of phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH) mutations have recently shown normalization of blood phenylalanine levels upon oral administration of the PAH cofactor tetrahydrobiopterin [(6R)-L-erythro-5,6,7,8-tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4)]. Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain BH4 responsiveness, but the molecular basis for the corrective effect(s) of BH4 has not been understood. We have investigated the biochemical, kinetic, and structural changes associated with BH4-responsive mutations (F39L, I65T, R68S, H170D, E178G, V190A, R261Q, A300S, L308F, A313T, A373T, V388M, E390G, P407S, and Y414C). The biochemical and kinetic characterization of the 15 mutants studied points toward a multifactorial basis for the BH4 responsiveness; the mutants show residual activity (>30% of WT) and display various kinetic defects, including increased Km (BH4) and reduced cooperativity of substrate binding, but no decoupling of cofactor (BH4) oxidation. For some, BH4 seems to function through stabilization and protection of the enzyme from inactivation and proteolytic degradation. In the crystal structures of a phenylketonuria mutant, A313T, minor changes were seen when compared with the WT PAH structures, consistent with the mild effects the mutant has upon activity of the enzyme both in vitro and in vivo. Truncations made in the A313T mutant PAH form revealed that the N and C termini of the enzyme influence active site binding. Of fundamental importance is the observation that BH4 appears to increase Phe catabolism if at least one of the two heterozygous mutations has any residual activity remaining.


Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate parents' awareness toward antibiotics use in upper respiratory tract infection in children. Methods: This cross-sectional study conducted in Al-Qassim using validated and translated questionnaire whish was distributed using what's app. over a period of 3 months, extended from May 2018 to July 2018. Results: The number of respondents were 405, majority 81% chose physicians as the main source of information about antibiotic use. Forty-four percent of parents agreed that most URTIs are viral in origin and self-limiting without needing antibiotics. However, 19% of parents believed that antibiotics should be given to all children who have a fever. Fifty two percent were aware that inappropriate use of antibiotics reduces antibiotic efficacy and drives bacterial resistance. Sixty percent of participants chose antibiotics as the treatment they anticipated to be recommended. Fever was the dominant symptom among others of URTI, that would make (21.7%) always ask physicians to prescribe antibiotics. Parents who never asked paediatricians to prescribed antibiotics for their children were (36.5%). The attitude and practice of the participants were associated with the number of children they had; parents with five children or more had a lower attitude and practice score. Conclusion: this study found that majority of the participant were educated but with poor attitude and practice. Although parents are concerned about the use of over counter antibiotics, often demand it. Considering that parents are unaware of indications and subsequent complications of using over counter antibiotics, they often request mentioned drugs, showing concern nonetheless. the need to understand parents' knowledge, attitude and practice regarding the use of antibiotics for URTIs is required in creating suitable interventional educational programs and raise awareness to avoid futile antibiotic use.


Background: Malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea
are the leading causes of death in children under five years of age in Uganda.
In a bid to improve access to prompt
and effective treatment of these diseases, Malaria Consortium in partnership
with United Nations International Children's
Emergency Fund (UNICEF) introduced Integrated Community Case Management (ICCM)
in eight central districts of Uganda. There is currently limited information about
client satisfaction with this program. The main objective of the study was to
assess client satisfaction with the ICCM program in Wakiso district. Methods: A
cross-sectional study using quantitative methods and a modified SERVQUAL tool
was conducted and 454 care givers of children under five years of age were
interviewed. Differences in mean scores between expected and perceived services
were analyzed using paired t-tests and chi-square tests. A negative score
implied that clients were not satisfied with the care they received. Logistic
regression models were also used. Results: Among 454 respondents, 80% of the
care givers of children under five were satisfied with ICCM program. The
overall gap (-0.332) between expectations and perceptions was significant, (t = -4.89, p-value 0.0081) meaning that despite the high level of client satisfaction, there still existed
a quality gap in services provided under ICCM. Furthermore, there were
no significant differences in the expectation and perception scores among the
different dimensions except for reliability which had a score of -0.49 (p-value
0.0005). The multivariable logistic regression model showed that primary education
(OR 2.8, 95% CI 1.12-6.80) and being a Muslim (OR 2.9, 95% CI 1.40-6.34) were
significantly associated with client satisfaction. Conclusion: Overall, 80% of the clients were satisfied
with ICCM services despite the overall quality gap in ICCM services and there
was no statistical significant difference between perceptions and expectations
for all the dimensions except for reliability dimension. The DHO and
implementing partners should ensure a systematic approach for gathering, aggregating, analysing
and reporting data to map and identify key gaps in treatment coverage.


