The contributions that industrial designers can make in achieving greater degrees of sustainability in the sectors that design serves are sizable. However the greening of product manufacturing has been largely transferred away from the remit of design and into technical and managerial areas within the manufacturing construct. This paper reflects on a decade of privileging the "social and sustainable" as core to the professional and pedagogic construction of industrial design in an undergraduate degree program in Australia, and the two decades of theory for sustainability in design that has informed it. The paper charts the modes and intensities of theory in this domain and describes the issues of design for sustainability as a technical, managerial or moral discourse for design within undergraduate industrial design education. In discussing the transitions of theory in design for sustainability the paper points the way toward new forms of social and sustainable design management and leadership as a possible future trajectory for industrial designers that look to direct their work towards environmental and social concerns.


This dissertation is broadly concerned with the issue of electronic democracy, i.e. whether, under what conditions and how does the Internet strengthen democracy in advanced industrial polities. Specifically, this work applies the theory of participation to recent British data on online political engagement in order to understand: whether and how the Internet modifies the existing structure of political inequality; whether and how the Internet alters the context of traditional political action; whether the Internet holds a democratising potential and what is its nature. Data collected and analysed include a survey of British citizens' online political behaviour, and three smaller, in-depth surveys of citizens' online political activities within limited settings: a national online consultation forum, routine politics by young party activists and charity work by an elderly activist network. More generally, the dissertation contributes towards clarifying the ongoing debate on electronic democracy, by examining the discourse surrounding the evolution of the issue. It reviews a large portion of the existing literature on online political engagement, organised in three main approaches. It presents and analyses seminal data on British online political engagement to assess the state of electronic democracy in Britain. Importantly, it advances a theoretical framework for the understanding of the 'real' digital divide, drawing on the theory of participation. The theory is an ideal explanatory base from which to depart in order to find the factors shaping the structure of online political opportunities and the way in which preferences are voiced, and heard, through the Internet. This dissertation speaks directly to the electronic democracy debate by setting the agenda on the notion of democratic equality and by focusing on the structure of voice in the information polity.


Many companies rely on information systems (IS) that are critical to their business operations. Some of these IS utilize obsolete technology, and often include embedded business rules that are imprecisely documented. There is a risk that crucial knowledge related to maintenance of these IS could leave organizations as a result of the surge in retirement of experienced information technology (IT) professionals. This paper presents design science research, in which a survey and method of analysis was developed to assess and prioritize knowledge transfer needs related to IS. The instrument builds on industry leading practices in knowledge retention and incorporates social network analysis in order to produce a tool that is more comprehensive and efficient than previous tools built for this purpose. The analysis produces a prioritized list of knowledge and skill areas as well as a prioritized list of employees to focus knowledge transfer efforts within a firm.


This paper proposes two kinds of novel 2/spl times/2 circuit configuration for finite-impulse response (FIR) half-band filters. These configurations can be transformed into each other by a symmetric transformation and their power transmittance is identical. The configurations have only about half the elements of conventional FIR lattice-form filters. We derive a design algorithm for achieving desired power transmittance spectra. We also describe 2/spl times/2 circuit configurations for infinite-impulse response (IIR) half-band filters. These configurations are designed to realize arbitrary-order IIR half-band filter characteristics by extending the conventional half-band circuit configuration used in millimeter-wave devices. We discuss their filter characteristics and confirm that they have a power half-band property. We demonstrate design examples including FIR maximally flat half-band filters, an FIR Chebyshev half-band filter, and an IIR elliptic half-band filter.


The present thesis is a study of the Older Scots vowels 4, 5, and 8, as classified in A.J. Aitken's vowel system, in the period 1380-1500. The vowels are studied based on a number of lexical items containing the various vowels: MAKE pt, MORE, NAME, and STONE with Vowel 4; DAUGHTER, GOD, OVER, and WOULD with Vowel 5; and MAY, THEY, and SAY pt with Vowel 8. These items have been extracted from the corpus of the Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots (Williamson 2008a), and that of the Middle English Grammar project (Stenroos, Mäkinen, Horobin, Smith 2008). These data are geographically mapped and divided into two time-periods in order to study their diatopic variation. Vowels 4, 5, and 8 are reflexes of the Old English vowels ā, ō and ǣ. These vowels are known to have developed differently in the north and south of England and it is thus of interest to map their development also in Older Scots. The focus on Older Scots raises the question of Scots' distinctness from Northern Middle English, the variety in use south of the border in the same time-period. It is thus of interest to study the similarities and dissimilarities between these two varieties. Older Scots has generally received less attention compared to the variety found south of the border. This comparative neglect is being rectified through the compilation of the Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots and its related studies. This thesis thus contributes to the study of the vowel development of Older Scots and the sound changes affecting Scots. The thesis also shows spatial and diachronic dialect variation within Scotland based on the three vowels. Finally the thesis contributes the study of more lexical items to the Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots and the Middle English Grammar project. The thesis is divided into three parts, 1) the introductory chapter, containing the historical and linguistic background to Older Scots, earlier and related studies and a description of the status of Scots in the period under study; 2) the data chapters, including the methodology used for the study and a presentation of the collected data in the form of geographic maps; and 3) the analysis of the data, which includes remarks on the quality of the data, a discussion of their implications and concluding remarks.


The ontology of TGD inspired theory of consciousness  consist of the trinity formed by objective realities represented by configuration space spinor fields, subjective realities defined by quantum jump sequences between quantum histories (selves), and geometrical objects (res extensa) represented by spacetime surfaces. The infinite-dimensional configuration space of 3-surfaces is believed to be determined completely by the requirement that it allows Kahler geometry free of infinities: infinite- dimensional ontology is fixed by self consistency. Quantum histories (configuration space spinor fields, 'solutions of field equations') are not only representations for objective realities but identical with them: painting is the landscape so that there is no theory-reality dualism at this level. Quantum histories can be also identified as inhabitants of the Platonic realm of ideas. p-Adic nondetermism and the nondeterminism of the basic variational principle defining configuration space geometry correspond to the nondeterminisms of cognition and language. These nondeterminisms make it possible to represent, not only the quantal aspects of quantum states, but also quantum jumps sequences defining selves as spacetime regions. This explains the self-referentiality of consciousness meaning that it is possible to become conscious of being conscious about something. One ends up to a view about mathematics in which one must distinguish between mathematical ideas at the level of quantum histories and quantum jump sequences ('that which is'), and their cognitive and linguistic representations at spacetime level: the latter ones can never be faithful so that in this sense the map is not the territory.


As the Middle East peace process disintegrates and the second Palestinian Intifada begins, Wendy Pearlman, a young Jewish woman from the American Midwest travels to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in a quest to talk to ordinary Palestinians. A remarkable narrative emerges from her conversations with doctors, artists, school kids, and families who have lost loved ones or watched their homes destroyed. Their stories, ranging from the humorous to the tragic, paint a profile of the Palestinians that is as honest as it is uncommon in the Western media: that of ordinary people who simply want to live ordinary lives. As Pearlman writes, "the personal stories and heartfelt reflections that I encountered did not expose a hatred of Jews or a yearning to push Israelis into the sea. Rather, they painted a portrait of a people who longed for precisely that which had inspired the first Israelis: the chance to be citizens in a country of their own. "


This study investigates the insight of Muslim account holders' in conventional bank to purchase Islamic bank products. The concept Insight was defined in terms of Perception, Awareness and Understanding. Hence, the objectives of this study is to assess the effect of Perception, Awareness and Understanding of Muslim's account holder's in conventional bank to purchase Islamic bank products. Perception is operationally defined as the opinion, observation, assessment or experience while, Awareness is viewed as the consciousness, recognition or familiarity. Understanding is referred as the comprehension, grasp or appreciation of Muslim's account holder. A research framework model and hypotheses concerning the relationships among the variables – Perception, Awareness, and Understanding of Muslim's Account holder's in conventional bank to purchase Islamic bank products were posited and tested. Data was collected using hand delivery questionnaire survey approach. Using simple random sampling procedure, three hundred and eighty five (385) respondents both male and female were selected to participate in this study. Factor analysis, Pearson correlation, multiple regression methods of data analysis were utilized for hypotheses testing. The results of the correlation revealed that Perception, Awareness and Understanding are positively associated with Muslim account holders in conventional banks toward Islamic banking products. The multiple regression results indicate that Understanding and Awareness factors jointly explained 27.1% of the variance of Muslim account holder's in conventional bank toward patronising Islamic bank products. The outcome of this study provides vital information on the effect of Awareness and Understanding of Muslim account holder's in conventional bank to purchase Islamic banking products. The managerial implication of this study is for the Islamic banking industry to focus on the people's understanding of Shariah position on business transactions, concept of profit and loss sharing practice, benefit of Islamic banking products, good understanding of Islamic banking theory and practice that would have impact on customer decision. Keywords: Insight; Perception; Awareness; Understanding; Islamic banking Products


Distributed systems were once the exception, constructed only rarely and with great difficulty by developers who spent significant amounts of time mastering the technology. Now, as modern software technologies have made distributed systems easier to construct, they have become the norm. Unfortunately, many distributed systems fail to meet their performance objectives when they are initially constructed. Others perform adequately with a small number of users but do not scale to support increased usage. These performance failures result in damaged customer relations, lost productivity for users, lost revenue, cost overruns due to tuning or redesign, and missed market windows. Our experience is that most performance failures are due to a lack of consideration of performance issues early in the development process, in the architectural phase. This paper discusses assessment of the performance characteristics of distributed software architectures using the Software Performance Engineering (SPE) approach. We describe the information required to perform such assessments, particularly the information about synchronization points and types of synchronization mechanisms, and the modeling approach. The case study demonstrates how to construct performance models for distributed systems and illustrates how simple models of software architectures are sufficient for early identification of performance problems.


