Reaction heat treatments spanning 605 to 750degC and 24 to ~400 hours were applied to several sets of RRP strands. Magnetization and transport measurements were used to track the changes of superconducting properties and the amounts of Nb3Sn formed. The experiments showed that temperature increases of 15degC produced equivalent properties in half the time within the temperature range 620-680degC. This result was the same whether Ta or Ti was used to alloy the Nb3Sn. The bulk pinning force Fp for Ta-alloyed wires displayed a significant drop for temperatures outside the range above, due to tin gradients at low temperatures and grain growth at high temperatures. The Fp drop at high reaction temperatures prevents wire technology from taking advantage of the significantly higher Kramer-plot intercept H K for high-temperature reactions. On the other hand, Ti alloying provides a quick and potent means to increase H K at reaction temperatures for which Fp remains high.


Despite the authoritative and very explicit directions from the Vatican in 1903, the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne successfully resisted the demands for a major reform of liturgical Church music for 35 years. This thesis will examine the reasons for this strong and effective resistance to the demands of the Holy See and show that despite being complex and interrelated these reasons can be summarised under two fundamental headings. The thesis will examine the broad spectrum of music performed in the Melbourne Archdiocese, but because of the limited availability of information and the prime importance of the two principal churches of the Archdiocese, it shall concentrate on St. Patrick's Cathedral and on St. Francis Church. The thesis shall also examine in detail the documents of the Holy See concerning liturgical music which were relevant to musical practice in Melbourne. Special attention is drawn to the influential Motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini (1903) issued by Pope Pius X. The time span of this thesis covers the 95 years from March 1843 when the first music was sung in Melbourne's only Catholic church to 1938 when Archbishop Daniel Mannix ordered the reforms to liturgical music as demanded by the Vatican. The thesis shall demonstrate that the resistance to the reform of liturgical music in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne was due to the two following influences: the fact that the new freedom and wealth that the immigrant Irish community of the Archdiocese of Melbourne experienced enabled them to establish churches and liturgies whose grandeur and artistic excellence symbolized their success in establishing a major new social and cultural status in their new home. Church music was one of the great manifestations of this and as an integral part of their new significance and sense of achievement, it was to be jealously guarded. the second was the matter of authority and the independence of the Catholic bishops from the dictates and interference of the Vatican authorities. These Irish-born bishops were trained in an historical milieu in Ireland and Europe which fostered a fierce pride in the value of autonomy from external and alien authority. In this they were given a great degree of protection by the isolation of Australia and its distance from outside authority. In this Archbishops Carr and Mannix both proved to be strongly independent leaders who proved to be most reluctant to automatically implement reforms imposed by the Vatican. It will be shown that only in the fourth decade of the twentieth century was Episcopal authority finally brought to bear to make reforms to liturgical music a reality in the Catholic Church in Melbourne.


This chapter examines the contemporary revisiting and reimagining of the histories and memories of Finnish migrants in Sweden. Since 2000, a new generation of children and grandchildren of the Great Migration in the 1960s and 1970s has entered the public arena in Sweden, articulating new narratives in pop music, literature, theatre and film. While these "third-generation" Sweden Finnish artists themselves embody success stories of migration, enjoying positive publicity and the appreciation of Swedish mainstream audiences, it is argued that the new narratives are essentially stories about living with, managing and rejecting shame. To be either a cultural producer or an audience of new narratives about Sweden Finns is to engage with an affective legacy of shame, a sense of history and a repertoire of representations – and politics of pride as its rejoinder. Drawing from affect theories by Sara Ahmed and Margaret Wetherell, as well as Beverley Skeggs' work on the production of class, this chapter investigates two novels, Svinalängorna by Susanna Alakoski (2006) and Ingenbarnsland by Eija Hetekivi Olsson (2012); two television programmes, Emigranterna SVT (2006–2007) and Kansankodin kuokkavieraat YLE Teema (2011); and a musical documentary, Ingen riktig finne/Laulu koti-ikävästä (Mika Ronkainen 2013). In this way, the study highlights an affective practice, a pattern in process and an economy of pride and shame mobilized for purposes of identity construction and community building.


We study variations in housework time and leisure consumption when workers are subject to labor market work hours constraints that prevent them from working the optimal number of hours. Using data from two large nationwide longitudinal surveys, we first document that such constraints are widespread--about 50 percent of all households in our sample had been bound by such constraints in at least one year, highlighting the significance of studying household behaviors in labor markets under binding constraints. Our analysis reveals strong heterogeneity and asymmetry in workers' reactions to this type of market constraint that are difficult to reconcile with standard preferences and home production technology. In particular, we find that the ceilings on market work hours induce workers to increase time spent on housework, including cooking, and to reduce vacation time. In contrast, floors on market work hours do not significantly affect time spent on housework, but may boost vacation time. On net, workers constrained by hours ceilings (floors) appear to have more (less) leisure time. Meanwhile, the response to hours ceilings are more pronounced among unmarried households. We also find some evidence that the magnitude of the effects of market hours constraints increases with the persistence of these constraints. Our results are robust to a number of variations in measurement metrics, econometric specifications, sample selection criteria, and data sources. We argue that the empirical results documented in this paper can be taken as additional moments conditions against which equilibrium models with home production are calibrated.


OBJECTIVE
To compare risk- and volume-adjusted outcomes of colon resections performed at teaching hospitals (THs) vs non-THs to assess whether benign disease may influence the volume-outcome effect.

DESIGN
Retrospective data analysis examining colon resections determined by International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification classification performed in the United States from 2001 through 2005 using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) and the Area Resource File (2004). Patient covariates used in adjustment included age, sex, race, Charlson Index comorbidity score, and insurance status. Hospital covariates included TH status, presence of a colorectal surgery fellowship approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, geographical region, institutional volume, and urban vs rural location. County-specific surgeon characteristics used in adjustment included average age of surgeons and proportion of colorectal board-certified surgeons within each county. Environmental or county covariates included median income and percentage of county residents living below the federal poverty level.

SETTING
A total of 1045 hospitals located in 38 states in the United States that were included in the NIS.

PATIENTS
All patients older than 18 years who had colon resection and were discharged from a hospital included in the NIS.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Operative mortality, length of stay (LOS), and total charges.

RESULTS
A total of 115 250 patients were identified, of whom 4371 died (3.8%). The mean LOS was 10 days. Fewer patients underwent surgical resection in THs than in non-THs (46 656 vs 68 589). Teaching hospitals were associated with increased odds of death (odds ratio, 1.14) (P = .03), increased LOS (P = .003), and a nonsignificant trend toward an increase in total charges (P = .36).

CONCLUSIONS
With the inclusion of benign disease, colon surgery displays a volume-outcome relationship in favor of non-THs. Inclusion of benign disease may represent a tipping point.


In this paper we describe the development of a limited lead BSPM system which is based around a commercial 12-lead ECG acquisition unit and a smartphone. We repositioned the six precordial leads to allow for better information capture and hence more accurate reconstruction of BSPMs. The new lead positions were chosen using a data mining based lead selection algorithm. We developed two specific lead sets, one optimized for QRS monitoring and one optimized for ST segment monitoring. The 12-lead ECG device used is a commercially available system which is designed to capture the 12-lead ECG and transmit it via Bluetooth to a standard personal computer. The personal computer can then be used to store, display or print the recorded ECG. For our purpose we have replaced the personal computer with a Microsoft Windows Mobile based smartphone. To achieve this, software has been developed which allows the smartphone to capture the information from the 12-lead ECG device and store it on a removable solid state memory card. The software was developed using Visual Basic .NET and is designed to run on any device supporting the .NET Compact Framework. Further work is required to refine the developed software to support enhanced visualization and storage of the recorded data.


'You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed...' Julian Barnes' new book is about ballooning, photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded him the 2011 Man Booker Prize described him as 'an unparalleled magus of the heart'. This book confirms that opinion.


Radiotherapy is a cancer treatment that uses high-energy X-rays or other types of ionizing radiation to try to kill the cancer cells in various organs/tissues. PubMed is a database used as a tool in various publications. The aim of this work was to evaluate, in the PubMed, the number of publications (NP) in radiotherapy and cancer in various organs related to the pelvic floor as well as brachytherapy. The searches were performed (August 2008) in the PubMed (http://www.pubmed.com) using the words: (i) radiotherapy (RT) or cancer (CA), (ii) RT and CA, (iii) RT and CA and prostate, RT and CA and testis, RT and CA and breast, RT and CA and kidneys, RT and CA and vulva, RT and CA and vagina, RT and CA and penis, RT and CA and uterus, RT and CA and ovary, RT and CA and bladder, and RT and CA and urethra. A search using brachytherapy was also performed. The NP in each subject was determined and was 2178635 to CA and about 9% of them are related with RT. The NP in RT and CA and breast or prostate is bigger than for the other organs, whereas brachytherapy is mainly cited in the studies about CA of prostate, bladder and breast. In conclusion, our findings demonstrate the importance of radiation therapy studies in the cancer of several organs. This information is crucial in understanding the field and demonstrates areas of significant progress or existing gaps of research in radiotherapy treatment of various cancers of the pelvis. Furthermore, it could significantly aid the interprofessional team in the determination of actions related to the treatment of patients that are undertaking radiotherapy, due to the possible complications of this modality of treatment.


