The Swedish health care system does not offer care on equal terms for all its end-users. Discrimination toward patients can take the form substandard communication toward women or foreign born patients. Discrimination is also embedded in the organizational context. Health care is under pressure to increase efficiency and quality of care at the same time. There is a risk that demands for equality will be pushed aside. This thesis aims to contribute to our understanding of how discrimination is expressed in interpersonal- and organizational communication within health care, and highlight educational implications for health care practices. This thesis is comprised of three empirical studies and one conceptual study. In the first study, critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used to categorize gender patterns in communication between health care workers and patients, and finds that both patients and health care workers reproduced the gender order. Open questions created a setting less prone to be limited by gender stereotypes. In the second study, CDA is used and complemented with Linell's dialogic perspective in order to explore whether patients who were native speakers of Swedish were constructed differently than those who were not, in patient-physician consultations. Findings indicated that the non-native speakers actually were model, participative patients according to patient-centered care. Notwithstanding this they were met by argumentation, whereas the more amenable native patients were met by accommodating responses. In the third study, qualitative content analysis is used to analyze how health care workers talked about patients in their absence. The results revealed that communication about patients who were perceived as not acting according to socially accepted gender norms contained negative and disparaging statements. The final study focused on Clinical Microsystems, a New Public Management-based model for multi-professional collaboration and improvement of health care delivery. Drawing on theories of New Public Management, gender, and organizational control, this study argues that the construction of innovative and flexible health care workers risks reproducing the gender order. The thesis concludes that gender and ethnic stereotypes are reproduced in health care communication, and that an efficiency-inspired organizational and institutional discourse may be an impediment to equal care. This calls for focus on learning about communication for prospective and existing health care workers in a multicultural health care context.


Robust and reliable development of stent designs and materials is an important aspect for medical device manufacturing in relation to procedures such as Transcatheter Aortic-Valve Implantation. It is essential to perform a variety of experiments at an early stage of this process to define suitable material requirements and stent geometry. Mechanical simulation of realistic use case scenarios is a cost and time effective approach to optimize this task. In silico experiments can assist the device development phase and successively support patient-specific procedure planning. To establish confidence in the predictive power of in silico models and the corresponding simulation results, we therefore present a validation framework for stenting simulations. Our workflow allows the comparison of finite element analysis with actual mechanical response tests using optical tracking of stent deformation in artificial vessel phantom models. The results indicate that stent and vessel deformation can be analysed and validated across well-defined tissue properties within the presented framework.


Twenty-three illustrated gothic tales from the dark corridors of the imagination of Tim Burton. Burton - the creative genius behind Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks! and Nightmare Before Chistmas, among others - now gives birth to a cast of gruesomely sympathetic children: misunderstood outcasts who struggle to find love and belonging in their cruel, cruel worlds. His lovingly lurid illustrations evoke both the sweetness and tragedy of these hopeful, yet hapless beings.


BACKGROUND
In people, hypercortisolism (HC) has been associated with acalculous cholecystitis and biliary dyskinesia, which may potentiate ascending biliary infections. In dogs, an association between HC and gallbladder disease recently has been documented, although the role of bacteria remains controversial. Furthermore, there is no information on the gallbladder bile microbial flora in healthy dogs.

OBJECTIVES
To investigate the microbial flora in gallbladder bile in healthy dogs, the relationship between iatrogenic hyperadrenocorticism and bactibilia and possible changes in biliary microbial flora after cortisol withdrawal in dogs.

ANIMALS
Six control dogs and 6 dogs treated with hydrocortisone.

METHODS
Gallbladder bile obtained by percutaneous ultrasound-guided cholecystocentesis was cultured aerobically and anaerobically and examined cytologically before (d0), during (d28, d56, d84), and after (d28p, d56p, d84p) administration of hydrocortisone (8 mg/kg PO q12h).

RESULTS
In the control group, 2/42 bile cultures yielded bacterial growth (Enterococcus sp.; Escherichia coli on d0) and 1/42 bile smears had cytological evidence of bacteria (d28). In the HC group, 2/42 bile cultures yielded bacterial growth (Enterococcus sp. on d28; Bacillus sp. on d28p) and 3/42 bile smears had cytological evidence of bacteria (d84, d84, d28p). All dogs remained healthy throughout the study period (168d).

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE
Based on the results of conventional bacterial culture techniques, gallbladder bile of healthy dogs periodically may harbor bacteria, which do not appear to be clinically relevant. A 3-month period of iatrogenic HC was not associated with bactibilia. A higher prevalence of bactibilia may be detected with micromolecular techniques.


This paper shows that the German labor market is more volatile than the US labor market. Specifically, the volatility of the cyclical component of several labor market variables (e.g., the job-finding rate, labor market tightness, and job vacancies) divided by the volatility of labor productivity is roughly twice as large as in the United States. We derive and simulate a simple dynamic labor market model with heterogeneous worker productivity. This model is able to explain the higher German labor market volatilities by a longer expected job duration.


Background: Anti‐tumor necrosis factor (TNF) medications have similar efficacy in Crohn's disease (CD), but have not been compared in the real world. This study compared health costs and utilization for patients with CD newly initiating anti‐TNF therapy with adalimumab (ADA) or infliximab (IFX) by using insurance data. Methods: CD patients initiating ADA or IFX therapy were identified from the MarketScan database. ADA and IFX groups were matched using a propensity score. The primary endpoint was direct costs of healthcare for the 6 months following initiation. The secondary endpoints compared healthcare utilization between groups. Results: After propensity matching, characteristics were similar between the ADA (n = 623) and IFX (n = 623) groups. During the 6‐month interval following anti‐TNF initiation, healthcare costs were significantly lower for ADA compared with IFX. Total healthcare cost was $18,885 for ADA and $24,355 for IFX, a difference in cost of $5,470 (P < 0.0001). CD‐related costs made up the majority of the costs: $16,454 for ADA and $22,316 for IFX (P < 0.0001). The largest difference in cost was seen in outpatient visits: $2,082 difference between the two groups (P < 0.0001). Both all‐cause and CD‐related hospitalization decreased for both ADA and IFX groups. Emergency room and hospitalization use in the 6‐month follow‐up period was not statistically different between groups, although numerically slightly higher in the IFX group. Conclusions: Patients with CD using ADA had lower healthcare costs than patients using IFX; this difference was partly driven by outpatient medical costs. (Inflamm Bowel Dis 2012;)


Simultaneous in situ measurements of NO, NOy, HNO3, CO, CO2, O-3, and aerosols were performed in the midlatitude upper troposphere (UT) and lower stratosphere during the Stratosphere-Troposphere Experiment by Aircraft Measurements (STREAM) 1998 summer campaign. The campaign focused on the region around Timmins in the Canadian province of Ontario (79.3 degreesW, 48.2 degreesN), close to the polar jet stream that rapidly transports trace species across the Atlantic Ocean. This paper focuses on the origin of total reactive nitrogen (NOy) in the UT, as our measurements show strong variations, which reflect large local sources. In situ production by lightning, stratospheric downdraft, aircraft emissions, and upward transport of polluted boundary layer air are discussed in two case studies as potential contributors. We use correlations among NO, NOy and CO to distinguish between transport from the boundary layer and in situ formations. Lightning production of NOx is found to be a strong contributor to the budget of NOy during high NOy episodes.


SUMMARY
More than ever before, the supply chain presents a significant challenge to firms that must develop a logistics system to help enhance product flow throughout their distribution channels. Of the various types of suppliers, those described as preferred should normally be in the best position to respond to the strategic aspirations of large order-givers. Given the growing importance ascribed to supply chain management and supplier characterization in the literature, this article proposes to examine the actual contribution of various types of suppliers to supply chain integration. Following an empirical study focusing on a large multinational firm and its regular first-tier suppliers, a detailed statistical analysis was conducted. Cluster analysis revealed the extent of a suppliers' logistics contributions. Overall, the findings suggest three types of contributions, and show that the intensity of a supplier's contribution has little to do with its status as a preferred supplier, depending instead on the sophistication of a supplier's logistics system. The system is characterized by a significant increase in the role of logistics in a firm's structures, through formalization of an organization, reinforcement of communication and information quality and the use of leading-edge technology. The authors conclude that it may be tempting for a large order-giver simply to expect supply chain performance from its preferred suppliers, rather than adding this characteristic to the others used as a basis for granting preferred status to some of its suppliers.


