Kawabata Yasunari is known not only for the traditionalist poetics of his later days but also for his modernist period during the late 1920's and early 1930's, when he wrote as a member of the avant-garde movement Shinkankakuha . This paper provides a detailed reading of one of his last modernist works, the experimental novel Suishō gensō (Crystal Fantasies). While showing certain parallels to the psychological I-novel of its time in its exploration of subjectivity, the text distinguishes itself especially on a narrative level, implementing new forms of storytelling that unleash a lyrical and fragmented imagery upon the reader. My analysis seeks to illuminate the diegetic structure of Kawabata's text, showing how it functionally replaces the omnipresent voice of the self-reflexive narrator by cinematographic techniques of montage and collage, and how it provides an alternative "interior view" of its characters, mediated via stream of consciousness . Following the split-second flow of associations, sounds and images, the reader is drawn into a world of intertextual cross-references to mythology, (pseudo-)science, psychoanalysis and popular culture ‒ discourses that left their imprints on the language of modernity and, in their contradictory co-presence, reveal a conflicted scenography of the modern mind.


PURPOSE
To determine if the Firefly Algorithm (Yang) or a genetic algorithm would provide viable alternatives to the simulated annealing technique used in Leksell GammaPlan 10 to create potential tumor treatment plans for use with Leksell Gamma Knife.

METHODS
To determine the viability of each algorithm, separate programs were created to generate treatment plans. The first utilized an annealing algorithm based on Leksell GammaPlan, and was intended to provide an accurate baseline for comparing the performance of the other algorithms. The second utilized an algorithm (Yang) that mimicked the behavior of fireflies in order to search all possible treatment plans to find an acceptable solution. The third mimicked natural selection and breeding among a population of potential solutions to generate acceptable solutions. Each of the programs were then run through a variety of tests to determine its effectiveness, after which each generated treatment was evaluated with the fitness function detailed by Elekta.

RESULTS
Of the compared algorithms, the Firefly Algorithm consistently generated the highest quality solutions when all three were run for a set number of generations. The Firefly Algorithm required the least amount of time to generate an acceptable solution for cubic tumors, but the genetic algorithm required the least amount of time for spherical tumors. The genetic algorithm produced the highest quality solutions in tests with shorter maximum run times, while the Firefly Algorithm produced the highest quality solutions in tests with longer maximum run times.

CONCLUSION
Both the Firefly algorithm and genetic algorithm outperformed annealing in almost all test cases. This supports their potential use as alternatives to the existing method used in Leksell GammaPlan. Future studies with a wider variety of more extensive tests (i.e. more tumor varieties, longer tests, etc.) could provide additional support for their potential.


Background: Diabetes is the most common comorbidity in individuals with cystic fibrosis (CF) Autoimmunity was reported to be no greater in CF related diabetes (CFRD) than in the general population and routine screening for type 1 diabetes (T1D) antibodies is not recommended. We report 3 patients with CF, diabetes and T1D autoimmunity. Clinical cases: Patient 1 and 2 are Caucasian siblings with CF, genotype ∆F5homozygous and pancreatic insufficiency. Patient 1 is a male who presented at age 16 with polyuria, polydipsia and weight loss. Fasting glucose was 350 mg/dL. C peptide was 1.1 ng/ml and Hba1c was >14%. T1D antibodies showed (Anti GAD 147, negative Islet cell antigen antibody 512 (IA2), ZNT8 and insulin antibodies). Current insulin requirement at age 22 is 0.8 units/kg/day with Hba1C ranging from 6.7-12.0%. Patient 2 is a female diagnosed with CFRD at age 9 with an oral glucose tolerance test. Fasting glucose was 92 mg/dL and 2-hour glucose 209 mg/dL. C peptide 7.1 ng/ml. Hba1c 6.7%. T1D antibodies were negative at presentation. At age 14, because of increase in insulin requirement, T1D antibodies were retested and positive (Anti GAD 31, IA2 52, znt8 0.955). Her current insulin dose at age16 is 0.7units/kg/day with Hba1c ranging 6.7-12.7%. Patient 3 is a prepubertal biracial (African American, Caucasian) female with CF, genotype 1 copy of ∆F5and 1 copy of ∆I507, pancreatic insufficiency and Hashimoto's hypothyroidism. She presented at age 9 with polyuria, polydipsia and weight loss. She was in DKA with glucose 686 mg/dL, bicarbonate 5 mEq/L, BOHB 5.4 mmol/L, C-Peptide 0.1 ng/ml, HbA1C >14%. T1D antibodies were positive (Anti GAD 192, IA2 183, ZnT8 0.177, Insulin 0.017). Current insulin dose at age 11 is 0.55 unit/kg/day with Hba1c ranging 7.7-10.2%. Conclusion: T1D needs to be considered in a CF patient with hyperglycemia when patient is prepubertal, symptomatic, in DKA, or requiring high insulin doses. Correct diagnosis allows for proper treatment and help prevent short and long-term diabetes complications. Disclosure G. Kim: None. L. Merjaneh: None.


I. INTRODUCTIONShould Congress be able to unilaterally determine the constitutionality of a criminal sentence under the Eighth Amendment? Moreover, should Congress be able to override the Supreme Court's judgment that a particular criminal punishment is unconstitutional without amending the Constitution?Presumably, the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment were adopted with the intention of imposing an outer limit on what kinds of actions legislatures may take against individuals. In particular, the Eighth Amendment limits legislative discretion by prohibiting the imposition of "cruel and unusual punishments" by state and federal legislatures.1 However, as some scholars have argued, the U.S. Supreme Court may have already vested Congress and state legislatures with the power to independently dictate whether a particular punishment is permissible under the Eighth Amendment.2Although the text of the Eighth Amendment provides little guidance as to which particular punishments are unconstitutional,3 the Supreme Court has made clear that the Amendment prohibits (1) certain modes of punishment, such as torture,4 and (2) punishments that are grossly disproportionate or excessive.5 This latter category has comprised the majority of cases giving rise to the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.6 In determining which sentences are unconstitutionally excessive, the Court has adopted two approaches for reviewing disproportionality challenges.7First, for the majority of noncapital crimes, the Court has utilized a "gross disproportionality" analysis.8 Essentially, this approach consists of judges weighing the seriousness of an offense against the seriousness of the punishment, so as to determine whether the penalty is unconstitutionally excessive.9Second, the Court has used a "categorical" approach that implements bright-line rules to prohibit certain sentencing practices.10 This approach differs from the gross-disproportionality method because, rather than requiring judges to subjectively weigh the proportionality of a sentence, the Court simply creates blackletter rules that dictate the specific applications of the Eighth Amendment. While most cases implicating the categorical approach have dealt with capital punishment,11 the Court has recently applied this method to a noncapital case,12 suggesting that the categorical approach may now be utilized in both capital and noncapital cases.13The categorical approach consists of a two-part analysis. First, the Court considers "Objective indicia of society's standards, as expressed in legislative enactments and state practice' to determine whether there is a national consensus against the sentencing practice at issue."14 In other words, the Court first considers state and federal legislation to determine if there is a national consensus against implementing a particular sentencing practice. Second, the Court considers "the Court's own understanding and interpretation of the Eighth Amendment's text, history, meaning, and purpose."15 This second part of the analysis has been deemed the "independent judgment" analysis, and has historically complemented the national consensus rationale to help the Court determine whether a particular sentencing practice violates the Eighth Amendment.16 Using these methodologies in complementary fashion, the Court has been able to determine whether particular sentencing practices violate the Eighth Amendment.17Recently, however, the dual relationship between the national consensus and independent judgment rationales has become unclear,18 prompting onlookers to wonder which of the two methods should predominate whenever they point to different outcomes. Some scholars have argued that in Kennedy v. Louisiana,(TM) this issue was decided as the national consensus rationale became the primary basis for the Court's holding.20 Because of this, scholars have argued that the holding in Kennedy should be subject to legislative override, since new legislation would indicate a different national consensus. …


AbstractRecent observations made by the Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SIM) on the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) spacecraft suggest that the Sun's visible and infrared spectral irradiance increased from 2004 to 2008, even as the total solar irradiance measured simultaneously by SORCE's Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM) decreased. At the same time, solar ultraviolet (UV) irradiance decreased 3–10 times more than expected from prior observations and model calculations of the known effects of sunspot and facular solar features. Analysis of the SIM spectral irradiance observations during the solar minimum epoch of 2008, when solar activity was essentially invariant, exposes trends in the SIM observations relative to both total solar irradiance and solar activity that are unlikely to be solar in origin. The authors suggest that the SIM's radically different solar variability characterization is a consequence of undetected instrument sensitivity drifts, not true solar spectrum changes. It is thus do...


ABSTRACT Research for novel Brucella vaccines has focused upon the development of live vaccine strains, which have proven more efficacious than killed or subunit vaccines. In an effort to develop improved vaccines, signature-tagged mutant banks were screened to identify mutants attenuated for survival. Mutants selected from these screens exhibited various degrees of attenuation characterized by the rate of clearance, ranging from a failure to grow in macrophages after 24 h of infection to a failure to persist in the mouse model beyond 8 weeks. Ideal vaccine candidates should be safe to the host, while evoking protective immunity. In the present work, we constructed unmarked deletion mutants of three gene candidates, manBA, virB2, and asp24, in both Brucella abortus and Brucella melitensis. The Δasp24 mutants, which persist for extended periods in vivo, are superior to current vaccine strains and to other deletion strains tested in the mouse model against homologous challenge infection after 12, 16, and 20 weeks postvaccination. The Δasp24 mutants also display superior protection compared to ΔmanBA and ΔvirB2 mutants against heterologous challenge in mice. From this study, a direct association between protection against infection and cytokine response was not apparent between all vaccine groups and, therefore, correlates of protective immunity will need to be considered further. A distinct correlation between persistence of the vaccine strain and protection against infection was corroborated.