Abstract In recent years economic agents and systems have become more and more interactive and juxtaposed, therefore the social sciences need to rely on the studies of physical sciences to analyze this complexity in the relationships. According to this point of view, the authors rely on the geometrical model of the Möbius strip used in electromagnetism, which analyzes the movements of the electrons that produce energy. They use a similar model in a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) context to devise a new cost-benefit model in order to take into account three positive effects on the efficiency of a socially responsible company: 1) cooperation among stakeholders in the same sector; 2) cooperation among similar stakeholders in different sectors; and 3) the stakeholders' loyalty toward the company. By applying this model to a firm's decision problem the authors find that investing in CSR activities is always convenient, depending on the number of sectors, the stakeholders' sensitivity to these investments and the decay rate to alienation. Their work suggests a new method of analysis which should be developed not only at a theoretical level, but also at an empirical level.


This paper discusses the development of political parties in Indonesia from the 1950s (post-independence) to the general elections of the Reform era (1999 and 2004) following the end of Suharto's New Order regime. Indonesians are divided along religious and cultural lines into different aliran (streams) and political parties in some respects have followed these "streams", representing santri (pious Muslims), abangan (nominal Muslims with beliefs in mysticism) and priyayi (those with roots in the aristocracy and beliefs in mysticism). They can further be categorised into two major groups, those that have links to, or espouse ideologies of, Islam and Nationalists. This paper finds, firstly, that this pattern continued from the 1950s to 1999, but that by 2004, peoples' preferences in local, regional, and national elections for head of government were no longer generally characterised by "streams". Second, it finds that a pattern of nationalist-Islamic or abangan-santri coalitions has apparently become an alternative solution for Indonesian integration and democracy. And, third, it shows that it is difficult for Islamic-based parties to gain popular support without coalitions with other parties with secular-nationalist bases of support even though demographically, the majority of Indonesian people are Muslim.


Water consumption figures for the southwest United States are compared for the last four decades. Past trends in consumption are evaluated in the context of precipitation variability in the region and with regard to Colorado River streamflow changes. The study represents a follow-up look at a previous assessment of water consumption, regional precipitation, and demographic trends in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, which account for much of the annual depletions of Colorado River water. The previous study was completed during a wet spell in the West, and trends in all major categories of water consumption were consistently upward. This study indicates that a decline or reversal has taken place in water use in many of the western states. The greater water efficiency (reduced per capita water use) is particularly noteworthy in California, which alone accounts for the lion's share of water depletions from the Colorado River Basin. The years since the mid-1980's have been predominantly dry in much of the West. At the same time, population in the six-state region has ncreased at about the same pace it had grown during prior decades. A shift from irrigation-related uses to civil consumption is evident in the 1980's. Taking into consideration a situation where multiyear dry spells are a normal part of the climate of the region, it appears that irrigation depletions may have peaked in the West. In the future, allocations for civil supply, recreation, and other in-stream uses as well as for hydropower generation may heighten the competition for available water supplies, put pressure on existing pricing policies, and force users toward greater conservation efforts and improved efficiencies.