Alec and Jerry shouldn't have been friends: Alec's life was one of privilege, while Jerry's was one of toil. But this hardly mattered to two young men whose shared love of horses brought them together and whose whole lives lay ahead of them. When war breaks out in 1914, both Jerry and Alec sign up - yet for quite different reasons. On the fields of Flanders they find themselves standing together, but once again divided: as officer and enlisted man. And it is there, surrounded by mud and chaos and death, that one of them makes a fateful decision whose consequences will test their friendship and loyalty to breaking point.


Adaptor proteins connect the proteins involved in multiple cell signaling pathways. In T cells, the adaptor protein ADAP regulates certain signals from the T cell receptor (TCR) that influence the function of integrin adhesion receptors. Medeiros et al. found that ADAP also associates directly with another adaptor, CARMA1, a membrane-associated protein that couples TCR signaling to the activation of the core transcription factor NF-κB. This association involved the assembly of a multiprotein complex that failed to form in the absence of ADAP and corresponded with impaired NF-κB activity. The study introduces a key new step in regulating the pathway that connects TCR activation with the transcriptional response to infection. R. B. Medeiros, B. J. Burbach, K. L. Mueller, R. Srivastava, J. J. Moon, S. Highfill, E. J. Peterson, Y. Shimizu, Regulation of NF-κB activation in T cells via association of the adapter proteins ADAP and CARMA1. Science 316, 754-758 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text]


This article analyses the offshore services industry using the global value chain approach. This industry has grown at a rapid pace over the last decade, driven principally by the search of businesses to reduce costs by unbundling and offshoring corporate services. This paper explores how developing nations have seized these growth opportunities. While developed countries consume the vast majority of global services, demand from developing economies and new end markets is beginning to grow. Supply is dominated by India, which in 2009 had 45% of the global market share for offshore services. Indian firms occupy most value chain segments and they have expanded in the South to serve both domestic and export markets. Although the quality and quantity of human capital remains the key factor in the location of offshore services, formal education is being supplemented by demand-driven training and compliance with required international professional certifications and performance standards.


Thomas Seifrid. The Word Made Self: Russian Writings on Language, 1860-1930. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005. 240 pp. Bibliography. Index. $47.50, cloth.This book traces the development of writing about language in Russia in the years leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution and into the first decade or so of the Soviet period. Its principal thesis is that the seminal figure in Russian thought in this field was the Ukrainian linguist A. A. Potebnia (1835-1891). A pupil of Sreznevskii, Potebnia was greatly influenced by German idealism, particularly that of J. G. Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt, which in the West spawned the linguistic relativism of Whorf and Sapir. Seifrid argues - convincingly enough for this reader - that what shaped Potebnia's response to these ideas and that of the people following on behind him was neo-Platonism as it had been transmitted through the Hellenistic and Orthodox traditions, in which the prologue to John's Gospel is the key, unifying text.In Potebnia, language is envisioned as behaving like a "self," which in the psychology of the day was seen as fluid, indeterminate, mutable and evolving, rather than fixed, rigid, hierarchical and mechanistic (p. 53). This "psychologism" was certainly in vogue at the end of the nineteenth century, but mainstream linguists like Baudouin de Courtenay and the later Structuralists turned decisively against it. Not surprisingly, therefore, Potebnia was not a major influence in the development of linguistics in his homeland. Rather, he left his mark on later generations as someone interested in the role of language in the creative process. The considerable impact of Potebnia's ideas on Russian thought of the turn of the century, especially among the pioneers of Russian literary Modernism, is the central theme of this book (Chapter 2). The first direct influence was on his pupils in the Khar'kov (Khar'kiv) School (for example, D. V. Ovsianniko-Kulikovskii and A. P. Pogodin), then in very different and complex ways among the Symbolists (e.g., Belyi), Futurists (e.g., Khlebnikov), Acmeists (e.g., Osip Mandel'shtam) and - despite Shklovskii's explicit criticisms of Potebnia's views on language and art - even the Formalists (among them Plotnikov).The rejection of materialism and positivism put the self and personality in the forefront of Russian philosophical thought from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. This idealism is much in evidence in the revival of metaphysics in such thinkers as Berdiaev, Frank, Losskii, and on down to Florenskii and Sergei Bulgakov. At the same time, Russian idealist philosophy shares with the broad mainstream of twentieth-century philosophy a conscious orientation on problems of language (Chapter 3). Key here-especially in Florenskii - is the relationship between etymology and true meaning, another theme extensively developed by Potebnia with roots going right back to Plato. …


The Sherman Act's distinction between "unilateral" and "concerted" action is particularly salient where intrabrand restraints are concerned. Minimum resale price maintenance that takes the form of concerted action is unlawful per se, while price maintenance that takes place within a single firm cannot violate the Sherman Act. While courts scrutinize some unilateral conduct under Section 2, intrabrand restraints do not constitute the sort of "exclusionary conduct" that can offend that provision. Courts and leading scholars have offered two distinct justifications for the distinction between concerted and unilateral restraints. First, concerted restraints supposedly create a greater competitive risk than, say, price coordination that occurs within a single firm. Second, cooperation within a single firm purportedly creates significant efficiencies when compared to analogous concerted action. This article argues that both justifications for this differential treatment reflect neoclassical price theory's technological conception of the firm. By contrast, transaction cost economics (TCE) and its theory of the firm undermine any supposed economic distinction between concerted and unilateral intrabrand restraints. TCE treats the firm as a nexus of contracts between numerous individual input owners, thereby revealing that "unilateral conduct" is in fact the product of cooperation by individual input owners within the legally-determined boundaries of a single firm. Though deemed "unilateral," cooperation within a single firm eliminates rivalry that would otherwise occur and thus poses the very same risk of anticompetitive harm as intrabrand concerted action. TCE also teaches that unilateral and concerted intrabrand restraints are simply alternative vehicles for reducing transaction costs and that concerted intrabrand restraints can sometimes produce greater economic benefits than unilateral" conduct. As a result, there is no economic rationale for subjecting unilateral and concerted intrabrand restraints to disparate treatment, whether vertical or horizontal, and various considerations suggest that courts should declare all such restraints lawful per se.


Sicily owes its complex geological structure to a switch in tectonic regime from the Mesozoic to the Tertiary. A set of tectonic units outcrops in the northern portion of the island that originated during the Tertiary at the expense of paleogeographic domains of the African Mesozoic continental margin. The pre-orogenic successions show different types of deformation (extensional and transcurrent) related to the Jurassic paleotectonic evolution of the southern Neotethys margin. The history of the tectonic inversion of the Neotethys shear zone is recorded in the Cretaceous strata. Extension occurred during late Cretaceous and may be compatible with the tensile stress field related to the Sicilide basin opening. The Neogene deformations are linked to collisional processes and are mostly represented by thrusts and folds. Since the late Miocene onwards, the formation of the Tyrrhenian basin has driven the recent tectonic evolution of Northern Sicily. Its basin formation was realised through extension, followed by transcurrent tectonics along its southern margin.


Technology increasingly allows us to capture and revisit rich digital records of our lives, processes which we call Technology-Mediated Memory (TMM). We explore whether TMM alters unmediated remembering and also whether such changes affect psychological well-being. Human memory biases promote well-being by adaptively editing our memories, making them more positive. In contrast, TMM often provides rich records of what people actually did and felt, which could disrupt adaptive edits. To explore this, we developed a smartphone-based personal TMM application, Echo, that allows participants to record and later reflect on everyday events. In a month-long deployment, 64 users made over 3200 recordings and reflections. We found that although Echo TMM alters how we remember, these changes remain adaptive. Instead of compromising adaptive biases, Echo TMM helps well-being and benefits are sustained long-term. Logfile analysis shows that participants use Echo strategically to prospectively edit by initially reporting events positively to anticipate future viewing. Participants also distance themselves from past negative events by reflecting more positively than at recording. We discuss design and theoretical implications.