Aim: We investigated the performance of FDG PET using an automated procedure for discrimination between Alzheimer's disease (AD) and controls, and studied the influence of demographic and technical factors. Methods: FDG PET data were obtained from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) [102 controls (76.0 ± 4.9 years) and 89 AD patients (75.7 ± 7.6 years, MMSE 23.5 ± 2.1) and the Network for Standardisation of Dementia Diagnosis (NEST-DD) [36 controls (62.2 ± 5.0 years) and 237 AD patients (70.8 ± 8.3 years, MMSE 20.9 ± 4.4). The procedure created t-maps of abnormal voxels. The sum of t-values in predefined areas that are typically affected by AD (AD t-sum) provided a measure of scan abnormality associated with a preset threshold for discrimination between patients and controls. Results: AD patients had much higher AD t-sum scores compared to controls (p < 0.01), which were significantly related to dementia severity (ADNI: r = –0.62, p < 0.01; NEST-DD: r = –0.59, p < 0.01). Early-onset AD patients had significantly higher AD t-sum scores than late-onset AD patients (p < 0.01). Differences between databases were mainly due to different age distributions. The predefined AD t-sum threshold yielded a sensitivity and specificity of 83 and 78% in ADNI and 78 and 94% in NEST-DD, respectively. Conclusion: The automated FDG PET analysis procedure provided good discrimination power, and was most accurate for early-onset AD.


Convergence of form and function has accompanied the evolution of modular growth in terrestrial plants and colonial marine invertebrates. Part of this convergence is related to the optimal exploitation of resources (space and light) and the ability to translocate energy products from sources to sink sites. Feeding on the energy pathways and energy sinks of terrestrial plants is a well–known phenomenon. Hermatypic corals, the major organisms constructing tropical reef environments, contain photosynthetic algae (zooxanthellae), energetic products of which are translocated towards sink sites located at the coral's growing tips and regenerating areas. Despite the plant–coral convergence in energy pathways and sinks, there has been no evidence to date that coral energy sinks are exploited by coral predators. Gastropods of the genus Coralliophila are found feeding on coral margins, causing small and localized tissue damage. However, the ability of these snails to continue to feed without moving over a long period remains puzzling. Using a 14C labelling technique, we found that colony margins of the stony coral Porites function as major energy sinks. When snails inhabited these sites they incorporated significant amounts of 14C, indicating that they had fed on photosynthetic products translocated from the interior of the colony. Furthermore, when snails aggregate in the interior of the colony, thereby causing large surface injuries, they induce the development of significant new sink sites. This mode of prudent sessile feeding maximizes the efficiency of energy exploitation by the predatory snail, while minimizing tissue damage to the coral. The fact that energy sink sites occur in many coral species suggests that the strategy of sink exploitation for nutrition could also occur in many other marine host–symbiont relationships.


The aim of the article is to present the standpoints of the Polish Socialist Party against the May coup d'Etat in 1926. The paper brings close the actual influence of socialists and dependent on trade unions within the preparation and course on the May coup d'Etat 1926. The author analyses the role and influence of the socialist past of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski in obtaining the support of the leftist forces in the decisive moments of the 1926 coup d'Etat. The article contains a comparative analysis of the political postulates of the Polish Socialist Party as well as the actions taken by the leading groupings aimed at carrying out political and system reforms in the Second Polish Republic. It was shown that the concept of Polish socialists, adopted at the beginning of the 1920s, consisting of achieving program objectives through gradual and non-revolutionary socio-political reforms, paradoxically was abandoned in 1926 in favour of solutions characteristic for revolutionary groups.


The mapping of the predominant freeze/thaw state of the landscape is one of the main objectives of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's proposed Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission. This study applies Alaska Ecological Transect (ALECTRA) biophysical network temperature measurements and satellite radar scatterometer data from the Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) to evaluate some of the validation issues regarding the planned SMAP freeze/thaw measurements. Although the QuikSCAT data are acquired at Ku-band frequency, rather than at the L-band frequency of the proposed SMAP instrument, QuikSCAT data do provide a high temporal fidelity over the ALECTRA sites, similar to SMAP. The results of this study show that multiple temperature measurements representative of individual landscape components (soil, snow cover, vegetation, and atmosphere) covering different types of terrain within the satellite field of view are important for understanding the freeze/thaw process and the aggregate radar backscatter response to that process. The backscatter temporal dynamics and relative contribution of the freeze/thaw state of these landscape elements to radar signal vary with land cover, seasonal weather, and climate conditions.


This article presents a group of graveside monuments particular to western Anatolia in the sixth through fourth centuries B.C.E. Unified by their depiction of a door, the stelae discussed here can be divided into two groups, each showing varying degrees of Phrygian, Greek, and Achaemenid Persian influence: Group A begins in the mid to late sixth century and represents a door with architectural embellishments; Group B appears by the late fifth century and incorporates also elements of anthemion stelae. None of the monuments blocked passages in their original contexts; rather, they were symbolic graveside markers, associated primarily with tumulus and rock-cut chamber tombs visible to passers-by and offering-bearing descendants of the deceased. All but two of the 19 examples are from ancient Lydia, and the form may be of Lydian origin. The eclecticism of influence—typical of Lydian material culture during this period—is paralleled by the probable multivalence of the door's symbolism, representing the door of the afterlife, the tomb, and the household. Just as they reveal conceptions of the afterlife, symbolic door stelae are significant also in their probable association with family tombs and use in ancestor or tomb cult, and in their relation to contemporary western Anatolian funerary developments.


Due to the extensive use of information technology and the recent developments in multimedia systems, the amount of multimedia data available to users has increased exponentially. Video is an example of multimedia data as it contains several kinds of data such as text, image, meta-data, visual and audio. Content based video retrieval is an approach for facilitating the searching and browsing of large multimedia collections over WWW. In order to create an effective video retrieval system, visual perception must be taken into account. We conjectured that a technique which employs multiple features for indexing and retrieval would be more effective in the discrimination and search tasks of videos. In order to validate this, content based indexing and retrieval systems were implemented using color histogram, Texture feature (GLCM), edge density and motion..


Expert opinion is often necessary in forecasting tasks because of a lack of appropriate or available information for using statistical procedures. But how does one get the best forecast from experts? One solution is to use a structured group technique, such as Delphi, for eliciting and combining expert judgments. In using the Delphi technique, one controls the exchange of information between anonymous panelists over a number of rounds (iterations), taking the average of the estimates on the final round as the group judgment. A number of principles are developed here to indicate how to conduct structured groups to obtain good expert judgments. These principles, applied to the conduct of Delphi groups, indicate how many and what type of experts to use (five to 20 experts with disparate domain knowledge); how many rounds to use (generally two or three); what type of feedback to employ (average estimates plus justifications from each expert); how to summarize the final forecast (weight all experts' estimates equally); how to word questions (in a balanced way with succinct definitions free of emotive terms and irrelevant information); and what response modes to use (frequencies rather than probabilities or odds, with coherence checks when feasible). Delphi groups are substantially more accurate than individual experts and traditional groups and somewhat more accurate than statistical groups (which are made up of noninteracting individuals whose judgments are aggregated). Studies support the advantage of Delphi groups over traditional groups by five to one with one tie, and their advantage over statistical groups by 12 to two with two ties. We anticipate that by following these principles, forecasters may be able to use structured groups to harness effectively expert opinion.


PURPOSE
To assess whether the effect of a low-fat dietary pattern on breast cancer incidence varied by report of baseline vasomotor symptoms.

METHODS
Postmenopausal women age 50 to 79 years enrolled onto the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) Dietary Modification trial from 1993 to 1998 were randomly assigned to a low-fat dietary intervention (n = 19,541) or comparison (n = 29,294). Presence of vasomotor symptoms at baseline was ascertained from a 34-item self-report symptom inventory. Women were queried semi-annually for a new diagnosis of breast cancer. Each case report was verified by medical record and pathology report review by centrally trained WHI physician adjudicators.

RESULTS
Among participants who reported hot flashes (HFs) at baseline (n = 3,375), those assigned to the low-fat diet had a breast cancer rate of 0.27 compared with their counterparts in the control group who had a rate of 0.41 (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.65; 95% CI, 0.42 to 1.01). Among women reporting no HFs (n = 45,160), the breast cancer rate was 0.42 in those assigned to the low-fat diet compared with 0.46 in the control group (HR = 0.93; 95% CI, 0.84 to 1.03; P for interaction = .12 by HF status). Furthermore, the dietary benefits observed seemed to be specific to estrogen receptor (ER) -positive/progesterone receptor (PR) -positive tumors (ER positive/PR positive v other, P for risk = .03). Although women with and without HFs differed with regard to breast cancer risk factors, the effect of the diet intervention on breast cancer incidence by HF status was consistent across risk factor strata.