One-hundred-forty characters may be insufficient to deliver a treatise on the judiciary, but it is more than enough to deliver criticism of the third branch of government. Today, these tweeted critiques sometimes come not from the general public but from the President himself. Attacks such as these come at a challenging time for court systems. We live in a highly politicized, polarized society. This polarization is reflected in attitudes toward the courts, particularly the federal courts. Unfortunately, public doubts about the court system come at a time when public understanding of the structure of government, and especially the court system, is abysmally low.
All of this context raises a number of related questions. When the prolific executive tweeter calls out a federal judge, is President Trump just venting or has he tapped into a strong subset of American opinion on the judiciary? And, if so, does a "so-called judge" have a role in engaging, informing, perhaps even rebutting these opinions? Further, could 140 characters be an effective platform to use in fulfilling that role?
This article will address the specific issue of judges using Twitter to promote the interests of the courts as institutions. After section II's brief description of the mechanics of Twitter, section III will discuss why and how judges communicate through Twitter.
Section IV will sound a note of caution based on two factors:
1) a web of judicial ethics rules that limit judicial speech (including Twitter); and
2) the nature of the Twitter experience and the way people use it, which can hinder attempts to effectively reach the desired audience.
The article will conclude by arguing that in this day and age, when much of America gets its news from social media and those platforms are being used to delegitimize the judiciary, the third branch can ill afford to disengage. Judicial tweeting, within the limits of the ethics rules, should be encouraged rather than shunned.


This paper investigates certain macro data on the Indian economy to draw inferences on the sustainability of the economic growth experienced over the last couple of decades. Interpreting sustainability in terms of the maintenance of different forms of capital to ensure that future consumption levels are at least as high as current levels, estimates of investment have been made using theoretically consistent models and data relevant to the Indian context. Subsequently, the paper investigates the extent to which the investment that has taken place over a thirty year period (from 1976-77 to 2004-05) has been aligned with the consumption path. Investment estimates are found to be a reliable indicator of sustainability of the future consumption path and average future consumption is likely to be higher than current consumption. The findings reveal that while capital formation in manufactured assets has been fuelling wealth accumulation in the economy, there has been a rise in the degradation of natural capital stocks. However, considering the aggregate picture, taking note of investment in human capital, produced capital and the depreciation of natural capital, there has been net wealth accumulation in the economy. Per capita wealth has been rising over the period, with a sharp rise observed from the mid 1990s onwards.


This paper discusses how empowerment can be triggered by mystical experiences, by focusing on mystical experience of the first revelation of Islam to Muhammad PBUH. Only few literature on empowerment in mainstream psychology, specifically discuss how empowerment can be achieved through personal mystical or spiritual experiences. Transpersonal studies give explanations of human mystical experiences and extra sensory perceptions. Chronological analysis of the first revelation showed how the mystical experience empowered Muhammad. First, mystical experience is empowerment. Second, mystical experiences can become an effective and an efficient trigger for empowerment in daily life if understood correctly; and affirmed with social support. Third, spiritual awakening can unfold into intrapersonal, interpersonal and behavioral empowerment if the person contemplates about the experience, and implement it to benefit others.


This paper addresses several experiments that the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) University Library has
undertaken to shape how information is presented on the Internet and to contribute to the quality and quantity of
information accessible via the Internet. Four projects were begun under UIC's Great Cities Initiative. This paper
describes each project briefly; reviews the significant issues addressed by the development of each project; discusses
the future of each project; and identifies areas for other organizations, but especially libraries, to become involved with
Internet publishing. The four projects include: a partnership with the Chicago Public Library (CPL) to make information
about the Library and the City of Chicago available to eight CPL branches as well as to Internet visitors from more than 30
countries; a pilot project, now under contract, with the United States Department of State to provide State Department
information world-wide on a timely basis, resulting in more than 3,000 full-text, fully indexed items distributed via Gopher
and the World Wide Web over 300,000 times each month; a project with Pemberton Press to provide selected articles
from four print journals, plus tables of content, author's guidelines and other information; and a collaboration with the
Illinois State Archives to provide access to specialized databases of interest to genealogists and historians, such as the
Federal Land Sales in Illinois.


