Knowledge is a complex and fluid concept to people, so knowledge management focuses on knowledge arrival; also it is considered as strategic activity help organizations to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Value chain analysis is one of the analysis tools which satisfy continuous competitive advantage on organizations. This paper summarizes the value chain analysis in strategic management field to be applied on the knowledge organizations in knowledge management field which is called Knowledge Value Chain.


Purposes: (1) To explore self-disclosure, physiological and affective responses in easy and difficult speaking situations, (2) to investigate physiological and affective responses in self-disclosure and no self-disclosure speaking contexts, (3) to examine types of self-disclosure statements used along with physiological responses, (4) and to gain an understanding of reasons why and how adults who stutter choose to self-disclose or not self-disclose about their stuttering. Method: Four adults who stutter were randomly assigned to self-disclosure and non self-disclosure speaking contexts. Heart rate, skin conductance, and affective responses were measured during the following focus areas: 1) start baseline, 2) anticipation of the easy speaking situation, 3) the easy speaking situation, 4) anticipation of the difficult speaking situation, 5) the difficult speaking situation, and 6) end baseline. An informational interview to understand the participants' use of or lack of self-disclosure in their daily lives was then conducted. Results: Skin conductance responses were comparable between self-disclosure and non self-disclosure groups. When it came to the participants' heart rate (BPM), all but one focus area had a statistically significant difference between the BPM recorded for the self-disclosure group (M=35.88, SD=3.77) compared to the non self-disclosure group (M=49.54, SD=1.54) for the End Baseline; p =0.04 (between-group). Affectively, participants who did not self-disclose reported the same affective responses preand post-experiment, while participants who did self-disclose reported different affective responses preand post-experiment. Participants also expressed that self-disclosing was dependent on the familiarity of the listener or situation. Also, most participants stated feeling "at ease" or a "pressure" was lifted off when they self-disclosed. Most participants also shared that they self-disclosed as a part of their first interaction with someone or when meeting someone for the first time. Furthermore, when asked about their reactions to engaging in the most difficult and easiest speaking situations most participants were surprised by their feelings. Conclusion: There was not a statistically significant difference in the between-group heart rate and skin conductance results, but there was during the end of the baseline of the BPM measurements. It was also suggested that the anticipation of easy or difficult speaking situations (SC and HR) may be influenced based on familiarity or comfortableness of situation. Participants who did not self-disclose reported the same affective responses preand post-experiment, while participants who did self-disclose reported different affective responses preand post-experiment. Additionally, the informational interview gave insight into how the participants' perceived fear of a speaking situation was different than anticipated. The interview provided information about the situations that participants self-disclose most often and how they self-disclose. This study also revealed that self-disclosure is still a valuable tool that can ease conversation for the speaker. These results may help clinicians to inform their therapy by considering multiple variables that contribute to stuttering and how they change depending on the client's experiences.


abstract South Pacific media is generally projected as embracing Western news values with the ideals of "objectivity" and "facticity" being paramount. In fact, while this may well be partially true of the Western-owned mainstream media in the two largest nations, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, the reality is far more complex. In many respects, Pacific media have more in common with other developing nations, such as in India, Indonesia and the Philippines. Some argue that unique forms of media language are evolving in the region, while others assert that a unique style of Pacific journalism is emerging. This paper discusses notions of Fourth Estate in the South Pacific and outlines and applies a "Four Worlds" news values model that contrasts with media in the dominant regional neighbour states, Australia and New Zealand. It also assesses the findings of two rounds of empirical research in the newsrooms of Fiji and Papua New Guinea (1998/9 and 2001). Finally, the paper argues for major changes to alter a mindset in the region among news organizations that have been reluctant to invest in human resource development or recognize the importance of education for media and democracy.


Being told the sex of your unborn child is a major exogenous 'shock'. In the first study of its kind, we collect before-and-after data from hospital wards. We test for the causal effects of learning child gender upon people's degree of risk-aversion. Using a standard Holt-Laury criterion, the parents of daughters, whether unborn or recently born, are shown to be almost twice as risk-averse as parents of sons. The study demonstrates this in longitudinal ('switching') data and cross-sectional data. The study finds it for fathers and mothers, babies in the womb and recently born children, and for a West European nation and an East European nation.


This article argues for a renewed interest in forgotten modernist lesbian author Gale Wilhelm through an examination of her 1935 novel We Too Are Drifting. Aimed at a wide readership, Wilhelm's novel differs from the work of high-modernist lesbians like Gertrude Stein and Djuna Barnes with its middlebrow sensibilities. Furthermore, it presents the hermaphrodite as a new metaphor for conceptualizing lesbian identity in contrast to the dominant model of the invert espoused by Radclyffe Hall's famous The Well of Loneliness. Without engaging in explicit politics, entering into clinical considerations of sexual psychology, or including gratuitously titillating scenes that the public had come to expect with the subject of lesbianism, Wilhelm's revolutionary gesture needs to be gauged differently: it assumes the lesbian's right to define her own existence as the a priori condition for writing about lesbian love by focusing on how lesbian artists use visual media to express their identities and desires.


This article alerts farmers and those who advise them of the need for caution when making arrangements or agreements with family members regarding the future ownership and succession of the family farm. Such arrangements are frequently oral and informal. Promises are made and revised, and often unspoken 'understandings' are arrived at. This lack of legal formality gives rise to a propensity for matters to go badly and bitterly 'wrong'. Furthermore, the article draws attention to the fact that, even where formal arrangements are made, they are vulnerable to challenge and the nature of the legal and equitable doctrines applicable in such cases means the outcome of such challenges cannot be confidently predicted. It may come as a surprise to many farmers to learn that their autonomy in dealing with their land and businesses can be overridden by legally imposed obligations of morality and good conscience. The article illustrates its thesis by examining three High Court cases in which family farming agreements have been challenged. In each case, the court determined the fate of the family farm, not by reference to the farmer's intention, but by the application of succession legislation and equitable doctrines, such as equitable estoppel and unconscionable transaction. Moreover, in two of these cases, the farmer's actual intention was overridden in favour of an arrangement that better coincided with what the court considered that he ought to have done - resulting in an outcome that neither the parties nor their legal advisers could have expected.


A frequency‐domain detection method, based on statistical estimates derived from coherence measures, was used to determine optimal signal processing and stimulus parameter settings. The method was evaluated using simulations of electrophysiologic recording noise and signals in noise, as well as, real physiologic noise and click evoked auditory brain‐stem responses. Parameters varied in the study were artifact rejection level, spectral filter shape, and stimulus presentation rate. Signal detection was improved following objective selection of parameter settings by this method. Some systematic estimate biases were found under the noise conditions evaluated. This method should be useful in selecting stimulus and recording parameter settings for improved signal detectability. [Work supported by U.C. San Francisco Graduate Division.]


Photographer Robert Adams (b. 1937) is widely regarded as one of the most significant and influential chroniclers of the American West, renowned for his austere views of a landscape profoundly changed by human development. This stunning three-volume set, printed with an unprecedented fidelity to the photographer's master prints, accompanies a major travelling exhibition and is the first publication to comprehensively survey Adams's 45-year career. Presenting an epic sequence of nearly 400 tritone plates, "Robert Adams: The Place We Live" features selections from all of Adams' major projects, including his seminal work in the suburbs of Colorado Springs and Denver and his most recent, elegiac portrayals of trees in the Pacific Northwest. Also included is an anthology of texts by the photographer, a series of critical essays on Adams' life and work, and an illustrated bibliography and chronology that will shed new light on one of the central American artists of our time.


Lack of gender diversity in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) workforce is raising growing concerns, but the evidence base about this problem has until now been based on statistics about the workforce of large technology companies or submissions to a small number of prestigious conferences. We build on this literature with a large-scale analysis of gender diversity in AI research using publications from arXiv, a widely-used preprints repository where we have identified AI papers through an expanded keyword analysis, and predicted author gender using a name-to-gender inference service. We study the evolution of gender diversity in various disciplines, countries and institutions, finding that while the share of female co-authors in AI papers is increasing, it has stagnated in disciplines related to computer science. We also find that geography plays an important role in determining the share of female authors in AI papers and that there is a severe gender gap in the top research institutions. We also study the link between female authorship in papers and the citations it receives, finding a strong, positive correlation in research domains related to the impact of information technology on society. Having done this, we examine the semantic differences between AI papers with and without female co-authors. Our results suggest that there are significant differences in machine learning and computer ethics between the United States and the United Kingdom as well as differences in the research focus of papers with female co-authors. We conclude by reporting the results of interviews with female AI researchers and other important stakeholders aimed at interpreting our findings and identifying policies to improve diversity and inclusion in the AI research workforce.


Species- and individual-specific animal calls can be used in identification as verified in playback experiments and analyses of features extracted from these signals. The use of machine-learning methods and acoustic features borrowed from human speech recognition to identify animals at the species and individual level has increased recently. To date there have been few studies comparing the performances of these methods and features used for call-type-independent species and individual identification. We compared the performance of four machine-learning classifiers in the identification of ten passerine species, and individual identification for three passerines using two acoustic features. The methods did not require us to pre-categorize the component syllables in call-type-independent species and individual identification systems. The results of our experiment indicated that support vector machines (SVM) performed best generally, regardless of which acoustic feature was used, linear predictive coefficients (LPCs) increased the recognition accuracies of hidden Markov models (HMM) greatly, and the most appropriate classifiers for LPCs and Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) were HMM and SVM respectively. This study will assist researchers in selecting classifiers and features to use in future species and individual recognition studies.