Analytic design criteria are provided to determine if a digital magnetic recording system can overwrite under worst-case conditions. The worst-case condition is taken to be a bubble of reversed magnetization in an otherwise saturated medium, written by applying current to a stationary recording head. A leading and a trailing transition are formed, creating a large demagnetizing field opposing the head field. Although the leading transition is commonly thought to be unimportant in saturation writing, its demagnetizing field can significantly hamper the writing of the trailing transition. First, self-consistent numerical calculation shows the characteristics of the bubble and its associated fields. Then the bubble is approximated analytically by a biquadratic form, and the demagnetizing field at the bubble center is compared with the field necessary to saturate the medium. A rapid loss of overwrite ability with decreasing gap-length is demonstrated. The importance of including image fields for thin-film heads is discussed. Graphical representations are given for the minimum gap-length necessary for overwrite. A relation between media parameters, bit density, and magnetic energy/bit in commercial disk drives is discussed.


The proteins hamartin and tuberin form a heterodimer that inhibits cell growth and proliferation by blocking nutrient signaling through the mTOR pathway. Loss of function of either protein results in tumorigenesis associated with the human genetic syndrome tuberous sclerosis complex. Little is known about how this heterodimer functions--hamartin is predicted to have a transmembrane domain and tuberin bears a domain with guanosine triphosphatase (GTPase)-activating protein (GAP) activity. Tee et al. report that the heterodimer stimulates GTP hydrolysis of a small GTP-binding protein called Ras homolog enriched in brain (Rheb). Rheb-GTP appears to activate nutrient signaling input to mTOR. Overexpression of Rheb in cultured mammalian cells, in the absence of nutrients, induced activation of the 40S ribosomal protein S6 kinase 1 (S6K1) and also the phosphorylation of the eukaryotic initiation factor 4E binding protein 1 (4E-BP1), two targets of the mTOR-nutrient pathway. Rheb overexpression also enhanced S6K1 activation when cells were treated with amino acids, an effect that was blocked by the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin. However, additional overexpression of hamartin and tuberin blocked Rheb's ability to activate S6K1; this required an intact GAP domain in tuberin. Hamartin and tuberin enhanced the GTPase activity of Rheb in vitro, suggesting that the complex acts as a GAP. The requirement for farnesylation of Rheb for optimal activation of S6K1 suggests that membrane localization, perhaps in proximity to membrane-localized hamartin-tuberin, is important for modulating Rheb activity. The authors propose that Rheb becomes activated when nutrients are sufficient, thus promoting mTOR signaling when in the GTP-bound form. The hamartin-tuberin complex would then inhibit Rheb by stimulating GTP hydrolysis. A. R. Tee, B. D. Manning, P. P. Roux, L. C. Cantley, J. Blenis, Tuberous sclerosis complex gene products, tuberin and hamartin, control mTOR signaling by acting as a GTPase-activating protein complex toward Rheb. Curr. Biol. 13, 1259-1268 (2003). [Online Journal]


This research study clearly explains the application of G2G e-government within nontraditional
governance. This research was aimed at developing a framework that
identified the key factors that affect the implementation of G2G e-government within
non traditional governance using Libya as a case study.
Libya is an Arab country in North Africa and similar to other Arab countries in many
ways with respect to the location, language, religion, customs, values, culture, and
history. But Libya is completely different in its political and economic system. Libya
is a unique model of democracy, using a system of direct democracy, which depends
on the power of the people through the People's Congresses as an instrument of
legislation. Libya has a public society, also there is no a Prime Minister in Libya and
no any municipalities but its governance is based on People's Congresses and these
committees decide what legislation to be implemented.
In order to achieve the research aim, four objectives have been accomplished. By
reviewing the relevant literature the theoretical framework was enhanced. Then the
empirical work was carried out by collecting the data required for the research in three
Libyan public sectors namely the General Public Committee (Cabinet of Libya), the
General Public Committee for Planning (The Ministry of Planning) and the General
Information Authority. After collecting the data it was analysed qualitatively to
identify and explore the key factors affecting e-government in the selected cases. The
findings of the research have been discussed, using many tools for triangulation, to
understand the implementation of e-government in the three cases, and to find the
factors affecting e-government within non-traditional governance, the initial
theoretical framework is revised accordingly to reflect the case studies' findings.
This study is the first one that has identified both the factors and factors affecting egovernment
within the Libyan public sector. The significance of this research is that
lessons have been learned as well as solutions on how to apply e-government in a
country with non-traditional governance.
XIII


Margery B. Ginsberg/Raymond J. Wlodkowski Jossey - Bass Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2000 $29.95, ISBN 0-7870-4330-4 Creating Highly Motivating Classrooms for All Students, by Margery B. Ginsberg and Raymond J. Wlodkowski, is a motivational framework for culturally responsive teaching. The book is divided into three parts which move logically from understanding culture and motivation in Part One to the elements of the author's Motivational Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching in Part Two. Part Three presents wide building support and skills and district-wide implementation. Worthwhile features include practical exercises for both classrooms and school professional development activities that vary in format and utilize case studies, simulations, cooperative group activities, as well as individual, dyad and triad responses. Each exercise is complete in that it does not merely state general comments, but provides all specific pieces (as actual full case studies, rubrics) that would be needed to complete the strategy. Chapters contain exhibits that provide artifacts as profiles, rubrics, sample agreements, and guides. Within Part Two each chapter concludes with a useful checklist related to the framework component and an activities guide that categorizes the activities described in the chapter. Chapters One through Three provide research support and concept development for the basic thesis of the authors related to motivation and culture. Chapter One "Culture and the Motivation to Learn" presents the basic conceptual framework for the book. Motivation is viewed as intrinsic and owned by the student, not the teacher. Motivation and culture are bound together, as culture provides a world view. However, each individual exists in his/her own specific culture and context. The common effort-reward system may have no value for many students. The authors feel that four motivational conditions are necessary in the classroom: establishing inclusion, developing positive attitudes, enhancing meaning, and engendering competence. These conditions provide the bases of their framework. Along with providing opportunity for student motivation, teachers need to be concerned with understanding their own culture, values and bias as influenced by their own social content. Chapter Two, "Critical Features of a Culturally Responsive School," focuses on comprehensive school-wide planning. The King School is provided as an example of the framework in action. The authors warn that along with complexity comes conflict. Chapter Three, "Culturally Responsive Curriculum," stresses the need for transformations rather than cosmetic changes that are considered a contribution or additive approach. For example heroes and holidays are part of an additive approach that provides certain times of the year when contributions by minorities are discussed. However, transformations are systemic changes that would integrate instruction with the overlay of a multicultural perspective. Chapters Four through Eight concentrate on the specific components of the framework. Although the components are interrelated, they are discussed separately. Chapter Four gives a definition of the framework, which is a macro cultural pedagogical model. An extensive sample history lesson plan is included which incorporates the major aspects of the framework. Chapter Five discusses the concept of inclusion based on the principles of respect and connectedness. Several activities are explored that create opportunities for multidimensional sharing. Strategies are applicable to the classroom, as well as school wide. Furthermore, the authors provide strategies for negotiating conflict and dealing with resistance--two common issues in response to change. Chapter Six discusses positive attitude. Positive attitude is considered a result of both relevance and choice. Choice concerns what will be shared, how, what, when, where and how areas are assessed. …


Due to the ubiquity of localisation technology, users now have the ability to keep a record of their own location, as a kind of 'location diary'. Such a large collection of data can become unmanageable without some way to structure that data to make it useful and searchable. We address this problem of structuring location data by proposing a framework for classifying the data into often-traversed routes. In this work, commonly traversed routes are identified with clusters based on sensed data. Our framework does not rely on any one source of location information, but can fuse data from multimodal localisation sources. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm by examining the combination of GPS, wireless signal strength readings and image-matching on very challenging data in a variety of environmental conditions. By fusing these three modalities we obtained better performance than any individual or combination of two modalities. As it can be orientated towards the needs and capabilities of the user based on context, this method becomes useful for some ambient assisted living applications.


The isolation‐rearing (IR) paradigm, consisting of the social deprivation for 6–9 weeks after weaning, induces a spectrum of aberrant behaviors in adult rats. Some of these alterations such as sensorimotor gating deficits are reminiscent of the dysfunctions observed in schizophrenia patients. Although gating impairments in IR rats have been linked to impairments in the cortico‐mesolimbic system, the specific molecular mechanisms underlying this relation are unclear. To elucidate the neurochemical modifications underlying the gating disturbances exhibited by IR rats, we compared their pre‐pulse inhibition (PPI) of the acoustic startle reflex with that of socially reared (SR) controls, and correlated this index to the results of proteomic analyses in prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens from both groups. As expected, IR rats exhibited significantly lower startle amplitude and PPI than their SR counterparts. Following behavioral testing, IR and SR rats were killed and protein expression profiles of their brain regions were examined using two‐dimensional electrophoresis based proteomics. Image analysis in the Coomassie blue‐stained gel revealed that three protein spots were differentially expressed in the nucleus accumbens of IR and SR rats. Mass spectrometry (matrix‐assisted laser desorption ionization‐time of flight and MS/MS) identified these spots as heat shock protein 60 (HSP60), α‐synuclein (α‐syn), and 14‐3‐3 protein ζ/δ. While accumbal levels of HSP60 was decreased in IR rats, α‐syn and 14‐3‐3 proteins were significantly increased in IR in comparison with SR controls. Notably, these two last alterations were significantly correlated with different loudness intensity‐specific PPI deficits in IR rats. In view of the role of these proteins in synaptic trafficking and dopaminergic regulation, these findings might provide a neurochemical foundation for the gating alterations and psychotic‐like behaviors in IR rats.