Maraviroc is a nonpeptidic, small molecule human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) entry inhibitor that has just entered the therapeutic arsenal for the treatment of patients. We recently demonstrated that maraviroc binding to the HIV-1 coreceptor, CC chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5) prevents it from binding the chemokine CCL3 and the viral envelope glycoprotein gp120 by an allosteric mechanism. However, incomplete knowledge of ligand binding sites and the lack of CCR5 crystal structure have hampered an in-depth molecular understanding of how the inhibitor works. Here, we addressed these issues by combining site-directed mutagenesis (SDM) with homology modelling and docking. Six crystal structures of G-protein coupled receptors were compared for their suitability for CCR5 modelling. All CCR5 models had equally good geometry, but that built from the recently reported dimeric structure of the other HIV-1 coreceptor CXCR4 bound to the peptide CVX15 (PDBID:3OE0) best agreed with the SDM data and discriminated CCR5 from nonCCR5 binders in a virtual screening approach. SDM and automated docking predicted that maraviroc inserts deeply in CCR5 transmembrane cavity where it can occupy three different binding sites, whereas CCL3 and gp120 lie on distinct yet overlapped regions of the CCR5 extracellular loop 2 (ECL2). Data suggesting that the transmembrane cavity remains accessible for maraviroc in CCL3-bound and gp120-bound CCR5 help explain our previous observation that the inhibitor enhances dissociation of preformed ligandCCR5 complexes. Finally, we identified residues in the predicted CCR5 dimer interface that are mandatory for gp120 binding, suggesting that receptor dimerization might represent a target for new CCR5 entry inhibitors.


— Thermal insulating composites help to reduce the total power consumption in a building by creating a barrier between external and internal environment. Such composites can be used in the roofing tiles or wall panels for exterior surfaces. This study purposes to develop lightweight cement-based composites for thermal insulating applications. Waste materials like silica fume (an industrial by-product) and fly ash cenosphere (FAC) (hollow micro-spherical shells obtained as a waste residue from coal fired power plants) were used as partial replacement of cement and lightweight filler, respectively. Moreover, aerogel, a nano-porous material made of silica, was also used in different dosages for improved thermal insulating behavior, while poly vinyl alcohol (PVA) fibers were added for enhanced toughness. The raw materials including binders and fillers were characterized by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), X-Ray Fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis techniques in which various physical and chemical properties of the raw materials were evaluated like specific surface area, chemical composition (oxide form), and pore size distribution (if any). Ultra-lightweight cementitious composites were developed by varying the amounts of FAC and aerogel with 28-day unit weight ranging from 1551.28 kg/m 3 to 1027.85 kg/m 3 . Excellent mechanical and thermal insulating properties of the resulting composites were obtained ranging from 53.62 MPa to 8.66 MPa compressive strength, 9.77 MPa to 3.98 MPa flexural strength, and 0.3025 W/m-K to 0.2009 W/m-K as thermal conductivity coefficient (QTM-500). The composites were also tested for peak temperature difference between outer and inner surfaces when subjected to heating (in a specially designed experimental set-up) by a 275W infrared lamp. The temperature difference up to 16.78 o C was achieved, which indicated outstanding properties of the developed composites to act as a thermal barrier for building envelopes. Microstructural studies were carried out by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) for characterizing the inner structure of the composite specimen. Also, the hydration products were quantified using the surface ar e a mapping and line scale technique in EDS. The microstructural analyses indicated excellent bonding of FAC and aerogel in the cementitious system. Also, selective reactivity of FAC was ascertained from the SEM imagery where the partially consumed FAC shells were observed. All in all, the lightweight fillers, FAC, and aerogel helped to produce the lightweight composites due to their physical characteristics, while exceptional mechanical properties, owing to FAC partial reactivity, were achieved.


At least up to Rayleigh numbers of the order 1013, a feature of turbulent convection in confined containers is a self-organized and coherent large-scale motion ("mean wind"). For aspect ratio unity, the mean wind is comparable in scale to the container size. Its magnitude is measured here using short-time temperature correlations in a cylindrical container of aspect ratio unity; the working fluid is cryogenic helium and the Rayleigh numbers span from 106 to 1015. The self-organizing advection of "plumes" by the mean wind leads to periodic temperature oscillations near the sidewall. Comparisons of the observed oscillation frequency to the rotational rate of the mean wind, however, have differed by a factor of 2 in the recent literature. It is argued here that this apparent discrepancy is the result of the evolution of the shape of the mean wind, from a tilted and nearly elliptical shape at low Rayleigh numbers to a squarish shape at high Rayleigh numbers, thereby altering the effective path length from which the rotational rate of the mean wind is deduced.


Generations that are currently receiving their education and those yet to come should get prepared for everyday interaction with information and communication technology. European Parliament and the Council of the European Union included digital competence in key competencies which each person needs to possess in order to adapt to the rapidly changing world. Their definition of digital competence, along with knowledge and skills, include critical attitude toward the responsible use of ICT. At the moment, Croatia does not have a national strategy for the internet safety and not even the minimum of children's knowledge about appropriate and safe use of internet is obligatory in school curriculum. Oř Veliki Bukovec together with partners Oř Popovača, Oř "Mladost", Oř "Gripe" and Oŕ "Mato Lovrak", is running a 16-month European Union-funded project " Children's safety on the Internet " developing new school curriculum area for children's safety on the Internet for students aged 7-14, their parents, teachers and local community. Curriculum will consist of pedagogical-didactical model, acceptable use policies, multimedia resources, textbooks and guides. The project aims to improve students' digital competences and encourage children to assume responsibility for their own safety with a focus on empowerment, emphasizing responsible behavior and digital citizenship and to raise student teacher, parents and general public awareness and understanding of issues relating to children's safety online in synergy with the EU policies.


The ITER project is an unprecedented international collaboration in which scientists and engineers from Europe, Japan, Russia, USA, China, South Korea and in the near future India, are working together on the next step for the development of fusion. ITER's mission is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy for peaceful purposes and it will be the first fusion device to produce thermal energy at the level of an electricity-producing power plant. This fusion device will be built in Cadarache, France. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is an experimental fusion reactor based on the tokamak concept in which superconducting coils, operating at 4K, are positioned around a toroidal vessel providing a magnetic configuration in which to create and maintain the conditions for controlled fusion reactions. The machine consists of complex and high-quality technological components such as the in-vessel components, like the divertor and blanket, and out-vessel components like the magnet system. The finite element program ANSYS is used by all participating parties in order to support the engineering design activities. The type of finite element analysis is diverse and ranges over; dynamic analyses, nonlinear thermal analysis, electro-magnetic analyses, and non-linear structural analyses. Extensive non-linear structural analyses have been performed to investigate several design options of the magnet system consisting of the toroidal field (TF), poloidal field (PF) and central solenoid (CS) magnet systems. For the analyses of the ITER Magnet systems, large complex 3-dimensional non-linear finite element models have been developed, as well as 2-dimensional local finite element models. Evaluation of the results has been mainly focused on acceptable static and cyclic stresses (for fatigue) in the magnet system during normal operating conditions and fault conditions [1]. This paper gives an overview of some of the studies performed and results obtained with several ANSYS FE-models [2], which support the design of the ITER magnet system as illustrated in Figure 1 – Present ITER Design. Figure 1. Present ITER Design


This paper describes findings from a pilot study that compared the collaborative use by children of three different media formats: a paper book, a CD-ROM in a standard PC set-up, and a paper booklet augmented with digital content. These findings show how the book's ergonomics provide a flexible and easily accessible interface which engenders fluid collaboration between pairs of children. These qualities are also observed when children work with the augmented paper booklet. The value of digital content is demonstrated in a participatory design activity, where we find how digital media can 'bring to life' the information presented on paper. In contrast to developments focused narrowly on new technologies, this study presents evidence for the use and value of paper, and paper augmented with digital media, in educational settings.


Through various researches and investigations it has been established that high doses of ionising radiation are harmful to health. There is substantial controversy regarding the effects of low doses of ionising radiation despite the large amount of work carried out (both laboratory and epidemiological). According to the linear no-threshold hypothesis, any amount, however small, of radiation is potentially harmful, even down to zero levels. The threshold hypothesis, on the other hand, emphasises that below a certain threshold level of radiation exposure, any deleterious effects are absent. At the same time, there are strong arguments, both experimental and epidemiological, which support the radiation hormesis (beneficial effects of low-level ionising radiation). The choice of the approximate dose-response model for use in estimating the health effects of small doses of ionising radiation remains controversial. In the present work, a comprehensive study of the available literature, data and reports of various radiation exposure and protection studies is presented.


After arriving in New Zealand, Thomas Quoi held a variety of jobs, from 1879 onwards being an Auckland restaurant owner and caterer. He was also an interpreter, especially in court cases, and in the twentieth century ran a bathhouse. Despite suffering abuse for being Chinese, he was notable for assisting charities to aid all races. Praised for being Anglicized – a 'regular white man' – he was a spokesman for the Chinese community, of which he was a leading member. Quoi's involvement in Te Aroha mining was limited to providing capital. Like so many investors, he traded in shares and hoped to sell his mining properties to overseas capitalists. In 1890 he went bankrupt, in part because of losing money through his mining investments. Quoi's personal life became notorious. Accused of sexual immorality and of being a cruel husband to his first wife, an Irishwoman, court cases revealed lurid details of their behaviour. Her infidelity meant he obtained a divorce and was soon married again, to an Englishwoman, with a happier outcome. Socially, and especially through his gambling until his last years he was a prominent member of the community.