Prediction and utilization of right parameters in any fabricating process is the first and foremost step that is essential to maintain the quality of any fabricated product. Quality of fabricated commodities by the industrialists should not be a drawback, instead that should be a main asset for the development of any industry. General algorithm, artificial neural networks, trial and error method, Design of Experimentation (DOE) are some of the optimizing techniques applied in the fabrication processes, among which DOE method framing orthogonal arrays proposed by Dr. Genechi Taguchi is the simplest and widely executed quality control technique. Maintaining the quality without creating loss to the society is the primary motto of this methodology. According to him, consistency of performance of a product means showing its standard, and inconsistency means lack of its quality. Taguchi"s approach of quality control using "parameter design phase" of three quality engineering activities such as parameter phase, tolerance phase and design phase not only minimizes the number of experiments to be conducted but also reduces the time, expenditure and in the end, it gives us a set of appropriate parameters that are desired during final fabrication of products. The present paper speaks about the steps that are to be followed for selection of number of parameters and number of level for forming orthogonal arrays.


This epidemiologic study was designed to determine whether occupational exposures to cobalt and zinc in the metallurgic industry increase the risk of asthma and symptoms of chronic bronchitis or decrease ventilatory capacity. The results indicated that, already at concentrations under 0.1 mg/m3, cobalt sulfate exposure increased the risk of asthma by about five times in exposed workers. The mechanism of sensitization was not studied further in this project. Neither zinc exposure nor sulfuric acid caused asthma or any other pulmonary impairments. All of the exposed groups had a highly significant chronic production of phlegm. This symptom was associated with smoking. Cobalt and sulfur workers had significantly more wheezing than the referents. The high frequency of this symptom probably reflected bronchial irritation caused by sulfur dioxide and cobalt sulfate. There was no evidence confirming that cobalt sulfate would have caused persistent bronchial obstruction or increased the risk of chronic bronchitis at the concentrations measured. Cobalt and/or sulfur dioxide exposure probably increased bronchial reactivity to methocholine transiently, but this effect did not last for more than 2 d. The prevalence of chronic bronchitis was between 0 and 2% in the exposed groups and 0% among the referents. There was no evidence that any exposure other than smoking would have caused chronic bronchitis. The Vmax50 meaurements did however indicate that sulfur dioxide and dusts probably increase the risk of chronic bronchitis gradually after more than 5 to 8 a of exposure at concentrations between 1--5 ppm (cm3/m3).


The Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) has carried out a year of direct measurements of standard deviations of wind fluctuations (σv and σw) on an island off the west coast of Norway. These measurements have been used for the evaluation of estimated values based on the meteorological pre–processor MEPDIM. The physical basis for this metprocessor is provided by parameterisation of the structure of the atmospheric boundary layer, including interaction with the surface. The statistical evaluation of estimated versus observed turbulence parameters gave best results of stable atmospheric conditions, with correlation values of 0.91 and 0.92 for σv and σw, respectively. σw was overestimated, because stable atmospheric conditions restrict the development of vertical turbulent motions in the atmospheric boundary layer over the island. For unstable atmospheric conditions, both σv and σw were overestimated. This can be explained by the location of the measurements on an island, where the development of a convective boundary layer is limited compared with inland conditions. For the specific measurement site, modified equations have been proposed in order to reduce the effect of the convective turbulence for unstable atmospheric conditions and reduce the overprediction of σw for stable atmospheric conditions. After this modification, a linear regression close to σest=σobs was obtained for stable conditions. For unstable conditions, improvements were achieved for the linear regression. However, the constants are still high, which implies that improved empirical equations should be applied to this area for unstable atmospheric conditions.


Title: Vulnerability in Small Single Industry Towns in Sweden - A Case Study of HoforsMunicipalitySvenska: Sma och sarbara industriorter i Sverige - en fallstudie om Hofors KommunSubject: Business AdministrationKeywords: Business Climate, Network, Collaboration, Single Industry TownsBackground: There is a dependency situation between the industry and the municipality. Thismakes Hofors municipality vulnerable. The industry Ovako Steel is the biggest employer in themunicipality and is therefore very important to Hofors. If a place have a good business climate itis easier for employment opportunities, good ideas and entrepreneurship to grow easily. There isa lot that a municipality can do in order to enhance the business climate.Purpose: The purpose of this research is to identify to what extent a good business climate canimpact on the vulnerability situation for small single industry towns in Sweden.Method: Case study with semi-structured interviews and secondary data.Conclusion: Based on our empirical study a good business climate could be seen as a usefulstrategy for small and vulnerable single industry towns in Sweden. By developing a goodbusiness climate, the more attractive it is for entrepreneurs to start their businesses and broadenthe business community. Municipalities with a good business climate is also a place where iteasier to start new work opportunities in times of reductions in the industry.Being dependent on one industry does not have to imply only negative effects. In our empiricalstudy of Hofors situation the collaboration between the network Entre Hofors and the industryOvako Steel is reciprocally and positive. The general implication for Hofors and other smallvulnerable single industry towns seems to be the importance of changing the attitudes towardsentrepreneurship as well as the ability to create new work opportunities in times when theindustry needs to cut down or the worst situation possible; closing down the whole industry.


Released in 1952, The Anthology of American Folk Music was the singular vision of the enigmatic artist, musicologist, and collector Harry Smith (1923-1991). A collection of 84 commercial recordings of American vernacular and folk music originally issued between 1927 and 1932, the Anthology featured an eclectic and idiosyncratic mixture of blues and hillbilly songs, ballads old and new, dance music, gospel, and numerous other performances less easy to classify. Where previous collections of folk music, both printed and recorded, had privileged field recordings and oral transmission, Smith purposefully shaped his collection from previously released commercial records, pointedly blurring established racial boundaries in his selection and organisation of performances. Indeed, more than just a ground-breaking collection of old recordings, the Anthology was itself a kind of performance on the part of its creator. Over the six decades of its existence, however, it has continued to exert considerable influence on generations of musicians, artists, and writers. It has been credited with inspiring the North American folk revival - "The Anthology was our bible",� asserted Dave Van Ronk in 1991, "We all knew every word of every song on it" - and with profoundly influencing Bob Dylan. After its 1997 release on CD by Smithsonian Folkways, it came to be closely associated with the so-called Americana� and Alt-Country� movements of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Following its sixtieth birthday, and now available as a digital download and re-released on vinyl, it is once again a prominent icon in numerous musical currents and popular culture more generally. This is the first book devoted to such a vital piece of the large and complex story of American music and its enduring value in American life. Reflecting the intrinsic interdisciplinarity of Smith's original project, this collection contains a variety of new perspectives on all aspects of the Anthology.


The April 20, 2010 explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform created an immense environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. The ineffective blowout preventer (BOP), possibly the largest moveable object ever implicated in products liability litigation, is at the center of an epic legal struggle between oil industry defendants over the limits of tort law to supplement deficient federal regulation. This Article examines the products liability litigation by Gulf States' attorneys general (AGs) against British Petroleum (BP) and BP's products-related cross claims. Alabama's and Louisiana's multidistrict litigation claims for products liability, negligence, and punitive damages were filed pursuant to their states' parens patriae sovereign powers.This complex products defect case involves all the big issues in products liability: risk utility design tests, cause in fact, proximate cause, defenses such as state of the art, the economic loss rule, caps on damages, and punitive damages under federal maritime law. The state AGs bear the burden of demonstrating that Cameron International's BOP was defectively designed or contained a manufacturing defect that led to consequential damages, rather than a superseding cause such as operational errors by some other oil industry entity supplying equipment or expertise. BP and Cameron have agreed to mutual releases of potential claims against each other, and BP has agreed to indemnify Cameron for compensatory damages arising from the failure of the blowout preventer to close off the gushing well. Neither punitive damages nor civil penalties are under the indemnification agreement.Further discovery is necessary to determine whether there are aggravating circumstances that justify the imposition of punitive damages against Cameron International or the other oil industry defendants. A company's inaction in the face of knowledge of a dangerous defect will generally support an inference that the firm has been recklessly indifferent to consumer safety. Deep sea drilling is an ultrahazardous activity and the operations must be conducted with the highest degree of care. This will be the first test of the U.S. Supreme Court's de facto cap that it placed on punitive damages in maritime cases in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 554 U.S. 471 (2008). Our argument is that the states' parens patriae products liability action against BP and other oil industry defendants is necessary so that BP and the other codefendants pay the true costs of deploying allegedly defective products in the perilous subsea drilling and oil exploration industry. Even if the state attorney generals' litigation ultimately settles, Judge Barbier should be praised for creating a legal pathway for future governmental lawsuits to recover public welfare damages based upon products liability rather than the amorphous and ill-fitting nuisance paradigm.