The purpose of this EP Wire survey was to assess clinical practice in periprocedural management of atrial fibrillation ablation. This survey is based on an electronic questionnaire sent to the European Heart Rhythm Association Research Network members. Responses were received from 78 centres in 20 countries. The results of the survey have shown that periprocedural management is generally in accordance with guidelines and consensus recommendations on ablation for atrial fibrillation ablation, although there are some areas of variation. Differences between high- and low-volume centres are observed with respect to patient selection, antiarrhythmic drug management, and heparin bridging.


Do not resuscitate, or fly Unless you're an economist, health economics is likely to leave you cold. But as Stuart Peacock and colleagues remind us this week (p 482), needs will always outstrip resources. So however hard it is to prioritise, that's what we have to do. Their essay offers help to doctors and managers wanting to make practical and ethical decisions about priorities. Their recipe for more holistic resource management includes clear objectives, ownership of decisions, and transparency. These building blocks take time for careful thought, something that is often in short supply when dealing with acutely ill patients. All the more reason to have clear policies in place so that health professionals don't have to make hard decisions in the heat of the moment. Without these, there is a tendency to intervene even where this may be hopeless. Simon Conroy and colleagues (p 479) argue that resuscitating frail elderly people is rarely successful, especially in residential care homes, and it diverts resources from other aspects of care. It can also cause indignity at death for the patient and distress to staff. They say that current UK guidelines, which presume that patients should be resuscitated unless they have clearly requested otherwise, are inappropriate where success is so unlikely. Asking what patients want should be easy, but doing this when it is most relevant—during acute admission to hospital—turns out to be hard. Helen Fidler and colleagues asked themselves why so few patients admitted through their emergency department were asked their views within the first 24 hours (p 461). Was this due to medical paternalism? Their study concludes not. They list a range of practical difficulties that need to be overcome to improve the chances that patients are asked their views. But they conclude that, until patients are well enough, health professionals must act in their best interests. Conroy et al agree and provide a "best interests checklist" (p 480). Charges of paternalism will remain unless there is transparency. Patients must, as far as possible, understand the limitations of what is available to them. If a residential care home decides not to fund resuscitation, this policy needs to be explicit so that patients and their families can choose alternatives where these exist (p 479). Where new approaches to antenatal chromosomal testing would save money but would miss a small proportion of normal fetuses (p 452), parents need to know so they can pay for comprehensive testing if they wish (p 433). Finally, things may be available but that doesn't mean we should use them, metformin and cheap air flights being two examples. Metformin increases fertility in obese women with polycystic ovary syndrome. But Adam Balen and colleagues are concerned about the risks of pregnancy associated with obesity (p 434). They advise waiting until the woman has lost weight before treating her infertility. As for the cheap air flights, you'll understand when you've learnt how to speak carbon (p 497).


The Avellino Pumices eruption was one of the most catastrophic volcanic events of Somma-Vesuvius, which hit prehistoric communities during the Early Bronze Age. In the last 30 yr, several authors reported assessments about its chronology, including radiocarbon datings, but with poor internal agreement and frequently with large experimental errors. A new and more accurate 14C dating of this eruption (1935–1880 BC, 1 σ) was obtained at the CIRCE laboratory in Caserta (Italy) by 3 AMS measurements on a bone sample of a goat buried by the eruption, collected in an Early Bronze Age village at Croce del Papa (Nola, Naples). These results were verified by other measurements on several samples chronologically related to the eruption. Our data show that human resettlement after the eruption occurred rather quickly but lasted only for a short time in areas affected by the volcanic products, like Masseria Rossa and San Paolo Belsito (Nola, Naples), according to 14C dating of archaeological samples collected below and above the eruption deposits. The state-of-the-art chronology of this eruption, emerging from the results obtained in this work as well as from data in the literature, is discussed.


While clustered communication has been considered as one key technology for wireless sensor networks, existing work on cluster formation predominantly takes a pure graph-theoretic approach with the goal of optimizing the performance of individual machines. Since the radio resource available for M2M communications is typically limited yet the amount of data to transport is large, such "resource-agnostic" and "data-agnostic" clustering techniques could lead to sub-optimal performance. To address this problem, we propose "data-centric" clustering in a resource-constrained M2M network by prioritizing the quality of overall data over the performance of individual machines. We first formulate an optimization problem to minimize the amount of radio resource needed for supporting two-tier clustered communications. We then partition the formulated problem into the inner power control and outer cluster formation sub-problems and propose algorithms for solving the problems. While power control can be optimally solved for any given cluster structure by the proposed algorithm, cluster formation is an NP-hard problem. Hence, we propose an anytime, guided, stochastic search algorithm to find a reasonably good cluster structure without incurring prohibitive computation complexity. Compared with baseline approaches, our evaluation results show that data-centric clustering can achieve noticeable performance gain by selecting only important machines and forming a cluster structure that can balance the radio resource usage of the two tiers. We therefore motivate data-centric clustering as a promising communication model for resource-constrained M2M networks.


T.F. Torrance is widely known for his dialogue between theology and the natural sciences. His Christology, however, merits greater attention in the academic literature, particularly in regard to his important discussion of the prehistory of Jesus Christ's incarnation in the nation of Israel. The purpose of this article is to address this inadequacy. The present article provides an overview of Torrance's discussion of the mediation of revelation and reconciliation in Israel and relates it to Jesus Christ's incarnation. Content is based on a review of the primary literature published over a span of more than 40 years, as well as a review of the relatively few secondary resources that include an extensive discussion of this subject matter. Torrance's discussion of the prehistory of the incarnation in Israel provides the biblical-historical background for his Christology. For Torrance, divine self-disclosure and human response in the context of God's covenant interaction with Israel constitute a two-fold but unitary movement of mediation in Israel that is ultimately embodied and enacted in the person and life of Jesus Christ. As Torrance argues, Jesus Christ incorporates in his incarnate person, life, death and resurrection the prehistory of the mediation of revelation and reconciliation in Israel. Torrance's discussion of the prehistory of the incarnation in Israel provides a helpful hermeneutical framework for understanding the purpose, meaning and goal of God's covenant interaction with Old Testament Israel as a preparation for the advent of Jesus Christ.


An intimate look into three Victorian photo-settings, "Pleasures Taken" considers questions of loss and sexuality as they are raised by some of the most compelling and often misrepresented photographs of the era: Lewis Carroll's photographs of young girls; Julia Margaret Cameron's photographs of Madonnas; and the photographs of Hannah Cullwick, a "maid of all work," who had herself pictured in a range of masquerades, from a blackened chimney sweep to a bare-chested Magdalene. Reading these settings performatively, Carol Mavor shifts the focus toward the subjectivity of these girls and women, and toward herself as a writer.Mavor's original approach to these photographs emphatically sees sexuality where it has been previously rendered invisible. She insists that the sexuality of the girls in Carroll's pictures is not only present, but deserves recognition, respect, and scrutiny. Similarly, she sees in Cameron's photographs of sensual Madonnas surprising visions of motherhood that outstrip both Victorian and contemporary understandings of the maternal as untouchable and inviolate, without sexuality. Finally she shows how Hannah Cullwick, posing in various masquerades for her secret paramour, emerges as a subject with desires rather than simply a victim of her upper-class partner. Even when confronting the darker areas of these photographs, Mavor perseveres in her insistence on the pleasures taken--by the viewer, the photographer, and often by the model herself--in the act of imagining these sexualities. Inspired by Roland Barthes, and drawing on other theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, Mavor creates a text that is at once interdisciplinary, personal, and profoundly pleasurable.


In this paper, two different Passive Mode-Locked Laser Diodes (PMLLD) structures, a Fabry-Perot cavity and a ring cavity laser are characterized and evaluated as monolithic Optical Frequency Comb Generators (OFCG) for CW sub-THz generation. An extensive characterization of the devices under study is carried out based on an automated measurement system that systematically evaluates the dynamic characteristics of the devices, focusing on the figures of merit that define the optimum performance of a pulsed laser source when considered as an OFCG. Sub-THz signals generated with both devices at 60 GHz and 90 GHz are presented and analyzed in terms of electrical linewidth to compare such components for mm-Wave and sub-THz photonic generation. This work offers a systematic comparison of PMLLD devices for OFCG operation and provides reference information of the performance of two different device topologies that can be used for the implementation of photonic integrated sub-THz CW generation.


A scholarly edition of works by Ben Jonson. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.