Urban areas are hot spots that drive environmental change at multiple scales. Material demands of production and human consumption alter land use and cover, biodiversity, and hydrosystems locally to regionally, and urban waste discharge affects local to global biogeochemical cycles and climate. For urbanites, however, global environmental changes are swamped by dramatic changes in the local environment. Urban ecology integrates natural and social sciences to study these radically altered local environments and their regional and global effects. Cities themselves present both the problems and solutions to sustainability challenges of an increasingly urbanized world.


In this paper, we characterize 3D optical imaging techniques as 3D linear shift-invariant filtering operations. From the Helmholtz equation that is the basis of scalar diffraction theory, we show that the scattered field, or indeed a holographic reconstruction of this field, can be considered to be the result of a linear filtering operation applied to a source distribution. We note that if the scattering is weak, the source distribution is independent of the scattered field and a holographic reconstruction (or in fact any far-field optical imaging system) behaves as a 3D linear shift-invariant filter applied to the refractive index contrast (which effectively defines the object). We go on to consider tomographic techniques that synthesize images from recordings of the scattered field using different illumination conditions. In our analysis, we compare the 3D response of monochromatic optical tomography with the 3D imagery offered by confocal microscopy and scanning white light interferometry (using quasi-monochromatic illumination) and explain the circumstances under which these approaches are equivalent. Finally, we consider the 3D response of polychromatic optical tomography and in particular the response of spectral optical coherence tomography and scanning white light interferometry.


Knowledge about the diversity and distribution of Australian coastal sabellids (Polychaeta) is still scarce. Examination of specimens housed in museum collections has increased the number of species recorded in Australia and helped to clarify the relationships among certain taxa of Sabellidae. Australian specimens belonging to a group of genera considered the most derived of the Sabellidae were the subject of this taxonomic revision, resulting in the description of five new species in four genera (Laonome calida, sp. nov.; Perkinsiana anodina, sp. nov.; P. longa, sp. nov.; Potaspina australiensis, sp. nov.; and Pseudopotamilla monoculata, sp. nov.). In addition, this is the first record of Potaspina Hartman, 1969 and Perkinsiana Knight-Jones, 1983 in Australia. A phylogenetic analysis of these and other apomorphic sabellids revealed their evolutionary relationships and supported the monophyly of most genera with the exception of Perkinsiana and Pseudopotamilla Bush, 1905. Some characters not considered in previous cladistic analyses were proven useful in elucidating relationships within Sabellidae. The diagnoses of Perkinsiana, Potaspina and Pseudopotamilla were emended. A dichotomous key is presented for identification of Australian apomorphic sabellids.


Abstract The study was conducted to enhance the dissolution rate of ketoconazole (KCZ) (a poorly water-soluble drug) using the liquisolid technique. Microcrystalline cellulose, colloidal silica, PEG400 and polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) were employed as a carrier, coating substance, nonvolatile solvent and additive in the KCZ liquisolid compact formulation, respectively. The drug-to-PEG400 and carrier-to-coating ratio variations, PVP concentration and aging effects on the in vitro release behavior were assessed. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) data revealed no alterations in the crystalline form of the drug and the KCZ-excipient interactions within the process. The load factor and the drug release rate were significantly enhanced compared to directly compressed tablets in the presence of the additive. Increasing the PEG400-to-drug ratio in liquid medications enhanced the dissolution rate remarkably. The dissolution profile and hardness of liquisolid compacts were not significantly altered by keeping the tablets at 40 °C and relative humidity of 75 % for 6 months. With the proposed modification of the liquisolid process, it is possible to obtain flowable, compactible liquisolid powders of high-dose poorly-water soluble drugs with an enhanced dissolution rate.


We present muzicodes, an approach to incorporating machine-readable 'codes' into music that allows the performer and/or composer to flexibly define what constitutes a code, and to perform around it. These codes can then act as triggers, for example to control an accompaniment or visuals during a performance. The codes can form an integral part of the music (composition and/or performance), and may be more or less obviously present. This creates a rich space of playful interaction with a system that recognises and responds to the codes. Our proof of concept implementation works with audio or MIDI as input. Muzicodes are represented textually and regular expressions are used to flexibly define them. We present two contrasting demonstration applications and summarise the findings from two workshops with potential users which highlight opportunities and challenges, especially in relation to specifying and matching codes and playing and performing with the system.


The aim of this work is identifying and analysing the creation of economic value in an agroindustrial cooperative in the south of Minas Gerais, using the EVA® (Economic Value Added). In specific terms, we sought to analysing investment, financing of operational capital, and the financial structure of the cooperative as bases for the creation of economic value. In that sense the work had as theorical background, the aspects concerning financial management based on value creation, preceeded by a literature review on cooperativism with an emphasis on the specificities of the structure of capital in cooperative organizations. The research was carried out by means of a case study starting out from the financial statements of 1995 through 1999, furnished by the cooperative. The analitical model used was the Fleuriet Model which, through the measurement of its characteristic variables provides a dynamic analysis of companies' financial management. Results indicated destruction of economic value, that is, the operational results of the cooperative were not able to provide a reward of invested capital. A demand of resources for the maintainance and development of its operational activities was also verified. The combination of the characteristic variables of the Fleuriet Model enabled the identification of two basic financial structures: the solid one and the nonsatisfactory one.


Allergy prevention remains a vexing problem. Food sensitization frequently occurs early in life and is often the first sign of future atopic disease. Therefore, interventions to prevent food allergies and the development of the atopic phenotype are best made early in life. The results of studies regarding the effects of breast-feeding and the prevention of allergy remain inconclusive. Several factors in breast milk either induce or protect against food allergies. Probiotic and prebiotic supplemented whey hydrolysate formulas need further research in order to determine the future of this intervention in the prevention of food allergies. Several dietary manipulations in infancy, such as prolonged breast feeding, maternal avoidance diets during pregnancy and lactation, the use of hypoallergenic formulas, have been proposed as ways of altering the Th1/Th2 balance in infants, with varying degrees of success. Studies have examined whether food atopy can be prevented by controlling the intake of highly allergenic foods by a high-risk infant from a variety of sources, that is, both direct ingestion and indirect ingestion through the breast milk. The previous studies showed that in high risk infants who are unable to be completely breast fed, there is evidence that prolonged feeding with a hydrolysed formula compared to a cow's milk formula reduces infant and childhood allergy and infant cow's milk allergy ,while other studies reported that an antigen avoidance diet for high risk mothers is unlikely to reduce the atopic diseases in their children substantially, and that such a diet may adversely affect maternal and/or fetal nutrition.


We present a detection of the splashback feature around galaxy clusters selected using the Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (SZ) signal. Recent measurements of the splashback feature around optically selected galaxy clusters have found that the splashback radius, rsp, is smaller than predicted by N-body simulations. A possible explanation for this discrepancy is that rsp inferred from the observed radial distribution of galaxies is affected by selection effects related to the optical cluster-finding algorithms. We test this possibility by measuring the splashback feature in clusters selected via the SZ effect in data from the South Pole Telescope SZ survey and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter survey. The measurement is accomplished by correlating these cluster samples with galaxies detected in the Dark Energy Survey Year 3 data. The SZ observable used to select clusters in this analysis is expected to have a tighter correlation with halo mass and to be more immune to projection effects and aperture-induced biases, potentially ameliorating causes of systematic error for optically selected clusters. We find that the measured rsp for SZ-selected clusters is consistent with the expectations from simulations, although the small number of SZ-selected clusters makes a precise comparison difficult. In agreement with previous work, when using optically selected redMaPPer clusters with similar mass and redshift distributions, rsp is ∼2σ smaller than in the simulations. These results motivate detailed investigations of selection biases in optically selected cluster catalogues and exploration of the splashback feature around larger samples of SZ-selected clusters. Additionally, we investigate trends in the galaxy profile and splashback feature as a function of galaxy colour, finding that blue galaxies have profiles close to a power law with no discernible splashback feature, which is consistent with them being on their first infall into the cluster.


Leave no disease undetected with MRI and CT of the Cardiovascular System, your definitive guide to magnetic resonance and computed tomography for cardiovascular health. Authored by a collaboration of international experts, this vivid, four-color third edition imparts the latest technologies in a rapidly advancing field. With topics that range from anatomy, to MR in infants and children, to risk assessment in ischemic heart disease this text includes seven new chapters to reflect the rising tide of technological discovery as it pertains to cardiology. Thanks to its expert analysis, procedural guide to implementation, and profound understanding of the recent advances in cardiovascular imagining, MRI and CT of the Cardiovascular System gives you all the tools necessary for powerful screening, diagnosis, and cardiovascular care. Features: new chapters reflecting technological discoveries in cardiology; color illustrations for heightened clarity; companion website with fully searchable text; units organized by pathology and disease detection; and fully updated information on application of MR and CT - Up-to-date analysis of emerging multi-detector CT.


Mammalian signal transduction pathways are highly integrated within extended networks, with crosstalk emerging in space and time. This dynamic circuitry is dependent on changing activity states for proteins and organelles. Network structures govern specificity of cellular responses to external stimuli, including proliferation and cell death. Loss of regulation virtually underlies all disease. However, while the contributions of individual components to phenotype are mostly well understood, systematic elucidation for the emergence or loss of crosstalk and impact on phenotype remains a fundamental challenge in classical biology that can be investigated by systems biology. To that end, we established a mathematical modeling platform, at the interface between experimental and theoretical approaches, to integrate prior literature knowledge with high-content, heterogeneous datasets for the non-intuitive prediction of adaptive signaling events.