The DSRC standards generally adopt FM0 and Manchester codes to achieve electricity-balance, improving the signal reliability. This paper not just evolves a completely reused VLSI architecture, but additionally exhibits a competent performance in comparison using the existing works. The devoted short-range communication (DSRC) is definitely an emerging method to push the intelligent transportation system into our daily existence Nonetheless, the coding-diversity between your FM0 and Manchester codes seriously limits the possibility to create a completely reused VLSI architecture for. Within this paper, the similarity-oriented logic simplification (SOLS) strategy is suggested to beat this limitation. The SOLS technique increases the hardware utilization rate from 57.14% to 100% for FM0 and Manchester encodings. The performance of the paper is evaluated around the post layout simulation in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) .18-µm 1P6M CMOS technology. The utmost operation frequency is 2 GHz and 900 MHz for Manchester and FM0 encodings, correspondingly. The ability consumption is 1.58 mW at 2 GHz for Manchester encoding and 1.14 mW at 900 MHz for FM0 encoding. The main circuit area is 65.98 × 30.43 µm2. The encoding capacity of the paper can fully offer the DSRC standards of the use, Europe, and Japan.


This article discusses occupational bilingualism from the perspective of speakers of other languages who need to acquire English to be able to work. Most of the data are drawn from information on the language-use patterns of recent immigrants, a group that has been the focus of much policy research, though the situation of workers from indigenous language minority groups and those involved in the border economy are also mentioned. Data on immigrants' job experiences show that the relevance of English skills to employment varies by geographical location, occupational sector, gender, and ethnic background. Three case studies of occupational language use—in a restaurant, in small retail businesses, and in hospitals—illustrate the job-specific nature of second-language skills in these settings. Evidence indicates that bilingualism, defined as the addition of some level of English to previous native-language skills, plays an active role in the American economy.


This paper takes as its starting point Henry Neuburger's injunction that taxation must be seen as a contribution to the maintenance of the welfare state, not as a dead-weight burden. It sets recent developments in the UK tax ratio in the context of changes in public spending, particularly on welfare services, in the public sector's balance sheet, and the distributional effects of both tax and spending. It then discusses tax and transfer policy since the change of governance in May 1997 in the context of public attitudes to inequality and different forms of redistribution. It compares the distributional effects of the four Labour Budgets since July 1997 with those which would have resulted from simply indexing the April 1997 tax and social security system for income growth. This suggests that actual reforms will on average deliver as much to lower income groups as income indexation would have done, but at lower cost to the public finances, and in a way which is more consistent with public attitudes. However, delays between Budget announcements and implementation meant that inequality and relative poverty increased in Labour's first two years in office. If further progress is to be made towards the target of abolishing child poverty in a generation, the measures so far announced will have to be added to each year.


New nations require new histories of their struggles for nationhood. Postcolonial Vietnam takes us back to the 1950s to see how official Vietnamese historians and others rethought what counted as history, what producing history entailed, and who should be included as participants and agents in the story. Beginning with government-appointed historians' first publications in 1954 and following their efforts over the next thirty years, Patricia M. Pelley surveys this daunting process and, in doing so, opens a wide window on the historical forces and tensions that have gone into shaping the new nation of Vietnam.

Although she considers a variety of sources—government directives, census reports, statistics, poetry, civic festivities, ethnographies, and museum displays—Pelley focuses primarily on the work of official historians in Hanoi who argued about and tried to stabilize the meaning of topics ranging from prehistory to the Vietnam War. She looks at their strained and idiosyncratic attempts to plot the Vietnamese past according to Marxist and Stalinist paradigms and their ultimate abandonment of such models. She explores their struggle to redefine Vietnam in multiethnic terms and to normalize the idea of the family-state. Centering on the conversation that began in 1954 among historians in North Vietnam, her work identifies a threefold process of creating the new history: constituting historiographical issues, resolving problems of interpretation and narration, and conventionalizing various elements of the national narrative. As she tracks the processes that shaped the history of postcolonial Vietnam, Pelley dismantles numerous cliches of contemporary Vietnamese history and helps us to understand why and how its history-writing evolved.


The influence of ambient solar UV-A or UV-B radiation on growth responses was investigated in three varieties of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) after exclusion of solar UV-A/B radiation: JK-35, IH-63 and Khandwa-2. Cotton plants were grown from seeds in UV-exclusion chambers lined with selective UV filters to exclude either UV-B (280–315 nm) or UV-A/B (280–400 nm) from the solar spectrum under field conditions. Excluding UV-B and UV-A/B significantly increased plant height, leaf area and dry weight accumulation in all three varieties of cotton. The varieties differed considerably in their sensitivity to ambient UV-A/B. Khandwa-2 was most sensitive and JK-35 least sensitive to ambient solar UV. We monitored the activity of the antioxidant enzymes superoxide dismutase (SOD), ascorbic acid peroxidase (APX), glutathione reductase (GR) and guaiacol peroxidase (GPX), as well as the level of the antioxidant ascorbic acid (ASA), in primary leaves of the most UV-sensitive variety (Khandwa-2). The level of UV-B-absorbing substances was significantly decreased by exclusion of solar UV-B and UV-A/B. Exclusion of solar UV decreased the activity of all the antioxidant enzymes monitored and the level of ascorbic acid versus control plants (+UV-A/B) grown under filters transparent to solar UV. Reduction of the antioxidant defense after UV exclusion indicates that ambient solar UV exerts significant stress and induces some reactive oxygen species to accumulate, which in turn retards the growth and development of cotton plants. Ambient solar UV stresses cotton plants, shifting their metabolism towards defense against solar UV. Exclusion of solar UV eliminates the need for that defense and leads to enhancement of primary metabolism.


The phase-perturbation method for the computation of fields scattered by rough surfaces is reviewed and then a method for calculating moments of the field scattered from randomly rough surfaces is investigated. In previous work, the authors have shown that the phase-perturbation method can provide an accurate approximation to the fields scattered from deterministic rough surfaces, even in cases when the rms surface-height variation is significant compared to the radiation wavelength. The present work employs cumulants to develop a systematic averaging procedure that retains this advantage, in the case of scalar-wave scattering from surfaces on which Dirichlet boundary conditions hold. The resulting expressions for the moments of the scattered field are shown to reduce to classical small roughness and physical-optics expressions in the appropriate limits. Numerical results for the magnitude of the coherent reflection coefficient in two test cases are also presented.


Why is this important? Improved primary prevention by lifestyle changes and pharmacological treatment of cardiovascular risk factors have resulted in a lower risk of cardiovascular events and a spectacular drop in cardiovascular mortality in the last decades. As a result, the age at which people have their first cardiovascular event has shifted to older age and patients live longer after the onset of cardiovascular disease also as a result of effective revascularisation procedures.What's more, the life expectancy of patients with several other chronic diseases, for example certain types of cancer, has increased, leading to an increasing number of patients with a disease that now reach an age where they are at risk to suffer from a cardiovascular event. Taken together, an increasing number of people have more time to 'accumulate' combinations of diseases and (new) cardiovascular diseases in their life. Having another disease next to an index disease is called comorbidity. In this thesis we examined comorbidity in patients with cardiovascular disease. Outline thesis First, we identified chronic disease combinations and clusters of chronic diseases in patients with cardiovascular disease in the general population, primary health care and secondary health care. Second, we investigated the possible relationship between treatment for breast cancer and subsequent cardiovascular disease. Lastly, we evaluate the consequences of comorbidity investigating comorbidity in relation to the number of chronic medications prescribed as well as the perceived quality of life of patients with cardiovascular disease and comorbidity.


To assess the impact of a four-week elective on medical student perceptions of diagnostic radiology, we gave questionnaires to 96 senior students on the first and last days of the rotation. Eighty-five anonymous entrance responses and 73 exit responses were obtained during a 13-month interval. Compared with other clinical specialties, the students viewed radiology as third, behind surgery and medicine, in terms of required breadth of knowledge, skill, training, and "glamour." Radiology was also perceived to have the lightest workload with the exception of psychiatry. Responses did not significantly change after completion of the elective. Perceived advantages and disadvantages of radiology were studied in detail in a subset of students. Exit responses indicated that the elective promoted favorable perceptions of radiology but did not change the relative rankings of the various specialties. It appears that at our institution basic attitudes concerning radiology are formed prior to the senior radiology elective and are affected only moderately during the elective.


The IEEE 802.3az standard provides a mechanism to build energy efficient Ethernet interfaces via a low power idle mode that they can enter when there is no data to transmit. Several competing algorithms have appeared that make use of this mode to minimize energy consumption with little disruption to the traffic. Two algorithms stand out among those because of their simplicity and performance: frame transmission and burst transmission. Although these algorithms have been shown to be very efficient in simulated scenarios, there is a lack of general analytical models for their behavior. In fact, to this date, the only analyzed traffic patterns have been variants of Poisson traffic. In this paper we provide a general GI/G/1 model for energy consumption and traffic delay for both algorithms. We then develop specializations of the general model for Poisson and deterministic traffic. Finally, we validate the model with the help of both synthetic traffic and real Internet traffic traces.


This chapter presents a review of the rehabilitation technologies for people who have suffered a stroke, comparing and analyzing the impact that these technologies have on their recovery in the short and long term. The problematic is presented, and motor impairments for upper and lower limbs are characterized. The goal of this chapter is to show novel trends and research for the assistance and treatment of motor impairment caused by strokes.