CONCLUSION
The results of this trial, which are hypothesis generating, suggest that HFs may identify a subgroup of postmenopausal women whose risk of invasive breast cancer might be reduced with the adoption of a low-fat eating pattern.


Digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) are novelty tools that can be used to facilitate broader involvement of citizens in the discussions about science. The same tools can be used to reinforce the traditional top-down model of science communication. Empirical investigations of particular technologies can help to understand how these tools are used in the dissemination of information and knowledge as well as stimulate a dialog about better models and practices of science communication. This study focuses on one of the ICTs that have already been adopted in science communication, on science blogging. The findings from the analysis of eleven blogs are presented in an attempt to understand current practices of science blogging and to provide insight into the role of blogging in the promotion of more interactive forms of science communication.


The tree which fills the arms grew from the tiniest sprout; the tower of nine storeys rose from a (small) heap of earth; the journey of a thousand li commenced with a single step. And I would walk five hundred miles, And I would walk five hundred more, Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles To fall down at your door. In the previous lecture, we saw algorithms to find the shortest path from a source vertex s to a target vertex t in a directed graph. As it turns out, the best algorithms for this problem actually find the shortest path from s to every possible target (or from every possible source to t) by constructing a shortest path tree. The shortest path tree specifies two pieces of information for each node v in the graph: • dist(v) is the length of the shortest path (if any) from s to v; • pred(v) is the second-to-last vertex (if any) the shortest path (if any) from s to v. In this lecture, we want to generalize the shortest path problem even further. In the all pairs shortest path problem, we want to find the shortest path from every possible source to every possible destination. Specifically, for every pair of vertices u and v, we need to compute the following information: • dist(u, v) is the length of the shortest path (if any) from u to v; • pred(u, v) is the second-to-last vertex (if any) on the shortest path (if any) from u to v. For example, for any vertex v, we have dist(v, v) = 0 and pred(v, v) = NULL. If the shortest path from u to v is only one edge long, then dist(u, v) = w(u→v) and pred(u, v) = u. If there is no shortest path from u to v—either because there's no path at all, or because there's a negative cycle—then dist(u, v) = ∞ and pred(v, v) = NULL. The output of our shortest path algorithms will be a pair of V × V arrays encoding all V 2 distances and predecessors. Many maps include a distance matrix—to find the distance from (say) Champaign to (say) Columbus, you would look in the row labeled 'Champaign' and the column labeled 'Columbus'. In these notes, I'll focus almost exclusively on computing the distance array. The predecessor array, from which you would compute …


Anchor text plays a special important role in improving the performance of general Web search. The importance of anchor text comes from the fact that it is fairly objective description for a Web page by potentially a large amount of other Web pages. Vertical search provides indexing and search functionality for objects in a certain domain, and is becoming an important supplement for general Web search. It is desired to utilize anchor text in vertical search as well to improve search performance. Vertical objects typically lack explicit URLs to accurately identify them. The anchor-text of a vertical object is also hard to acquire explicitly. This paper proposes concepts of pseudo-URL and pseudo-anchor-text for vertical objects, corresponding to the URL and anchor-text of a general Web page. For extracting and utilizing pseudo-anchor-text information of vertical objects, we focus on candidate anchor block accumulation and pseudo-anchor extraction in this paper. State-of-the-art data integration techniques are utilized to accumulate candidate anchor blocks belonging to same objects. Pseudo-anchor text for each object is extracted from its candidate anchor blocks using a machine learning based approach. A case study in academic search domain indicates that our approach is able to dramatically improve search performance.


We developed a platform combining fluorogen-activating protein (FAP) technology with high-throughput flow cytometry to detect real-time protein trafficking to and from the plasma membrane in living cells. The hybrid platform facilitates drug discovery for trafficking receptors such as G protein-coupled receptors and was validated with the β2-adrenergic receptor (β2AR) system. When a chemical library containing ∼1200 off-patent drugs was screened against cells expressing FAP-tagged β2ARs, all 33 known β2AR-active ligands in the library were successfully identified, together with a number of compounds that might regulate receptor internalization in a nontraditional manner. Results indicated that the platform identified ligands of target proteins regardless of the associated signaling pathway; therefore, this approach presents opportunities to search for biased receptor modulators and is suitable for screening of multiplexed targets for improved efficiency. The results revealed that ligands may be biased with respect to the rate or duration of receptor internalization and that receptor internalization may be independent of activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway.


This book expounds fruitful ways of analysing matters of ecology, environments, nature, and the non-human world in a broad spectrum of material in French. Scholars from Canada, France, Great Britain, Spain, and the United States examine the work of writers and thinkers including Michel de Montaigne, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Arthur Rimbaud, Marguerite Yourcenar, Gilbert Simondon, Michel Serres, Michel Houellebecq, and Eric Chevillard. The diverse approaches in the volume signal a common desire to bring together form and content, politics and aesthetics, theory and practice, under the aegis of the environmental humanities.


Abstract BOT3P is a set of standard FORTRAN 77 language programs that were developed at the ENEA-Bologna Nuclear Data Centre. BOT3P aims to give the users of the DORT and TORT deterministic transport codes some useful diagnostic tools to prepare and to check their input data files. It also includes some plotting programs that can be employed both as preprocessors and as postprocessors of a transport analysis. The BOT3P plotting programs use the RSCORS Graphics System subroutines, included in the DOORS-3.3 and earlier software package together with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory DORT and TORT transport codes. BOT3P was developed on a DIGITAL UNIX ALPHA 500/333 workstation and successfully used in some complex applications such as the VENUS-1 and VENUS-3 neutron shielding benchmarks. BOT3P was tested on an IBM RS/6000 workstation also and is designed to run on most UNIX platforms. The following programs are included in the package: GGDM, DDM, GGTM, DTM2, DTM3, and RVARSCL. GGDM and GGTM generate the geometrical and material entries for DORT and TORT, respectively. DDM is a DORT graphics pre/post processor. DTM2 and DTM3 are graphics pre/post processors showing cuts and three-dimensional views of the TORT model, respectively. RVARSCL reads DORT/TORT "VARSCL" sequential format files and selects and writes the data required by the user in new files to be visualized by DDM, DTM2, and DTM3 as postprocessor applications. The package is publicly available from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency Data Bank (NEA-1627).


ABSTRACT An estimated 71 million people live with hepatitis C virus (HCV) and without an effective vaccination, control efforts depend entirely on prevention, early diagnosis, and treatment with direct acting antiviral medication. The experiences of accessing care and treatment, as well as how HCV is locally perceived, are context specific and require an understanding of local epidemics. The objectives of this study were to explore the experiences and demand-side barriers for people with chronic HCV infection, as well as describe the social and cultural landscapes in which they experienced, managed, and perceived HCV in Rwanda. Eleven participants provided consent to participate and all completed two semi-structured interviews during treatment within a clinical trial. We identified four themes: (1) diagnosis and use of traditional medicine, (2) access and financial barriers, (3) complex social networks (4) proactivity in care-seeking. Results demonstrate the complex ways in which Rwandans understand HCV, utilise parallel health systems, activate social networks, and the importance of active agency in the opportunities and outcomes for their own health in the context of an early response to a major epidemic. Without recognising communities' understanding and expectations, it is impossible to build a sustainable and successful public health response to HCV.


This paper examines the overlap between SEC securities enforcement actions and private securities fraud class actions. We begin with an overview of data concerning all SEC enforcement actions from 1997 to 2002. We find that the volume of SEC enforcement proceedings is relatively modest. We next examine the scope of the recently enacted "Fair Fund" provision that authorizes the SEC to designate civil penalties it recovers from defendants to benefit defrauded private investors. We conclude that this provision offers only limited potential relief for private investors. We complete this part of the paper with an analysis of the serious resource limitations faced by the SEC. The second portion of the paper contains an empirical analysis of the determinants of SEC enforcement actions and the overlap of private fraud suits and SEC enforcement proceedings. In bi-variate analysis, we find that: private suits with parallel SEC actions settle for significantly more than private suits without such proceedings; SEC enforcement actions target significantly smaller companies than private actions alone; private cases with parallel SEC actions take substantially less time to settle than other private cases; and private cases with parallel SEC actions have significantly longer class periods than other private actions. Finally, we create a model for estimating damages to compare settlement ratios in cases with parallel SEC actions to those in private actions. We find that one-fourth of all the private class action settlements occurring in suits that yield less than 10% of provable losses are settled for less than .02 percent of provable losses, but that there are no private actions with parallel SEC suits with such small settlements. In the final part of the paper, we conduct a multivariate regression analysis of the determinants of when SEC enforcement actions are filed. We find that the most highly significant determinant of SEC actions is financial distress. Estimated losses do not appear to be a statistically significant factor in the SEC's decision to file these suits.