In the first part of this work, we investigated high-content microscopy datasets of morphological, bio-energetic and functional features of mitochondria in response to pro- apoptotic treatment in MCF-7 breast cancer cells. Data pretreatment techniques were used to unify the heterogeneous datasets. Using fuzzy logic, we established a generalized data-driven modeling formalism to model signaling events solely based on measurements, capable of high simulation accuracy via non-discrete rule sets. Employing neural networks, a generalized fuzzy logic system, i.e. its rules and membership functions, could be parameterized for each potential signaling interaction. An exhaustive search approach identified models with least error, i.e. the most related signaling events, and predicted a hierarchy of apoptotic events, in which upon activation of pro-apoptotic Bax, mitochondrial fragmentation propagates apoptosis, which is consistent with reported literature. Hence, we established a predictive approach for investigation of protein and organelle interactions utilizing cell-to-cell heterogeneity, a critical source of biologically relevant information.

In the second part of this work, we sought to identify network evolution in the topology of MAPK signaling in the A-375 melanoma cell line. To that end, the modeling method was extended to incorporate temporal and topological structure from phosphorylation profiles of key MAPK intermediates treated with different pharmacological inhibitors and acquired over 96 hours. To increase prediction power, a parameter reduction strategy was developed to identify and fix parameters with lowest contribution to model performance. Therefore, training datasets were bootstrapped and signatures of deviation in flexibility and accuracy were calculated. This novel strategy achieved an optimal set of free parameters. Finally, a reduced multi-treatment model encoding the behavior of the full MAPK dataset was systematically trained to a sequentially increasing subset of time points, enabling time-defined identification of discrepancies in reported vs. acquired network topology. To that end, an objective function for fuzzy logic model optimization was implemented, which accounted for time-defined model training. Analysis led to the identification of emerging discrepancies between model and data at specific time points, thus characterizing a potential network rearrangement upstream of MAPK kinase MEK1, consistent with studies reporting increased resistance to apoptosis exhibited by A-375 melanoma cell line. The approach presented here was successfully benchmarked against a recently published fuzzy-logic-based analysis of signal transduction.


The orientation of honey bee dances is affected by the earth's magnetic field. Honey bees possess localized, well-oriented, stable and superparamagnetic domains of magnetite. Four lines of evidence suggest that the superparamagnetic domains of bees are more likely to be involved in magnetic field detectors than the stable domains. (1) Although the stable domains vary widely in size and number between bees, approximately 2×10^8 superparamagnetic domains are found reliably in all bees, and are restricted to there latively narrow size range of 300–350 A. This suggests that the superparamagnetic domains are more likely to have a biological function. (2) Behavioural observations of dances in null fields are difficult to reconcile with astable-domain detector but are clearly predicted by many superparamagnetic detector models. (3) When honey bees are demagnetized, their ability to orient to the earth's field is unaffected. This suggests that the detector either utilizes the super paramagnetic domains or depends on aligned anisotropic stable domains processed without regard to magneticpolarity. (4) Bees that have only superparamagnetic domains are able nevertheless to orient to the earth's magnetic field, a phenomenon which indicates that permanent domains may not be required for detection.


Although marine bacteria were identified nearly two decades ago as potential sources for strong iron‐binding organic ligands detected in seawater, specific linkages between ligands detected in natural water and the microbial community remain unclear. We compared the production of different classes of iron‐binding ligands, dissolved iron and macronutrient concentrations, and phytoplankton and bacterioplankton assemblages in a series of iron amended 6‐d incubations. Incubations with high iron additions had near complete macronutrient consumption and higher phytoplankton biomass compared with incubations with low iron additions, but both iron treatments were dominated by diatoms. However, we only detected the strongest ligands in high‐iron treatments, and strong iron‐binding ligands were generally correlated with an increased abundance of copiotrophic bacteria, particularly Alteromonas strains. Ultimately, these robust correlations suggest a potential linkage between copiotrophic bacteria and strong iron‐binding ligand production after iron fertilization events in the marine environment.


Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People is recognized as a masterpiece among the historical literature of medieval England and Europe. Completed in 731, it comprises in a single flowing narrative a coherent history of the conversion of the English peoples to Christianity, and the story of the island kingdoms and churches from the 590s to the early eighth century, prefaced by a sketch of the earlier history of Britain. In 1969 the Clarendon Press published the new edition in Oxford Medieval Texts, edited by Bertram Colgrave and Sir Roger Mynors. Mynors's masterly text and textual introduction replaced much of Charles Plummer's great edition of 1896; but the historical notes did not attempt to match in scale and detail Plummer's second volume of commentary. To fill this gap the late Professor J. M. Wallace-Hadrill devoted the last years of his life to a new commentary, one of the finest and most mature fruits of his scholarship - more succinct than Plummer, tauter, more relevant, above all drawing together and adding to the findings of a galaxy of modern scholars. Prepared for the press by Thomas Charles-Edwards, helped by Patrick Wormald and others, this book completes the new Bede, and is prefaced by a paper characteristic of Professor Wallace-Hadrill on 'Bede and Plummer'.


This dissertation bundles together a number of essays that find themselves on the intersection of the fields of law and economics. It shows that economics can help determine the rationale of individuals' behaviour both in situations of certainty and uncertainty, by looking at incentives and consequences of behavioural choices. Economics can create insights into the rationale and goals of legislation and it can also explain how preferences and information asymmetries influence the outcomes of negotiations between multiple parties. If there is a central thesis to this dissertation, it is that legal issues can benefit from economic analysis in every stage of the legal process. Albeit by explaining legal constructs from a behavioural perspective ex post, or by using economic concepts to inform legislative decisions ex ante.


Statistical analysis of pumping-test data from wells have been used to calculate average values of transmissivity and permeability in different Swedish rocks. The influence of the well-loss on the calculations is discussed. The highest values of transmissivity and permeability of the investigated rocks are found in the sandstones of Algonkian and Cambrian age. The Archean crystalline rocks show a wide range of results, and of the investigated rocks the gneisses seem to be more permeable than the granites. However, the degree of tectonization affects the hydraulic properties of the rocks considerably.


The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations concerned with international public health. Problems raised by indoor air quality are at the heart of its mission and action. Causing over 3.3 million deaths every year, domestic air pollution is particularly prevalent in regions where income is low or modest, as households will often use highly polluting energy sources for heating and cooking. It is estimated that over half of the world's population uses sources of energy for heating and cooking whose fumes are toxic to human health and the environment. Soot particle pollution is extremely toxic for the airways and is something that women and children are particularly exposed to. Indoor air pollution is responsible for serious illnesses like pneumonia and heart disease. There are innumerable political and economic obstacles to energy transition in such regions. It is essential to initiate dialogue and cooperation between politicians and public health specialists to alert public opinion to the relationship between air quality and climate change and to enact public health policies that will anticipate and prevent pollution rather than remedy it subsequently. It is equally essential to stress the importance of cooperation between public health actors and those sectors of the economy that generate the most pollution, in order to bring about meaningful changes in public health.


Abstract Objective To describe how the time spent in food-related activities by Americans has changed over the past 30 years. Design Data from four national time diary surveys, spanning 1975–2006, are used to construct estimates of trends in American adults' time spent in food-related activities. Multivariate Tobits assess how food-related activities have changed over time controlling for sociodemographic and economic covariates. Results Both bivariate and multivariate estimates reveal that between 1975 and 2006, American women's time spent in food preparation declined substantially, whereas the time spent in these activities by American men changed very little. On the contrary, grocery shopping time increased modestly for both men and women. The primary eating time (i.e. time when eating/drinking was the respondent's main focus) declined for both men and women over this historical period, and the composition of this time changed with less primary eating time being done alone. Concurrently, secondary eating time (i.e. time when something else had the respondent's primary attention, but eating/drinking simultaneously occurred) rose precipitously for both women and men between 1975 and 1998. Conclusions The total time spent in eating (i.e. primary plus secondary eating time) has increased over the past 30 years, and the composition of this time has shifted from situations in which energy intake can be easily monitored to those in which energy intake may be more difficult to gauge. Less time is also being spent in food preparation and clean-up activities. Future research should explore possible links between these trends and Americans' growing obesity risk.


A type of memory based on the least mean square algorithm is explored on the density classification task, which is a well-known test problem for two-state discrete dynamical systems. In the absence of memory, there is no elementary cellular automaton that can solve this task. However, when augmented with memory, the performance of elementary cellular automaton 184 approaches that of the best-known radius three cellular automata found in the literature. It is found that rule 184 transforms spatial information about the neighborhood into temporal information that memory is able to retain and present to the rule's transition function. This causes the cell to transition to a different state compared to the case when no memory is present, which extends blocks of cells having a common state to facilitate a solution of the task.