A number of studies in developed countries suggest that breastfeeding protects against infections in infancy. However, the choice to breastfeed is often related to maternal characteristics, and many of these studies are limited in the extent to which they can take account of confounding influences. In a prospective birth cohort study, we assessed the relationship between the duration of breastfeeding and the prevalence of lower respiratory tract infections, ear infections and gastrointestinal morbidity during the first year of life in 1764 infants. We considered the duration of all breastfeeding, including mixed feeding. Eighty-one per cent of the infants were breastfed initially, and 25% were breastfed up to 6 months. There were graded decreases in the prevalence of respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms between birth and 6 months as breastfeeding duration increased; these were robust to adjustment for a number of confounding factors. The adjusted relative risks (95% confidence interval) for infants breastfed for six or more months compared with infants who were never breastfed were 0.72 (0.58-0.89), 0.43 (0.30-0.61) and 0.60 (0.39-0.92) for general respiratory morbidity, diarrhoea and vomiting, respectively. Duration of breastfeeding in the second half of infancy was less strongly related to diagnosed respiratory tract infections and gastrointestinal morbidity, although important benefits of breastfeeding were still seen. Our data provide strong support for a protective role of breastfeeding against respiratory and gastrointestinal infections in infancy. The graded inverse associations with breastfeeding duration suggest that current efforts to promote breastfeeding and increase duration will have important effects in reducing morbidity in infancy.


This book is the result of three conferences held in Uruguay, Paraguay, and El Salvador, to discuss the role of public television in Latin America. The role of public media is making a major readjustment. Worldwide, there is reflection on what should take place in the pluralistic media system that a democratic society must build and nurture. The objective of this book is to identify those formulas that, beyond their theoretical conception, serve in practice -- because they are already operating in countries of the region -- as an example to make public television comply with the basic mission it shares with the rest of public media to inform, educate and entertain, and to do so because of the autonomy, economic sustainability and quality of its content. The book begins with a historical survey of public television beginning in London. Chapter 2 defines what public television is. Chapter 3 details the various types of programs found on public television. Chapters 4 and 5 explain who controls public TV, and how it is financed. Chapter 6 predicts what the future of public TV will hold, and Chapter 7 concludes with a global proposal for Latin American public media.


Preventing and managing workplace bullying, including sexual harassment, is not just a 'feel good' exercise, or something organisations should only do when they are faced with a complaint. It is part of core business. Employers and managers have a duty of care as part of occupational health and safety laws to prevent hazards that might contribute to workplace injuries. This book shows you how to meet these responsibilities using practical, sensible strategies based on a framework of: - understanding what bullying and sexual harassment really mean, - using a risk management approach to identify issues in the workplace, - implementing procedures to control risk, - taking action when things go wrong. A range of tools and tips are included throughout the text to help the reader get started quickly. Stemming from a solid and extensive research base and with reference to up-to-date legislative requirements, Preventing and Managing Workplace Bullying and Harassment is essential reading for anyone in business today.


Neurotrophins regulate sensory neuron survival, differentiation and phenotype, yet much remains to be discovered. The role of neurotrophins and neurotrophin receptors in adult primary sensory neurons was investigated along three main avenues 'in vivo'. First, to better predict neurotrophin responsiveness in DRG, the localization of messenger RNA for neurotrophin receptors was examined using 'in situ' hybridization. Results indicate extensive overlap in trk expression in lumbar sensory neurons, such that expression of multiple trk receptor mRNAs in neurons is more prevalent than the expression of single trk mRNAs. These findings provide the anatomical substrate to explain the differential modulatory effects of neurotrophins on individual neurons. Like trkA, neuronal expression of trkB and trkC mRNA is reduced following axotomy, suggesting a neurotrophin-deficient state and a role for these molecules in promoting normal phenotype. Secondly, neuronal BDNF was characterized in intact, axotomized and NGF-infusedDRG using 'in situ' hybridization and immunohistochemistry. BDNF is expressed in a subpopulation of small to medium-sized sensory neurons that overlaps largely with trkA mRNA, and less so with BDNF receptor mRNA, trkB. This suggests that BDNF serves a largely paracrine role in DRG, which may include a role in nociception. Injury increases BDNF transiently in small neurons and chronically in larger neurons, many of which express trkB, thus implicating BDNF in a greater autocrine function that may be neuroprotective. NGF upregulates BDNF expression in trkA positive neurons which implicates it in nociceptive responses. The downregulation of trkB expression corresponding with high BDNF levels suggests novel receptor regulation not seen before with neurotrophins in the PNS. Lastly, the role of p75 in sensory neurons was examined by conducting a detailed analysis of DRG in p75 knock-out mice. Compared to wildtype controls, p75 knock-out mice show diminished NGF binding affinity, reduced retrograde transport of low quantities of NGF and a more rapid phenotypic switch following injury, suggesting that p75 is important in the ability of sensory neurons to bind and transport limited quantities of NGF. Such a role for p75 in high-amity NGF binding in sensory neurons may explain developmental deficits in p75 knock-out mice, which were found to include fewer lumbar sensory neurons and unmyelinated sensory nerve fibers and were reflected in reduced sensory nerve conduction velocities. The findings of this thesis research both strengthen and extend that predicted by the classic neurotrophic hypothesis which states that only developing neurons that successfully compete for limited amount of target derived neurotrophic factor will survive a period of naturally occurring cell death. An absence of p75 may render many neurons incapable of adequately binding and transporting limiting quantities of neurotrophins as predicted by this theory. This thesis also extends this theory to…


In order to advance the peer review based evaluation system Zimmermann et al. (2012) suggested to use network-based statistics (NBS) combined with modern search tools of internet. In my opinion, the new system they envisage include many useful and positive aspects such as openness, visibility of pre-publication manuscripts, researchers' initiatives to put forward papers of colleagues for review and publication, increased transparency of the pre-publication procedures, etc. The main underpinning of the proposal by Zimmermann et al. (2012) is an attempt to increase quality of the published works and the to-be-shared scientific ideas accessible to a wide community of scientists.

However, the system as envisaged may bring in also some questionable, if not counterproductive results if not counteracted and taken care of ab ovo. Let me share a few worries:

The new NBS based and fully integrated system has a danger of expansion and overpublication. This is in terms of mass of published and accessible materials, burden of scientists as authors, reviewers, commentators, database monitors, etc. This also means that if authors justly feel they have been done injustice in evaluation and commentaries, they physically and in terms of time resources cannot "wrestle" with all this. No sufficiently strong and visible (and numerous) explanations, counterarguments, specifications can be provided. People become buried under the overload of materials and duties they can not cope with and frustrations will not decrease compared to the present habitual system, but may even increase.

The NBS system is basically a system capable of offering a quantitative data on the publishing affairs and activities of access to and use of the papers included in the database of the network. How come quality out of the quantity? Traditionally, top experts (read: editors and reviewers) dispersed between very many journals with their own traditions and idiosynchrasies have made their evaluation based decisions. This is an Elitarian system combined with diversity and chances for "many tastes." Citation statistics is essentially based on (i) whether someone has read the paper and/or knows its scientific merits and therefore uses it in his/her own work for substantial reasons and (ii) on scientific-political motivations such as flattery, service to friends. So roughly half of the indices of impact reflect the quality and relevance of the publication. In the new system suggested by Zimmermann et al. (2012) where downloads statistics becomes the main measure of impact the relative role of substantial type of factors may be disproportionately diminished. Compared to a citation (which bears some responsibility of the citing author with regard to what is cited in terms of relevance and quality of the cited work) a download click is much less responsible an action. There are a vast many reasons for downloads besides the paper or an author being of high quality – curiosity, intrigue, habitual knowledge, and routine database-check, size of the scientific "brotherhood" or "alumni-circle" (the larger it is, the more clicks and downloads irrespective of the quality of work). Quality is essentially not reflected in downloads statistics. Unless some other means of evaluation focused on substance and quality will be used, the downloads-statistic in NBS may backfire. Quality cannot be automatically derived from quantity. (For my own views on related matters see Bachmann, 2011.)

The wide-open community-controlled system has another danger, that of scientific populism dependent increasing dominance of the mediocre (or scientific power structure based) ideas together with marginalization of the truly innovative, ahead-of-its-time, ideas, and approaches. In the traditional system, because of less integration of the journals, schools, authorities, and a wider variety (and perhaps partly because of a narrow circle of reviewers/editors) novel thought and approaches have always had their chance, sooner, or later. In the envisaged community-based, totally integrated, and fully open system social-psychological rules of power structure formation and increased influence of the persuasive and marketing skills depending factors may gradually get an upper hand over the talent based, ahead-of-time, or otherwise original thinking. By an analogy, the selection factors in the evolution of the scientific ideas, instead of being varied and dispersed, become unitary, and therefore potentially counterproductive for scientific thought evolution (if not fatal). Furthermore, if you write as expected by a majority and stay within the prevailing paradigm (or within the views defended by the leaders) you get prize and acceptance, but if you present views ahead of your time or not fitting with the views of the leaders in the field, you are not popular and your evaluative ranking is low. Consequently, the new NBS system should build in some procedures or principles where diversity, originality, difference from the bandwagon approaches will not be jeopardized. Advancement of science has been always driven by the minds representing minority of thought at the time. This is despite the fact that peer review has been present already for long time either in terms of reviewing for journals or collegial pre-publication criticism. Now, the question is, whether the envisaged NBS statistics based system (Zimmermann et al., 2012) would be a more favorable context for innovative (ahead-of-time or simply original) scientific development compared to the traditional system of evaluation? "Community-based" brings in an association with "communism" and we all know where this ultimately ends up. Some private elitism is inevitable in such realities as science and discoveries. If a system is a bit populism-prone and disproportionately communal, intellectual freedom based advancement may be in danger. In my view, scientific impact means whether new important facts, theoretical developments, innovations in methods, syntheses of the earlier views are achieved, i.e., whether something has been really advanced in terms of influencing the ways we think about our subject and understand it. Network statistics may be somewhat irrelevant for knowing about the substantive impact and may even motivate more conformism.