A bad reading of the facts in NFIB v. Sebelius has led to new limitations on Congress's Commerce, Necessary and Proper, and Spending Clause powers. The decision appeared to use healthcare as a vehicle for constitutional change, leading to interpretive gymnastics that invite further litigation. This essay highlights the factual errors in Chief Justice Roberts's and the joint dissent's opinions and explains why Justice Ginsburg's more fact-attuned opinion was the correct analysis of the case.


We are interested in the autonomous acquisition of repertoires of skills. Language-conditioned reinforcement learning ( LC - RL ) approaches are great tools in this quest, as they allow to express abstract goals as sets of constraints on the states. However, most LC - RL agents are not autonomous and cannot learn without ex-ternal instructions and feedback. Besides, their direct language condition cannot account for the goal-directed behavior of pre-verbal infants and strongly limits the expression of behavioral diversity for a given language input. To resolve these issues, we propose a new conceptual approach to language-conditioned RL : the Language-Goal-Behavior architecture ( LGB ). LGB decouples skill learning and language grounding via an intermediate semantic representation of the world. To showcase the properties of LGB , we present a specific implementation called DECSTR . DECSTR is an intrinsically motivated learning agent endowed with an innate semantic representation describing spatial relations between physical objects. In a first stage ( G → B ), it freely explores its environment and targets self-generated semantic configurations. In a second stage ( L → G ), it trains a language-conditioned goal generator to generate semantic goals that match the constraints expressed in language-based inputs. We showcase the additional properties of LGB w.r.t. both an end-to-end LC - RL approach and a similar approach leveraging non-semantic, continuous intermediate representations. Intermediate semantic representations help satisfy language commands in a diversity of ways, enable strategy switching after a failure and facilitate language grounding.


We present a data dependent generalization bound for a large class of regularized algorithms which implement structured sparsity constraints. The bound can be applied to standard squared-norm regularization, the Lasso, the group Lasso, some versions of the group Lasso with overlapping groups, multiple kernel learning and other regularization schemes. In all these cases competitive results are obtained. A novel feature of our bound is that it can be applied in an infinite dimensional setting such as the Lasso in a separable Hilbert space or multiple kernel learning with a countable number of kernels.


Title of dissertation: PROBLEMS IN SPATIOTEMPORAL CHAOS Matthew Tyler Cornick Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Dissertation directed by: Edward Ott Department of Physics In this thesis we consider two problem areas involving spatiotemporally chaotic systems. In Part I we investigate data assimilation techniques applicable to large systems. Data assimilation refers to the process of estimating a system's state from a time series of measurements (which may be noisy or incomplete) in conjunction with a model for the system's time evolution. However, for practical reasons, the high dimensionality of large spatiotemporally chaotic systems prevents the use of classical data assimilation techniques such as the Kalman filter. Here, a recently developed data assimilation method, the local ensemble transform Kalman Filter (LETKF), designed to circumvent this difficulty is applied to Rayleigh-Bénard convection, a prototypical spatiotemporally chaotic laboratory system. Using this technique we are able to extract the full temperature and velocity fields from a time series of shadowgraphs from a Rayleigh-Bénard convection experiment. The process of estimating fluid parameters is also investigated. The presented results suggest the potential usefulness of the LETKF technique to a broad class of laboratory experiments in which there is spatiotemporally chaotic behavior. In Part II we study magnetic dynamo action in rotating electrically conducting fluids. In particular, we study how rotation effects the process of magnetic field growth (the dynamo effect) for a externally forced turbulent fluid. We solve the kinematic magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations with the addition of a Coriolis force in a periodic domain. Our results suggest that rotation is desirable for producing dynamo flows. PROBLEMS IN SPATIOTEMPORAL CHAOS by Matthew Tyler Cornick Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2007 Advisory Committee: Professor Edward Ott, Chair/Advisor Professor Brian Hunt Dr. Istvan Szunyogh Professor Thomas Antonsen Professor Daniel Lathrop c © Copyright by Matthew Cornick 2007


Description: The aim of the development was to provide an archiving system, which can be used for education an for the routine consultation discussions. The modalities at the Medical University are in different clinics and buildings. They work on different computational platforms (PC, Unix, Macintosh, e.t.c.) and use different output formats (TIFF, Interfile, ACR-NEMA, DICOM) for the studies. The university network seemed to be good enough for the data transfer at expexted rate. We could solve the problems originated from the different platforms and formats by using converter stations (mostly PCs) between the modalities and the university network. In this way SZOTE-PACS can collect studies from CT, MR, NM, US and SPECT modalities, from X-film scanners and, furthermore, from any stations having Internet connection and being able to communicate according to DICOM standard. The modalities are connected to the university network mostly through converter stations. The main component of the system is the central server receiving and archiving the DICOM studies from the network. The studies can be presented and processed on the workstations. All stations are connected to the system via NFS or FTP and, in certain cases, via DICOM protocol.


BACKGROUND
Servicemembers injured in combat often experience moderate to severe acute pain. Early and effective pain control in the prehospital setting has been shown to reduce the sequelae of untreated pain. Current data suggest that lack of point-of-injury (POI) analgesia has significant, downstream effects on healthcare quality and associated costs.

METHODS
This was a process improvement project to determine the current rate of adherence to existing prehospital pain management guidelines. The records of patients who had sustained a major injury and met current Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) criteria for POI analgesia from July 2013 through March 2014 were reviewed to determine if pain medication was given in accordance with existing guidelines, including medication administration and routes. On 31 October 2013, the new TCCC guidelines were released. The "before" period was from July 2013 through October 2013. The "after" period was from November 2013 through March 2014.

RESULTS
During the project period, there were 185 records available for review, with 135 meeting TCCC criteria for POI analgesia (68 pre-, 66 postintervention). Prior to 31 October 2013, 17% of study patients received analgesia within guidelines at the POI compared with 35% in the after period. The most common medication administered pre-and post-release was oral transmucosal fentanyl citrate. Special Operations Forces had higher adherence rates to TCCC analgesia guidelines than conventional forces, but these still were low.

CONCLUSION
Less than half of all eligible combat casualties receive any analgesia at the POI. Further research is needed to determine the etiology of such poor adherence to current TCCC guidelines.


Existing research indicates that members of poor and minority groups are less likely than their higher income counterparts to seek help when they experience a civil legal problem. Indeed, roughly three-quarters of the poor do not seek legal help when they experience such problems. Inaction is even more pronounced among poor blacks. This Article uses original empirical data to provide novel explanations for these puzzling and troubling statistics. This study shows, for the first time, a connection between negative past experiences with the criminal justice system and decisions to seek help for civil justice problems. For those familiar with the law, civil and criminal law are separate categories across which experiences do not generalize, any more than a negative experience of subways would lead one to avoid driving. For most respondents, though, the criminal and civil justice systems are one and the same. Injustices they perceive in the criminal system translate into the belief that the legal system as a whole is unjust and should be avoided. Second, the Article shows that past negative experiences with a broad array of public institutions perceived as legal in nature caused respondents to feel lost and ashamed, leading them to avoid interaction with all legal institutions. Third, my data and interviews suggest that respondents helped make sense of these troubling experiences by more generally portraying themselves as self-sufficient citizens who solve their own problems. Seeking help from the legal system might run counter to this self-portrayal. Finally, this Article provides a novel analysis of racial differences in how much citizens use the civil legal system and argues that disparities in trust levels help to explain these differences. The Article concludes by discussing potential policy implications of the findings and identifies key areas for further research.


We discuss the development of a Java toolbox for astronomical time series data. Rather than using methods conventional in astronomy (e.g., power spectrum and cross-correlation analysis) we employ rule discovery techniques commonly used in analyzing stock-market data. By clustering patterns found within the data, rule discovery allows one to build pre- dictive models, allowing one to forecast when a given event might occur or whether the occurrence of one event will trigger a second. We have tested the toolbox and accompanying display tool on datasets (represent- ing several classes of objects) from the RXTE All Sky Monitor. We use these datasets to illustrate the methods and functionality of the toolbox. We also discuss issues that can come up in data analysis as well as the possible future development of the package.


To increase revenue or improve customer service, companies are increasingly personalizing their product or service offerings based on their customers' history of interactions. In this paper, we show how call centers can improve customer service by implementing personalized priority policies. Under personalized priority policies, managers use customer contact history to predict individual-level caller abandonment and redialing behavior and prioritize them based on these predictions to improve operational performance. We provide a framework for how companies can use individual-level customer history data to capture the idiosyncratic preferences and beliefs that impact caller abandonment and redialing behavior and quantify the improvements to operational performance of these policies by applying our framework using caller history data from a real-world call center. We achieve this by formulating a structural model that uses a Bayesian learning framework to capture how callers' past waiting times and abandonment/redialing decisions affect their current abandonment and redialing behavior and use our data to impute the callers' underlying primitives such as their rewards for service, waiting costs, and redialing costs. These primitives allow us to simulate caller behavior under a variety of personalized priority policies and hence, collect relevant operational performance measures. We find that, relative to the first-come, first-served policy, our proposed personalized priority policies have the potential to decrease average waiting times by up to 29% or increase system throughput by reducing the percentage of service requests lost to abandonment by up to 6.3%. This paper was accepted by Vishaul Gaur, operations management.