The aim of this paper is to study the growth and corporate governance implications of market
concentration in the GCC banking sector. It will begin by defining corporate governance, its
significance in the context of banks, and how it can be improved by more competition or less
concentration in the banking market. It will then discuss the importance of corporate governance
to "better functioning and well-behaved" financial systems, and how both can favorably
affect growth. A discussion of the GCC economies and banking system will follow, with
an emphasis on market concentration in the banking system. To document empirically the effect
of banking market concentration on growth, we estimate a growth model to capture this
effect, and find that the effect is positive but conditioned by the level of financial development.
The paper conclude by stating that policies aimed at opening the GCC banking market, and
creating less concentration in the process, will have a positive effect on growth when the financial
system is relatively more developed.


Abstract Dinoflagellate cysts were used as a proxy for reconstructing the salinity variations during the Holocene in the southwestern Black Sea. The aim of this study was to determine the timing of the reconnection between the Black and Marmara seas. Core GeoB 7625-2, located 50 km northeast of the mouth of the Sakarya River, was sampled with a 200-year resolution between 7.42 and 0.52 ka BP. The lower part of the core was sampled with varying resolution. A distinct change in the dinoflagellate cyst assemblages from freshwater/brackish water to saltwater was observed between ∼ 8.25 and ∼ 7.97 ka BP, which is ∼ 0.6 ka earlier than observed in other dinoflagellate cyst studies. This discrepancy may indicate the diachronous salinification of the Black Sea. The freshwater to brackish water assemblage is dominated by Pyxidinopsis psilata and Spiniferites cruciformis, while the most important euryhaline species are Lingulodinium machaerophorum and cysts of Pentapharsodinium dalei. The average process length of Lingulodinium machaerophorum was used as a salinity proxy. Both proxies suggest a gradual reconnection between the Black and Marmara seas, and these findings confirm earlier studies. Peridinium ponticum is restricted to the Black Sea; abundance fluctuations of this species were controlled by salinity variations and changes in nutrient concentrations. Earlier studies have demonstrated that the 800 to 500 year cycles observed in the sedimentary record are related to the intensity of the discharge of the Sakarya River, and linked to the North Atlantic Oscillations. Cysts of Pentapharsodinium dalei and Spiniferites spp. fluctuated synchronously with the clay layer frequency. The poor preservation of these forms may indicate shelfal transport during periods of intense river discharge. The variation in relative abundance of heterotrophic species does not correlate with the clay layer frequency, since upwelling and nutrient supply also influenced their abundances. Lingulodinium machaerophorum shows the highest relative abundances during periods with reduced river input.


The 10th BRICS Academic Forum, consisting of scholars, think tanks and non-governmental organizations from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, took place in Johannesburg, South Africa on 28–31 May 2018. The event was hosted jointly by the BRICS Think Tank Council (BTTC) and the South African BRICS Think Tank (SABTT) with the support of the South African government and the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) as the SABTT custodian and coordinator. Under South Africa's direction as chair of BRICS, participation at the Academic Forum was extended to other African countries as part of the Africa Outreach Initiative: Angola, Burundi, Ethiopia, Gabon, Namibia, Uganda, Togo, Rwanda and Senegal accepted invitations. Participants commended the efforts made by China during its turn as chair of BRICS to promote BRICS cooperation and suggested working together to strengthen the three-wheel-driven areas of economy, peace and security, and people-to-people exchanges. For the final four days of May, Johannesburg became a vibrant intellectual capital offering for the Academic Forum participants much debate and discussion, plenary sessions and side events all united under the theme "Envisioning Inclusive Development Through a Socially Responsive Economy." The 2018 Academic Forum focused on the topics most important for the BRICS group ranging from peace and security, energy, gender relations and health to regional integration. The Forum was a complete success with broad consensus and submitted a list of recommendations for the consideration of the leaders of BRICS.


While the IETF standardized IPv6 more than fifteen years ago, IPv4 is still the prevalent Internet protocol today. On June 8th, 2011, several large content and service providers coordinated a large-scale IPv6 test-run, by enabling support for IPv6 simultaneously: the World IPv6 Day. In this paper, we compare IPv6 activity before, during, and after the event. We examine traffic traces recorded at a large European Internet Exchange Point (IXP) and on the campus of a major US university; analyzing volume, application mix, and the use of tunneling protocols for transporting IPv6 packets. For the exchange point we find that native IPv6 traffic almost doubled during the World IPv6 Day while changes in tunneled traffic were limited. At the university, IPv6 traffic increased from 3–6 GB/day to over 130 GB/day during the World IPv6 Day, accompanied by a significant shift in the application and HTTP destination mix. Our results also show that a significant number of participants at the World IPv6 Day kept their IPv6 support online even after the test period ended, suggesting that they did not encounter any significant problems.


For many applications in adaptive optics the eigenfunctions of the power spectrum of turbulence-induced distortions on the actual telescope aperture constitute the ideal basis for modeling wave fronts. The mathematical derivation of these functions is reviewed, and a procedure for their calculation, allowing for a circular central obscuration and leaving considerable freedom in the form of the structure function, is described. Examples of wave-front simulations are presented for a range of power-law structure functions and for Kolmogorov structure functions with an outer scale smaller than the diameter of the region being modeled.


The spatio-temporal evolution of the free electron density induced in a helium gas jet by an intense femtosecond pulse is measured with ~10 fs resolution in a ~1 ps temporal window. The double-stepionization feature is observed. In these measurements, we use the technique of single-shot supercontinuum spectral interferometry. It is demonstrated that finite laser-gas interaction lengths can strongly affect the interpretation of such measurements.


In the past decades changes in occupations and service work in professional organizations has been in the center of attention of numerous contributions. Occupations are seen as threatened by the organizational management under the new managerialist regimes as they become a 'victim' of organizational standards and performance monitoring while managers are portrayed as the 'carriers of neo-liberal reforms and organizational control'(Noordegraaf, 2011, p. 1350; Ackroyd et al., 2007; Scott 2008; de Boer et al. 2007). The reaction to the threats results in professions creating protective spaces in their organizations by 'return to professionalism' (Freidson, 2001; Rip, 2011). On the other hand, scholars argue that maintaining the duality between occupations versus organizations needs to be bridged and one needs to find typologies which incorporate the two in a productive way (Noordegraaf, 2011). It is suggested that professionals may take up organizing roles and professional workers can develop organization capacities (Ibid.).

The duality between academic profession and organization management is well documented in higher education studies literature (Amaral et al., 2003; Huisman, 2009; Deem et al., 2007). However, it is not clear whether and how disciplinary community values and norms are transformed by the organizational values and norms and thus, how the duality of the two can be bridged in this particular sector? To answer this question it is useful to turn to the work roles and identities of academics as they are ultimately the carriers of professional values and norms. Based on the evidence from Western European countries strongly influenced by New Public Management reforms I will present the dynamics of changing academic identity formation while bridging the duality between academic profession and university as professional organization.


Marginally stable power recycling cavities are being used by nearly all interferometric gravitational wave detectors.With stability factors very close to unity the frequency separation of the higher order optical modes is smaller than the cavity bandwidth. As a consequence these higher order modes will resonate inside the cavity distorting the spatial mode of the interferometer control sidebands. Without losing generality we study and compare two designs of stable power recycling cavities for the proposed 5 kilometer long Australian International Gravitational Observatory (AIGO), a high power advanced interferometric gravitational wave detector. The length of various optical cavities that form the interferometer and the modulation frequencies that generate the control sidebands are also selected.


Boron-containing compounds which possess unique and attractive properties have received increasing attention from the pharmaceutical industry and academia recently. They have shown interesting and useful biological activities, including antibacterial, antifungal, antiparasitic, antiviral, and anti-inflammatory activities. In this review, the synthetic strategies for various boron-containing compounds, including peptidyl boronic acids, benzoxaboroles, benzoxaborines, benzodiazaborines, amine carboxyboranes, and amine cyanoboranes are summarized. Representative structures of each structural class and recently developed biologically active boron-containing compounds are used as examples in this review.


The performance of the board members is a key determinant of a Parliament's performance in carrying out the duties and the responsibilities of budgeting, legislation, and control. This study aims to obtain the results about the effect of competence and discipline on work motivation and the implication on the performance of members of the Depok Municipality's House of Local Representatives or the Depok City Council.The method used is descriptive-explanatory with a survey that aims to test the hypothesis and to explain causal relationships between the variables. The population is all the members of the Depok City Council (50 people). A sample of 34 people was taken by simple random method. The research hypothesis is tested using the Path Analysis.The results showed that the competence and the discipline have simultaneously effects on the work motivation of the board members. Work motivation refinement can be pursued through increased competence and discipline synergistically. However, not disjointed competence and discipline is an obstacle in strengthening the work motivation. Partially, the work motivation is more influenced by the competence rather than the discipline. The results also showed that the competence, discipline and work motivation have affected simultaneously the performance. Performance refinement can be pursued through increased competence, discipline, and work motivation synergistically. Partially, the performance is more influenced by the discipline rather than the competence and the work motivation.Our suggestion to the headship of the Depok City Council is to improve the competence and the discipline of the board members synergistically and continously in order to strengthen the work motivation and improve the performance at the same time. We recommend to formulate policies which require the adequacy and the suitability of competence in the placement of tasks and improve the discipline collectively. It is recommended to immediately implement a performance management system and enhance the rules of internal procedures through conditioning duties and responsibilities according to the competence. It is also suggested to researchers to examine the performance of board members in other regions using other factors such as control, compensation, commitment and job satisfaction.