Fisheries bycatch mortality poses a primary threat to the majority of the world's 22 albatross species, 15 of which are at risk of extinction. Although quantitative estimates of albatross bycatch are often unavailable due to a relative or total absence of monitoring, spatial overlap between fisheries and albatrosses is often used to estimate the extent of interaction, a proxy for exposure to bycatch, and to inform avoidance and mitigation actions. Using comprehensive records of commercial demersal longline and trap fishing and survey information for albatrosses (black-footed albatross Phoebastria nigripes, Laysan albatross P. immutabilis, short-tailed albatross P. albatrus), the extent of spatial potential interaction was estimated in Canada's Pacific coast waters and examined across breeding and non-breeding seasons. The distributions of albatrosses and longline and trap fisheries were found to substantially overlap, with potential interaction hotspots concentrated along the continental shelf break. Trap fisheries reported 1 albatross bycatch incident, suggesting that these fisheries are responsible for negligible albatross mortalities. In contrast, >80% of recorded albatross bycatch incidents occurred within 10 km of albatross-longline fisheries hotspot locations, providing evidence that longline-albatross potential interaction hotspots represent actual areas of elevated bycatch mortality risk. Indicative of potential conservation concern, 60% of short-tailed albatross sightings occurred within 10 km, and 93% within 30 km, of longline-albatross potential interaction hotspots. By contributing knowledge regarding albatross-fisheries interactions, in addition to undertaking the first evaluation of albatross-fisheries hotspots with recorded bycatch incidents on Canada's Pacific coast, this study represents a step towards enhancing albatross conservation through bycatch avoidance and mitigation.


Abstract Teck v. Pakootas revisits the infamous Trail smelter, which made history in public international law. This more recent case should be set to make history as well, due to the manner in which the issue of extraterritorial exercise of jurisdiction was handled. The substantive result reached in the courts seems fair, reasonable, and appropriate: a notorious polluter, Teck Cominco Metals Inc., is called to account by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and required to study the feasibility of cleaning up a site it contaminated by dumping effluents in a transboundary river over the course of several decades. Yet, both courts that examined this case on the merits failed to understand the ramifications of this extension of the Environmental Protection Agency's jurisdiction across the Canada–United States border. This article begins with a doctrinal analysis of jurisdictional rules in private and public international law, and then proceeds to evaluate those rules with the help of insights from scholarship on global administrative law and international public authority.


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To explore the hope experience of male spouses of women with breast cancer.

DESIGN
Thorne's qualitative interpretive descriptive approach was used.

SETTING
Homes of participants in two western Canadian provinces.

SAMPLE
11 male spouses of women with breast cancer.

METHODS
24 open-ended tape-recorded telephone interviews were completed. Data were transcribed and then analyzed used Thorne's approach.

MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Hope.

FINDINGS
The participants described their hope as tangible and important to them. Hope was influenced by their partners' hope and courage and gave participants the courage to support their partners. The overarching theme was engaging hope. The participants described their hope as always being there, but with the diagnoses of their partners' breast cancer, they needed to engage their hope. Other themes were finding balance, discovering what works, and focusing on the positives.

CONCLUSIONS
The participants emphasized the importance and the positive outcomes associated with hope, such as being able to continue caring for their partner.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
The importance of hope in the participants' lives underscores the need to find ways to foster hope in this population. The findings also suggest that the hope experience of men may differ from the experience of women; therefore, strategies to foster hope in this population should be tailored to the male experience.


In this classic tale, Richard E. Kim paints seven vivid scenes from a boyhood and early adolescence in Korea at the height of the Japanese occupation, 1932 to 1945. Taking its title from the grim fact that the occupiers forced the Koreans to renounce their own names and adopt Japanese names instead, the book follows one Korean family through the Japanese occupation to the surrender of the Japanese empire. "Lost Names" is at once a loving memory of family and a vivid portrayal of life in a time of anguish.


Environment problems associated with the generation of waste are part of societal changes where household solid waste play an important role. For the effective planning of solid-waste handling infrastructure, it is essential to know the quantity of waste generation and its composition. This study of purpose is the problem of recycling and recycling of solid household waste using new technologies. The solid waste disposal site of the city of Uralsk was investigated for the collection and subsequent disposal of solid waste. According to the regional Department of ecology, the mass of accumulated household waste throughout the WKO at the beginning of the year reached 6.3 million tons. And the total area of landfills is already more than 550 hectares. During 2018, more than 108 thousand tons of household waste were placed in landfills and village dumps. If we take into account that the population of the region is 649,460 people, then 178 kg of household waste per West Kazakhstan citizen. Were investigated in 6 points of waste collection and disposal site. The studied parameters were the formation and composition of waste, technologies used at the Uralsk landfill for waste disposal and disposal. Municipal solid waste consists of ten categories of waste and has the largest component (35%). Accordingly, the use of alternative measures, accompanied by awareness-raising activities and investments in solid waste management, will further improve and preserve the cleanliness of the environment.


Most theories in social and political psychology stress self-interest, intergroup conflict, ethnocentrism, homophily, ingroup bias, outgroup antipathy, dominance, and resistance. System justification theory is influenced by these perspectives—including social identity and social dominance theories—but it departs from them in several respects. Advocates of system justification theory argue that (a) there is a general ideological motive to justify the existing social order, (b) this motive is at least partially responsible for the internalization of inferiority among members of disadvantaged groups, (c) it is observed most readily at an implicit, nonconscious level of awareness and (d) paradoxically, it is sometimes strongest among those who are most harmed by the status quo. This article reviews and integrates 10 years of research on 20 hypotheses derived from a system justification perspective, focusing on the phenomenon of implicit outgroup favoritism among members of disadvantaged groups (including African Americans, the elderly, and gays/lesbians) and its relation to political ideology (especially liberalism-conservatism).


Aim: To propose a new system of keratoconus staging using a set of parameters describing the keratoconic cone. Materials and methods: Retrospective case series study of 101 keratoconic eyes of 58 patients was undertaken. They all had complete eye examination including corneal topography (Oculus Pentacam). Kmean, Kmax, higher order aberrations (HOAs) root mean square (HOARMS) value, pachymetry at thinnest point and steepest corneal meridian were obtained from Pentacam. Apex to thinnest pachymetry distance (D) was calculated using trigonometry. Pearson correlation coefficients between Kmax and HOARMS, between D on the one hand and the adjusted angle of steepest meridian, Kmean and Kmax respectively on the other, were calculated. Results: There is a statistically significant positive correlation between Kmax and HOARMS (p < 0.00001). There is a negative correlation, a "horizontalization," of the steep meridian with D increase, although it fell short of statistical significance (p = 0.07). D and Kmean (p = 0.003), and D and Kmax (p = 0.005) are significantly negatively correlated. Conclusion: Kmax correlates with significant changes in HOAs. D correlates with corneal astigmatic meridian change and has a divergent path to Kmean and to Kmax. We propose a new keratometry, decentration, and thinnest pachymetry staging using the parameters Kmax (K), distance from the corneal apex to the thinnest pachymetry point (D), and corneal thickness at its thinnest point (T) to give a better, detailed description of a keratoconic cornea which could lead to improvements in assessment of its severity and treatment outcomes.


The seasonal response to surface melting of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream outlets, Zachariae and 79N, is investigated using new highly temporally resolved surface velocity maps for 2016 combined with numerical modeling. The seasonal speedup at 79N of 0.15 km/yr is suggested to be driven by a decrease in effective basal pressure induced by surface melting, whereas for Zachariae its 0.11 km/yr seasonal speedup correlates equally well with the breakup of its large ice mélange. We investigate the influence 76 km long floating tongue at 79N, finding it provides little resistance and that most of it could be lost without impacting the dynamics of the area. Furthermore, we show that reducing the slipperiness along the tongue‐wall interfaces produces a velocity change spatially inconsistent with the observed seasonal speedup. Finally, we find that subglacial sticky spots such as bedrock bumps play a negligible role in the large‐scale response to a seasonally enhanced basal slipperiness of the region.


Psychologists have long documented that we over-attribute people's actions to innate characteristics, rather than to luck or circumstances. Similarly, economists have found that both politicians and businessmen are rewarded for luck. In this paper, we introduce this "Fundamental Attribution Error" into two benchmark political economy models. In both models, voter irrationality can improve politicians' behavior, because voters attribute good behavior to fixed attributes that merit reelection. This upside of irrationality is countered by suboptimal leader selection, including electing leaders who emphasize objectives that are beyond their control. The error has particularly adverse consequences for institutional choice, where it generates too little demand for a free press, too much demand for dictatorship, and responding to endemic corruption by electing new supposedly honest leaders, instead of investing in institutional reform.


During the negotiation of the Paris Agreement, many argued that the final text should integrate a human rights approach so as to better align climate governance under the UNFCCC with climate justice. Reference to human rights ultimately appeared only in the Preamble, despite submissions from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that urgent and ambitious State action to combat climate change is an existing duty of international human rights law. Another submission highlighted the role of businesses as duty-bearers who must contribute to climate mitigation and be accountable for climate impacts.
This article will consider an unexplored avenue through which Canada could advocate for climate mitigation by examining whether Canada's corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy for Canadian extractive sector companies operating internationally integrates consideration of human rights and climate change. The paper will argue that while Canada's CSR strategy expects Canadian extractive companies, including oil & gas companies, to respect human rights wherever they operate, the international CSR standards endorsed in the Strategy are largely climate mitigation bind. Moreover, many of these standards are also gender blind, of importance given that women of the global south are among the most vulnerable to the human rights impacts of climate change.