Many scholars have examined the play, Wedlock of the Gods, but most readings of the text looked at it from the perspective of feminism and, in this case, the right for a woman to choose her marriage partner. While it cannot be denied that this theme is discernible in the text, this paper attempts to demonstrate that the burden of human rights abuse in the play is not only shared by both genders, but that the chief male character, Uloko appears to be more "sinned against than sinning," to use Hazlitt's popular phrase. In the text, he is made the butt of society, a persona non grata from where spirals the tapestry of violence witnessed in the play.


This work presents an algorithm to provide a better representation of space to artificially intelligent characters (i.e., agents or bots) in game and simulation environments by providing a more accurate breakdown of the traversable space present in the game environment. Such representations are generally constructed by decomposing the walkable space present in a game environment into a series of convex regions to form a data structure called a navigation mesh. We extend the basic concept of a navigation mesh by the introduction of an understanding of the textures that are attached to the underlying geometry creating what we refer to as a texture-aware navigation mesh. This does result in a more complex navigation mesh (more regions and a larger search space). However, since the textures of walkable geometry can be used to determine the appropriate traversal method for that terrain, a game character can determine valid paths for their traversal methods using just the navigation mesh (e.g., characters in cars can generate paths containing just roads or walking characters can create paths containing just sidewalks). We also present a use case that shows how such a system of texture aware navigation meshes might benefit character path planning and search in virtual environments. In this use case, we examine a Real Time Strategy game style game environment, which shows it is possible to generate a navigation mesh such that each region is composed of a single terrain type.


Lymphangioleiomyomatosis [LAM] is a rare lung disease affecting women and characterized by abnormal smooth muscle cells (LAM cells) proliferation along lung and lymphatic channels. The frequent occurrence of extrapulmonary LAM [e-LAM] has been reported as abdomen pelvic lymph nodes involvement, angiomyolipomas, lymphangioleiomyomas or lymphangiomas in LAM patients. An extrapulmonary manifestation as the initial LAM presentation preceding pulmonary disorders and as asymptomatic extrapulmonary LAM lesions are unusual. We report two women presented with asymptomatic retroperitoneal cystic masses accidentally found on ultrasound examination. The tumours were surgically removed and diagnosed as: 1-malignant mesothelioma and 2-tymphangiomyoma. The microscopical sections were reviewed and re-diagnosed as e-LAM at advanced pulmonary LAM development. Mesotheliosis present in e-LAM morphology is unique and was misleading for malignancy diagnosis. The second case illustrates the hormone dependent growth of lymphangiomyoma and LAM development in young women. It is difficult to prove the presence of pulmonary LAM at the time of tumours excision but both cases demonstrate importance of appropriate LAM diagnosis and being aware of such diagnosis in cases presenting with extrapulmonary extension of the disease.


The generalized presence of stain, particularly on anterior teeth, provides an unaesthetic appearance with a negative impact on the patient. The aim of this paper is to report a case of severe chromatic alterations treated with enamel microabrasion associated with infiltration of low-viscosity resin. The intense brownish pigmentation and white spots of fluorosis lose their whitish appearance and look similar to sound enamel. This association of techniques, which might be an alternative to white-masking of intense pigmentation, showed optimal aesthetic results.