Nomadic computing is about communication on an anytime anywhere basis. Security in this area is today not high enough and at the same time nomadic computing is increasing. In this thesis, security in the area of nomadic computing and remote access to company systems is assessed. The purpose is to investigate the security in this area today but also in the future in order to answer the main question of how and when secure nomadic computing can be offered. For this purpose a futuristic scenario has been used as a method to identify challenges within nomadic computing. After looking at the state of the art of wireless communication and security techniques, evaluating the focused techniques and looking at future trends, some preliminary conclusions could be made. A model of technology uptake has been used. The main concept of the model is to show that the uptake is depending on a co-evolution between different parts and not only the technique. One conclusion is therefore that the users must have confidence in the technique, but also in the organisation and the organisational use of the technique or else they will not use it. Security is important in order to create this trust and is thus of decisive importance to the technology uptake. Another conclusion is that the three focused techniques; rule-based access, authentication and policy/contract can be used today, but also in the future to increase the security for remote access. Finally, education and user awareness seems to be important in the future, even though the users interact less in the security management.


Motivated by unresolved debates on the appropriateness of accrual accounting in the public sector context and limited empirical support justifying its suitability within developing countries, this research seeks to fill such important knowledge gap. It expands the ongoing interest in the development of public sector accounting by focusing on an in-depth exploration of contextual interactions between institutions and processes of accounting change in one of the developing countries, Malaysia. As Malaysia is currently undertaking a radical accounting reform at the federal level, the research explored how it becomes institutionally embedded within political and administrative structures. By applying Critical Realism and Institutional Theory as theoretical lenses, this research employed qualitative strategies for primary and secondary data collected at lead agencies and three selected ministries. These include a thorough review of government documents, interviews with key actors and observations of their responses towards reform activities. The analyses revealed how the ultimate institutionalisation of accrual accounting approach, was constrained by the key actors' limited capacity for action along with unaccommodating power dependencies. Moreover, the tension that arose between multiple expectations and the inherent attributes and culture of the public organisations that were strongly embedded in social welfare logics heavily influenced their interests and commitments in applying the efficiency logics prescription which underpin accrual accounting. The data also revealed the difficulties in complying with the International Public Sector Accounting Standards requirements, especially by organisations with distinctive assets where the relevant government policies still appear ambiguous. Consequently, there is heterogeneity in organisational responses and the quality of accounting information produced proved to be below expectations. The new financial information indicating the government's financial position has imposed some political risks that have caused political support for the project to fluctuate. Therefore, rather than functioning as a management tool, accrual accounting has become a political tool. If these issues remain unresolved, the research implies that the Malaysian government will not be able to realise the value promised by accrual accounting, of which, may result in significant consequences in its effort to become a developed nation.


This article focuses on post-2004 migration to the UK from A8 and A2 countries and discusses the complex, multi-layered and bounded nature of migrants' decision making on length of stay. It argues that the maximisation of economic benefits is only one factor amongst many which influences decision making. Following a 'bounded rationality' approach the article considers the following three dimensions of decision making: perception of environment, goals and normative principles. Data from a longitudinal study of migrant workers in the East of England will be used to illustrate migrants' decisions on length of stay. The study combined a mixed methods approach with a longitudinal panel approach and the article will present findings from three phases of semi-structured interviews (a core group of 30 A8/A2 citizens over three years) and two surveys (161 participants in year 1 of which 61 responded in year 2). The article concludes that the maximisation of economic benefits is only part of a complex bundle of factors which influence decisions on length of stay. A positive perception of the wider social situation in the UK (influenced partly by participants' transnational experience), a strong goal orientation (in the context of personal life and education) and strong normative principles (reflected in aspirations, determination, resilience and a certain flexibility regarding notions of identity and belonging) have been highlighted as important factors in decision making processes on length of stay.


Business IT Alignment is considered an enduring topic in academic and practitioners' literature. The interest in the subject is justified by the link, demonstrated by several studies, between alignment and corporate performances. However, alignment research has not yet been translated into practices, theoretically demonstrated in literature and applied to companies. The interpretation of alignment as a function of independent factors and the underestimation of the complex nature of alignment process are considered key barriers in alignment achievement. The present study is based on a multi-case study analysis carried out in two companies that implemented alignment processes. We conceptualise alignment as a co-evolution process and derive four mechanisms and three types of parameters and explain their role in alignment implementation. The contribution is theoretical, since we analyse and describe mechanisms and factors that govern alignment, and for the practitioners, since knowledge of these mechanisms is precondition for an effective alignment implementation.


This paper aims to contribute to the debates on communal rangelands and analyses the gendered dimension of land rights and land access in the rural areas of Namaqualand. The actual gender relations within rural communities and the emergence of strategies that are being pursued in communal land processes are obscured and often ignored in policies about communal rangelands, which overemphasise 'the ecological and economic impact' and the balancing of these dimensions. As active, primary users, women play a central role in livelihoods supported by communal rangelands yet their access to land is mediated through their relationships with men, effectively circumventing women's land autonomy. A wider debate is necessary to advance the largely superficial policy considerations of women's position in relation to communal rangelands land and their social exclusion on the basis of traditional control of land, forms of access and claiming of use rights. The paper discusses the complexity of land rights under communal land tenure and argues that, despite traditional and policy barriers, women in traditional systems of male-dominated land rights have had some success in accessing communal rangelands. Greater policy impetus is necessary to leverage equitable and independent land access for women amidst debates about management of communal rangelands.


Hysteria was a frequently diagnosed illness in the West through the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century. Today the medical profession has virtually abandoned the diagnosis altogether. However, this does not mean that hysteria has ceased to exist. In The Nature of Hysteria, Niel Micklem argues that the disease has merely shifted into other personal and collective forms. He traces the history of hysteria from ancient Egyptian times to the present and examines its mythic background. He also describes the involvement of sexuality in the clinical manifestations of hysteria to witchcraft, and various collective manifestations of hysteria in the form of sexual permissiveness and unisexual behaviour. Arguing that hysteria is much more than an illness, Niel Micklem suggests that the denial of hysteria in individual patients has coincided with the creation of an increasingly hysterical society.


This thesis gives particular attention to the Usūl of the noted grammarian, Ibn al-Sarrāj, but some attention is also given to the Mugtadab of al-Mubarrad, his teacher, although this latter work is less significant. This dissertation also provides a more general discussion of grammatical thought as relevant material from the works of earlier and later scholers has also been introduced. Chapter I consists of an account of the history of Arabic grammatical thought up until the early 10th. Century and special attention is given to al-Mubarrad and Ibn al-Sarrāj and their writings on grammar. Chapter II deals with the methodical and systematic approach of Ibn al-Sarraj to his subject matter and assesses the significance of this. Chapter III deals Ibn al-Sarrāj's discussion of the regent (ʽāmil) and considers related questions. Chapter IV is a discussion of aspects of qiyās an tagdīr, two important concepts in the methodology of the Arab grammarians. Chapter V looks specifically at how qiyās determines the relationship of asl and farʽ. Chapter VI examines how al-Mubarrad and Ibn al-Sarrāj approach two specified topics, the tamyīz and the verb wonder (fiʽl al-taʽajjub). Chapter VII deals with Ibn al- Sarrāj's treatment of Kufan grammatical thought, and his use of expression "the Baghdadis" is considered. In addition, the question of Kufan influence on Ibn al-Sarrāj is discussed. Chapter VIII consists of an examination of material taken from the Usūl by Ibn Yaʽīsh and incorporated into this commentary of the Mufassal of al-Zamakhsharī.


In this manuscript, a carbon intercalated porous NaTi2(PO4)3 (NTP@C) spherical composite was synthesized through a facile hydrolysis reaction combined with a subsequent hydrothermal and annealing process. Benefiting from the unique mesoporous architecture combined with the conductive carbon layer, the NTP@C composite showed excellent electrochemical properties in terms of both stable cycling performance and good rate capabilities. Evaluated as anodes for sodium-ion batteries, the NTP@C composites presented a high reversible specific capacity (around 134 mA h g−1 at a current rate of 1C) and an excellent cycling performance (about 81 mA h g−1 at a high current rate of 50C during the 1000th cycle). The remarkable electrochemical performance can be attributed to the rational design of the hybrid structure, which can ensure fast electron and sodium ion transport in the electrode materials.