Tissue-engineered vascular grafts (TEVGs) have the potential to provide life-saving arterial replacements to patients requiring vascular bypass, hemodialysis access, and pediatric coronary surgery. Recent years have seen impressive strides towards widespread clinical use, but significant work still remains in optimizing cell source and graft growth, including the suppression of unwanted calcification during culture. In this study, I examine oxygen concentration and two small-molecule bone morphogenic protein (BMP) inhibitors, DMH-1 and LDN193189, as potential avenues of increased control over mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) differentiation of into vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs). Applying BMP-inhibitor concentrations from 0.01 to 10 μM at oxygen tensions of 2 & 20% over two weeks of growth, I use reverse transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) to evaluate resultant expression levels of smooth muscle (SM22-α), bone (OCN), and cartilage (Col2a) marker genes. Via multiple linear regression, I demonstrate that low oxygen growth causes a statistically significant SM22-α downregulation (∆∆Cq = 1.77 ± 0.22, mean ± standard error, p <0.0%) coupled with increased Col2a (∆∆Cq = -2.85 ± 0.73, p =0.1%) and type-I collagen expression (∆∆Cq = -1.75 ± 0.65, p = 1.2%), suggesting that physiological oxygen tensions increase the incidence of chondrogenic differentiation. In contrast, LDN193189 increases SM22-α expression (∆∆Cq = -0.78 ± 0.27 per μM, p =0.8%) and reduces Col2a expression (∆∆Cq = -2.17 ± 0.89, p =2.2%), seeming to usefully suppress chondrogenesis. Additionally, I evaluate the effects of pulsatile vessel growth conditions on an attractive new cell source: MSCs derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Using PicoGreen and modified Bradford assays, I demonstrate that pulsatile growth conditions significantly increase dry weights of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) from 0.0780 ± 0.002% to 0.1414 ± 0.008% (mean ± standard error, p = 0.015%) and collagen from 25 ± 2% to 46 ± 2% (p = 2.3%), approaching a sample of native aorta at 55% collagen. Overall, results suggest normoxic growth conditions remain superior for SMC differentiation, but that the BMP-inhibitor LDN193189 may have a future role in suppressing cartilage production during TEVG growth. Furthermore, iPSC-derived MSCs demonstrate similar responses to traditional bone marrow MSCs, and may well represent an attractive cell source in future TEVG production.


This article is based on the study that examined communities' indigenous approaches to peacemaking and conflict resolution and seeks to determine whether the government's responses are concomitant with local knowledge of peacemaking and conflict resolution through a case study of Msinga villages in the North of the KwaZulu-Natal Province. It focuses on inter-clan wars, which have a long history in the study areas; the scars of violence are still fresh in the minds of men and women living in these areas. In the qualitative study, face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with local traditional leaders, village elders, both men and women, and local government officials and the youth. The findings of the study demonstrate that there is still mistrust between members of these communities to the extent that any tension can lead to violence. The findings also show that, although there have been and still are many peacemaking and conflict resolution initiatives, these seem to be ineffective in bringing about peace and the sense of a united community. Furthermore, many local citizens and women believe that government imposed approaches have limited their effective participation in peacemaking and conflict resolution. The contestation and in fighting between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the African National Congress has further undermined ordinary citizens' full participation as they try to wrest control from the other group; this continues to deepen divisions in an already divided society. Keywords: Traditional approaches, peacemaking, conflict resolution, peace, inter-clans conflict and community participation


While little attention has been paid to stories of boyhood sexual abuse in sport, in recent years autobiographical accounts from male "survivors" have emerged in relatively quick succession. This paper argues that this is a significant development for the sports community which requires further attention. More specifically, it argues that the use of narrative analysis is vital to the development of this field of study and illustrates this through the presentation and analysis of two stories of boyhood sexual subjection in male-sport. It is argued that some stories of sexual subjection in male-sport may be well-received while others may not and that social science must be alert to those stories which may transgress dominant notions of the "survivor" story and may be silenced as a result.


The single-member LLC (SMLLC) is ubiquitous. Despite its ubiquity, the Internal Revenue Code (Code) does not squarely address its tax consequences nor even contemplate its existence. This article examines the tax lifecycle of an SMLLC through its formation, operation, and exit event (e.g., sale, gift, or deathtime transfer).

This article identifies and isolates a tax asymmetry that arises from the U.S. Tax Court's decision in Pierre v. Commissioner. Despite the check-the-box regulations, which disregard the SMLLC, Pierre regards the SMLLC for federal gift tax purposes. This asymmetry has several tax consequences, including a potential prophylactic immunization of transfers to SMLLCs against application of section 2036 — which claws back into the federal gross estate transfers when the transferor retains an interest — in the family partnership context.

Consequently, this article demonstrates that the SMLLC can be used to blunt the negative effects of section 2512 (a gift tax provision), section 1015 (an income tax provision), and section 2036 (an estate tax provision). In effect, due to the Pierre asymmetry, the SMLLC is the ideal initial entity in a gifting strategy.


We introduce collaborative learning in which multiple classifier heads of the same network are simultaneously trained on the same training data to improve generalization and robustness to label noise with no extra inference cost. It acquires the strengths from auxiliary training, multi-task learning and knowledge distillation. There are two important mechanisms involved in collaborative learning. First, the consensus of multiple views from different classifier heads on the same example provides supplementary information as well as regularization to each classifier, thereby improving generalization. Second, intermediate-level representation (ILR) sharing with backpropagation rescaling aggregates the gradient flows from all heads, which not only reduces training computational complexity, but also facilitates supervision to the shared layers. The empirical results on CIFAR and ImageNet datasets demonstrate that deep neural networks learned as a group in a collaborative way significantly reduce the generalization error and increase the robustness to label noise.


Introduction Canada established official diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of Albania on September 10, 1987. Although Canada had recognized Albania in 1959, relations between the two countries had been limited. This situation was in large part dictated by Albania's self-imposed isolation. However, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Albania's approach to Canada shifted. Albanian diplomats worked towards improving relations with Canada and other countries in the West. Canada, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), respected leader in the United Nations (UN), and close ally to the United States, was highly regarded by the Albanian leadership. Unlike Britain, the United States, and West Germany, Canada had no outstanding grievances with the Albanian government. Canada had also exhibited flexibility in its relations with communist states. Thus, Canada was courted by Albanian diplomats before any other Western state. This article examines the process which culminated in the establishment of Albanian-Canadian diplomatic relations. I shall argue that changes to Canadian foreign policy introduced by the Trudeau government in 1968 were instrumental in delaying Canada's diplomatic initiatives in Albania. Specific areas under consideration include: (1) Canada's shift away from an active, internationalist diplomacy to a restrained policy driven by specific "national interests"; (2) the Trudeau government's indifference towards the recommendations of Canadian diplomats, and disdain for the diplomatic process generally; and (3) the lack of consensus between diplomats who continued to endorse an activist foreign policy, and civil servants and politicians at the Department of External Affairs. Canada's approach to Albania was representative of a general trend in Canadian foreign policy during the 1970s and early 1980s. It was during this time that Canada relinquished its function as a "Middle Power," a designation which reflected its capabilities as well as its demeanor. Instead, the Trudeau government adopted a modest, self-interested approach to international affairs. This study supports the view that the Trudeau policy underestimated Canada's influence and ability to shape events in the world. Rather than playing an active part in Albania's attempts to improve relations with the West, Canada abdicated its potential role to others. Thus, Canadian policies were often contradictory, and diplomatic initiatives were repeatedly ignored by officials in Ottawa. Initial Contacts: 1964-1967 Albania originally expressed interest in improving its relations with Canada on May 21, 1964. On that day the Albanian Ambassador to Cuba, Mr. Josif Pogaci, met with Canada's Ambassador, Mr. Leon Maynard. Ambassador Pogaci expressed his country's desire for a "normalization" of relations. Ambassador Maynard responded by stating that, although the possibility of an exchange of diplomatic missions was remote, commercial relations were possible. Though nothing came of this meeting, the very fact that it took place is of interest. A brief review of Albanian international relations between 1948-1961 may help to put this development into perspective. Albania had been an important Soviet satellite since 1948. Support from the Soviet Union was instrumental in transforming Albania from an underdeveloped agrarian country to an agricultural-industrial state.(1) However, relations between the two countries deteriorated soon after Stalin's death in 1953. By December 1961, all Soviet economic and military assistance to Albania had been suspended.(2) The schism was due in part to the de-Stalinization process initiated by Nikita Khrushchev. Albania's leader, Enver Hoxha, had been an enthusiastic proponent of Stalinism. Khrushchev's conciliatory gestures to Yugoslavia also raised suspicions in Tirana. Yugoslavia had pursued a policy aimed at absorbing Albania into the Yugoslav Federation in the years between 1946-1948. …


In the last years domestic as well as international legislation has revealed a trend towards providing an increased protection to marine environment and establishment of various marine protected areas to serve this aim. However, such development instigates a discussion whether a coastal state has unlimited jurisdiction under international law to designate such areas in its territorial sea and exclusive economic zone. Compatibility of marine protected areas with the regime of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is analysed in part 2 of this paper. Part 3 of this paper describes various types of marine protected areas that have been designated within the waters of the Baltic Sea: Special Area under MARPOL 73/78 Convention, Particularly Sensitive Sea Area under respective regulations of the International Maritime Organization, Baltic Sea Protected Areas under Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment in the Baltic Sea Area, Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation under European Union directives as well as other areas established under Lithuanian national legislation. Legal regime associated with the status of each of the aforementioned areas and its effectiveness is also being reviewed. At the end of this paper certain conclusions as regards the system of marine protected areas in the waters of the Baltic Sea and the scope of protective measures applicable in such areas are drawn.