Enhanced abundances of neutral potassium (K) in the atmosphere of Mercury have been found above the longitude range containing Caloris Basin. Results of a large data set including six elongations of the planet between June 1986 and January 1988 show typical K column abundances of ∼5.4 x 108 K atoms/cm2. During the observing period in October 1987, when Caloris Basin was in view, the typical K column was ∼2.7 x 109 K atoms/cm2. Another large value (2.1 x 109 K atoms/cm2) was seen over the Caloris antipode in January 1988. This enhancement is consistent with an increased source of K from the well-fractured crust and regolith associated with this large impact basin. The phenomenon is localized because at most solar angles, thermal alkali atoms cannot move more than a few hundred kilometers from their source before being lost to ionization by solar ultraviolet radiation.


A personal bio-aerosol sampler is a self-contained, operation flexible, high-efficient device for indoor air quality (IAQ) and health risk exposure monitoring and measurement. Bio-aerosols such germ-laden viruses, microbial species, airborne microorganisms and volatile organic compounds (VOC) are sucked into the sampler and are deposited on the inner wall surface based on cyclone principal. The major concern with bio-aerosol samplers is the collection efficiency. In this study, we use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools to evaluate key design parameters, specifically the inlet tube angle and collection tube inner wall roughness. 3D incompressible turbulent flow is simulated using commercial software ANSYS FLUENT. Reynolds stress model (RSM) is used to investigate the turbulence effect with the following boundary conditions (velocity-inlet boundary condition at inlet, outflow boundary condition at outlet and no slip at walls). The numerical approach for air-aerosol interaction is based on an Eulerian-Lagrangian fluid dynamics framework, where the particles or droplets trajectories are computed in a Lagrangian method (discrete phase element) and then conjugate these particles to the continuous phase in the Eulerian frame. The variation of inlet angle affects the collection efficiency of the cyclone separator. In addition, the flow characterizations with different velocity fluctuation profiles validate the continuous phase model. The development and evolution of the vortex core region for the axial velocity are obtained and evaluated in the simulation of the cyclonic flow.Copyright © 2014 by ASME


Abstract The source area of a large submarine landslide complex has been imaged in the subsurface off Angola using 3D seismic data. The 3D seismic data reveal erosional slide scars, landslide blocks, and debris flows involving > 20 km3 material, affecting an area > 430 km2. The basal and internal structure is imaged in detail showing basal erosion and evidence for at least three phases of landslide failure. Landslide internal structure reveals evidence for seafloor remobilization during the initial phase of submarine landslide failure. Missing strata and downslope-trending striations 15 m deep and 9 km long on the basal sliding surface record the initial failure over an area > 130 km2. The basal striations originate from and extend downslope from a major growth fault trending NW–SE. We speculate that fluid flow or seismicity associated with this growth fault triggered landsliding. The landslide deposit consists of large blocks (~ 1 to > 5 km across and ~ 100 to 150 m thick) which have slid, rotated, and deformed in the landslide within a chaotic debris-flow matrix. A smoother debris-flow morphology extends from the erosional scars and blocks to the SE beyond the boundaries of the survey area. A rough estimate of landslide geometry indicates that the deposit volume is double the volume of erosional slide scars within 5 km of source. The observations from this study are summarized in a process-oriented landslide model. Results provide insight into the triggering, evolution, and runout potential of giant submarine landslides.


We present 3D-MPA, a method for instance segmentation on 3D point clouds. Given an input point cloud, we propose an object-centric approach where each point votes for its object center. We sample object proposals from the predicted object centers. Then, we learn proposal features from grouped point features that voted for the same object center. A graph convolutional network introduces inter-proposal relations, providing higher-level feature learning in addition to the lower-level point features. Each proposal comprises a semantic label, a set of associated points over which we define a foreground-background mask, an objectness score and aggregation features. Previous works usually perform non-maximum-suppression (NMS) over proposals to obtain the final object detections or semantic instances. However, NMS can discard potentially correct predictions. Instead, our approach keeps all proposals and groups them together based on the learned aggregation features. We show that grouping proposals improves over NMS and outperforms previous state-of-the-art methods on the tasks of 3D object detection and semantic instance segmentation on the ScanNetV2 benchmark and the S3DIS dataset.


Abstract : Using relevant best practices from the CMMI (registered) (Capability Maturity Model Integration) for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ) model, this primer defines effective and efficient practices for acquisition projects. These best practices address activities that include monitoring and controlling contractors and suppliers that develop products and services and deliver services. The practices in this primer provide a foundation for acquisition process discipline and rigor that enables product and service development and service delivery to be repeatedly executed for ultimate acquisition success. This primer can be used by projects that acquire products or services in government and nongovernment organizations to improve acquisition processes. Selected content of the CMMI-ACQ model is used in this primer as a basis for helping readers unfamiliar with CMMI to begin their process improvement journey. After using this primer, most organizations will want to implement the CMMI-ACQ model. This primer can also be used by acquisition organizations that manage several related acquisition projects (e.g., product centers, acquisition commands) to establish an acquisition process improvement program. However, organizations at that level should consider using the CMMI-ACQ model instead because it includes organizational process management practices.


Recently performed Silicon based Ball Lightning experiments done by two different laboratories have both produced rest products in the form of Silicon globules, both with unusual complex internal and external structures. These Silicon globule structures show strong differences with normal Silicon matter, which was reason to compare these complexities in detail and make suggestions for future research. One of the clear phenomena is, that all globules show internal traces of evaporating tunnelling energy bullets, which according to Quantum FFF theory is supposed to be a first sign of Quantum Knots in the form of micro-black holes or Ball Lightning. According to Quantum FFF Theory, Black holes are the origin of so called universal dark matter phenomena. As a consequence the tunnelling energy bullets are also a first sign of microscopic Dark Matter in the Lab.


Expanding the Contribution of Early Warning to Climate-Resilient Agricultural Development in Africa Summary Extreme climate events can undermine agricultural and rural development progress. Even in years when extreme events do not occur, the uncertainty that results from climate-related risk is an impediment to sustainable intensification of agriculture and adoption of climate-smart agricultural production practices. Systems that provide early warning of climate extremes can reduce the adverse impacts of such events – if they are embedded in effective communication and linked to decisionmaking processes. However, there is general consensus that early warning systems are not meeting their current potential to provide decision-makers with timely information in a format that enables action. Recent failures to respond effectively to slow-onset extreme climate events – particularly drought – have generally been attributed to failures in decision-making rather than failures in early warning. Therefore any investment in developing or improving early warning systems should be coupled with investment in improving communication and decision-making processes to maximize the benefit of early warning. In order to increase response, early warning systems must also tailor information for a broader set of actors ranging from global to community level. Many institutions create early warning systems for their own operational purposes or share warnings broadly without regular feedback from stakeholders. Making appropriate early warning information available to decisionmakers at a more local level can allow earlier, better targeted mitigation action that may reduce longterm impacts of climate shocks on livelihoods, and reduce the need for emergency assistance later. Such an approach would require increased capacity at local levels and regular feedback to assure that the information provided is keeping pace with local dynamics.


South Africa is one of the countries most affected by HIV/AIDS, and the impact on children living in affected households and communities is significant. The loss of a parent or caregiver due to an AIDS related illness has left many children orphaned. Understandings of bereavement particularly amongst African adolescents and adults' responses to orphans' psychological and emotional difficulties, remains underdeveloped. This paper explored adolescents' experiences of parental AIDS related illness and bereavement. Ten adolescents participated in this study. Qualitative methods such as observation, individual interviews and a focus group were the means of data collection. Key findings of the study were that: adolescents were profoundly affected by the death of their parents with some showing signs of great anxiety in relation to their future; were in need of emotional and material support; and were affected by the intense stigma associated with HIV/AIDS which resulted in secrecy and shame. This study suggests that if we listen to the voices of children, we will learn about their emotional, psychological, developmental, and behavioural needs, which in turn will inform interventions working with vulnerable and orphaned children.