Immunoinformatics tools have multiple applications in human immunology research. One of their most prominent applications is the prediction of T cell epitopes to accelerate vaccine development. T cell epitopes are short peptides derived from pathogens that are recognized by the cells of the immune system (T cells) when presented on the surface of cells bound to a major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecule, which results in a specific immune response. For their role as key drivers of the immune response, numerous algorithms have been developed to predict binding of peptides to MHC molecules; however, comparable tools are limited for other species. The goal of this thesis is to develop immunoinformatics tools for swine to aid in the design of vaccines for pathogens affecting the pork industry. One of the main reasons for the limited development of T cell epitope mapping tools for swine is the lack of data required to train and test the predictive algorithms. Through this research, we have developed PigMatrix, a tool for prediction of peptide binding to swine MHC molecules. In an initial analysis, PigMatrix predictive performance was favorable, in particular because its development did not require training data. Using PigMatrix, we have identified immunogenic peptides conserved in seven different strains of influenza A virus (IAV), a highly diverse virus that has a significant impact not only on swine, but also for humans. Protective potential of IAV vaccines is commonly predicted using genetic data and antibody cross-reactivity properties of the hemagglutinin (HA) surface protein, the most variable antigen and primary target of the antibody immune response. However, protection has been reported in the absence of cross-reactive antibodies to HA. To explore the role of T cell epitopes in vaccine protection, we have developed a method (EpiCC) to compare T cell epitope content between proteins. We found that the relationship of predicted T cell epitopes between HA sequences of a swine IAV inactivated vaccine and challenge strains was associated with protection, providing evidence that T cells contribute to vaccine efficacy. This approach may complement current methods for selection of influenza vaccines against novel viruses and influenza strains for vaccine development. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the potential of immunoinformatics tools for the development and evaluation of swine vaccines and will allow for further research to improve the tools and apply them to design novel vaccine candidates.


Jacob Marschak (1898–1977) had an enormous impact on the development of postwar economics, both as an intellectual mentor of Nobel Prize winners such as Kenneth Arrow and Franco Modigliani and as forerunner and institutional organizer of several research programs, most famously at the Cowles Commission. Nevertheless, he remains understudied by historians. This article uncovers the salient characteristics of his scientific vision in the forties and fifties, at the apex of his influence on the profession: his definition of economics as the science of rational choice; his emphasis on mathematization, experimentation, and interdisciplinarity as the proper methodology; his view of uncertainty as the main characteristic of the social environment; and his claim that economists should be "social engineers." The development of such a vision is studied against the background of Marschak's biography and of his understanding of the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, in particular his socialist beliefs and his repeated experience of emigration.


In a recent article, Professor Hanoch Dagan argues that courts should incorporate the principle of distributive justice into their decisions as to whether a particular property owner should receive compensation in response to a government-imposed redistribution of property. To that end, he proposes a concept called "progressive" compensation that he believes will better serve distributive justice than present doctrine while at the same time improving the efficiency of governmental decision-making. This Essay questions key aspects of Professor Dagan's analysis, proposes as an alternative a uniform few-many rule for resolving takings issues. If funded through progressive taxation, such a rule would better address both the efficiency and the distributive justice concerns associated with government redistributions of private property.


Generally, the Internet and the hospitality industries are enthusiastic about the mutual benefits that they could possibly bring each other. In the hospitality industry, Malaysian hotel companies have begun to recognize the importance of understanding Internet marketing; there is likely to be increased recognition of the potential. Since no research has been done on the Malaysian hospitality industry's use of the Internet technologies, this researcher took the opportunity to look into current Malaysian hotel website marketing to examine the successful elements. The purpose of the study is to evaluate Malaysian Hotel Website marketing in the context of the elements of successful Internet marketing identified in the literature. This study is mainly based on primary qualitative data. The main benefits of this study approach were the ability to gather the richest and most reliable data within the prescribed limits of the study. Ten hotels representing the hotel industry in Malaysia were chosen. An interview was conducted with marketing managers at five hotels in Kuala Lumpur and five hotels in Pulau Pinang. The hotels that were chosen were well known to Malaysian tourists and included four and five star establishments. The Internet was found to benefit most of the Malaysian hotel companies in promoting the hotel's image, branding and creating awareness in the public. Notable differences were found in hotel online pricing strategies. Online prices were found to be either higher, lower or the same as offline prices. Online purchasing styles were found to provide an immediate response from the hotel, and were convenient and easy to perform. Online service delivery did not alter offline service delivery. The major difficulties of marketing an online product were that not many Malaysian people use the Internet and it is hard to attract the attention of viewers. Online bookings and reservations provided the company with lower revenues than other distribution channel. The Internet was considered likely to play an important role in the future.


This paper is an ethnography that explores the acculturation of South Korean exchange students at Southern Adventist university through a triangulation of information from theory, interviews, and field observation. The paper relies on Young Yun Kim's theory of acculturation, which closely looks at the push and pull of one's home and host culture in the process of acculturation. In my ethnography, I observed approximately 60-100 South Korean students, ages 18-23, in different social settings such as church, social dining, and study. Full participant, participant observer, and full observer were the three methods of observation used in the various social settings. I found that the South Korean exchange students did indeed acculturate to local culture; however, those who stayed within their South Korean social group acculturated at slower pace than those who left the group.


Using a mixed method approach, this case study investigates effects on the participating students () of an undergraduate honors course in the Netherlands, aimed at global justice citizenship. Knowledge about effects of global citizenship courses is still limited. The Ethical Sensitivity Scale Questionnaire and the Global Citizenship Scale were used in a pre- and posttest design to measure possible development in the moral and civic domain among the participants of the course. In the qualitative part, deductive content analyses of students' work and students' written reflection on the course, utilizing the theory-based curriculum guidelines Global Justice Citizenship Education, were performed. In addition, a follow-up blog and interview were analyzed to learn students' perception on the effects of the course after half a year. Quantitative results show increased ethical sensitivity as well as global civic engagement and global competence among the participants. Qualitative results point in the same direction and provide deeper insights in the content of students' learning and the perceived impact of the course on their attitudes and behavior. Results are discussed in relation to theory on justice-oriented global citizenship and honors pedagogies.


Motivated by the lack of an obvious spectroscopic probe to investigate nonconventional order such as quadrupolar orders in spin S > 1/2 systems, we present a theoretical approach to inelastic light scattering for spin-1 quantum magnets in the context of a two-band Hubbard model. In contrast to the S = 1/2 case, where the only type of local excited state is a doubly occupied state of energy U, several local excited states with occupation up to four electrons are present. As a consequence, we show that two distinct resonating scattering regimes can be accessed depending on the incident photon energy. For (h) over bar omega(in) less than or similar to U, the standard Loudon-Fleury operator remains the leading term of the expansion as in the spin-1/2 case. For (h) over bar omega(in) less than or similar to 4U, a second resonant regime is found with a leading term that takes the form of a biquadratic coupling similar to(S-i . S-j)(2). Consequences for the Raman spectra of S = 1 magnets with magnetic or quadrupolar order are discussed. Raman scattering appears to be a powerful probe of quadrupolar order.


Is the internet a urinal? flushes the toilet on Silicon Valley. This lecture-performance flows through popular film, architecture, literature, and queer sex to consider the enduring Californian Ideology. Paying particular attention to waterworks in California, the fountain emerges as both a monument for false publics and a figure of information. In Silicon Valley, the fountain finds a philosophical form in the writings of Ayn Rand, as a symbol of radical individualism and extreme entrepreneurship. To stymy the gushing of such toxic liquidity, Duchamp's strategy of the readymade is evoked, and Silicon Valley is re-conceived as a pissoir, a public cruising grounds for post-capitalist possibilities.


In this paper, we evaluate the performance of a WiMAX network in different frequency reuse scenarios with and without adaptive beamforming technique. We study the possibility of deploying reuse 1 networks. Radio quality in terms of SINR and outage probability on one hand, and throughput on the other hand, are the parameters considered for this analysis. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations, based on effective SINR computation using abstraction model mean instantaneous capacity (MIC), have been performed in downlink. The simulation results show that some frequency reuse schemes with a very good global throughput performance result however into significant user outage. The improvement in performance due to adaptive beamforming is evaluated. The frequency reuse patterns satisfying the two parameters (outage and throughput) in the best possible way are being suggested (based on simulation results) for WiMAX networks.