Luxury is central to the material culture of the country house and to many conceptualisations of the elite. Commentators from Adam Smith to Werner Sombart to Arjun Appadurai have distinguished luxury as a particular form of consumption, drawing a close link between luxury, status and honour. But luxury is a slippery and complex idea: a category that is contingent upon time and space, as well as culture and wealth. It links to public displays of wealth and status – and thus to the idea of positional goods used to distinguish elite groups – and to private pleasures of the mind and body. Books have long occupied a particular place in the pantheon of luxury goods. They fulfilled all of Appadurai's register of consumption, being costly and often difficult to acquire; commanding semiotic virtuosity and specialised knowledge; and often being closely linked to the personality of the consumer. However, they were far from being straightforward luxuries, not least because different owners conceived and deployed their books in very different ways. For bibliophiles, the collection was all important and books were precious objects. Status came from owning rare volumes or first editions, and pleasure through possession rather than use. For the learned gentleman or antiquarian books were important as tools of learning: they represented the world of enlightenment understanding and were for reading. For others, books were about wealth and status: the library formed a forum for display, with the contents intended for show rather than consumption.
In this paper, I want to explore these different readings of the book as luxury through the libraries and consumption practices of two members of the English provincial elite. Sir Roger Newdigate (1719-1806) had his family seat at Arbury Hall in Warwickshire. A renowned scholar, MP for Middlesex and later Oxford University, Sir Roger spent much of his long life remodelling his home in the gothic style. His near neighbour, Edward, fifth Lord Leigh (1742-86), lived at Stoneleigh Abbey. Also with a reputation as something of an intellect, Edward spent lavishly in a burst of activity following his coming of age in 1763, completing the interiors of the Abbey in a conservative neo-classical style. Both men bought and owned a huge number of books, and their libraries were integral to their identity and status. Here, I draw on household accounts, receipted bills, catagloues and correspondence to reproduce a detailed picture of their different patterns and practices of book buying (including their relationships with booksellers); the number, type, quality and condition of the books purchased, and the ways in which they were stored, displayed and used. I argue that both men straddled the divide between the different types of book owner identified in the literature. Newdigate and Leigh were both men of learning and yet were concerned with the quality and presentation of the books which they bought: content and cover were both important in communicating something of their identity. Both used their libraries to construct and communicate social and educational status, investing in books as cultural and symbolic capital, and drawing on that capital in their dealings with their peers. Moreover, these libraries had a spatial expression within their houses: rooms that were planned and designed as spaces of learning and places to display knowledge, wealth and power. Perhaps most significantly, because their books survived them, they had the power to enhance status post-mortem – in the form of family heritance, important bequests or wider cultures of learning. In sum, I present the book as a multi-faceted and complex luxury, with particular and overlapping significance to the (elite) consumer


In this article we aim to present three kinds of artistic-ethnographic projects in a way to provoke reflection about creating experimental ethnographic realities and searching for new languages of their description. Starting from a very neutral project, this article passes through a provocative fake business and ends with an action that is quite controversial in ethical terms. First, we describe the "Work Culture" project in the town of Lublin, Southeast Poland which was realized by the "Field Collective", a group of artists and anthropologists, and conducted in a place like railway station district. The Collective undertook attempt to learn the craft from the local artisans and to create meeting situations that were revealing the embodied, manual knowledge of the performed work. They used film as a visual tool but not as the point of coming up, but it has accompanied them from the beginning, influencing the encounter and bringing a new conditions for ethnography. Second, we present a description of the Tear Dealer, a project conducted by the artists Alicja Rogalska and Łukasz Surowiec, in the town of Lublin of Southeast Poland. In this case we show a kind of faked, new-business set in an impoverished urban district as a particular artistic-ethnographic trap designed for producing the moment of slowing down faced an unexpected emotional work. Third, we draw on the "Outpatient clinic" project that was at the same time an artistic and research project, a showcase and a prototype of action in which the artist, Łukasz Surowiec, created the situation of meeting of actively drinking alcoholics, anthropologists, artists and casual passerby. In these three cases we propose a new theoretical-descriptive framework to the experimental research situations that have been revealed, especially while facing an unexpected emotional work, the unplanned expressions, interventions and experiences. Through this, we also show how artistic experiments with visual and audio-visual methods influence ethnographic perception, and how the films, pictures and recordings used during the project have become an inseparable part of the situation.


In Learning with Label Proportions (LLP), the objective is to learn a supervised classifier when, instead of labels, only label proportions for bags of observations are known. This setting has broad practical relevance, in particular for privacy preserving data processing. We first show that the mean operator, a statistic which aggregates all labels, is minimally sufficient for the minimization of many proper scoring losses with linear (or kernelized) classifiers without using labels. We provide a fast learning algorithm that estimates the mean operator via a manifold regularizer with guaranteed approximation bounds. Then, we present an iterative learning algorithm that uses this as initialization. We ground this algorithm in Rademacher-style generalization bounds that fit the LLP setting, introducing a generalization of Rademacher complexity and a Label Proportion Complexity measure. This latter algorithm optimizes tractable bounds for the corresponding bag-empirical risk. Experiments are provided on fourteen domains, whose size ranges up to ≈300K observations. They display that our algorithms are scalable and tend to consistently outperform the state of the art in LLP. Moreover, in many cases, our algorithms compete with or are just percents of AUC away from the Oracle that learns knowing all labels. On the largest domains, half a dozen proportions can suffice, i.e. roughly 40K times less than the total number of labels.


In the first part of this thesis, the FE program MSC.Marc is applied for coupled thermomechanical simulations of wire-rod rolling. In order to predict material behaviour of an AISI 302 stainless steel at high strain rates generated during wire-rod rolling, a material model based on dislocation density is applied. Then, the evolution of temperature, strain rate and flow stress is predicted in the first four rolling passes of a wire block. In the second part of the thesis, an alternative approach to simulation of shape rolling is evaluated. The approach is applied in order to save the computational time in cases where many shape-rolling passes are to be simulated. The approach is a combination of the slab method and a 2D FEM with a generalized plane-strain formulation. A number of various isothermal shape-rolling passes are simulated applying the simplified approach. The simulations are carried out using an in-house 2D FE code implemented in Matlab. The results are compared to fully 3D FE analyses. The comparison shows that the simplified approach can predict roll forces and roll torques with a fair accuracy, but the predicted area reductions are a bit underestimated. The reasons for the deviations between the simplified approach and the 3D FEM are discussed.


Survival of the Skilful: An Ethnographic Study of Two Groups of Young People in Residential Care This thesis is a study of the experiences of young people living together in groups. It uses two children's homes in the north east of Scotland as its research sites. The ways in which data were collected were devised in consultation with the young people involved and required the researcher to 'live-in' th units for a year long period. This thesis concentrates on the ways in which the young people structured their resident groups and gained status and position within them. It argues that fixed roles or positions were not in play; rather there was constant change and fluidity. Young people, it is argued, gained position through a complex set of negotiations which required them to consider their skills and abilities as well as the social context in which they were operating. This inter-relationship supports some of the ideas put forward by Pierre Bourdieu and the conceptual analysis developed during the course of this thesis draws upon his work. The thesis as a whole contributes to the debates both within the study and practice of residential child care and broader sociological debates around children and young people. It illustrates the wide range of skills and knowledge used by the young people thus challenging bully/victim stereotypes and beliefs about the solely 'negative' influence of peers. Furthermore this thesis demonstrates the ways in which young people use their social agency to negotiate around 'adult' influences and controls.


This article addresses the path synthesis of RCCC (revolute-cylindrical-cylindrical-cylindrical) linkages, a problem that has not received due attention in the literature. Compared with planar and spherical four-bar linkages, a RCCC linkage has many more design parameters, which lead to a complex formulation of the path synthesis problem and, consequently, to a quite challenging system of algebraic equations. In this article, the problem is solved with a novel formulation of path synthesis for visiting a number of prescribed positions. This is achieved by means of an alternative coordinate system, which allows point coordinates to be expressed with the aid of two vectors fixed to the same body. By this means, the rotation matrix used to represent the coupler link attitude is obviated. The synthesis equations are then formulated in a simple form. Our formulation confirms that path synthesis admits exact solutions for up to nine prescribed positions, which proves a landmark claim submitted by Burmester. Examples are included to demonstrate the path synthesis procedure with the method thus developed.


Rett Syndrome (RTT) is an X-linked genetic disorder and a major cause of intellectual disability in girls. Mutations in the methyl-CpG binding protein 2 (MECP2) gene, are the primary cause of the disorder. Despite the dominant neurological phenotypes that characterise RTT, MECP2 is expressed ubiquitously throughout the body and a number of peripheral phenotypes such as growth retardation (reduced height and weight), skeletal deformities (scoliosis/kyphosis), reduced bone mass and low energy fractures are also common yet under-reported clinical features of the disorder.
In order to explore whether MeCP2 protein deficiency results in altered structural and functional properties of bone and to test the potential reversibility of any such defects, I have conducted series of histological, imaging and biomechanical tests of bone using an accurate genetic (functional knockout) mouse model of RTT. Initial experiments using a GFP reporter mouse line demonstrated the presence of MeCP2 in bone cells and the effective silencing on the gene in functional knockout mice. Different aspects of the study were conducted in different types of bone tissues that were especially suited for individual assays. For instance, biomechanical three point bending tests were conducted in long bone (femur) whilst trabecular geometry measures were measured in spinal vertebrae.
Both hemizygous Mecp2stop/y male mice in which Mecp2 is silenced in all cells and female Mecp2stop/+ mice in which Mecp2 is silenced in ~50% of cells as a consequence of random X-chromosome inactivation (XCI), revealed, lighter and smaller long bones and significant reductions in cortical bone mechanical properties (~ 39.5% reduction in stiffness, 31% reduction in ultimate load and 37% reduction in Young's modulus respectively in Mecp2stop/y male mice; %) and material properties (microhardess reduced 12.3% in Mecp2stop/y male mice and 14% inMecp2stop/+ female mice) as compared to age wild type control mice. Micro structural analysis conducted using µCT also revealed a significant reduction in cortical (54% reduction in cortical thickness, 30% in bone volume, 20% in total area, and 38% in marrow area) and trabecular (~30% in trabecular thickness) bone parameters as compared to age matched wild-type controls MeCP2-deficent mice. Histological analysis using Sirius red staining as a marker of collagen revealed a ~25% reduction in collagen content in MeCP2 deficient mice as compared to age matched wild type controls.
In experiments designed to establish the potential for reversal of MeCP2-related deficits, unsilencing of Mecp2 in adult mice by tamoxifen-induced and cre-mediated excision of a stop cassette located at the endogenous Mecp2 locus (male; Mecp2stop/y, CreER and female; Mecp2+/stop, CreER), resulted in a restoration of biomechanical properties towards the wild-type levels. Specifically, Male Mecp2stop/y, CreER mice displayed improvement in mechanical properties (stiffness 40%, ultimate load 10%, young's modulus 61% and micro hardness 12%) and structural bone parameter (trabecular thickness 80%) as compared to Mecp2stop/y male mice. Female Mecp2+/stop, CreER, displayed a significant improvement (19%) in microhardess measures as compared to Mecp2 deficient mice.
Overall, the results of my studies show that MeCP2-deficiency results in overt, but potentially reversible, alterations in the biomechanical integrity of bone and highlights the importance of targeting skeletal phenotypes in considering the development of pharmacological and gene-based therapies for Rett Syndrome