Put the authority of Goodman & Gilman's in the palm of your hand! 5 STAR DOODY'S REVIEW! "...the most authoritative and trusted source of pharmacological information, has now spawned a portable pocket drug guide...This manual extracts the essential core drug information from the eleventh edition of the parent book, referring the reader to the online version of the parent book for historical aspects, many chemical and clinical details, and additional figures and references. This makes G & G a very useful book. This will be of use to individuals in training or practice in the fields of pharmacy, medicine, nursing, or allied health disciplines where knowledge of drug actions are important...Each chapter provides the core essential information provided in the parent book in a very readable format. Readers can use this easy to handle and read manual for essential information along with the online version of the parent book as a reference for more in-depth specific information on drugs." --Doody's Review Service The Goodman & Gilman Manual of Pharmacology and Therapeutics offers the renowned content of Goodman & Gilman's Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, Eleventh Edition, condensed into an ultra-handy, streamlined reference. More than just a pocket drug guide, this indispensable resource offers: A carry-along source of essential fundamental information, with all the authority of Goodman & Gilman's Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, Eleventh Edition The benefits of the world's leading pharmacology text in a convenient, portable format Comprehensive, yet streamlined and clinically relevant coverage of the pharmacological basis of therapeutics High-yield overview of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and the foundations of pharmacology Expert insights into the properties, mechanisms, and uses of all the major drug classes Considerations of vital patient-specific issues


Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), now known to be caused by a coronavirus, probably originated in Guangdong province in southern China in late 2002. The first major outbreak occurred in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, between January and March 2003. This study reviews the clinical presentation, laboratory findings and response to four different treatment protocols. Case notes and laboratory findings were analysed and outcome measures were collected prospectively. The SARS outbreak in Guangdong province and the outbreak in Guangzhou associated with hospitals in the city are described, documenting clinical and laboratory features in a cohort of 190 patients randomly allocated to four treatment regimens. Patients were infected by close contact in either family or health-care settings, particularly following procedures likely to generate aerosols of respiratory secretions (e.g. administration of nebulized drugs and bronchoscopy). The earliest symptom was a high fever followed, in most patients, by dyspnoea, cough and myalgia, with 24 % of patients complaining of diarrhoea. The most frequent chest X-ray changes were patchy consolidation with progression to bilateral bronchopneumonia over 5-10 days. Thirty-six cases developed adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), of whom 11 died. There was no response to antibiotics. The best response (no deaths) was seen in the group of 60 patients receiving early high-dose steroids and nasal CPAP (continuous airway positive pressure) ventilation; the other three treatment groups had significant mortality. Cross-infection to medical and nursing staff was completely prevented in one hospital by rigid adherence to barrier precautions during contact with infected patients. The use of rapid case identification and quarantine has controlled the outbreak in Guangzhou, in which more than 350 patients have been infected. Early administration of high-dose steroids and CPAP ventilation appears to offer the best supportive treatment with a reduced mortality compared with other treatment regimens.


The academic literature relating to the political issues of information systems is fairly well established. However, there are relatively few empirical studies relating to the political issues associated with the organisational implementation of package software. The aim of this paper is to offer a modest contribution via case study research with an analysis of a packaged software implementation at an organisation based in the United Kingdom. The study raises issues that support and question some of the notions inherent in many political theories relating to information systems. The study also highlights the multifarious and complex nature of politics in the development of packaged software implementation.


Future advances in technology may allow home-based robots to perform complex collaborative activities with individuals of different ages. Two studies were conducted to understand the expectations of and attitudes toward home-based robots by younger and older adults. One study involved questionnaires sent to 2500 younger adults (aged 18-28) and 2500 older adults (aged 65-86) in the Atlanta Metropolitan area. One hundred and eighty questionnaires were completed and returned by individuals in the targeted age groups. For the questionnaire, participants were asked to imagine a robot in their home and then to answer questions about how well characteristics matched their imagined robot. Participants' technology and robot experience, demographic information, and health information were also collected. In conjunction with the questionnaire study, twelve younger adults (aged 19-26) and twenty-four older adults in two sub-age groups (younger-older, aged 65-75, and older-older aged 77-85) were interviewed about their expectations of and attitudes toward a robot in their home. They were asked to imagine a robot in their home and answer numerous questions about the tasks their envisioned robot would perform, the appearance of the robot, and other general questions about their interaction with the robot. The results of the studies suggest that individuals have many different ideas about what a robot in the home would be like. Mostly, they want a robot to perform mundane or repetitive tasks, such as cleaning, and picture a robot as a time-saving device. However, individuals are willing to have a robot perform other types of tasks, if they see benefits of having the robot perform those tasks. The ability of the robot to perform tasks efficiently, with minimal effort on the part of the human, appears to be more important in determining acceptance of the robot than its social ability or appearance. Overall, individuals both younger and older seem to be very open to the idea of a robot in their home...as long it is useful and not too difficult to use.


There is great interest in using expired platelet concentrates for producing human platelet lysates (hPLs) for cell therapy procedures and, potentially, regenerative medicine. The scientific rationale lies in the richness of platelets in growth factors and cytokines and other cell growth‐promoting biomolecules. The main use of hPL is to replace fetal bovine serum (FBS) for cell therapy protocols for clinical‐grade xeno‐free nutritional supplementation of propagation media. To improve consistency, hPLs may be currently manufactured by pooling the lysates from approximately 16 to 50 frozen platelet concentrates, depending upon jurisdiction. hPL is used as growth medium supplement to expand primary mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) from different tissues, as well as various differentiated primary cells. hPLs avoid immunological and zoonotic infectious risks linked to FBS, exhibit potent capacity at expanding cells, shortening the cell population doubling time while maintaining cell physiological, biochemical and functional properties, and, for MSCs, capacity to differentiate. Nonexpired autologous or allogeneic platelet‐derived biomaterials are used in regenerative medicine to enhance the healing and repair of damaged or injured tissues. However, the variability in these products does not generally allow to draw evidence‐based conclusions, and recommendations on best clinical practices remain needed. Future trends may include the development of large‐scale virally inactivated hPLs manufactured following controlled conditions meeting specifications tailored‐made for dedicated clinical applications. In conclusion, there is a scientific rationale for making optimal use of expired platelets to produce standardized growth factor preparations for both cell therapy procedures and dedicated regenerative medicine applications.


Patients with severe burns complicated by joint involvement and exposure of noble structures require immediate local cover, which can be achieved using a variety of surgical procedures. Local flaps are the first choice due to the simplicity of their preparation and the resulting acceptable cover. However, the tissue adjacent to the burned area is often of low quality as a consequence of local changes that mainly affect blood circulation. When local flaps cannot be used, distant and/or microsurgical flaps can be applied. However, distant flaps generally require reconstructions performed in separate surgical procedures, which can prolong bed rest and immobilization of the patient. For more than 3 decades, microsurgery has been used to repair significant tissue losses in a single surgical procedure. This technique enabled the use of tissue transplantation for the repair of burn sequelae. Often in association with other established surgeries, such as skin graft or tissue expansion, these procedures provide better functional and aesthetic results. In the present study, aspects of this therapeutic strategy, as well as the indications, contraindications, and technical details of tissue transplantation are discussed.


Spinal codes are a new class of rateless codes that enable wireless networks to cope with time-varying channel conditions in a natural way, without requiring any explicit bit rate selection. The key idea in the code is the sequential application of a pseudo-random hash function to the message bits to produce a sequence of coded symbols for transmission. This encoding ensures that two input messages that differ in even one bit lead to very different coded sequences after the point at which they differ, providing good resilience to noise and bit errors. To decode spinal codes, this paper develops an approximate maximum-likelihood decoder, called the bubble decoder, which runs in time polynomial in the message size and achieves the Shannon capacity over both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and binary symmetric channel (BSC) models. Experimental results obtained from a software implementation of a linear-time decoder show that spinal codes achieve higher throughput than fixed-rate LDPC codes, rateless Raptor codes, and the layered rateless coding approach of Strider, across a range of channel conditions and message sizes. An early hardware prototype that can decode at 10 Mbits/s in FPGA demonstrates that spinal codes are a practical construction.


eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. Abstract: This paper presents an overview of a two-year study funded by the Andrew W. Mellon and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundations that (1) mapped the universe of digital resources available to undergraduate educators in the humanities and social sciences (H/SS) and (2) examined how a better understanding of the variation in use and users can benefit the integration of these resources into undergraduate teaching. In order to address questions around user demand and resource sustainability, we used a variety of methodologies that included an extensive literature review; discussions with and surveys of faculty from different disciplines and institutions; and discussions and interviews with site owners, use researchers, librarians, and educational technology professionals. Our results suggest that faculty use a vast array of online materials from both educational and "non-educational" sources, including their own personal collections and the ubiquitous Google-type search. Individual characteristics, including disciplinary and institutional affiliation, affected patterns of use. Many faculty, however, do not use digital resources for a host of reasons including the lack of direct relevance to their preferred pedagogical approaches and insufficient time and classroom resources. Our discussions with digital resource providers confirmed that resources created by higher education institutions will continue to proliferate despite a lack of formal knowledge about users and/or clear models for financial sustainability. A more precise understanding of the diversity of use and user behavior, and the ability to share findings from user studies, will demand that the digital resource development community make typologies, standards of data and data collection, and results more transparent. ABSTRACT This paper presents an overview of a two-year study funded by the Andrew W. Mellon and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundations that (1) mapped the universe of digital resources available to undergraduate educators in the humanities and social sciences (H/SS) and (2) examined how a better understanding of the variation in use and users can benefit the integration of these resources into undergraduate teaching. In order to address questions around user demand and resource sustainability, we used a variety of methodologies that included an extensive literature review; discussions with and surveys of faculty from different disciplines and institutions; and discussions and interviews with site owners, use researchers, librarians, and educational technology professionals. Our results suggest that faculty use a vast array of online materials from both educational and "non-educational" sources, including their own personal collections and the ubiquitous Google-type search. Individual characteristics, including disciplinary and institutional affiliation, affected patterns of use. Many faculty, however, do not use digital resources for a host of reasons including the lack of direct relevance to their preferred pedagogical approaches and insufficient time and classroom resources. Our discussions with digital resource providers confirmed that resources created by higher education institutions will continue to proliferate despite a lack of formal knowledge about users and/or clear models for financial sustainability. A more precise understanding of the diversity of use and user behavior, and the ability to share findings from user studies, will demand that the digital resource development community make typologies, standards of data and data collection, and results more transparent.*