When planning a new development, location decisions have always been a major issue. This paper examines and compares two modelling methods used to inform a healthcare infrastructure location decision. Two Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) models were developed to support the optimisation of this decision-making process, within a National Health Service (NHS) organisation, in the UK. The proposed model structure is based on seven criteria (environment and safety, size, total cost, accessibility, design, risks and population profile) and 28 sub-criteria. First, Evidential Reasoning (ER) was used to solve the model, then, the processes and results were compared with the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). It was established that using ER or AHP led to the same solutions. However, the scores between the alternatives were significantly different; which impacted the stakeholders' decision-making. As the processes differ according to the model selected, ER or AHP, it is relevant to establish the practical and managerial implications for selecting one model or the other and providing evidence of which models best fit this specific environment. To achieve an optimum operational decision it is argued, in this study, that the most transparent and robust framework is achieved by merging ER process with the pair-wise comparison, an element of AHP. This paper makes a defined contribution by developing and examining the use of MCDA models, to rationalise new healthcare infrastructure location, with the proposed model to be used for future decision. Moreover, very few studies comparing different MCDA techniques were found, this study results enable practitioners to consider even further the modelling characteristics to ensure the development of a reliable framework, even if this means applying a hybrid approach. 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).


We need to move from object-oriented thinking towards relational thinking for many reasons. As public services become more complex, their design increasingly focuses on the relationships between people.  The role of the traditional service staff is shifting from a 'provider' to an 'enabler' and 'facilitator' of relationships between service users, their peers, family or members of the civil service.  Many agree that the future of public services relies on relational services, relational welfare and a relational state. Yet we don't have a shared vocabulary to describe good relationships nor materials to design for services that support meaningful relationships. We visually perceive the world as fragmented parts rather than seeing the connection amongst the parts. This perception is integrated with cognition, therefore when mapping complex systems, nodes are emphasized over their relations in-between. Categorizing and color-coding types of systemic relations are useful to understand but not sufficient to shape complex social relationships. We propose a multi-sensory relational tool that aids public servants, designers and users in understanding social relationships through the use of material properties as new design materials. Testing this tool revealed that people are enabled, within a short timeframe, to create a shared relational vocabulary and use the tool to co-design new service concepts. However, future research needs to address how to move from theory to practice, hence from concepts to prototyping.


The lack of a liquid market for implied correlations requires traders to estimate correlation matrices for pricing multi-asset equity options from historical data. To quantify the precision of these correlation estimates, we devise a block bootstrap procedure. The resulting bootstrap distributions are mapped on price distributions of three standard types of multi-asset options. ?Minimal? bid-ask spreads that reflect the risk from estimating the unknown correlations are quoted as quantiles of the price distributions. We discuss the influence of different market regimes and different payoff structures on the price distributions and on the the size of the resulting bid-ask spreads.


This study used a novel approach combining biological, environmental, and ecosystem function data of the Logachev cold-water coral carbonate mound province to predictively map coral framework (bio)mass. A more accurate representation and quantification of cold-water coral reef ecosystem functions such as Carbon and Nitrogen stock and turnover were given by accounting for the spatial heterogeneity. Our results indicate that 45% is covered by dead and only 3% by live coral framework. The remaining 51%, is covered by fine sediments. It is estimated that 75,034–93,534 tons (T) of live coral framework is present in the area, of which ∼10% (7,747–9,316 T) consists of Cinorg and ∼1% (411–1,061 T) of Corg. A much larger amount of 3,485,828–4,357,435 T (60:1 dead:live ratio) dead coral framework contained ∼11% (418,299–522,892 T) Cinorg and <1% (0–16 T) Corg. The nutrient turnover by dead coral framework is the largest, contributing 45–51% (2,596–3,626 T) C year–1 and 30–62% (290–1,989 T) N year–1 to the total turnover in the area. Live coral framework turns over 1,656–2,828 T C year–1 and 53–286 T N year–1. Sediments contribute between 1,216–1,512 T C year–1 and 629–919 T N year–1 to the area's benthic organic matter mineralization. However, this amount is likely higher as sediments baffled by coral framework might play a much more critical role in reefs CN cycling than previously assumed. Our calculations showed that the area overturns 1–3.4 times the C compared to a soft-sediment area at a similar depth. With only 5–9% of the primary productivity reaching the corals via natural deposition, this study indicated that the supply of food largely depends on local hydrodynamical food supply mechanisms and the reefs ability to retain and recycle nutrients. Climate-induced changes in primary production, local hydrodynamical food supply and the dissolution of particle-baffling coral framework could have severe implications for the survival and functioning of cold-water coral reefs.


Each year, following an accident or illness, over 200 new cases of paraplegia occur in Switzerland, and 1000 in France. This makes 7'000, respectively 40'000 para- etraplegic patients in these countries. Since the Second World War, methods available for the treatment of medullar trauma at the moment of lesion, and for re-education, have evolved considerably. Nowadays, these methods allow in around 80% of medullar injuries, limitation of the damage to a partial lesion of the spinal cord. Unfortunately, only 10% of these patients ever recover autonomous walking Zach G.A., 2000]. Today paraplegics often benefit from walking re-education programmes on treadmills. Two, occasionally three physiotherapists are required to mobilise the patient's legs and pelvis. Unfortunately this work is extremely hard on the staff, and the movements are difficult to reproduce and obviously non-quantifiable. These manual treatments are slowly being replaced by robotic rehabilitation [Reinkensmeyer et al., 2004], much more capable of providing the repetitive and precise exercises demanded by modern methods. However, in cases where residual voluntary capacity is absent, or where there is muscular atrophy, the movements made are purely passive. The Cyberthosis Project presented below, allows active re-education, and preliminary testing has confirmed its great efficacy.


Subgroup mining is a powerful and broadly applicable data mining approach: In general, the goal is to efficiently discover novel, potentially useful and ultimately interesting knowledge given by subgroup patterns. However, in real-world situations these requirements often cannot be fulfilled, e.g., if the applied methods do not scale for large data sets, if too many results are presented, or if many of the discovered patterns are already known to the user. This work proposes a combination of several techniques in order to cope with the sketched problems: Concerning automatic methods we present the novel SD-Map algorithm that is fast and effective. We describe interactive techniques for subgroup introspection and analysis, and we present advanced visualization methods that can be used for subgroup optimization, comparison and exploration. Furthermore, we propose to include several classes and types of background knowledge into the mining process. The techniques are combined into a knowledge-intensive process supporting both automatic and interactive methods for subgroup mining. The evaluation consists of two parts: With respect to objective evaluation criteria (efficiency and effectiveness), we provide a thorough experimental evaluation using synthetic data demonstrating the benefit of the presented methods. Subjective evaluation criteria include the user acceptance, the benefit, and finally the interestingness of the results. The approach has been successfully implemented in medical and technical applications, for which we present five case studies using real-world data.


Chaos-based cryptography, attracting many researchers in the past decade, is a research field across two fields, i.e., chaos (nonlinear dynamic system) and cryptography (computer and data security). It Chaos' properties, such as randomness and ergodicity, have been proved to be suitable for designing the means for data protection.The book gives a thorough description of chaos-based cryptography, which consists of chaos basic theory, chaos properties suitable for cryptography, chaos-based cryptographic techniques, and various secure applications based on chaos. Additionally, it covers both the latest research results and some open issues or hot topics. The book creates a collection of high-quality chapters contributed by leading experts in the related fields. It embraces a wide variety of aspects of the related subject areas and provide a scientifically and scholarly sound treatment of state-of-the-art techniques to students, researchers, academics, personnel of law enforcement and IT practitioners who are interested or involved in the study, research, use, design and development of techniques related to chaos-based cryptography.


Modern neural recording techniques allow neuroscientists to observe the spiking activity of many neurons simultaneously. Although previous work has illustrated how activity within and between known populations of neurons can be summarized by low-dimensional latent vectors, in many cases what determines a unique population may be unclear. Neurons differ in their anatomical location, but also, in their cell types and response properties. Moreover, multiple distinct populations may not be well described by a single low-dimensional, linear representation. To tackle these challenges, we develop a clustering method based on a mixture of dynamic Poisson factor analyzers (DPFA) model, with the number of clusters and dimension of latent states treated as unknown parameters. To analyze DPFA model, we propose a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm to efficiently sample its posterior distribution. Validating our proposed MCMC algorithm with simulations, we find that it can accurately recover the true clustering, and is insensitive to the initial cluster assignments. We then apply the proposed mixture of DPFA model to multi-region experimental recordings, where we find that the proposed method can identify novel, reliable clusters of neurons based on their activity, and may, thus, be a useful tool for neural data analysis.


The multivariate probit model (MVP) is a popular classic model for studying binary responses of multiple entities. Nevertheless, the computational challenge of learning the MVP model, given that its likelihood involves integrating over a multidimensional constrained space of latent variables, significantly limits its application in practice. We propose a flexible deep generalization of the classic MVP, the Deep Multivariate Probit Model (DMVP), which is an end-to-end learning scheme that uses an efficient parallel sampling process of the multivariate probit model to exploit GPU-boosted deep neural networks. We present both theoretical and empirical analysis of the convergence behavior of DMVP's sampling process with respect to the resolution of the correlation structure. We provide convergence guarantees for DMVP and our empirical analysis demonstrates the advantages of DMVP's sampling compared with standard MCMC-based methods. We also show that when applied to multi-entity modelling problems, which are natural DMVP applications, DMVP trains faster than classical MVP, by at least an order of magnitude, captures rich correlations among entities, and further improves the joint likelihood of entities compared with several competitive models.