The author presents his work in sonifying ocean buoy data for scientific, pedagogical and compositional purposes. Mapping the spectral buoy data to audible frequencies creates interesting and illuminating sonifications of ocean wave dynamics. Several phenomena can be heard, including both those visible and those invisible in graphical representations of the data. The author has worked extensively with this data to compose music and to produce Music from the Ocean, a multi-media CD-ROM demonstrating the data, the phenomena and the sonification. After a brief introduction to physical oceanography, many examples are presented and a composition and installation created from the sonifications are discussed.


Given a large amount of table data, how can we find the tables that contain the contents we want? A naive search fails when the column names are ambiguous, such as if columns containing stock price information are named "Close" in one table and named "P" in another table.One way of dealing with this problem that has been gaining attention is the semantic annotation of table data columns by using canonical knowledge. While previous studies successfully dealt with this problem for specific types of table data such as web tables, it still remains for various other types of table data: (1) most approaches do not handle table data with numerical values, and (2) their predictive performance is not satisfactory.This paper presents a novel approach for table data annotation that combines a latent probabilistic model with multilabel classifiers. It features three advantages over previous approaches due to using highly predictive multi-label classifiers in the probabilistic computation of semantic annotation. (1) It is more versatile due to using multi-label classifiers in the probabilistic model, which enables various types of data such as numerical values to be supported. (2) It is more accurate due to the multi-label classifiers and probabilistic model working together to improve predictive performance. (3) It is more efficient due to potential functions based on multi-label classifiers reducing the computational cost for annotation.Extensive experiments demonstrated the superiority of the proposed approach over state-of-the-art approaches for semantic annotation of real data (183 human-annotated tables obtained from the UCI Machine Learning Repository).


The talk identifies and discuss the editorial and technical background that is now essential to fulfil the core roles of a research library with regards to scholarly publication. As the role of the library continues to evolve, Research Librarians will be required to provide more and more support to researchers to maintain, archive and disseminate their scholarly content – which includes research papers, data and other materials. The presentation will explore some of the technologies being deployed by librarians and in particular the role of international standardization initiatives such as the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). It will also examine the library- publisher relationship and the need for publishers and librarians to work together to address the requirements of their patrons. The EU PEER project will be taken as an example of such collaborations.


This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to explore the extent and causes of widening differences in life expectancy by socioeconomic status (SES) for older persons. We construct alternative measures of SES using educational attainment and average (career) earnings in the prime working ages of 41-50. We also use information on causes of death, health status and various behavioral indicators (smoking, drinking, and obesity) that are believed to be predictors of premature death in an effort to explain the causes of the growing disparities in life expectancy between people of high and low SES. The paper finds that: - There is strong statistical evidence in the HRS of a growing inequality of mortality risk by SES among more recent birth cohorts compared with cohorts born before 1930. - Both educational attainment and career earnings as constructed from Social Security records are equally useful indicators of SES, although the distinction in mortality risk by education is greatest for those with and without a college degree. - There has been a significant decline in the risk of dying from cancer or heart conditions for older Americans in the top half of the income distribution, but we find no such reduction of mortality risk in the bottom half of the distribution. - The inclusion of the behavioral variables and health status result in substantial improvement in the predictions of mortality, but they do not identify the sources of the increase in differential mortality. The policy implications of the findings are: - Indexing the retirement age to increases in average life expectancy to stabilize OASDI finances may have unintended distributional consequences, because most mortality gains have been concentrated among workers in the top half of the earnings distribution. - The fact that we cannot identify the sources of the increase in differential mortality contributes to uncertainty about the distributional effects of increases in the retirement age in future years.


We demonstrate that the compensation of self-phase modulation by third-order dispersion can be exploited in the design of fiber amplifiers with tens of microjoules pulse energy. At the highest energies, the amplified pulse accumulates nonlinear phase shift as large as 17 pi. Gain-narrowing occurs in the final amplifier stage, but shorter pulses are still generated with larger nonlinear phase shifts. A large-mode-area Yb-doped photonic crystal fiber amplifier generates diffraction-limited 30 microJ pulses, which are compressed to 240 fs duration. These are converted to the second harmonic with 48% conversion efficiency, as expected theoretically, which confirms the pulse quality.


A RIDGE (Region of IncreaseD Gene Expression), as defined by previous studies, is a consecutive set of active genes on a chromosome that span a region around 110 kbp long. This study investigated RIDGE formation by focusing on the well-defined, immunological important MHC locus. Macrophages were assayed for gene expression levels using the Affymetrix MG-U74Av2 chip are were either 1) uninfected, 2) primed with IFN-γ, 3) viral activated with mCMV, or 4) both primed and viral activated. Gene expression data from these conditions was studied using data structures and new software developed for the visualisation and handling of structured functional genomic data. Specifically, the data was used to study RIDGE structures and investigate whether physically linked genes were also functionally related, and exhibited co-expression and potentially co-regulation. A greater number of RIDGEs with a greater number of members than expected by chance were found. Observed RIDGEs featured functional associations between RIDGE members (mainly explored via GO, UniProt, and Ingenuity), shared upstream control elements (via PROMO, TRANSFAC, and ClustalW), and similar gene expression profiles. Furthermore RIDGE formation cannot be explained by sequence duplication events alone. When the analysis was extended to the entire mouse genome, it became apparent that known genomic loci (for example the protocadherin loci) were more likely to contain more and longer RIDGEs. RIDGEs outside such loci tended towards single-gene RIDGEs unaffected by the conditions of study. New RIDGEs were also uncovered in the cascading response to IFNγ priming and mCMV infection, as found by investigating an extensive time series during the first 12 hours after treatment. Existing RIDGEs were found to be elongated having more members the further the cascade progress.


Background The management of peripheral nerve injuries remains a large challenge for plastic surgeons. With the inability to fuse axonal endings, results after microsurgical nerve repair have been inconsistent. Our current nerve repair strategies rely upon the slow and lengthy process of axonal regeneration (~1 mm/d). Polyethylene glycol (PEG) has been investigated as a potential axonal fusion agent; however, the percentage of axonal fusion has been inconsistent. The purpose of this study was to identify a PEG delivery device to standardize outcomes after attempted axonal fusion with PEG. Materials and Methods We used a rat sciatic nerve injury model in which we completely transected and repaired the left sciatic nerve to evaluate the efficacy of PEG fusion over a span of 12 weeks. In addition, we evaluated the effectiveness of a delivery device's ability to optimize results after PEG fusion. Results We found that PEG rapidly (within minutes) restores axonal continuity as assessed by electrophysiology, fluorescent retrograde tracer, and diffusion tensor imaging. Immunohistochemical analysis shows that motor axon counts are significantly increased at 1 week, 4 weeks, and 12 weeks postoperatively in PEG-treated animals. Furthermore, PEG restored behavioral functions up to 50% compared with animals that received the criterion standard epineurial repair (control animals). Conclusions The ability of PEG to rapidly restore nerve function after neurotmesis could have vast implications on the clinical management of traumatic injuries to peripheral nerves.


This case report represents, the treatment of deep carious lesion in a male was done by using indirect pulp capping with biodentine. The clinical and radiological outcomes were evaluated. The patient was presented with mild to moderate sensitivity on thermal (cold) stimulation and discomfort associated with eating in the left mandibular first molar. The clinico–radiographical examination revealed a disto–occlusal carious lesion, very close to the pulp, absence of radiolucencies in the periapical region and no periodontal space widening. Pulp sensitivity was confirmed by thermal pulp vitality test. Indirect pulp capping treatment was performed with biodentine. Following 6 months of the treatment, the clinical symptoms were resolved and a calcific bridge was found at the dentin over the pulp and biodentine interface that was indicative the evidence of reparative dentin formation.