Neural tube defects (NTDs) are severe congenital malformations affecting 1 in every 1000 pregnancies. 'Open' NTDs result from failure of primary neurulation as seen in anencephaly, myelomeningocele (open spina bifida), and craniorachischisis. Degeneration of the persistently open neural tube in utero leads to loss of neurological function below the lesion level. 'Closed' NTDs are skin‐covered disorders of spinal cord structure, ranging from asymptomatic spina bifida occulta to severe spinal cord tethering, and usually traceable to disruption of secondary neurulation. 'Herniation' NTDs are those in which meninges, with or without brain or spinal cord tissue, become exteriorized through a pathological opening in the skull or vertebral column (e.g., encephalocele and meningocele). NTDs have multifactorial etiology, with genes and environmental factors interacting to determine individual risk of malformation. While over 200 mutant genes cause open NTDs in mice, much less is known about the genetic causation of human NTDs. Recent evidence has implicated genes of the planar cell polarity signaling pathway in a proportion of cases. The embryonic development of NTDs is complex, with diverse cellular and molecular mechanisms operating at different levels of the body axis. Molecular regulatory events include the bone morphogenetic protein and Sonic hedgehog pathways which have been implicated in control of neural plate bending. Primary prevention of NTDs has been implemented clinically following the demonstration that folic acid (FA), when taken as a periconceptional supplement, can prevent many cases. Not all NTDs respond to FA, however, and adjunct therapies are required for prevention of this FA‐resistant category. WIREs Dev Biol 2013, 2:213–227. doi: 10.1002/wdev.71


Abstract
This study examines gender relations within a highly dynamic social and ecological context. It focuses on how men and women use marine resources for their livelihoods and how the rise of seaweed farming and its decline due to plant disease have affected intra-household gender relations on Songo Songo Island in Tanzania. Little is known about the effect on coastal people of micro and macro forms of social institutions in terms of class, gender and other factors, or of how they affect their rights to access, control and use marine resources. This thesis contributes to social-ecological understanding of the crossing point between natural environment and social processes by showing the relationship between temporality and gender relations in the context of marine resource utilisation in Tanzania.
Following a case-study approach, field research was conducted on Songo Songo Island using qualitative and quantitative techniques such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, semi-structured interviews, household surveys and participant observation. The main research question asks: How does the rise and decline in seaweed farming affect intra-household gender relations on Songo Songo Island? This was guided by three themes: gendered livelihood strategies, gendered access to marine resources and intra-household gender relations.
The study finds that Songo Songo households engage in a number of livelihood activities including fishing, fish processing and marketing, seaweed farming, octopus collecting and formal employment (both skilled and unskilled at the gas plant, hospital, airstrip, and primary school). Within the frame of the socio-cultural patterns of the fishing village, Songo Songo women perform both reproductive and productive roles. The structured social differences among Songo Songo men, according to the category of fishers to which they belong, and women, according to their marital status, determine their access to marine resources. The decline of seaweed farming has created a vacuum for women with no alternative income, forcing them to shift their farms from one place to another in search of areas around the island where seaweed might thrive. Access to marine resources is also influenced by temporality such as tidal changes and trade winds. These temporal variations affect female seaweed farmers" contribution to household income, which in turn affects intra-household gender relations. The overall decline in seaweed farming has reduced their income and limited their economic activity, affecting their power to bargain and negotiate with men. The women"s degree of power also depends on several other factors that influence perceptions of their contributions including cultural norms, gender ideology and social networking.
This thesis calls for gender analysis of coastal livelihoods to reveal the multiple forms in which gender relations are exercised, negotiated and understood in the utilisation of marine resources. It is hoped that the key information presented in this case study and its recommendations for the use of the marine resources in the Songo Songo archipelago will make a significant contribution to development sector understanding of intra-household gender concerns and power relations.


This article describes a new high-accuracy laser measurement device for monitoring the shape and relative position of the surfaces of large-scale items 100 m long or longer. A stable readout base that is independent of the position of the axis of the directional diagram of the laser radiation is created in the device. Interference transformation of the laser radiation was used to obtain a concentric annular structure in the beam that maintains a stable position relative to the axis along which the radiation propagates, and this allowed detector readout devices to be directly referenced to the axis of the laser beam without preprocessing the image. The technical characteristics of the device and its distinguishing features are presented.