Introduction: Reconstruction of the nipple-areola complex (NAC) is a fundamental step in the treatment of breast cancer. It is usually performed in two distinct stages. Tattooing is performed only after reconstruction and complete scarring of the nipple. Methods: This retrospective study was conducted from 2015 to 2016 at the Hospital São Lucas of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul. Twenty-one patients with a single NAC were included. One-stage reconstruction of the nipple using a local C-V flap associated with tattooing for pigmentation of the NAC is described. Data on the type of breast reconstruction performed, associated complications, and presence of previous breast radiotherapy were presented. Results: Most patients (48%) underwent reconstruction with an implant. Three complications (14%) were observed in the nipple, including one case of partial necrosis and two cases of small dehiscence. None of the patients had complications due to tattooing. Eleven patients (52%) underwent breast radiotherapy previously. Conclusion: Tattooing combined with one-stage reconstruction using a C-V flap is a simple technique with a low rate of complication. ■ ABSTRACT


With urban populations and their footprints growing globally, the need to assess the dynamics of the urban environment increases. Remote sensing is one approach that can analyze these developments quantitatively with respect to spatially and temporally large scale changes. With the 2015 launch of the spaceborne EnMAP mission, a new hyperspectral sensor with high signal-to-noise ratio at medium spatial resolution, and a 21 day global revisit capability will become available. This paper presents the results of a literature survey on existing applications and image analysis techniques in the context of urban remote sensing in order to identify and outline potential contributions of the future EnMAP mission. Regarding urban applications, four frequently addressed topics have been identified: urban development and planning, urban growth assessment, risk and vulnerability assessment and urban climate. The requirements of four application fields and associated image processing techniques used to retrieve desired parameters and create geo-information products have been reviewed. As a result, we identified promising research directions enabling the use of EnMAP for urban studies. First and foremost, research is required to analyze the spectral information content of an EnMAP pixel used to support material-based land cover mapping approaches. This information can subsequently be used to improve urban indicators, such as imperviousness. Second, we identified the global monitoring of urban areas as a promising field of investigation taking advantage of EnMAP's spatial coverage and revisit capability. However, owing to the limitations of EnMAPs spatial resolution for urban applications, research should also focus on hyperspectral resolution enhancement to enable retrieving material information on sub-pixel level.


It can now be confidently argued that a legal responsibility rests on every lawyer who advises a client on a dispute, to be equipped to advise on the alternative forms of resolving the dispute.' This proposition, stated and justified in the Adrasa Newsletter of July 1993, does not appear to have been challenged. On the contrary, the case which was made is supported by the many statements by the Minister of Justice in support of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), recognition of ADR in legislation such a the Pension Funds Act 24 of 1956 and by the investigations of the SA Law Commission.


Meristems contain groups of indeterminate stem cells that are critical for organ initiation throughout plant development. The shoot apical meristem (SAM) maintains itself and initiates all shoot organs, such as leaves, floral organs and axillary branch meristems. Development and balanced proliferation of the SAM is regulated by a feedback loop between CLAVATA (CLV) and WUSCHEL (WUS) signaling. CLV signaling is initiated by secretion of the CLV3 peptide ligand, which is perceived directly or indirectly by a number of Leucine-Rich-Repeat (LRR) receptor-like kinases, including CLV1 and BARELY ANY MERISTEM (BAM) 1-3, and RECEPTOR-LIKE PROTEIN KINASE 2 (RPK2), as well as the receptor-like protein CLV2 in a complex with the CORYNE (CRN) pseudokinase. However, CLV2, and its maize ortholog FASCIATED EAR2 (FEA2) appear to function in signaling by several related CLV3/EMBRYO-SURROUNDING REGION (CLE) peptide ligands, including CLV3. Nevertheless, it remains unknown how CLV2 or FEA2 transmit specific signals from distinct CLE peptides. Here we show that FEA2 is involved in signaling from at least 2 distinct CLE peptides, ZmCLE7, a maize CLV3 ortholog, and ZmFON2-LIKE CLE PROTEIN1 (ZmFCP1), a newly identified CLE peptide functioning in SAM regulation. Signaling from these 2 different CLE peptides appears to be transmitted through 2 different candidate downstream effectors, COMPACT PLANT2 (CT2), the alpha subunit of the maize heterotrimeric G protein, and maize CRN. Our data provide a novel framework to understand how diverse signaling peptides can activate different downstream pathways through common receptor proteins.


Extending research on organizational learning to multi-product environments is of particular importance given that the vast majority of products are manufactured in such environments. We investigate learning in a multi-product facility drawing on exceptionally rich data for a manufacturing firm that is a leading producer of high technology components. Weekly data for 10 years from the firm's production and human resource tracking systems are augmented by surveys of managers and engineers and by extensive first-hand observation. We find that productivity improves when multiple generations of the firm's primary product family are produced concurrently, reflecting the firm's ability to augment and transfer knowledge from older to newer product generations. No significant transfer of knowledge is evident between the primary product family and other products. Productivity is, however, decreased when the production facility is faced with extensive within-product buyer-specific customizations.We develop the implications of these findings for theory and practice.


Some deficiencies in structual welding, particularly when thousands of welds are installed, are expected. This deficiency may or may not compromise the strength of the joint or the structural element. A deterministic evaluation of this deficiency may not be possible. A probabilistic procedure is suggested. Limited sampling information from the site is used to develop this methodology. Sampling information obtained from a project should be checked before the information is used for any statistical prediction. The χ² test of homogeneity could be used to check the homogeneity of the samples. The hyperbinomial distribution may be the most appropriate distribution to study the characteristics of a group of welds. It considers the effect of sample size on the prediction. A large sample size is always beneficial, but the cost-benefit ratio for the collection of samples should be studied before any decisions are made. The method suggested here would help to study this area. Repairing the welds, whenever necessary, is the final step. This method is a safe, economical and conservative solution to this complex problem.


Most of us are fascinated by the conventional storybook account of Christopher Columbus' heroic discovery of America in 1492. Yet, should the credit for discovering America go to a man who insisted it was but a few islands off the shores of China? In Terra Cognita, Eviatar Zerubavel argues that physical encounters are only one part of the complex, multifaceted process of discovery. Such encounters must be complemented by an understanding of the true identity of what is being discovered. The small group of islands claimed by Columbus to have been discovered off the shores of Asia was a far cry from what we now call America. The discovery of the New World was not achieved in a single day but was a slow process - mental as well as physical - that lasted almost three hundred years. By celebrating 1492 as a year of discovery, we inevitably distort the reality of history. In vividly documenting how a slowly emerging New World gradually forced itself into Europe's consciousness, Zerubavel shows that Columbus did not discover America on October 12, 1492. Supplemented by fascinating old maps and a new preface written for this paperback edition, Terra Cognita will be of interest to historians, geographers, cognitive scientists, sociologists, and students of culture.


This study documents a case of language education decline, and the role that distance-teaching expertise, allied with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) experience, can play in alleviating the problem. In the United Kingdom a number of factors have led to a crisis in the teaching and learning of European Languages Other Than English (ELOTE). One of the main determiners is the dominance of English as a lingua franca for Continental Western European countries, and another the political reluctance of the part of British governments to engage fully with the European Union. In the country where English is the mother tongue, the position of ELOTE is particularly critical. After quantifying the decline in demand for these languages, I will look at different ways in which language-teaching professionals have attempted to fight back, and I will focus on the benefits that may be derived from a strategy that combines ICT capacity with distancelearning methodologies, using the UK Open University (UKOU) as an example. The lessons drawn by that institution in different discipline areas over two decades will be applied to languages.


The paper addresses the issue of effective implementation of the information and communication technologies in rural areas with the special focus on the accessibility of regional information and big collections of data related to the location. Presented results comes from long term research at the Department of Information Technologies FEM CULS in Prague in the areas of regional informatics and digital divide, and are compliant with strategic goals of Digital Agenda for Europe: A Europe 2020 Initiative. Description and definition of the general framework of the accessibility of regional information – Regional Information Structure (RIS) and Regional Information Relation (RIR) is introduced in the paper.


1. Social signalling can be risky when signals are open to exploitation by eavesdropping predators. Unlike other signal modalities, olfactory signals cannot be 'switched off' in the presence of an eavesdropping predator, leaving receivers of scent signals at an increased risk of predation long after the signaller has moved on. Yet individuals of some olfactorily communicating species appear unwilling to forego the receiving of signals under an increased risk of predation. Foraging theory predicts that predation risk can operate at multiple spatial scales, however, such that prey behaviour should be sensitive to the broader olfactory environment beyond the risks of a single point source of odour. 2. Here, we use the house mouse Mus domesticus to test whether the spatial distribution and overall level of receiving activity varies with the spatial distribution of conspecific scent signals and the risks posed by an eavesdropping predator, the cat Felis catus. We assessed the mice's responses to these risks using overall visitation, activity and scent marking rates at conspecific scented locations (in clumped, random or regular distributions) and the surrounding matrix (non-scented) locations with and without a predator cue (cat urine). We then used univariate and bivariate spatial point pattern analyses to assess behavioural responses (activity) to both treatments across a range of spatial scales. 3. Visitation, activity and scent marking rates were not affected by the predator cue or the spatial distribution of scents. But these non-significant results masked a fine scale anti-predatory response. Mouse activity was significantly more clustered at small scales when in the presence of the predator cue; this response held across all spatial distribution treatments. Mice were also sensitive to the predation risks of clumped scents, and dispersed their activity at intermediate scales significantly more when exposed to the predator cue, than in the control scent treatment. 4. These results suggest that olfactorily communicating species use scale-sensitive anti-predatory behavioural changes to compensate for their increased risks of predation when receiving scent signals. We highlight the importance of examining a variety of scales when investigating predator-prey interactions, and discuss the implications of these findings for behaviourally responsive predators and prey.