PURPOSE:Determine the reliability of and relationship between 3-point bending and displacement methods of lumbar stiffness measurement. RELEVANCE:Three-point bending and displacement methods of measurement of spinal stiffness are present in the literature without discussion of their relative merits. The 3-point bending method measures the change in angle of sensors placed on L1 and the sacrum, whereas the displacement method measures vertical displacement at the point of force application. This is the first study to compare measurements collected simultaneously using both methods. METHODS:Twenty-nine subjects (15 asymptomatic and 14 with low back pain) participated. Stiffness was measured simultaneously via 3-point bending (force/angle) and displacement (force/displacement) methods. To compare reliability of the methods, measurements were taken 3 times on 2 occasions, in asymptomatic participants. For symptomatic participants, responsiveness to treatment was assessed by correlating percentage change after both 3 and 6 minutes of treatment. RESULTS:Within-day ICCs for stiffness were 0.56 to 0.77 (SEM, 0.46%- 1.46%), between-day ICCs for stiffness were 0.47 to 0.61 (SEM, 0.72%- 1.36%). Correlation analysis on asymptomatic participants demonstrated that there was a significant (P = .01) but moderate (r = 0.64; 95% CI: 0.20, 0.87) correlation between the 2 methods. On symptomatic participants, the correlation using baseline data revealed dissociation between the 2 methods (P = .167, r = 0.376). There was dissociation between percentage changes in the 2 stiffness measurement methods after 3 minutes of treatment (P = .751, r = 0.090); however, there was a significant correlation between the percentage changes after 6 minutes of treatment (P = .004, r = 0.693). CONCLUSIONS:Reliability statistics suggest that stiffness measurements are not sufficiently reliable to monitor the changes observed with treatment. The varying relationship between the 2 methods suggests they are not measuring the same behavior, highlighting the need for further investigation into their validity. IMPLICATIONS:The usefulness of stiffness measurement in assessing response to mobilization treatment warrants further investigation.


When the Greeks and Macedonians in Alexander's army reached India in 326 BCE, they entered a new and strange world. They knew a few legends and travelers' tales, but their categories of thought were inadequate to encompass what they witnessed. The plants were unrecognizable, their properties unknown. The customs of the people were various and puzzling. While Alexander's conquest was brief, ending with his death in 323 BCE, the Greeks would settle in the Indian region for the next two centuries, forging an era of productive interactions between the two cultures. This book explores the various ways that the Greeks reacted to and constructed life in India during this fruitful period. From observations about botany and mythology to social customs, the book examines the surviving evidence of those who traveled to India. Most particularly, it offers a full and valuable look at Megasthenes, ambassador of the King Seleucus to Chandragupta Maurya, and provides a detailed discussion of Megasthenes' now-fragmentary book Indica. The book considers the art, literature, and philosophy of the Indo-Greek kingdom and how cultural influences crossed in both directions, with the Greeks introducing their writing, coinage, and sculptural and architectural forms, while Greek craftsmen learned to work with new materials such as ivory and stucco and to probe the ideas of Buddhists and other ascetics. The book is an account of the encounters between two remarkable civilizations.


Two monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) raised against purified excysted oocysts and sporozoites of cryptosporidium parvum reacted in an immunofluorescence assay with antigens located at the anterior pole of the zoites. On Western blots of purified oocysts, these MAbs reacted with a series of bands between 210 and 40 kDa; several of these bands were recognized by both MAbs; others were specific. One MAb (TOU) did not react after periodic acid treatment and was therefore considered to recognize a carbohydrate epitope; as determined by immunoelectron microscopy, this MAb reacted on micronemes of sporozoites and merozoites and also with the peripheral cytoplasm and the parasitophorous vacuole of trophozoites and macrogametes. The other MAb (HAD) reacted with an epitope that was insensitive to periodate treatment but did not react in the immunoelectron microscopy assay. However, the similar labeling pattern obtained with the immunofluorescence assay with both MAbs and the fact that the two antibodies share common bands on Western immunoblots suggest that both MAbs react with molecules located in Cryptosporidium micronemes, one reacting with a glycannic epitope and the other reacting with a peptidic epitope.


This article focuses on automatic text classification which aims at identifying the first language (L1) background of learners of English. A particular question arising in the context of automated L1 identification is whether any features that are informative for a machine learning algorithm relate to L1-specific transfer phenomena. In order to explore this issue further, we discuss the results of a study carried out in the wake of a Native Language Identification Task. The task is based on the TOEFL11 corpus (cf. Blanchard et al. 2013), which involves a sample of 12,100 essays written by participants in the TOEFL® test from 11 different language backgrounds (Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Telugu, and Turkish). The article will show our results in automatic L1 detection in the TOEFL11 corpus. These results are discussed in light of relevant transfer features which turned out to be particularly informative for automatic detection of L1 German and L1 Italian.


One of the great dramatic events in the history of twentieth-century thought was the break of Carl Jung--the crown prince of the psychoanalytic movement--with his mentor and collaborator Sigmund Freud. After the "gladiatorial phase" of the debate between the Freudians and Jungians had passed, British psychoanalyst Edward Glover began serious consideration of the ideas of Jung. Glover's study was immediately recognized as the major Freudian statement on Jung's psychology and was even cited by later Jungians for its trenchant criticisms. This new edition of the unsurpassed classic will make it available for another generation of students, practitioners, and intellectual historians.


To help you navigate the large number of new data tools available, this guide describes 60 of the most recent innovations, from NoSQL databases and MapReduce approaches to machine learning and visualization tools. Descriptions are based on first-hand experience with these tools in a production environment. This handy glossary also includes a chapter of key terms that help define many of these tool categories:NoSQL DatabasesDocument-oriented databases using a key/value interface rather than SQL MapReduceTools that support distributed computing on large datasets StorageTechnologies for storing data in a distributed way ServersWays to rent computing power on remote machines ProcessingTools for extracting valuable information from large datasets Natural Language ProcessingMethods for extracting information from human-created text Machine LearningTools that automatically perform data analyses, based on results of a one-off analysis VisualizationApplications that present meaningful data graphically AcquisitionTechniques for cleaning up messy public data sources SerializationMethods to convert data structure or object state into a storable format


As reliability is one of the key factors in product quality, which is closely linked to customer satisfaction, the ability of companies to design products which will be "reliable" is key to their future market success. The paper presents a new design for reliability (DFR) method which assesses the suitability of mechanical system design configurations during the early stages of the design process. The method presented in this paper is a development of the work of Stephenson (1995) in which he sought to assess the reliability of technical mechanisms in large scale heavy plant equipment. The method described in this paper is based on three internal properties of technical systems, namely simplicity, clarity and unity proposed by Aguirre (1990). This paper, however, extends Stephenson's approach by focusing on the definition of a more rigorous method for assigning clarity levels in design configurations. This is done by assessing clarity levels at the interfaces between one component and another, building a hierarchy of functions within a configuration, and lastly matching the properties of clarity and simplicity with each function hierarchy. The DFR method is illustrated in the paper with a case study example.


Sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L. ssp. vulgaris) is one of the most important European crops for both food and sugar production. Crop improvement has been developed to enhance productivity, sugar content or other breeder's desirable traits. The introgression of traits from Crop Wild Relatives (CWR) has been done essentially for lessening biotic stresses constraints, namely using Beta and Patellifolia species which exhibit disease resistance characteristics. Several studies have addressed crop-to-wild gene flow, yet, for breeding programs genetic variability associated with agronomically important traits remains unexplored regarding abiotic factors. To accomplish such association from phenotype-to-genotype, screening for wild relatives occurring in habitats where selective pressures are in play (i.e., populations in salt marshes for salinity tolerance; populations subjected to pathogen attacks and likely evolved resistance to pathogens) are the most appropriate streamline to identify causal genetic information. By selecting sugar beet CWR species based on genomic tools, rather than random variations, is a promising but still seldom explored route toward the development of improved crops. In this perspective, a viable streamline for sugar beet improvement is proposed through the use of different genomic tools by recurring to sugar beet CWRs and focusing on agronomic traits associated with abiotic stress tolerance. Overall, identification of genomic and epigenomic landscapes associated to adaptive ecotypes, along with the cytogenetic and habitat characterization of sugar beet CWR, will enable to identify potential hotspots for agrobiodiversity of sugar beet crop improvement toward abiotic stress tolerance.