Coronaviruses (CoVs) are important human and animal pathogens that induce fatal respiratory, gastrointestinal and neurological disease. The outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002/2003 has demonstrated human vulnerability to (Coronavirus) CoV epidemics. Neither vaccines nor therapeutics are available against human and animal CoVs. Knowledge of host cell proteins that take part in pivotal virus-host interactions could define broad-spectrum antiviral targets. In this study, we used a systems biology approach employing a genome-wide yeast-two hybrid interaction screen to identify immunopilins (PPIA, PPIB, PPIH, PPIG, FKBP1A, FKBP1B) as interaction partners of the CoV non-structural protein 1 (Nsp1). These molecules modulate the Calcineurin/NFAT pathway that plays an important role in immune cell activation. Overexpression of NSP1 and infection with live SARS-CoV strongly increased signalling through the Calcineurin/NFAT pathway and enhanced the induction of interleukin 2, compatible with late-stage immunopathogenicity and long-term cytokine dysregulation as observed in severe SARS cases. Conversely, inhibition of cyclophilins by cyclosporine A (CspA) blocked the replication of CoVs of all genera, including SARS-CoV, human CoV-229E and -NL-63, feline CoV, as well as avian infectious bronchitis virus. Non-immunosuppressive derivatives of CspA might serve as broad-range CoV inhibitors applicable against emerging CoVs as well as ubiquitous pathogens of humans and livestock.


As sport has become more intense, professional and commercialized so have the debates grown about what constitutes acceptable behaviour and fair play, and how to encourage and develop 'good' sporting behaviour, particularly in children and young people. This book explores the nature and function ofvaluesin youth sport and establishes a framework through which coaches, teachers and researchers can develop an understanding of the decision-making processes of young athletes and how they choose between playing fairly or cheating to win. The traditional view of sport participation is that it has a beneficial effect on the social and moral development of children and young people and that it intrinsically promotes cultural values. This book argues that the research evidence is more subtle and nuanced. It examines the concept of values as central organizing constructs of human behaviour that determine our priorities, guide our choices, and transfer across situations, and considers the value priorities and conflicts that are so useful in helping us to understand behaviour in sport. The book argues that teachers and professionals working with children in sport are centrally important agents for value transmission and change and therefore need to develop a deeper understanding of how sport can be used to encourage pro-social values, and offers suggestions for developing a curriculum for teaching values through sport in differing social contexts. Spanning some of the fundamental areas of sport practice and research, including sport psychology, sport pedagogy, practice ethics, and positive youth development through sport, and including useful values and attitudes questionnaires and guidance on their use and interpretation, this book is important reading for any student, researcher, coach or teacher with an interest in youth sport or physical education.


Malate transporters play a critical role in aluminum (Al) tolerance responses for some plant species, such as Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). Here, we further characterize AtALMT1, an Arabidopsis aluminum-activated malate transporter, to clarify its specific role in malate release and Al stress responses. Malate excretion from the roots of accession Columbia was sharply induced by Al, which is concomitant with the induction of AtALMT1 gene expression. The malate release was specific for Al among rhizotoxic stressors, namely cadmium, copper, erbium, lanthanum, sodium, and low pH, which accounts for the specific sensitivity of a null mutant to Al stress. Al-specific malate excretion can be explained by a combined regulation of AtALMT1 expression and activation of AtALMT1 protein, which is specific for Al. Although low pH treatment slightly induced gene expression, other treatments did not. In addition, malate excretion in Al-activated seedlings was rapidly stopped by removing Al from the solution. Other rhizotoxic stressors were not effective in maintaining malate release. Protein kinase and phosphatase inhibitor studies indicated that reversible phosphorylation was important for the transcriptional and posttranslational regulation of AtALMT1. AtALMT1 promoter-b-glucuronidase fusion lines revealed that AtALMT1 has restricted expression within the root, such that unnecessary carbon loss is likely minimized. Lastly, a natural nonsense mutation allele of AtALMT1 was identified from the Al-hypersensitive natural accession Warschau-1.