The concerns of political ecology since its beginnings as a field have been predominantly set in rural areas with limited focus on urban industrial risks. Further, debates on the global South (often from Anglo-American perspectives) have not fully appreciated the divergent and differentiated perceptions of urban risks and, therefore, everyday forms of resistance within civil society. Instead, work has mainly focused on civil society power relations against the state and industry that are driven by coherent populist political agendas. Against this setting, this paper's contribution aims to better contextualize 'other' third world localities in political ecology through a case study of urban industrial risks in the upper/middle income (as opposed to rural, low/lower middle income) country, South Africa. In doing so, the paper sheds light on the derelict aspect of civil society contestation, especially along class and ethnic lines, over urban landfill infrastructure as a livelihood resource or a health hazard. The paper draws upon frameworks of self-reflexivity and reflexive localism as complementary to the mainstream political ecology to illuminate differentiated civil society reflexiveness and therefore, aims to advance the discussion of other political ecologies. The case study of the largest formal landfill site in Africa, the Bisasar landfill situated in Durban, highlights differences underlying power relations and constraints within civil society (in leadership, social networking, resources and mistrust) that have implications for mainstream political ecology notions of civil society coherence.


In December 2017 and January 2018, the Sejm and Senate, thanks to the votes of the deputies of ruling party Law and Justice, passed hugely controversial law amending inter alia Polish Electoral Code. Its adoption was opposed by the parliamentary opposition, by the electoral administration bodies and by many experts, however unsuccessfully. The enactment of this law destabilises the electoral system without a clear or evident need and treats the electoral code as a political instrument. Secondly, it does not provide the sufficient time for adaptation (vacatio legis), which may jeopardise free and fair local elections and the stability of the political system. Thirdly, the bill contains numerous unclear provisions and is in many parts written in a careless and contradictory way. Such amendments do not correspond with the European standards, described in the Venice Commission's Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters.


Third World fiction emanates from the Third World experience of exploitation, dehumanization and dislocation, shaped by the oppressive triad of geography, culture and history. As the author treats of the agonies, protestations and aspirations of file wretched of the earth, the novel revolves around two main complementary themes: protest and affirmation. The protest, which occurs in three levels, is directed externally or internally, against colonizers and minority power groups, and neocolonizers and sub-oppressors, respectively. The theme of affirmation comes in two forms: the assertion of a glorious past, culture, or civilization, and the affirmation of human dignity, fraternity and liberty. When these themes thus assault lie consciousness of the reading millions, the possibilities for collective social transformation become tremendous.


This paper presents FPGA implementations of classical algorithms for computing ln(x) with some improvement at the level of the multiplication steps, and step skipping techniques. One starts from a practical implementation of ln(x) computation using a convergence method. The function is approximated by a multiplicative normalization technique, however, thanks to the peculiarity of the multiplicative factor, namely (1 + ai .2 -i ), with ai ∈ {-1, 0, 1}, the successive multiplications have been replaced by additions. Doing so, one saves the use of LUT's and eventually reduces processing time, as addition is generally faster than multiplication. Further, the acceleration technique, based on skipping trivial steps, improves performances. Implementations for FPGA are presented with time and slice cost evaluations. The Xilinx Virtex IV has been used for comparative analysis of 8 to 64-bit logarithm computing devices.


Background Cochlear implant (CI) is an electronic device that provides direct electrical stimulation to the auditory division of the eighth cranial nerve. The integrity of the internal CI part after implantation can be assessed through objective measures, which are a widely used and valuable tool in the field of CIs. Impedance measurement and electrically evoked compound action potential (ECAP) are the most frequently used tests to facilitate programming of the implants especially in young children. Aim This study was carried out to compare ECAP thresholds and electrode impedance at the time of surgery, at the first stimulation session, and monthly for the next 2 months to assess whether a significant change take places with time. Patients and methods Fifteen deaf children implanted unilaterally with a MED-EL Sonata Implant System with an Opus 2 speech processor were included in this study. All patients received the implant if they fulfilled the Alexandria main hospital criteria for receiving CIs. The group studied included seven males and eight females; they ranged in age from 2 to 6 years. Two of the patients had received implantation in the left ear, whereas the rest of the patients had received a CI in the right ear. Results Intraoperative impedance was the lowest among all postoperative readings in all electrodes. The highest value was that measured 1 month after surgery, after which impedance values continued to decrease significantly, but not to the intraoperative values. The ECAP threshold showed no significant P values between the ECAP threshold measured in the intraoperative and the postsurgery follow-up period. Conclusion The measured impedance showed significant changes in the form of increasing values postoperatively relative to the intraoperative time. The ECAP threshold did not change significantly intraoperatively and postoperatively, showing that intraoperative ECAP can be useful in mapping as it shows no changes.


Thirty-four patients with tricyclic-resistant depressive illness took part in a nine-week, doubleblind, placebo-controlled trial of lithium augmentation. In addition to the maximum tolerated doses of their tricyclic antidepressant, the experimental group (n = 16) received 250 mg lithium daily for three weeks, followed by 750 mg lithium daily for six weeks, while the controls (n = 18) received placebo for three weeks followed by three weeks each of 250 mg lithium daily and 750 mg lithium daily. There was no significant difference between placebo and 250 mg lithium for weeks 0-3 of the trial. However, there was a significantly greater improvement on the MADRS for weeks 3-6 for those subjects on 750 mg lithium than for those on 250 mg lithium. In addition, using a 50% fall in the HRSD as a criterion of drug responsiveness, 22% responded to placebo, 18% to 250 mg lithium, and 44% to 750mg lithium. Thus, lithium in normal, but not in low, dose has a significant antidepressant effect in TCA-resistant depression. Further controlled studies using lithium in normal dose in trials which have a greater duration of placebo exposure are required to confirm the lithium augmentation effect.


Over 75% of Federal tax revenue is raised through the income tax and FICA taxes. The potential effects on labor supply and economic welfare are important because of the large and increasing reliance on direct taxation. Over the past few years significant legislative changes have occurred with respect to taxation of labor: the 25% tax cuts,indexation,the tax credit for working spouses, and likely increases in FICA taxation.I reviewr ecent econometric work which measures the effect of taxes on labor supply and which analyzes the likely effects of tax law changes on labor supply and economic welfare.Sections 1 and 2 develop the theory and econometric techniques for models of labor supply with taxes. Section 3 discusses the various tax systemsin the U.S. In Section 4, I present empirical estimates for husbands'and wives' labor supply functions. The economic cost of the tax system is also estimated. In Section 5 the individual questionnaire data for high income individuals is reviewed. Lastly, in Section 6 evidence from the negative income tax experiments and for social security beneficiaries is considered. These latter groups face extremely high marginal tax rates so that evidence beyond that contained in other surveys of labor supplyis provided.


Given heavy dependence on rainfed maize production, Zambia must routinely cope with pronounced production and consumption volatility in their primary food staple. Typical policy responses include increased food aid flows, government commercial imports and stock releases, and tight controls on private sector trade. This paper examines recent experience in Zambia, using a simple economic model to assess the likely impact of maize production shocks on the domestic maize price and on staple food consumption under alternative policy regimes. In addition to an array of public policy instruments, the analysis evaluates the quantitative impact of two key private sector responses in moderating food consumption volatility— private cross-border maize trade and consumer substitution of an alternate food staple (cassava) for maize. The analysis suggests that, given a favorable policy environment, private imports and increased cassava consumption together could fill roughly two-thirds of the maize consumption shortfall facing vulnerable households during drought years.


Polycythemia vera (PV) is a myeloproliferative disorder characterized by an increased proliferation of all three myeloid lineages. The molecular pathogenesis of PV is unknown. Using cDNA microarrays comprising 6000 human genes, we studied the gene expression profile of granulocytes obtained from 11 PV patients compared with granulocytes obtained from healthy individuals. We found that 147 genes were up-regulated by >2.5 fold in the majority of PV patients. Eleven of these 147 genes were up-regulated in all PV patients studied and may represent a molecular signature for this disorder. An increase in the expression of several protease inhibitors with affinity for proteases that promote apoptosis in neutrophils (e.g., cystatin F, secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor), as well as the up-regulation of a number of antiapoptotic and survival factors was found (e.g., adrenomedullin, p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase). We speculate that the deregulation of these factors may inhibit normal apoptosis and promote cell survival in the granulocytes of patients with PV. These PV-specific expression changes are likely to be biologically important in the pathophysiology of this disorder.


Examination of the contribution of experimental approaches to marine microbial ecology shows these approaches to receive 34.8% of the present effort in the field. Most of the experiments focus on bacteria or maline microbial communities and generally examine the importance of trophic interactions and associated flows of carbon and nutrients in these food webs. Microbial ecologists use experimental units ranging 8 orders of magnitude in slze (10-~ to 10' l), with a geometric median size of 0.8 1, and an exponential decline in the number of experiments performed at increasingly larger and smaller scales. The duration of experiments is scaled linearly with the characteristic linear dimension of the experimental units, corresponding to 20 d for each meter in characteristic dimension. The majority (70.3 %) of the experiments performed in the past 5 yr used natural communities or organisms, particularly in mesocosm (>lo3 1) experiments. Most (84.5%) of the experiments are conducted under closely controlled conditions in the laboratory and involve the manipulation of particles, resources and the food web structure, usually manipulating a single factor at a time, the fraction of experiments published declining exponentially with the increase in the numbers of factors tested. A major difference between experimental marine microbial ecology and other disciplines of marine ecology is the remarkable paucity of field experiments (only 2.6% of the experiments in marine microbial ecology), where only the treatment factors are controlled, and the total absence of ecosystem experiments, which are field experiments where the treatment is applied to an entlre ecosystem. Experimental approdches have played an important role in the development of marine microbial ecology, but no single experiment has had a large impact on the progress of the field, suggesting that the experiments so far conducted in marine microbial ecology have failed to provide the crucial tests of the main hypotheses needed to progress through strong inferences. The future effectiveness of experimental marine microbial ecology will be substantially enhanced through a larger allocation of efforts towards field experiments, designed to interplay with observational and comparative approaches, leading to conclusive tests of key hypotheses and paradigms through carefully designed, crucial ecosystem experiments.