This paper investigates whether the accuracy of models used in accounting research to predict categorical dependent variables (classification) can be improved by using a data analytics approach. This topic is important because accounting research makes extensive use of classification in many different research streams that are likely to benefit from improved accuracy. Specifically, this paper investigates whether the out-of-sample accuracy of models used to predict future changes in earnings can be improved by considering whether the assumptions of the models are likely to be violated and whether alternative techniques have strengths that are likely to make them a better choice for the classification task. I begin my investigation using logistic regression to predict positive changes in earnings using a large set of independent variables. Next, I implement two separate modifications to the standard logistic regression model, stepwise logistic regression and elastic net, and examine whether these modifications improve the accuracy of the classification task. Lastly, I relax the logistic regression parametric assumption and examine whether random forest, a nonparametric machine learning technique, improves the accuracy of the classification task. I find little difference in the accuracy of the logistic regression-based models; however, I find that random forest has consistently higher out-of-sample accuracy than the other models. I also find that a hedge portfolio formed on predicted probabilities using random forest earns larger abnormal returns than hedge portfolios formed using the logistic regression-based models. In subsequent analysis, I consider whether the documented improvements exist in an alternative classification setting: financial misstatements. I find that random forest's out-of-sample area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUC) is significantly higher than the logistic-based models. Taken together, my findings suggest that the accuracy of classification models used in accounting research can be improved by considering the strengths and weaknesses of different classification models and considering whether machine learning models are appropriate.


The original essays in this comprehensive collection examine the lives and sports of famous and not-so- famous African American men and women athletes from the nineteenth century to today. Here are twenty insightful biographies that furnish perspectives on the changing status of these athletes and how the changes mirrored the transformation of sport, American society, and civil rights legislation. "Out of the Shadows" shows us athletes struggling to make it in a Jim Crow society - Jimmy Winkfield in horse racing, Marshall Taylor in bicycling, William Henry Lewis in football, and Jack Johnson - and those achieving success on an international stage while suffering segregation at home - Ora Washington (tennis), Satchel Paige, Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, Alice Coachman (track and field), and Jackie Robinson. In the twentieth century athletes saw opportunities to fight for civil rights through their performances as was the case with Althea Gibson (tennis), Wilma Rudolph, Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, and Arthur Ashe. Today's successful African American athletes, such as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Venus and Serena Williams, deal with issues of race and celebrity culture. The contributors to this collection are some of today's best authors of sports history, including Gerald Early, Anthony O. Edmonds, Gerald R. Gems, and Donald Spivey. Together, these biographies not only provide insightful analyses of the athletes' careers, they tell a fascinating two-hundred-year-long story about the complex relationship between race and sport in America and how some gifted individuals achieved success on the playing field despite difficult living conditions and economic circumstances.


In recent years, studies of multi-national corporations (MNC) have shifted their focus from the perspective of the MNC itself to the perspective of transnational networks, which has resulted in greater recognition of the role and function of MNC subsidiaries. China's membership of World Trade Organization has offered more opportunities for MNC in China with the consequence that many of their subsidiaries have become international players where subsidiary autonomy is considered an essential competency. World famous MNCs set up subsidiaries in succession to occupy a market share in China. Therefore, it is worthy to study MNCs' Chinese subsidiaries' behaviour. This quantitative study therefore examined the role and autonomy of MNC subsidiaries in China and their relationship with their parent corporations. This quantitative study analysed the way in which the literature on subsidiary autonomy has evolved and identified determinates of such autonomy. The findings revealed that there are correlations between MNC procedure justice, subsidiary integration, subsidiary local responsiveness, and subsidiary relative capability and their influence on subsidiary autonomy. This suggests that the role of a subsidiary is highly influenced by its position in the MNC network.


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When the growth regulator ethephon is applied to walnuts at maturity and when packing tissue between kernel halves turns brown, hull dehiscence and nut loosening are advanced. Harvest can generally begin 7 to 10 days following treatment, which may be 1 to 3 weeks before normal harvest. The possible advantages of an earlier harvest are: improved kernel quality, less insect infestation , greater nut removal, greater hullability, and a more efficient harvest. In the course of University of California experiments and subsequent grower use of ethephon, reports have appeared claiming both longer and shorter nut drying times. The purpose of our investigation was to measure nut drying time after ethephon treatment.


We investigated the possible association between Parkinson's disease (PD), the second most common neurode-generative disorder and Toxoplasma gondii infection, the most common neurotropic protozoan parasitic infection, using serological and molecular techniques. One hundred and fifteen patients with confirmed PD and 115 healthy subjects in the same age and sex distribution were enrolled in this study. Blood samples were taken from each participant and the sera was screened for anti-Toxoplasma antibodies (IgG and IgM). PCR assay was performed in duplicate using the primer pair targeting the B1 gene of Toxoplasma. Amplicons were directly sequenced to conduct the phylogenetic analysis. The prevalence of Toxoplasma infection based on IgG titer was 53% in case and 55.6% in the control groups, revealing no statistically significant association between Toxoplasma seropositivity and PD (OR = 0.90; 95% CI = 0.54-1.51; P = 0.691). According to PCR assay, the prevalence of Toxoplasma infections was 19.3% in the case and 10.4% in control groups which the difference was statistically significant (OR = 3.02; 95% CI = 1.46-6.27; P = 0.002). Multiple sequence alignment of Toxoplasma gondii isolates manifested a common haplotype by the identity: 93.6-100% and divergence: 0-6.7%. We concluded that T. gondii infection not only could not be a risk factor to PD, but even it could be concluded that patients with PD are in more risk to acquisition of infection. These results provide fresh insights into the ambiguous association between T. gondii infection and PD.
Keywords

Author Keywords:Parkinson's disease; Toxoplasma gondii infection; Sero-molecular assessment

KeyWords Plus:SCHIZOPHRENIA; METAANALYSIS; PREVALENCE; DOPAMINE


Leishmania infantum causes visceral leishmaniasis (kala-azar), the most severe form of leishmaniasis, which is lethal if untreated. A few years ago, the re-sequencing and de novo assembling of the L. infantum (JPCM5 strain) genome was accomplished, and now we aimed to describe and characterize the experimental proteome of this species. In this work, we performed a proteomic analysis from axenic cultured promastigotes and carried out a detailed comparison with other Leishmania experimental proteomes published to date. We identified 2352 proteins based on a search of mass spectrometry data against a database built from the six-frame translated genome sequence of L. infantum. We detected many proteins belonging to organelles such as glycosomes, mitochondria, or flagellum, as well as many metabolic enzymes and many putative RNA binding proteins and molecular chaperones. Moreover, we listed some proteins presenting post-translational modifications, such as phosphorylations, acetylations, and methylations. On the other hand, the identification of peptides mapping to genomic regions previously annotated as non-coding allowed for the correction of annotations, leading to the N-terminal extension of protein sequences and the uncovering of eight novel protein-coding genes. The alliance of proteomics, genomics, and transcriptomics has resulted in a powerful combination for improving the annotation of the L. infantum reference genome.


The 2007-2010 financial crisis highlighted the central role of financial intermediaries' stability in buttressing a smooth transmission of credit to borrowers. While results from the years prior to the crisis often cast doubts on the strength of the bank lending channel, recent evidence shows that bank-specific characteristics can have a large impact on the provision of credit. We show that new factors, such as changes in banks' business models and market funding patterns, had modified the monetary transmission mechanism in Europe and in the US prior to the crisis, and demonstrate the existence of structural changes during the period of financial crisis. Banks with weaker core capital positions, greater dependence on market funding and on non-interest sources of income restricted the loan supply more strongly during the crisis period. These findings support the Basel III focus on banks' core capital and on funding liquidity risks. They also call for a more forward-looking approach to the statistical data coverage of the banking sector by central banks. In particular, there should be a stronger focus on monitoring those financial factors that are likely to influence the functioning of the monetary transmission mechanism particularly in a period of crisis.


As patents covering brand-name biologics begin to expire, biosimilar manufacturers are preparing to enter the market. Since its enactment in 2010, many have speculated on how the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act will influence competition and innovation, and whether the provisions struck the right balance. Now for the first time, the judiciary is interpreting the so-called "patent dance," the Act's information exchange and litigation provisions, in decisions that will impact the biosimilar landscape in the years to come. Two cases involving the biologic manufacturers Sandoz and Amgen illustrate the Act's susceptibility to different interpretations.