Background: The studies show that the Diclofenac and Ibuprofen drugs influence cancer cells proliferation. The main aim of this study was to investigate the effects of Diclofenac and Ibuprofen on the viability of HEK cells in cell culture.
Materials and Methods: In this laboratory experimental study, HEK cells were randomly divided into control group and groups exposed doses to 0.001,0/01,0/1,10,1 mg/ml of Ibuprofen and Diclofenac. The toxic effect of drugs was measured using the MTT assay method. The data were statistically analyzed between groups using ANOVA.
Results: The viability of HEK cells exposed to 0.1, 0.01, 0.001 mg/ml of Ibuprofenwas not significant increase in compared with control group . And the viability of HEK cells exposed to 1, 10, 0.1, 0.01, 0.001 mg/ml of Diclofenac significantly decreased compared to control group. (Classification P<0.01، P<0.01، P<0.01، P<0.05، P<0.01 (.
Conclusion: Diclofenac and Ibuprofen in high doses destroy the HEK cells. Therefore, the use of these drugs in high doses is inappropriate.
Keywords: Diclofenac, Ibuprofen, HEK, Viability


Recent work on "musical forces" asserts that experienced listeners of tonal music not only talk about music in terms used to describe physical motion, but actually experience musical motion as if it were shaped by quantifiable analogues of physical gravity, magnetism, and inertia. This article presents a theory of melodic expectation based on that assertion, describes two computer models of aspects of that theory, and finds strong support for that theory in comparisons of the behavior of those models with the behavior of participants in several experiments. The following summary statement of the theory is explained and illustrated in the article: Experienced listeners of tonal music expect completions in which the musical forces of gravity, magnetism, and inertia control operations on alphabets in hierarchies of embellishment whose stepwise displacements of auralized traces create simple closed shapes. A "single-level" computer program models the operation of these musical forces on a single level of musical structure. Given a melodic beginning in a certain key, the model not only produces almost the same responses as experimental participants, but it also rates them in a similar way; the computer model gives higher ratings to responses that participants sing more often. In fact, the completions generated by this model match note-for-note the entire completions sung by participants in several psychological studies as often as the completions of any one of those participants matches those of the other participants. A "multilevel" computer program models the operation of these musical forces on multiple hierarchical levels. When the multilevel model is given a melodic beginning and a hierarchical description of its embellishment structure (i.e., a Schenkerian analysis of it), the model produces responses that reflect the operation of musical forces on all the levels of that hierarchical structure. Statistical analyses of the results of a number of experiments test hypotheses arising from the computer models' algorithm (S. Larson, 1993a) for the interaction of musical forces as well as from F. Lerdahl's similar (1996) algorithm. Further statistical analysis contrasts the explanatory power of the theory of musical forces with that of E. Narmour's (1990, 1992) implication-realization model.


The paper is a brief outline of the first stage of a comparative research project in the role and adequacy of care credits in the British and German pension systems. The provision of care credits has been an essential part of pension reforms around Europe, which significantly changes the prospects of carers to accumulate adequate pension contributions through their life course. But although the policy significance of care credits is due to rise in line with an increasing demand for eldercare, our understanding of this measure in the context of welfare protection more broadly remains limited. Care credits in pension systems, whether they are provided for child care or for the care of adult dependants, can operate, firstly, as a compensatory mechanism for those who devote significant amounts of time to caring for dependants; and secondly, as a vehicle for promoting greater gender equality in pension protection, given that the majority of caring is still undertaken by women. This paper discusses the function and adequacy of care credits in the British pension system in three parts. First, the paper considers the concept of care credits as a compensatory mechanism and its contribution to the promotion of greater gender equality in welfare provision. The second part of the paper turns to the British context, discussing the emergence of care credits in the pension system and the importance of the concept in the British system of welfare protection. The third and final part of the paper considers the recent reforms in the pension entitlement structure, including the abolition of the Home Responsibilities Protection and the conversion of existing contributions into qualifying credits towards a Basic state pension


Urban trees and the services they provide (e.g., evapotranspirational cooling, shading, recreation, carbon storage, air pollution filtering) can have major effects on the microclimate of a city, although the growth conditions are often inadequate to ensure tree vitality and growth, negatively affecting their beneficial effects. In a worldwide dendrochronological study on ten urban tree species in four climatic zones, the growth and impacts of common urban tree species were assessed. This paper focuses on the results for Robinia pseudoacacia L. in the Mediterranean climate city of Santiago de Chile, highlighting the faster growth of the studied black locust trees since 1960 than its growth in the years before 1960. Furthermore, black locust displayed the best growth when situated closer to the city center than the city periphery and when in the northern and western parts of Santiago de Chile. The species characteristics of black locust also revealed an immediate negative growth reaction to drought events, followed by a rapid recovery, which was similarly influenced by the direction from and distance to the city center of the growing site. The results underline the overall worldwide findings on urban tree growth that indicate that a city climate with an extended growing season and increased temperatures can lead to improved growth of urban trees in the Mediterranean climatic zone. However, with increased growth, more rapid ageing and tree death might follow, leading to increased costs for new plantings and tree management.


The increasing scale of, and demand for, civil air transport has necessitated ever greater numbers of passengers and staff travelling to and from airports. At airports worldwide, private vehicles represent the vast majority of these surface access journeys and this has led to severe problems of traffic congestion and raised levels of air pollution.
Consequently, UK and international airports are re-evaluating their approach to surface access mode choice and considering how to reduce the reliance on private vehicles. Despite improvements in public transport links at some airports, in the UK it is currently estimated that around 65% of surface access trips at large airports are undertaken in private cars, with this figure being as high as 99% at smaller regional or secondary airports. The problems associated with high private vehicle use are likely to become even more acute in the future given the forecasted growth in demand for UK air travel.
Surface access is a complex airport management issue as decision makers must balance the often competing requirements and demands of different user groups with the wider commercial and environmental goals of the airport. Passengers pose a particular problem due to the large number of trips generated, and the wide range of factors affecting their travel. Passengers are also important because they represent the airport s primary customers.
The aim of the thesis is to examine passenger surface access travel behaviour in order to make recommendations for reducing private vehicle use. The research adopts a social psychological approach, employing two theories of attitude-behaviour relations, the Norm-Activation Theory and the Theory of Planned Behaviour, in order to identify groups of passengers with the potential to reduce their private vehicle use. Research methods employed to fulfil the aim include interviews with surface access managers at UK airports and a questionnaire survey of passengers at Manchester Airport, an international airport in the North-West of England.
It is found that passenger mode choice decisions are motivated primarily by considerations of self-interest, as posited in the Theory of Planned Behaviour, rather than normative or moral elements, as proposed by the Norm-Activation Theory. As well as attitudes, passengers are also found to vary considerably in terms of their specific personal, situational and spatial characteristics. For example, passengers using public transport are likely to be travelling alone from areas further from the airport and flying without checked-in luggage. Using this combined attitudinal, situational and spatial information, eight distinct passenger groups are then identified. Two of these groups, described as the Public Transport Advocates and the Pessimistic Lift Seekers, are found to have the greatest potential to reduce their private vehicle use.
Overall, it is important that strategies targeted at reducing private vehicle use and encouraging public transport use address both the physical and perceived barriers preventing behavioural change. Furthermore, while airport managers tend to favour implementing so called soft incentive measures for encouraging modal shift as opposed to more draconian measures, in the future it is likely that decision makers will increasingly need to find ways of implementing the latter in a fashion that is both effective and acceptable to airport users.


Reduction of cerebral blood flow below a critical threshold for a protracted time interval results in irreversible metabolic events culminating in cell death. The development of agents capable of extending the tolerable ischemic interval is of great importance as such agents may allow time for therapeutic measures to be accomplished which could restore cerebral perfusion. This issue is of particular pertinence in the treatment of complex cerebrovascular diseases when local (or global) cerebral blood flow must be interrupted during vascular reconstruction. Thiopental achieved great popularity once protective properties were demonstrated experimentally. Unfortunately, serious cardiovascular depression associated with high-dose barbiturates as well as prolonged duration of action may decrease collateral flow and limit their utility. Etomidate is a nonbarbiturate carboxylated imidazole which is capable of similar cerebral metabolic suppression without significant cardiac side effects. Accumulating experimental evidence supports the protective properties of this drug and suggests that it may be valuable clinically for this purpose. Significant adrenal suppression is a major toxic effect that must be treated if large doses or protracted administration is planned.