----*------.----..-...-.-...-.*.-*-....-.-*.----..----.-*...-...-...---.----.--... ".. The signature file approach is one of the most powerful information storage and retrieval techniques which is used for finding the data objects that are relevant to the user queries. The main idea of all signature based schemes is to reflect the essence of the data items into bit patter& (descriptors or signatures) and store them in a separate file which acts as a filter to eliminate the non aualifvine data items for an information reauest. It pro;ides an integrated access method for both formattid and &formatted databases. A comp&ative overview and discussion of the proposed signatnre generation methods and the major signature file organization schemes are presented. Applications of the signature techniques to formatted and unformatted databases, single and multiterm query cases, serial and paratlei architecture. static and dynamic environments are provided with a special emphasis on the multimedia databases where the pioneering prototype systems using signatnres yield highly encouraging results.


In 1983, the California Supreme Court decided National Audubon Society v. Superior Court, 658 P.2d 709, a decision now commonly referred to as "the Mono Lake decision." Mono Lake is widely viewed as a seminal public trust doctrine case and as an environmental law classic. Commentators credit the case with transforming California water law and often cite it in support of arguments for expanded reliance on the public trust doctrine. This article tests that conventional view by examining the actual influence of the Mono Lake decision upon subsequent California judicial and agency decision-making. It concludes that the case, though important, was less influential than conventional wisdom suggests. The public trust doctrine, as articulated in the Mono Lake case, has affected California water management. But outside of the Mono Lake basin, its effects are largely intertwined with, and often eclipsed by, the impacts of other environmental laws. Those effects also are concentrated on prospective new water uses rather than on existing practices, and they have occurred almost exclusively at the administrative level. The doctrine has exerted minimal influence in the courts, has done little to encourage re-examination of existing patterns of water use, even when those patterns were environmentally problematic, and has been significantly less important to California water management than statutory environmental laws.These findings have important implications for understanding the actual and potential influence of the public trust doctrine. Much public trust doctrine scholarship emphasizes the judicial role in implementing the doctrine and argues that the doctrine should assume central importance to environmental protection, not just as a broad governance principle but also as binding, enforceable law. The post-Mono Lake record shows that California has not adopted that approach, and instead has treated the doctrine as a complementary and modestly important component of a primarily statutory, agency-driven environmental law system. The article concludes that such integration is desirable, not problematic, and it closes by proposing several reforms that would bolster the role of the public trust doctrine within that statutory and administrative regulatory system.


This study investigates an axiomatic approach to in-kind assignment problems with a single-unit demand such as triage. We consider multiple ethical criteria regarding which agents should be assigned that conflict with one another. To make compromises between criteria, we introduce two methods for configuring social choice rules that map from various problems to agents who are assigned slots: the method of procedure and the method of aggregation. From inter-problem regularities, we demonstrate characterization results, implying that the method of procedure emphasizes consistent respect for individual criteria across problems, whereas the method of aggregation emphasizes consistent respect for individual agents across problems. These methods are incompatible because only ethical dictatorships are induced by both methods. We show that the method of aggregation is superior when we can utilize detailed information about ethical concerns such as cardinality and comparability, while the method of procedure is superior when there are severe informational limitations.


It is generally well recognised and accepted that opportunities exist to test individuals for genetic disorders; however, the application of such genetic testing during childhood is subject to controversy and debate. The views of the child, parent and professional must be considered and how these views are weighted will vary with each and every case. For conditions where there is a recognised medical treatment, childhood genetic testing is generally justified. However, testing children for carrier status or predictively for an adult-onset condition should be approached with extreme caution. The introduction of more sophisticated genetic testing methods such as array CGH and next-generation sequencing has another level of complexity, with the increased identification of incidental findings and variants of uncertain significance. The advent of direct-to-consumer testing and advances in prenatal and newborn testing have also influenced the debate about testing in childhood.

Key Concepts

Genetic tests may be diagnostic, predictive or assess carrier status.
Genetic testing may be performed prenatally, in the newborn period, in childhood, adulthood or on stored DNA from deceased relatives.
Childhood genetic testing is generally instigated by parents/guardians, but the views and opinions of children must be sought.
Testing in childhood that is performed predictively or to assess carrier status takes away the child's right to decide on testing for themselves when older.
New genetic testing technologies increase the diagnostic rate but may identify uncertain or incidental findings.

Keywords:

genetic testing;
childhood testing;
predictive testing;
carrier testing;
adult-onset disorders;
consent;
incidental findings;
direct-to-consumer testing;
next-generation sequencing;
prenatal testing


This paper proposes a method of reversible data hiding in encrypted images (RDH-EI) based on progressive recovery. Three parties are involved in the framework, including the content owner, the data-hider, and the recipient. The content owner encrypts the original image using a stream cipher algorithm and uploads a ciphertext to the server. The data-hider on the server divides the encrypted image into three channels and, respectively, embeds different amount of additional bits into each one to generate a marked encrypted image. On the recipient side, additional message can be extracted from the marked encrypted image, and the original image can be recovered without any errors. While most of the traditional methods use one criterion to recover the whole image, we propose to do the recovery by a progressive mechanism. Rate-distortion of the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art RDH-EI methods.


Managing migration promises to be one of the most difficult challenges of the twenty-first century. It will be even more difficult for south European countries, from which emigration has levelled off and to which immigration has become a significant economic issue. Southern Europe is close to other regions where the pressure to emigrate is intense: these regions have a high level of unemployment, above the European Union average, and a large informal sector, often 15-25 per cent of their economies as a whole. This book analyses the southern European migration case using an economic approach. It combines a theoretical and an empirical approach on the fundamental migration issues - the decision to migrate, effects on the country of departure and country of destination, and the effectiveness of policies in managing migration. It also explores the transformation due to migration of southern European countries in the 1980s and 1990s.


We investigated 1) the role of area per se in explaining anuran species richness on reservoir forest islands, after controlling for several confounding factors. We also assessed 2) how sampling design affects the inferential power of island species–area relationships (ISARs) aiming to 3) provide guidelines to yield reliable estimates of area-induced species losses in patchy systems. We surveyed anurans with autonomous recording units at 151 plots located on 74 islands and four continuous forest sites at the Balbina Hydroelectric Reservoir landscape, central Brazilian Amazonia. We applied semi-log ISAR models to assess the effect of sampling design on the fit and slope of species–area curves. To do so, we subsampled our surveyed islands following both a 1) stratified and 2) non-stratified random selection of 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 islands covering 1) the full range in island size (0.45–1699 ha) and 2) only islands smaller than 100 ha, respectively. We also compiled 25 datasets from the literature to assess the generality of our findings. Island size explained ca half of the variation in species richness. The fit and slope of species–area curves were affected mainly by the range in island size considered, and to a very small extent by the number of islands surveyed. In our literature review, all datasets covering a range of patch sizes larger than 300 ha yielded a positive ISAR, whereas the number of patches alone did not affect the detection of ISARs. We conclude that 1) area per se plays a major role in explaining anuran species richness on forest islands within an Amazonian anthropogenic archipelago; 2) the inferential power of island species–area relationships is severely degraded by sub-optimal sampling designs; 3) at least 10 habitat patches spanning three orders of magnitude in size should be surveyed to yield reliable species–area estimates in patchy systems.


The issue here is the relationship between disaster and development. In part, the focus of interest is on how the development process is affected by disaster. This is important since many countries trying to implement development goals are also locations which are hazard prone. In such circumstances, disaster may present obstacles to development. There is also the implication that disaster has more serious effects in less
developed nation states and may absorb resources necessary for development. Too, delays in recovery might affect "progress" in development. Such concerns are motivation for understanding how development might be protected from the effects of disaster or how disaster assistance, especially international aid, might be incorporated into the development process.
A major problem has been that two separate literatures have developed. The first literature has attempted to understand disaster and has given little attention to
understanding the development process. The second literature has involved understanding the political economy and alternative conceptions of development which has arisen quite independently of considerations of disaster. The effort here is to look at both streams of literature on the relationship of disaster and development.


There is continuing debate on the optimal treatment for Grave's thyrotoxicosis with a resultant variation in clinical practice. The present study aimed to ascertain changes in practice in the treatment of Grave's thyrotoxicosis in Tayside, Scotland, over the past four decades. Methods. The "Scottish automated follow-up register" (SAFUR) was queried to identify all patients treated for Grave's thyrotoxicosis from 1968 to 2007 inclusive. Patients were divided into 4 groups (Groups A to D) according to the decades. Demographic profile, treatment modalities, radioactive iodine (RAI) dose, and recurrence rates were studied and outcomes were compared by χ 2 test and ANOVA using SPSS v15.0. A p value of < 0.05 was considered significant. Results. Altogether, 3737 patients were diagnosed with Grave's thyrotoxicosis over the 4 decades. Use of RAI has increased from 43.1% in Group A to 68% in Group D (p < 0.001). The dose of RAI has increased (p < 0.001) and there has been a reduction in recurrence rate with higher dose of RAI. Surgical intervention rates decreased from 55.3% to 12.3% (p < 0.001) over time. Conclusions. Analysis of a large dataset of patients with Grave's thyrotoxicosis suggests increasing use of RAI as the preferred first line of treatment. Furthermore, using a single higher dose of RAI and adoption of total thyroidectomy have decreased recurrence rates.


The robust macro–ecological observation that there are more small–bodied species implies that smallbodied organisms have experienced elevated net rates of diversification. We investigate the role of body size in creating non–random differences in rates of cladogenesis using a set of 38 species–level phylogenies drawn from a range of animal groups. We use independent contrasts to explore the relationship between body size and species richness within individual phylogenies and across related sets of phylogenies. We also carry out a meta–analysis looking for associations between body size and species richness across the taxa. We find little evidence for increased cladogenesis among small–bodied organisms within taxa, and no evidence for any consistent differences between taxa. We explore possible explanations for the inconsistency of our findings with macro–ecological patterns.