This paper examines knowledge sharing in ICTenabled innovation projects in bureaucratic settings. The fact that individuals from different organizational units work on a common task creates a network that coexists with the functional subdivision of tasks and traditionally rigid hierarchical reporting structures within an organization. Based on empirical data from four project workgroups in Switzerland and the United States, I propose a theoretical model for knowledge sharing in ICT-enabled innovation projects. The model ties together processes and content of knowledge sharing through two task dimensions, each of them subdivided into two phases: (1) Conception and implementation of the project, and (2) Exploration and exploitation of knowledge. I show that the implementation of ICT-enabled innovation projects requires a balanced mix of exploration and exploitation of knowledge, where exploration through sparse networks is more important in the conceptual phase, and exploitation in tightly-bound groups becomes more fruitful in the implementation phase.


The smooth, quasi-elephantine form of the huge, long-necked sauropods is a familiar image widely repeated in both scientific and general literature. Recent discovery of fossilized sauropod (diplodocid) skin impressions reveals a significantly different appearance for these dinosaurs. The fossilized skin demonstrates that a median row of spines was present over the tail and may have continued anteriorly along the body and neck.


This paper presents an analytical model of the dynamic interrelationships between education, creativity, and happiness based on both theoretical insights and recent empirical neurological studies. In the model, the outcome is conditional on individual intelligence and risk aversion. Specifically, it focuses on two main determinants of creativity (divergent and convergent thinking), and compares two main educational policies (scholarships vs. training) in terms of their impacts on the happiness gained from creativity in the general and healthy population. An empirical test is provided by matching the model's predictions with the results of recent neuroscience research. Numerical simulations suggested that improving convergent thinking is more important than improving divergent thinking for creativity to generate happiness throughout an individual's life, provided both divergent and convergent thinking have achieved a sufficiently large degree; and that unstructured training in divergent thinking (e.g., in accounting schools) is necessary to reach richer but less intelligent people, whereas scholarships or unstructured training in convergent thinking (e.g., in art schools) are necessary to reach more intelligent but less rich people.


How can, or rather, how should the relationship between 'modernities and traditions' be more properly conceived? In other words, which is the more promising theoretical approach that allows scholars to investigate this relationship and the ways in which it has taken form in different cultures? In this framework our main analytical aim consists in problematising the relationships between modernity and tradition as far as the secularization of the 'Public Sphere' on one hand, and its contemporary transformations on the other, are concerned. Following the analytical path traced by scholars who carry out a theoretical and historical review of cultural roots of the Public Sphere in the Euro-Mediterranean cultures, (starting from the Axial and passing through the Classical ages and the moment of consolidation of Catholic and Islamic religious traditions, then focusing on the philosophical constitution of the 'liberal public sphere' in the modern age), this paper tries to assess origins and transformations of the Public Sphere in the Euro-Mediterranean cultures.


In this paper, we discuss how a regression model, with a non-continuous response variable, which allows for dependency between observations, should be estimated when observations are clustered and measurements on the subjects are repeated. The cluster sizes are assumed to be large. We find that the conventional estimation technique suggested by the literature on generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) is slow and sometimes fails due to non-convergence and lack of memory on standard PCs. We suggest to estimate the random effects as fixed effects by generalized linear model and to derive the covariance matrix from these estimates. A simulation study shows that our proposal is feasible in terms of mean-square error and computation time. We recommend that our proposal be implemented in the software of GLMM techniques so that the estimation procedure can switch between the conventional technique and our proposal, depending on the size of the clusters.


Following a series of extreme air pollution events, the Chinese government released the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan in 2013 (China's State Council 2013). The Action Plan sets clear goals for key regions (i.e. cities above the prefecture level, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Province, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta) and establishes near-term control efforts for the next five years. However, the extent to which the Action Plan can direct local governments' activities on air pollution control remains unknown. Here we seek to evaluate the air quality improvement and associated health benefits achievable under the Action Plan in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) area from 2012 to 2017. Measure-by-measure quantification results show that the Action Plan would promise effective emissions reductions of 34% of SO2, 28% of NOx, 26% of PM2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 μm in diameter), and 10% of VOCs (volatile organic compounds). These emissions abatements would lower the PM2.5 concentration by 17%, surpassing the 15% target established in the Action Plan, thereby avoiding more than 2900 deaths and 4300 hospital admissions annually. We expect the implementation of the Action Plan in the PRD would be productive; the anticipated impacts, however, fall short of the goal of protecting the health of local residents, as there are still more than 33 million people living in places where the annual mean ambient PM2.5 concentrations are greater than 35 μg m−3, the interim target-3 of the World Health Organization (WHO). We therefore propose the next steps for air pollution control that are important not only for the PRD but also for all other regions of China as they develop and implement effective air pollution control policies.


In this review, we describe the patterns of known immunological components in breast milk and examine the relationship between breastfeeding and reduced risk of breast cancer. The top risk factors for breast cancer are a woman's age and family history, specifically having a first-degree relative with breast cancer. Women that have a history of breastfeeding have been shown to have reduced rates of breast cancer. Although the specific cause has not been elucidated, previous studies have suggested that breastfeeding reduces the risk of breast cancer primarily through two mechanisms: the differentiation of breast tissue and reduction in the lifetime number of ovulatory cycles. In this context, one of the primary components of human milk that is postulated to affect cancer risk is alpha-lactalbumin. Tumour cell death can be induced by HAMLET (a human milk complex of alpha-lactalbumin and oleic acid). HAMLET induces apoptosis only in tumour cells, while normal differentiated cells are resistant to its effects. Therefore, HAMLET may provide safe and effective protection against the development of breast cancer. Mothers should be encouraged to breastfeed their babies because the complex components of human milk secretion make it an ideal food source for babies and clinical evidence has shown that there is a lower risk of breast cancer in women who breastfed their babies.


Abstract Background: Pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period after fertility treatment are considered "normal" in the Netherlands, with no indication of an increased obstetric risk, and can therefore be monitored by a primary care midwife. However, there is little evidence on the experiences of couples and women who finally get pregnant after fertility treatment and a lack of training for midwives exists on this subject. The aim of this study was to map the midwifery care needs of the subfertile client with past fertility problems. Methods: In 2011, we interviewed two couples and seven women who conceived through fertility treatment and received primary midwifery care at some point during their pregnancies. This explorative, qualitative study was based on the interpretivist/constructivist paradigm. Results: Although the participants are not representative of all subfertile clients, the findings of our qualitative study highlight the needs of women and their partners who have become pregnant through fertility treatment including help from the primary care midwife in understanding the likely course of their pregnancy, more psychosocial support and acknowledgement of the fertility treatment history, and more consultations and frequent ultrasound scans than usual to confirm pregnancy. Conclusions: Our study points out that the women who have become pregnant through fertility treatment and their partners communicate seemingly paradoxical prenatal care needs. It can help maternity care providers to optimally meet the care needs of subfertile clients and empower them during their transition from subfertility to parenthood.


The parasitoid, Aridelus rufotestaceus Tobias, 1986 (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) was first found in New Zealand by Stephen Thorpe in Auckland in 2010. In Italy this wasp species was reared from field collected nymphs of the green vegetable bug, Nezara viridula (Linnaeus, 1758) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), and in captivity from adults as well as nymphs. In captivity adult female wasps were observed following nymphs before depositing an egg I first saw a female of this parasitoid when it was following an adult green vegetable bug, N. viridula in Dr Adah Plat-Mills Reserve, Maraetai, Auckland during April 2014. This observation indicates that they may parasitize adult Hemiptera in the wild. There is a photograph of a female parasitoid following a green vegetable bug nymph on Nature Watch.


Abstract Rare assemblages of woody coprolites from different strata of the Two Medicine Formation provide surprising perspectives on the feeding behavior of Late Cretaceous ornithischian dinosaurs. Most of the irregularly shaped, calcareous specimens are largely composed of fragmented conifer wood (13%–85%) and can be identified as coprolites by the presence of distinctive backfilled dung beetle burrows. The large size (up to 7 L in volume), fibrous contents, and associated bones and eggshell strongly suggest that the source animals at one site were Maiasaura hadrosaurs. The wood-bearing coprolites occur in strata ranging in age from ∼74–80 Ma, revealing a recurring (possibly seasonal) habit of wood ingestion. The preponderance of wood in the specimens and the absence of recognizable small-diameter twig fragments suggest that wood ingestion was intentional—that the coprolite producers had not merely consumed wood inadvertently when feeding on the leaves and bark of terminal branches. Because undegraded wood provides inconsequential nutritive value for vertebrates, it is unlikely that ornithischians would have expended the energy to masticate intact wood for little benefit. Furthermore, patterns of tissue damage in the fecal wood fragments suggest fungal degradation. Thus, the most parsimonious explanation for the high fecal wood content is that the coprolite producers consumed decomposing wood to capitalize on resources released by fungal attack, along with the tissues of the decomposers and associated invertebrate detritivores. These multiple coprolite deposits provide direct fossil evidence of recurring dinosaur diets and suggest that some ornithischians at least occasionally tapped detrital resources. Although such feeding behavior is rare in large extant herbivores, utilization of rotting wood would have augmented the resource options of Cretaceous ecosystems that lacked fodder provided by grasses and other derived angiosperms.