Australia needs more qualified professionals in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) areas. The national focus on widening participation in higher education (HE) includes strengthening pathways from vocational education and training (VET). VET students often lack the mathematics skills necessary to articulate successfully to their chosen university degrees. Current approaches such as bridging and foundation mathematics programs are not tailored or sufficiently contextualised for VET articulants. This project is developing a mathematics pathway designed to improve the readiness of VET engineering diploma graduates for higher education study in engineering degree programs. Arrangements are flexible so that students can complete these pathways either as part of their engineering diploma as a VET student or as part of preparatory study at the diploma level at university.

Many VET students are granted credit when entering a HE course in engineering and can transfer directly to second year units which may assume a level of mathematical knowledge by the university. However, in the VET Diploma of Engineering Technical (MEM50212), there is only one core unit in mathematics (MEM30012A) equivalent to year 9 level and there are two mathematics electives, MEM23004A and MEM23007A, which are part of the advanced diploma and often not taught by many TAFE providers due to student demand and staff capabilities. The lack of required mathematics often leaves the student with a large gap in the required knowledge for success in HE.

The project has been underway for over a year and significant progress has been made in developing the pathway for engineering. To date, the mathematical knowledge outcomes from the VET courses have been mapped to the requirements of the HE courses at the University of Tasmania, Flinders University and James Cook University. Gaps in mathematical knowledge have been identified. A formal articulation agreement has been established through TasTAFE and the University of Tasmania where current VET students will be able to enroll in the university foundation mathematics units and receive credit towards their VET diploma in engineering. In addition to the foundation units, the students need to do an online component. This consists of a few compulsory topics which are not covered in the foundation units with supporting examples, practice problems, practical application and self-assessed quizzes for each mathematics topic covered in the foundation units, contextualised to engineering. VET students are applied learners and therefore often struggle with the transition to HE. The online component of the pathway is designed to support the student by providing the context to the mathematics they are learning. Another advantage of the pathway is that it exposes the VET students to HE units and the university environment while satisfying the university mathematics entry requirements.


The stray radiation suppression in Cassegrain family optical system is presented. The design method for ultra-short outer baffle with honeycomb structure is proposed. Meanwhile the constraint formulas for designing the geometries of primary baffle and secondary baffle are deduced when basing the characteristic and taking vignette into account. According to the ray trace simulated data, the point source transmittance values of the baffle are less than 10-10 when incident angles are larger than the rejection angle. The honeycomb-look front baffle guarantees a comparable performance of stray light suppression with traditional tube baffle, while reducing the size greatly.


Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a retinal vascular disorder frequently found in premature infants. Different therapeutic strategies have been developed to treat ROP. However, there are still many children with ROP suffering by severe limitations in vision or even blindness. Recently, ROP has been suggested to be caused by abnormal development of the retinal vasculature, but not simply resulted by retinal neovascularization which takes about 4 to 6wk after birth in premature infants. Thus, instead of focusing on how to reduce retinal neovascularization, understanding the pathological changes and mechanisms that occur prior to retinal neovascularization is meaningful, which may lead to identify novel target(s) for the development of novel strategy to promote the healthy growth of retinal blood vessels rather than passively waiting for the appearance of retinal neovascularization and removing it by force. In this review, we discussed recent studies about, 1) the pathogenesis prior to retinal neovascularization in oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR; a ROP in animal model) and in premature infants with ROP; 2) the preclinical and clinical research on preventive treatment of early OIR and ROP. We will not only highlight the importance of the mechanisms and signalling pathways in regulating early stage of ROP but also will provide guidance for actively exploring novel mechanisms and discovering novel treatments for early phase OIR and ROP prior to retinal neovascularization in the future.


Previous studies have shown that the negative cell cycle regulator WAF1/Cip1 is often overexpressed in human gliomas and that WAF1/Cip1 overexpression renders glioma cells resistant to chemotherapy agents. In this study, we investigated whether down-regulation of WAF1/Cip1 would sensitize gliomas to chemotherapy. An adenoviral vector expressing antisense WAF1/Cip1 was constructed and used to infect D54 glioma cells, which express a high level of endogenous WAF1/Cip1. After D54 cells were infected with antisense WAF1/Cip1 adenovirus, Western blotting revealed a significant decrease in the WAF1/Cip1 protein level. Down-regulation of WAF1/Cip1 alone resulted in the cells rounding up and detaching from plates. Electron microscopy revealed some nuclear fragmentation in antisense WAF1/Cip1-infected cells, indicating the initiation of apoptosis. The antisense WAF1/Cip1-infected cells were then treated with the chemotherapeutic agents 1,3-bis(2-chloroethyl)-1-nitrosourea and cisplatin. Other cells were infected with sense WAF1/Cip1 adenovirus or control virus and served as controls. Trypan blue exclusion assay revealed significant cell death in antisense WAF1/Cip1-infected cells. In situ end-labeling assay by flow cytometry revealed that many cells died of apoptosis. Our results show that the attenuation of WAF1/Cip1 expression initiated glioma cell death and sensitized glioma cells to apoptosis induced by 1,3-bis(2-chloroethyl)-1-nitrosourea and cisplatin. Thus, blocking WAF1/Cip1 production may serve as a useful chemosensitization regimen for treating glioma.


Citizen science has established itself as an important approach to the co-production of knowledge and public participation in scientific research. Combined with digital technologies and online tools, the approach has been celebrated as a path toward the democratization of science. However, only a few studies have investigated the role digital technologies play in shaping interactions between people and nature. Additionally, the role of context in shaping online and face-to-face participation in citizen science projects has yet to receive much attention. This article takes a citizen science initiative in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest in the state of São Paulo as an illustrative case of the emergence of unanticipated consequences of digital technologies. The emergence of a socio-material practice of animal identification through a popular instant-messaging app is described, allowing a better understanding of the role of digital technologies and the context framing citizen participation in challenging environments.


Some commentators have argued that, even if the President has the unilateral authority to terminate Article II treaties concluded with the Senate's advice and consent, the President lacks the unilateral authority to terminate "congressional-executive agreements" concluded with majority congressional approval, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This paper challenges that claim. If one accepts a presidential authority to terminate Article II treaties, this paper contends, there is no compelling reason to conclude differently with respect to congressional-executive agreements. Congressional-executive agreements have become largely interchangeable with Article II treaties as a matter of domestic law and practice, and, thus, for example, either instrument can be used to address matters relating to international commerce and trade. Moreover, while presidents do not have the authority to unilaterally terminate statutes, congressional-executive agreements are not mere statutes; they are, like Article II treaties, binding international instruments that can be concluded by the United States only through presidential action. These agreements also typically contain withdrawal clauses similar to the ones contained in Article II treaties that presidents have long claimed the authority to invoke unilaterally, and Congress has never indicated that it views presidents as having less withdrawal authority for such agreements. Indeed, in its trade legislation, Congress appears to have accepted that presidents may invoke such clauses unilaterally.


N-terminal acetyltransferase (Nats) complex is responsible for protein N-terminal acetylation (Nα-acetylation), which is one of the most common covalent modifications of eukaryotic proteins. Although genome-wide investigation and characterization of Nat catalytic subunits (CS) and auxiliary subunits (AS) have been conducted in yeast and humans they remain unexplored in plants. Here we report on the identification of eleven genes encoding eleven putative Nat CS polypeptides, and five genes encoding five putative Nat AS polypeptides in Populus. We document that the expansion of Nat CS genes occurs as duplicated blocks distributed across 10 of the 19 poplar chromosomes, likely only as a result of segmental duplication events. Based on phylogenetic analysis, poplar Nat CS were assigned to six subgroups, which corresponded well to the Nat CS types (CS of Nat A–F), being consistent with previous reports in humans and yeast. In silico analysis of microarray data showed that in the process of normal development of the poplar, their Nat CS and AS genes are commonly expressed at one relatively low level but share distinct tissue-specific expression patterns. This exhaustive survey of Nat genes in poplar provides important information to assist future studies on their functional role in poplar.


Bills recently introduced in the House of Representatives, in 2016 and again in 2017, would implement a proposal by the U.S. Copyright Office to establish a small claims tribunal within the Office. The Copyright Alternatives in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act of 2017, H.R. 3945, would authorize creation of a centralized tribunal system to adjudicate small copyright infringement claims as well as abuse of notice-and-takedown claims under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f). The bill, like its predecessors in 2016, is largely based on draft legislation developed by the Copyright Office in its 2013 Report on Copyright Small Claims.