Potassium was identified as a shortfall nutrient by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 Advisory Committee. The committee concluded that there was a moderate body of evidence of the association between potassium intake and blood pressure reduction in adults, which in turn influences the risk of stroke and coronary heart disease. Evidence is also accumulating of the protective effect of adequate dietary potassium on age-related bone loss and reduction of kidney stones. These benefits depend on organic anions associated with potassium as occurs in foods such as fruits and vegetables, in contrast to similar blood pressure-lowering benefits of potassium chloride. Benefits to blood pressure and bone health may occur at levels below current recommendations for potassium intake, especially from diet, but dose-response trials are needed to confirm this. Nevertheless, intakes considerably above current levels are needed for optimal health, and studies evaluating small increases in fruit and vegetable intake on bone and heart outcomes for short periods have had disappointing results. In modern societies, Western diets have led to a decrease in potassium intake with reduced consumption of fruits and vegetables with a concomitant increase in sodium consumption through increased consumption of processed foods. Consumption of white vegetables is associated with decreased risk of stroke, possibly related to their high potassium content. Potatoes are the highest source of dietary potassium, but the addition of salt should be limited. Low potassium-to-sodium intake ratios are more strongly related to cardiovascular disease risk than either nutrient alone. This relationship deserves further attention for multiple target tissue endpoints.


We describe 3-dimensional Monte Carlo modelling of HL Tau in the near infrared with aligned non-spherical grains. JHK linear polarimetry with 0.4-0.6 arcsec resolution from Subaru and UKIRT is fitted in detail, providing information about the structure of the system, the grain properties and perhaps also the magnetic field. Circular polarisation models are also presented, showing how near infrared circular polarimetry will provide the key to measuring magnetic field structure in protostars on the scale of the solar system, provided that circular polarimeters become available. This is illustrated with recently obtained circular polarimetry of the intermediate mass YSO HH135.


This essay, after highlighting the unique aspects of financial markets, offers a mostly rational account for financial crises, centering on the 2008 crisis as an example. Market participants may overestimate the duration of high productivity growth due to new technologies and produce occasional — and likely unavoidable — bubbles. Considering potential changes in the regulation of financial markets, the conclusion is grim. Regulators have exhausted the effective legal levers against overestimations of continued high growth. The legislative responses to the last few crises were unproductive and pro-cyclical whereas public finance needs a counter-cyclical approach, souring euphorias and enthusing out of slumps. A meaningful improvement would be the constitutional movement of financial legislative authority to a body with the independence to be counter-cyclical.


Much like the parade of claimants for the hand of Penelope in Homerrsquo;s Odyssey, the theoretical humanities have been presented with a string of would-be maicirc;tres agrave; pensers, each bringing with them claims of radical originality, and the promise of hope for the disciplines in question. Not only is the philosophy of Alain Badiou among the very few who have serious justifications to the claim of originality, the rigour, scope and goals of his philosophy reveal him as the first thinker in a long time to have thenbsp; resources necessary to engage with the ailments of theoretical discourse in the contemporary environment of global capitalism, and the steady dismantling of the traditional infrastructure of the human sciences and philosophy. This article provides an outline of the key positions espoused in Badiou#39;s key work Being and Event, and an assessment of its contemporary import.


On the 14 August 2003, a complex combination of immediate events and longer term vulnerabilities led to a domino effect in which 50 million people had their power supplies interrupted. Consequent losses were between $5–$10 billion. It is, therefore, one of the most serious disruptions to a national power distribution network. The causes included technical issues to do with network capacity and the algorithms used to predict potential distribution problems. It also had managerial and human factors causes; these arguably included an over-reliance on automated monitoring systems. The infrastructure failure also stemmed from governmental and regulatory intervention in the operation of the energy markets. The following paper applies accident investigation techniques to represent and reason about the complex interactions between these causes. In particular, we use Violation and Vulnerability (V2) diagrams to map out arguments for and against market deregulation as a causal factor in engineering failures.


The context of sociological research on disaster is discussed by the various settings in which the research tradition has developed. In addition, both funders and users of that research are identified. It is suggested that the most important policy use of disaster research has been to change the conceptualization of disaster. While no specific study can be directly tied to particular policy changes, the overall research tradition has had a transforming effect. That transformation is, of course, more obvious in some societies than in others. In the future, it is suggested that increased attention will be given to disaster preparedness and planning because of more and worse disasters. This means that social science research will continue to thrive because of its potential utility in problem solving. However, future research will be increasingly cast in interdisciplinary terms. Given the reluctance to support basic research, the relationship between applied research and the core disciplines will be come more problematic.


Disks of as-extruded Mg-4Nd alloy were processed by high-pressure torsion (HPT) through ¼ to 5 turns at room temperature. The first 1/4 turn of HPT induces large numbers of twins and some dislocation tangles in the center region of the disk. With increase of torsional straining, the twinning is inhibited gradually and the dislocation density increases relating to the formation of dislocation substructures and ultimately transforming to high fractions of equiaxed gains which have an average grain size of ~200 nm and high-angle boundaries. HPT significantly improves the values of microhardness of this alloy. The hardness values in both the central and edge regions show a sharp rise after HPT for 1/4 turn and exhibit nearly saturation after 1/2 turn although there is a trend of a slight increase with increasing numbers of turns. The experimental results suggest more homogeneous microstructures may be produced by larger numbers of turns in the HPT process.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a personal viewpoint on the development of document supply in the context of the recent European Union (EU) decisions on open science.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper provides some elements to the usual questions of service development, about business, customers, added value, environment and objectives.

Findings
The EU goal for open science is 100 per cent available research results in 2020. To meet the challenge, document supply must change, include more and other content, serve different targets groups, apply innovative technology and provide knowledge. If not, document supply will become a marginalized library service.

Originality/value
Basically, open science is not library-friendly, and it does not offer a solution for the actual problems of document supply. But it may provide an opportunity for document supply to become a modern service able to deal with new forms of unequal access and digital divide.


Students in creative disciplines, such as those studying Art, Design or Architecture at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA), are required within their programmes to balance a combination of academic, information and digital literacies. The unique demands of composite modes of study - studio based learning as well as online and more traditional tutor-led scenarios – requires students to develop confidence in the underpinning principles common to all three literacy areas: adaptability, critical application, collaboration and solution-focused, creative use of educational technologies.

For Gillen and Barton (2011), digital literacies refer to 'constantly changing practices through which people make traceable meanings using digital technologies' (p. 9). Such meaning-making is key within creative education in encouraging expression, reflection, autonomy and lateral sense making. As such, embracing digital technologies as part of the holistic learning experience enables students to research, develop and articulate ideas in a variety of innovative multimedia formats.

However, students' use of technology in learning and teaching may not necessarily match existing confidence and competencies of everyday, personal use. As increasing criticism of reductionist concepts such as Generation Y (Manuel 2002) and Digital Natives (Prensky 2001) attest, assumptions are often made on the part of the institution as to students' use of technology and the perceived ease of transferring principles from the personal domain to the academic. Reaction to the Digital Natives debate now posits it as over-simplistic (Luckin et al 2009), and as harbouring potential for the interpretation of students' digital literacies to be stronger than they actually are (JISC 2009). As with both academic and information literacies, expectations of applying digital literacies within academic programmes must be made clear to students, both on joining their programme and as requirements change throughout each academic transition.


This case study first describes and assesses co-management governance arrangements for Booderee National Park on the south-east coast of Australia. It then goes on to set this examination in the broader context of a range of other types of protected area co-management governance arrangements in the country. Comanagement of Booderee National Park raises and reflects issues from the ongoing development of comanaged protected areas in Australia. The co-management arrangements for Booderee exempt Aboriginal management and use from a range of regulatory provisions, but this is not considered to pose any threats to the successful maintenance of biodiversity. The arrangements also facilitate development interests of the local Aboriginal community. However, there continue to be unmet aspirations of local Aboriginal people. More generally, the survey of the various co-management arrangements in place in Australia shows that land tenure factors have a vital influence on the nature of arrangements negotiated between governments and Indigenous communities. Arrangements negotiated in situations where a government will only hand land back to Aboriginal people on condition that it is in turn leased back to the government to be managed as a protected area, as with Booderee National Park, are contrasted with situations where a government must come cap in hand to established Aboriginal landowners in order to establish an Indigenous Protected Area. Disciplines Life Sciences | Physical Sciences and Mathematics | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details D. Farrier and M. Adams, 2011, Indigenous – Government Co-Management of Protected Areas: Booderee National Park and the National Framework in Australia, in B. Lausche, Guidelines for Protected Area Legislation, pp 1-40 'Special Protected Area Types' IUCN, Gland, Switzerland. This journal article is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/scipapers/1008


The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of the Primary Movement programme on the fine motor skills of children in an early years setting in an area of high social disadvantage. Primary Movement is a programme which can be used as an early intervention technique to help children inhibit persistent primary reflexes that have been shown to adversely affect motor and cognitive development. Previous research has found that the programme can have significant effects in increasing the motor and academic attainments of children, aged 8–11 years. A repeated measures design was used to evaluate the impact of the Primary Movement intervention, in comparison to a control intervention, on the fine motor skills of 65 Reception children, aged four to five years. The results from this study provide evidence that the Primary Movement programme had a significant effect on improving the fine motor skills of the children. This research provides further evidence to support the use of the programme within the Early Years curriculum.