Cyberhate is a complex and yet not clearly defined phenomenon that comprises of online hate speech and various types of online content that expresses antagonistic attitudes towards targeted groups of people and that advocates and promotes hatred and discrimination. In prior research, cyberhate experiences were often conceptualised within a broader framework of cyberviolence and cyberharassment (Lwin et al. 2012; Peterson & Densley 2017). It was also examined as one of the possible online risks that young people and children can encounter on the internet, among which belong cyberbullying, sexting (especially unwanted sexting), exposure to sexually explicit materials, or exposure to various types of harmful online content (such as materials that promote eating disorders or suicide). Previous research has shown that young people and children do experience these risks, especially those who are active and frequent users of social media and the internet in general (Costello et al., 2016; Hawdon et al., 2017; Holt et al., 2015; Oksanen et al., 2016; Staksrud et al., 2012). It has also been shown that prior victimization, as well as experienced exposure to harmful online content, are connected to the prospect of cybervictimization and online harassment (Nasi et al., 2014; Rasanen et al., 2016; Reyns et al., 2013). Thus, our first goal is to investigate the associations between the different types of online risks connected to cyberhate experiences. Our contribution will consider the different types of actors in a cyberhate event — members of an exposed audience, victims of aggression, and perpetrators — and it will explore their experiences with relation to the other previously mentioned risks. Specifically, we will investigate the relationships between youths' various cyberhate experiences (as different kinds of actors) and the relationships with other online risks. In addition to cyberhate victimization, cyberhate exposure is considered harmful and associated with negative effects on youth and their subjective well-being (Keipi et al., 2018). It has also been shown that cyberhate experiences are associated with, for instance, lower quality offline relationships or the usage of specific social media (Costello et al., 2016; Oksanen et al., 2014). Therefore, our second goal is to investigate the links between cyberhate experiences and individual factors, also in comparison with their links to other online risks. Our analysis will utilize the data from the EU Kids Online IV project in which the data collection is still in progress. It will include data from European countries that have employed a cyberhate module in their surveys on a representative national sample of youth aged 9-17, including the Czech Republic, Italy, Norway, and Slovakia.


To learn from their environments, infants must detect structure behind pervasive variation. This presents substantial and largely untested learning challenges in early language acquisition. The current experiments address whether infants can use statistical learning mechanisms to segment words when the speech signal contains acoustic variation produced by changes in speakers' voices. In Experiment 1, 8- and 10-month-old infants listened to a continuous stream of novel words produced by 8 different female voices. The voices alternated frequently, potentially interrupting infants' detection of transitional probability patterns that mark word boundaries. Infants at both ages successfully segmented words in the speech stream. In Experiment 2, 8-month-olds demonstrated the ability to generalize their learning about the speech stream when presented with a new, acoustically distinct voice during testing. However, in Experiments 3 and 4, when the same speech stream was produced by only 2 female voices, infants failed to segment the words. The results of these experiments indicate that low acoustic variation may interfere with infants' efficiency in segmenting words from continuous speech, but that infants successfully use statistical cues to segment words in conditions of high acoustic variation. These findings contribute to our understanding of whether statistical learning mechanisms can scale up to meet the demands of natural learning environments.


Letter from Jack G. Bishop at Baylor College of Dentistry to Todd Bradford Willis on December 15, 1978, informing Willis of his acceptance into the Department of Pedodontics, provided he maintains his GPA until his graduation the following year from The University of Texas Dental Branch at Houston. Bishop also informs him of a $200 deposit.


This paper presents a framework for hand gesture recognition based on the information fusion of a three-axis accelerometer (ACC) and multichannel electromyography (EMG) sensors. In our framework, the start and end points of meaningful gesture segments are detected automatically by the intensity of the EMG signals. A decision tree and multistream hidden Markov models are utilized as decision-level fusion to get the final results. For sign language recognition (SLR), experimental results on the classification of 72 Chinese Sign Language (CSL) words demonstrate the complementary functionality of the ACC and EMG sensors and the effectiveness of our framework. Additionally, the recognition of 40 CSL sentences is implemented to evaluate our framework for continuous SLR. For gesture-based control, a real-time interactive system is built as a virtual Rubik's cube game using 18 kinds of hand gestures as control commands. While ten subjects play the game, the performance is also examined in user-specific and user-independent classification. Our proposed framework facilitates intelligent and natural control in gesture-based interaction.


One of the problems with assessing the emerging threats from advances in biotechnology and the life sciences is that there are two competing narratives for understanding biotechnology development: one based on the notion of a biotech revolution and the other based on biotech evolution. The biotech revolution is a dystopian tale in which scientific advances lead to rapid changes in biotechnology, its applications, and its potential threats. The biotech evolution, however, describes slower and more complex trajectories for biotechnology development and threats. These two narratives are based on different assumptions and analytic methods, which lead to fundamentally different conclusions. The US intelligence and policy communities use the biotech revolution story line to make sense of today's bioweapons threats, but this approach fails to reflect the complex social, economic, scientific, and technical factors that shape biotechnology and life science developments. The author argues that more critical perspectives on biotechnology are needed in order to improve intelligence assessments of present and future bioweapons threats and policy regarding them.


A best practices guide is developed from a synthesis of recent research on high-volume fly ash (HVFA) concrete mixtures. These best practices can be applied by the concrete construction industry to achieve desired properties and to ensure the (high) performance of HVFA concrete mixtures in practice. As such, the report considers all aspects of HVFA concrete production, from the characterization of the starting materials, through mixture proportioning and curing options to achieve desired properties, to the in-place early-age and long-term performance of the concrete in its fresh and hardened states. Both mechanical and transport properties are considered in detail. Perspective is established based on a brief review of current practices being employed nationally. Each topical section is concluded with a practice-based set of recommendations for the design and construction community. The report is intended to serve as a valuable resource to these communities, providing both a research summary and a guide to practical steps that can be taken to achieve the optimum performance of these sustainable concrete mixtures.


Although a cochlear implant (CI) restores access to sound and speech for profoundly deaf children, there is substantial inter-individual variation in outcomes and many children with a CI continue to be delayed in their spoken language development. This suggests that they may benefit from alternative modes of communication such as sign language. However, the role of signed input in the education of children with a CI is much debated. The aim of the present thesis was two-folded: to explore underlying processes in speech perception that may help to explain inter-individual variation in outcomes, and to obtain insight into the effects of signed input on spoken language abilities. To that end, this thesis investigates speech and sign perception in 5- to 6-year old children with a CI. More specifically, it examines and interrelates the use of acoustic and visual cues in phonetic categorization and the representation of phonetic contrasts in novel words and signs. Additionally, it investigates the effects of bimodal (i.e., simultaneously spoken and signed) input on speech perception. The analyses show that children with a CI have fuzzy boundaries between sound categories and have difficulties to represent phonetic detail in novel words. Weakly-specified auditory phonological-lexical representations likely negatively impact speech processing. Importantly, signing experience did not negatively affect their speech perception and bimodal input seemed to even facilitate spoken word recognition. Together, these findings form an argument for bilingualism in a spoken and a signed language as the ultimate goal in the rehabilitation and education of children with a CI.


COPYRIGHT © The Author(s) Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0) Veld fires are natural occurrences with the potential to impact thousands of hectares of vegetation, and in doing so, changes soil characteristics, for both urban and rural areas. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the hydrological response of a catchment could be affected by fire. The main aim of this research was to investigate the hydrological changes caused by fire on a catchment scale using a case study. On 9 March 2015, a wildfire which started in Jonkershoek nature reserve destroyed indigenous fynbos vegetation and afforested areas. Within the nature reserve, there are multiple rainfall and runoff stations, which provided a means of measuring any possible hydrological changes due to these fire events. Four catchments were used for this research, one main catchment (fynbos area) and three sub-catchments (afforested areas). Fifty-six percent of the main catchment burned, while two sub-catchments were completely burned and the other primarily unaffected by the fire. The main catchment's hydrological response was analysed by comparing the hydrographs of comparable preand post-fire runoff events. Eighteen comparable events were used for the analysis. The mean runoff volume increased by approximately 7% after the fire and mean peak flow by 50%. The change was even more noticeable when comparing the two sub-catchments affected by the veld fire and the unburned sub-catchment with each other. All the sub-catchments were similar in size and were located close enough to each other to be represented by one rainfall station. Before the fire, the average daily streamflows between the unburned (control) and burned catchments were similar; however after the fire the average daily streamflow of the two burned catchments in comparison to the control catchment increased by 45% and 50%, respectively. The mean runoff volume from the two affected/burned catchments, after the fire, for individual events increased by approx. 72% and 52% in comparison to the control catchment. The mean peak flows increased by approximately 173% and 110% in comparison to the control catchment. The effect of veld fires on the hydrological response of streamflow