Recognizing that enactment of legislation of this sort may have profound effects on copyright in the U.S., the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology (BCLT) and UC Hastings College of the Law convened a workshop In February 2017. Eighteen scholars specializing in economics, civil procedure, and intellectual property law discussed the small copyright claims legislation contemplated in the Copyright Office Report and the bills introduced in 2016. This report describes the range of issues discussed.

Reservations expressed at the workshop fell into six principal categories: 1) constitutionality concerns; 2) breadth of jurisdiction; 3) process concerns about claiming, adjudicating, and appealing the outcomes if the proposal was enacted as is; 4) potential for abuses; 5) underexplored alternatives; and 6) larger questions about the proposal, including whether copyright is so special that it should have a tribunal of its own, given that many federal laws are underenforced because of the high costs of litigation.

The range and seriousness of concerns lead to the conclusion that further consideration is warranted before moving forward with proposed legislation.


[1] It has been suggested that drift loss to the magnetopause can be one of the major loss mechanisms contributing to relativistic electron flux dropouts. In this study, we examine details of relativistic electrons' drift physics to determine the extent to which the drift loss through the magnetopause is important to the total loss of the outer radiation belt. We have numerically computed drift paths of relativistic electrons' guiding center for various pitch angles, various measurement positions, and different solar wind conditions using the Tsyganenko T02 model. We specifically demonstrate how the drift loss effect depends on these various parameters. Most importantly, we present various estimates of relative changes of the omnidirectional flux of 1 MeV electrons between two different solar wind conditions based on a simple form of the directional flux function. For a change of the dynamic pressure from 4 nPa to 10 nPa with a fixed IMF BZ = 0 nT, our estimate indicates that after this increase in pressure, the equatorial omnidirectional flux at midnight near geosynchronous altitude decreases by ∼56 to ∼97%, depending on the specific pitch angle dependence of the directional flux. The effect rapidly decreases at regions earthward of geosynchronous orbit and shows a general trend of decrease away from midnight. For a change of the IMF BZ from 0 nT to −15 nT with a fixed dynamic pressure of 4 nPa, the relative decrease of the omnidirectional flux at geosynchronous altitude on the nightside is much smaller than that for the pressure increase, but its effect becomes substantial only beyond geosynchronous orbit. Possibilities exist that our results may change to some extent for a different magnetospheric model than the one used here.


Title of Dissertation: Change Detection in Stochastic Shape Dynamical Models with Applications in Activity Modeling and Abnormality Detection Namrata Vaswani, Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 Dissertation directed by: Professor Rama Chellappa Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering The goal of this research is to model an "activity" performed by a group of moving and interacting objects (which can be people or cars or robots or different rigid components of the human body) and use these models for abnormal activity detection, tracking and segmentation. Previous approaches to modeling group activity include co-occurrence statistics (individual and joint histograms) and Dynamic Bayesian Networks, neither of which is applicable when the number of interacting objects is large. We treat the objects as point objects (referred to as "landmarks") and propose to model their changing configuration as a moving and deforming "shape" using ideas from Kendall's shape theory for discrete landmarks. A continuous state HMM is defined for landmark shape dynamics in an "activity". The configuration of landmarks at a given time forms the observation vector and the corresponding shape and scaled Euclidean motion parameters form the hidden state vector. The dynamical model for shape is a linear Gauss-Markov model on shape "velocity". The "shape velocity" at a point on the shape manifold is defined in the tangent space to the manifold at that point. Particle filters are used to track the HMM, i.e. estimate the hidden state given observations. An abnormal activity is defined as a change in the shape activity model, which could be slow or drastic and whose parameters are unknown. Drastic changes can be easily detected using the increase in tracking error or the negative log of the likelihood of current observation given past (OL). But slow changes usually get missed. We have proposed a statistic for slow change detection called ELL (which is the Expectation of negative Log Likelihood of state given past observations) and shown analytically and experimentally the complementary behavior of ELL and OL for slow and drastic changes. We have established the stability (monotonic decrease) of the errors in approximating the ELL for changed observations using a particle filter that is optimal for the unchanged system. Asymptotic stability is shown under stronger assumptions. Finally, it is shown that the upper bound on ELL error is an increasing function of the "rate of change" with increasing derivatives of all orders, and its implications are discussed. Another contribution of the thesis is a linear subspace algorithm for pattern classification, which we call Principal Components' Null Space Analysis (PCNSA). PCNSA was motivated by Principal Components' Analysis (PCA) and it approximates the optimal Bayes classifier for Gaussian distributions with unequal covariance matrices. We have derived classification error probability expressions for PCNSA and compared its performance with that of subspace Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) both analytically and experimentally. Applications to abnormal activity detection, human action retrieval, object/face recognition are discussed. Change Detection in Stochastic Shape Dynamical Models with Applications in Activity Modeling and Abnormality Detection


If we compose sufficiently many random functions on a finite set, then the composite function will be constant. We determine the number of compositions that are needed, on average. Choose random functions $f_1, f_2,f_3,\dots $ independently and uniformly from among the $n^n$ functions from $[n]$ into $[n]$. For $t>1$, let $g_t=f_t\circ f_{t-1}\circ \cdots \circ f_1$ be the composition of the first $t$ functions. Let $T$ be the smallest $t$ for which $g_t$ is constant(i.e. $g_t(i)=g_t(j)$ for all $i,j$). We prove that $E(T)\sim 2n$ as $n\rightarrow\infty$, where $E(T)$ denotes the expected value of $T$.


Out-of-training-distribution (OOD) scenarios are a common challenge of learning agents at deployment, typically leading to arbitrary deductions and poorly-informed decisions. In principle, detection of and adaptation to OOD scenes can mitigate their adverse effects. In this paper, we highlight the limitations of current approaches to novel driving scenes and propose an epistemic uncertainty-aware planning method, called \emph{robust imitative planning} (RIP). Our method can detect and recover from some distribution shifts, reducing the overconfident and catastrophic extrapolations in OOD scenes. If the model's uncertainty is too great to suggest a safe course of action, the model can instead query the expert driver for feedback, enabling sample-efficient online adaptation, a variant of our method we term \emph{adaptive robust imitative planning} (AdaRIP). Our methods outperform current state-of-the-art approaches in the nuScenes \emph{prediction} challenge, but since no benchmark evaluating OOD detection and adaption currently exists to assess \emph{control}, we introduce an autonomous car novel-scene benchmark, \texttt{CARNOVEL}, to evaluate the robustness of driving agents to a suite of tasks with distribution shifts.


In 1974 Richard Easterlin presented data showing that there is no relationship between economic growth and average happiness in the USA, yet a higher personal income did go with greater individual happiness in that nation. This phenomenon came to be known as the 'Easterlin Paradox'. Easterlin explains this pattern using the relative income theory, which holds that the positive effect of income increase is offset by: (a) adaptation to income change and (b) comparison to the income of compatriots. There is discussion as to whether this pattern is universal and, in this context, Easterlin (Easterlin et al. 2010) claims that the enormous economic growth in South-Korea over the last decade has not lead to an increase in average happiness. In this paper we report an empirical check of this claim, using another dataset from South-Korea. We also check whether the relative income theory applies in this case. Contrary to Easterlin's claim, we found that South-Koreans became happier and that the relative happiness theory did not apply in this case. It appears there is more in the relationship between economic growth and average happiness than Easterlin thought in 1974.


1. The rostromesial agranular frontal cortex of macaque monkey (Macaca fuscata), traditionally defined as the supplementary motor area (SMA), was studied using various physiological techniques to delineate two different areas rostrocaudally. 2. Field and unitary responses to electrical stimulation of the primary motor cortex were distinct in the caudal part, but minimal or absent in the rostral part. Intracortical microstimulation readily evoked limb or orofacial movements in the caudal part, but only infrequently in the rostral part. Neuronal responses to visual stimuli prevailed in the rostral part, but somatosensory responses were rare. The opposite was true in the caudal part. 3. The rostral part, roughly corresponding to area 6a beta, was operationally defined as the presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA). The caudal part was redefined as the SMA proper. 4. Single-cell activity in the pre-SMA was quantitatively compared with that in the SMA proper in relation to a trained motor task. 5. Phasic responses to visual cue signals indicating the direction of forthcoming arm-reaching movement were more abundant in the pre-SMA. 6. Activity changes during the preparatory period, which lasted until the occurrence of the trigger signal for the reaching movement, were more frequent in the pre-SMA. 7. Phasic, movement-related activity was more frequent in the SMA, and its onset was often time locked to the movement onset. In the pre-SMA, the occurrences of response time locked to the movement-trigger signal were more frequent than in the SMA. 8. Among neurons in both areas, directional selectivity was found in all the cue, preparatory, and movement-related responses.