Dwight David Eisenhower proudly claimed that he "came from the very heart of America." Yet it could be argued that, despite those provincial beginnings, no other American exerted more influence on world history during the twentieth century. From his humble birth in Abilene, Kansas, Eisenhower rose to the supreme command of the Allied armies that helped destroy Adolf Hitler's Nazi war machine and to the presidency of the United States. Douglas Kinnard's profile of this great soldier-statesman describes his rise through the ranks of the peacetime army of the 1920s and 1930s the recognition of his abilities by such leaders as Douglas MacArthur and George C. Marshall, his "great crusade" in Europe during World War II, and his two terms in the Oval Office. Kinnard's penetrating look at this great military leader and commander in chief serves as an introduction to Eisenhower's life and provides a concise account of the momentous military and political events of the first half of the twentieth century.


I. TAKINGS A GENERATION LATER It is my very great pleasure to write a short response to these presentations given at the conference held in connection with the decision of the faculty of the William & Mary School of Law to designate me as the recipient of the second Brigham-Kanner prize. I am especially grateful that the prize was awarded for my book Takings,1 which seems after twenty years to have weathered at least some of the scathing criticisms sent in its direction on the occasion of its publication.2 Before commenting briefly on the three papers in this symposium, let me express my continued puzzlement as to why the book has attracted such fierce criticism. The obvious reason is that my extended analysis of the Takings Clause ended with the "modest" conclusion that the vast redistributive programs of the New Deal were in fact unconstitutional if the Takings Clause was given its proper interpretation, one that properly combined its specific language with its larger intellectual structure.3 Everyone knows that the clause itself says, "[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."4 As Eric Claeys points out, an aggressive reading of this clause cannot be blithely dismissed as suffering from the oxymoronic features of substantive due process.5 Clearly, the text of the clause contains no internal contradiction. The key interpretive question asks what weight should be given to each of its constituent terms. To start with the first key term, private property is one of our most comprehensive social institutions, so it seems odd to give it a narrow construction that bears scant resemblance to the term "private property" as it is used in the private law. Land and chattels are obviously part of the overall picture. And more importantly all interests in land - leases, mortgages, life estates, reversions - are part of it as well. When John Locke wrote that property embraced our "Lives, Liberties and Estates,"6 he gave private property a broader definition than the standard account, by including the personal freedoms that in practice seem to be better located in the constitutional protections for speech, contract and religion. But even if these interests are excised, the Takings Clause still covers a lot of turf, and it is not a sensible construction of the phrase to try to limit it to, for example, the protection of the right to exclude only when the conception from Roman times forward has always included the rights of use and disposition as well.7 So perhaps then we could narrow the meaning of the clause by putting tough emphasis on the term "taken" which could be limited only to the outright physical dispossession of property. But it would be odd in the extreme to hold that the state has not taken property when it strips a mortgagee of his lien, when it denies the holder of a future interest the right to enter his land on the termination of a life estate, when it prohibits the holder of a patent from practicing his art, or when it requires the owner of a trade secret to share it with the rest of the world. Clearly a sensible reading has to accept that the meaning of the term "private property" covers liens, future interests, and intangible forms of property. The full range of private law interests are implicated by the clause, and any removal of rights from the standard bundle of rights - a phrase which will be addressed more later - subjects the government action to examination under the Takings Clause. Thus if a party lets a friend into his house for a day, and that person refuses to leave when the invitation has expired, it is just word play to insist that property has not been taken because the entrance was lawful even though the tenant's holdover was not. Yet the constant effort to situate rent control statutes outside the law of takings rests on the odd conceit that the holdover tenant has not displaced the original owner.8 The clause's coverage, moreover, does not stop with this individual taking. …


Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) is characterized by dysregulated beta-and alpha-cell hormone secretion leading to elevated blood glucose levels. Several proteins are crucial in maintaining exocytosis of the hormone-containing granules such as Syntaxin1A (Stx1A), SNAP25, Munc-18 (Stxbp1) and the family of Synaptotagmins (Syts). The aim of this thesis has been to investigate functional and genetic events that participate in the exocytotic process.

First we show that SNAP25 is essential for cAMP-dependent rapid exocytosis in insulin-secreting cells, and that the effect may be mediated by binding to cAMP-GEFII (paper I). In mouse alpha-cells, SNAP25 and Stx1A display a glucose-dependent localization where immunoneutralization of SNAP25 and Stx1A strongly reduce the exocytotic response (paper II). In paper III, the mRNA expression levels of 23 genes with known function in exocytosis was compared in human beta-cells from non-diabetic (ND) and T2D donors which revealed that STX1A, SYT4, SYT7, SYT11 and SYT13 is nominally down-regulated in T2D beta-cells and concomitantly correlate positively with glucose stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) and negatively with HbA1c levels. Furthermore, silencing of Syt4, Syt7 and Syt13 in INS1-832/13 cells correlate with reduced levels of GSIS. In paper IV exocytosis in human beta-cells was studied to generate a risk score consisting of 4 SNPs in or near TCF7L2, KCNJ11, ADRA2A and KCNQ1 that successfully predict reduced exocytosis, calcium-sensitivity, granular docking and GSIS. Finally, in paper V, knock-down of rno-microRNA-335 in insulin-secreting cells was found to increase Stxbp1 expression which correlates with increased exocytosis.

Within the scope of this thesis we establish that exocytosis is an important part of glucose homeostasis and that a broad range of factors can influence the exocytotic outcome. In this context, regulation of exocytosis span from the transcription of DNA, translation, transport and function of exocytotic proteins as well as their intricate interactions with one another. All while maintaining the correct cues in response to increased levels of intracellular calcium either amplified by second messengers or triggered by glucose-stimulated coupling. Taken together, extensive research on the molecular mechanisms participating in hormone exocytosis may well contribute to future treatment of the reduced insulin secretion apparent in T2D.


Preliminary results investigating the microstructure, bonding and effect of beryllium oxide formation on retention in the JET ITER-like wall beryllium tiles, are presented. The tiles have been investigated by several techniques: Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) equipped with Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX), Transmission Electron microscopy (TEM) equipped with EDX and Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (EELS), Raman Spectroscopy and Thermal Desorption Spectroscopy (TDS). This paper focuses on results from melted materials of the dump plate tiles in JET. From our results and the literature, it is concluded, beryllium can form micron deep oxide islands contrary to the nanometric oxides predicted under vacuum conditions. The deepest oxides analyzed were up to 2-micron thicknesses. The beryllium Deuteroxide (BeO x D y ) bond was found with Raman Spectroscopy. Application of EELS confirmed the oxide presence and stoichiometry. Literature suggests these oxides form at temperatures greater than 700°C where self-diffusion of beryllium ions through the surface oxide layer can occur. Further oxidation is made possible between oxygen plasma impurities and the beryllium ions now present at the wall surface. Under Ultra High Vacuum (UHV) nanometric Beryllium oxide layers are formed and passivate at room temperature. After continual cyclic heating (to the point of melt formation) in the presence of oxygen impurities from the plasma, oxide growth to the levels seen experimentally (approximately two microns) is proposed. This retention mechanism is not considered to contribute dramatically to overall retention in JET, due to low levels of melt formation. However, this mechanism, thought the result of operation environment and melt formation, could be of wider concern to ITER, dependent on wall temperatures.


This essay argues that Virginia Woolf's personal publishing venture, the Hogarth Press, both prefigured and influenced her later vision of a feminist, transnational Outsiders' Society, a proposal that she outlined in the 1938 text Three Guineas. Woolf imagined an Outsiders' Society with neither meetings nor leaders that pieced together a multiplicity of private actions to exert political influence. The Hogarth Press, however, was already a material incarnation of this strategy as its translations, feminist works, political pamphlets, and political fiction challenged both the male-dominated British canon and the nationalistic patriarchy that Woolf deplored in Three Guineas.


1. Connectivity between coastal habitats and mid-shelf and offshore coral reefs is a topical issue in the conservation and management of fishes and coastal ecosystems.

2. Coastal habitats provide a range of ecosystem functions for sharks and rays and the use of coastal ecosystems by these species affects conservation and management outcomes. There is a growing need to better understand movement and habitat use patterns given recorded declines of many shark and ray species around the world.

3. This study presents evidence of connectivity of blacktip reef sharks between coastal and offshore habitats, with juveniles dispersing from natal grounds at the onset of maturity and moving to new locations including offshore coral reefs.

4. These dispersal patterns differ from previous accounts of reef shark movements and provide new evidence of connectivity among coastal habitats and offshore coral reefs.

5. These large-scale movements may help to maintain genetic diversity of populations, and could increase the resilience of blacktip reef shark populations to localized pressures. These movement and connectivity patterns also illustrate the potential importance of coastal habitats to reef shark conservation.