Topologically non-trivial Hamiltonians with periodic boundary conditions are characterized by strictly quantized invariants. Open questions and fundamental challenges concern their existence, and the possibility of measuring them in systems with open boundary conditions and limited spatial extension. Here, we consider transport in Hofstadter strips, that is, two-dimensional lattices pierced by a uniform magnetic flux which extend over few sites in one of the spatial dimensions. As we show, an atomic wavepacket exhibits a transverse displacement under the action of a weak constant force. After one Bloch oscillation, this displacement approaches the quantized Chern number of the periodic system in the limit of vanishing tunneling along the transverse direction. We further demonstrate that this scheme is able to map out the Chern number of ground and excited bands, and we investigate the robustness of the method in presence of both disorder and harmonic trapping. Our results prove that topological invariants can be measured in Hofstadter strips with open boundary conditions and as few as three sites along one direction.


In the first project, hexagonal packed mesoporous silica (HMS) was synthesized, using dodecyl amine as neutral templating agent. Bis(benzene) and bis(cylopentadienyl) V and Cr were treated with HMS arriving in doping level of 5 wt % for Kubas-type hydrogen adsorption. All doped materials had higher hydrogen adsorption capacities than that of pristine silica. Each Cr center could accommodate 2.2 H2 molecules at 77 K and 60 bar while each V center adsorbs 1.73 H2 at the same condition. The Cr doped silica preserved a substantial degree of its adsorption at room temperature and after three months storage in an inert atmosphere. The second project involved in the synthesis and hydrogen storage performance of vanadium hydrazide gels. The third project focused on the manganese hydrazide for hydrogen storage. The fourth project concentrated on the preparation of titanium hydrazide gels for hydrogen storage. These materials used low-coordinate metal centers as the principal Kubas H2 binding sites with only negligible contribution of physisorption. Hydrazide samples were characterized by Powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Infrared Spectroscopy (IR), Elemental Analysis (EA), Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR), Raman Spectroscopy, nitrogen adsorption (BET), and hydrogen adsorption. The vanadium hydrazide gels possess an excess reversible storage of 4.04 wt% at 77 K and 85 bar, corresponding to a true volumetric adsorption of 80 kg/m3 and an excess volumetric adsorption of 60.01 kg/m3. These values are in the range of the ultimate DOE goal for volumetric density (70 kg/m3) while the manganese hydrazide gels possess 24.2 kg/m3 volumetric at 298K and 85bar. The fifth project employed commercially available organic compounds to react with V(Mes)3.THF to create vanadium-containing polymers for hydrogen storage. The sixth project involved in the synthesis of a porous titanium(III) hydride for hydrogen storage. Ti(III) hydride gels are a promising new hydrogen storage medium, which exploit the first example of solid-state hypervalent hydrides. The material with the highest capacity has an excess reversible storage of 3.49 wt % at 140 bar and 298 K, which corresponds to 44.3 kg/m3 of volumetric density, surpassing the DOE 2017 volumetric goal of 40 kg/m3 H2 without saturation. At adsorption level of 3.49 wt%, TiH3 is be converted to hypervalent TiH5 and TiH7, which contain 3.93 wt% and 7.86 wt% H2, respectively. There are high expectations that hydrogen storage performance of hydrazide and hydride materials might provide even higher storage capacities at higher hydrogen pressure in this thesis so that a system contains these materials might surpass the US Department of Energy ultimate system targets (7.5 wt% and 70 kg/m 3


Accessing quality research when not part of an academic institution can be challenging. Dating back to the 1980s, open access (OA) was a response to journal publishers who restricted access to publications by requiring a subscription and limited access to knowledge. Although the OA movement seeks to remove costly barriers to accessing research, especially when funded by state and federal governments, it remains the subject of continuous debates. After providing a brief overview of OA, this article summarizes OA statutory and regulatory developments at the federal and state levels regarding free and open access to research. It compares similarities and differences among enacted and proposed legislation and describes the advantages and disadvantages of these laws. It analyzes the effects of these laws in higher education, especially on university faculty regarding tenure and promotion decisions as well as intellectual property rights to provide recommendations and best practices regarding the future of legislation and regulation in the United States.