This article describes the data collection and use of data for the computation of rankings within RePEc (Research Papers in Economics). This encompasses the determination of impact factors for journals and working paper series, as well as the ranking of authors, institutions, and geographic regions. The various ranking methods are also compared, using a snapshot of the data.


International Journal of Medical Science and Public Health | 2015 | Vol 4 | Issue 9 1247 International Journal of Medical Science and Public Health Online 2015. © 2015 Alpana Singh. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. Research Article


This is the spectacular rags-to-riches story of James Morrison (1789–1857), who began life humbly but through hard work and entrepreneurial brilliance acquired a fortune unequalled in nineteenth-century England. Using the extensive Morrison archive, Caroline Dakers presents the first substantial biography of the richest commoner in England, recounting the details of Morrison's personal life while also placing him in the Victorian age of enterprise that made his success possible.

An affectionate husband and father of ten, Morrison made his first fortune in textiles, then a second in international finance. He invested in North American railways, was involved in global trade from Canton to Valparaiso, created hundreds of jobs, and relished the challenges of "the science of business". His success enabled him to acquire land, houses, and works of art on a scale to rival the grandest of aristocrats.


Are consumers "foolish" or "negligent" when they trust what salespersons falsely tell them rather than read all of the terms of the contracts they sign? Should consumers be barred from bringing a fraud action on the ground that they have not "reasonably relied" upon such false statements or deceptive conduct when the form contract they sign states that they have not so relied? Currently seven states' courts have interpreted their consumer fraud statutes to require "reasonable reliance," and three-quarters of the states' courts impose this requirement for a common law action for fraud. Some courts have also ruled that the presence of a "no reliance" type clause bars a consumer from being able to raise the alleged false statement or deceptive conduct. The attached article, "A License to Deceive: Enforcing Contractual Myths Despite Consumer Psychological Realities," provides an interdisciplinary analysis of this important aspect of consumer fraud law. The article proposes law reforms based upon the results of our fraud simulation study, reading contracts survey, and an analysis of the cognitive and social psychological reasons why consumers trust what salespersons tell them rather than read all of the contract terms. In our survey of consumers, we found that on average 67% of the consumers reported that they failed to read all of the terms of the contracts they signed among the six different categories of consumer transactions surveyed (agreements relating to computer software, rolling contracts, car rentals, apartment leases, home purchase and home loans). As detailed in the article, the primary reasons why consumers rely upon what the salesperson tells them and fail to carefully read and understand all of the terms of the contracts they sign are due to cognitive barriers such as: (i) visual and comprehension challenges based upon the manner in which many form contracts are drafted, (ii) analytic deficiencies based upon schema deficits, (iii) positive confirmation biases, (iv) inability to imagine possible negative outcomes (i.e. the availability heuristic), (v) default assumptions, and (v) sunk cost effects. The article also explores some of the social psychological reasons why consumers fail to read the contracts they sign including: (i) misplaced trust in the defrauders due to a variety of factors which creates a strong motivation to trust which is exacerbated when the consumer is of a lower socio-economic status, (ii) social norms not to read contracts in certain contexts and a concomitant social value to trust, and (iii) a perceived (and often real) inability to negotiate the terms of the contract. In light of these cognitive and social psychological barriers to reading and understanding all of the terms of the form contracts that consumers sign, we contend that courts are enforcing a contractual myth and creating a license to deceive when they enforce no reliance type clauses in contracts when in fact many consumers do in fact rely upon such statements in making the decision to purchase the product or service. Ninety percent of the public we surveyed reported that they expect that the terms of the contracts they sign will be consistent with the salesperson's statements and eighty percent reported that if there is an inconsistency they think the company should honor the statements made by the salespeople when the consumer has not read the terms of the agreement. While promoting certainty of contractual obligations is a legitimate goal, and the enforceability of "no reliance" type clauses through the reasonable reliance requirement is sensible under certain conditions in transactions between sophisticated companies, this article contends that based upon our empirical data it is not sound policy to make it a bar to a consumer bringing a common law fraud action or a statutory fraud action (the consumer would of course still have the burden to prove that the parol false statement or deceptive conduct took place). This article comprehensively addresses an important aspect of consumer fraud among the fifty states and provides very important data relative to the issue of consumer protection in general and consumer fraud in particular.


An expressive writing treatment was recently reported to reduce depressive symptoms and improve sexual function and satisfaction in a sample of female survivors of childhood sexual abuse (Meston, Lorenz, & Stephenson, 2013). We conducted a linguistic analysis of this data to determine whether pre- to posttreatment changes in participants' language use were associated with the improvements in sexuality and depression. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), a program that counts the use of word categories within a text, was used to evaluate the impact of several word categories, previously associated with changes in mental health (Frattaroli, 2006), and shown to differ between childhood sexual abuse survivors and nonabused women (Lorenz & Meston, 2012), on treatment outcomes. A reduction in the use of the word "I" and an increase in positive emotion words were associated with decreased depression symptoms. A reduction in the use of "I" and negative emotion words were associated with improvement in sexual function and sexual satisfaction. The findings suggest that, because language may serve as an implicit measure of depression and sexual health, monitoring language changes during treatment may provide a reliable indicator of treatment response free of the biases of traditional self-report assessments.


This book is an authoritative practical guide to financial transactions under Islamic law. Global interest in Shari'a-compliant financial practices continues to increase, but Islamic financial products can often be hard to understand, not least because they often cut across rather than strictly align with more conventional financial products. This book provides the necessary explanation by describing the theoretical underpinnings of Islamic finance as a whole before going on to examine the major individual transaction structures in detail. The first part of the book informs the reader about the general background to Islamic finance and the relevant aspects (and sources) of Islamic law. It also considers the role of Shari'a supervisory boards, Islamic financial institutions and accounting approaches. The second part of the book concentrates on Islamic financial law in practice by focusing on individual concepts and techniques. This section explains the basic requirements for Islamic finance contracts both in terms of the underlying asset types and also both the applicability and acceptability of the underlying asset. Arrangements discussed include Mudaraba (trustee finance), Musharaka (partnership or joint venture), Murabaha (sale of goods), and Sukuk (participation securities: coupons etc). Takaful (insurance) is also examined in detail. A new chapter has also been added to this second part of the book detailing the principles of Islamic investment funds and commonly applied structures.


Objective: To investigate changes in motor-unit activity and muscle oxygenation (MO) during isometric contraction with and without vascular occlusion using surface electromyography (EMG) and near-infrared spectroscopy. Design and Setting: MO and EMG of the right vastus medialis muscle were measured during isometric contraction at 30%, 50%, and 70% maximal voluntary contraction (MVC), with and without vascular occlusion. Participants: 6 healthy men. Results: Integrated EMG (IEMG) and mean power frequency were significantly higher with vascular occlusion at 30% and 50% MVC. MO reduction at each load was significantly lower with vascular occlusion. A significant positive correlation was found between IEMG and changes in MO level under both conditions. Conclusions: These results suggest that oxygen supply to active muscles was impaired by occlusion and that type II fibers were then preferentially recruited, which suggests that hypertrophy occurs in low-intensity exercise in patients with limitations resulting...


The research objective is to examine variables that can be used as crucial determinannts for the book value of manufacturing companies in Indonesia. The distinguishing variables are investment decisions, size of company, risk management issues, profitability and cash flow. The research design uses quantitative descriptive methodology with a sample of 25 manufacturing companies listed in the Indonesian Stock Exchange, for 4 consecutive years so that the number of units of analysis becomes 100 for the time series cross-sectional method used (pulling data). The analysis technique uses discriminant statistics that are processed with SPSS. The cash flow variable has a value of Wilks 'Lambda of 0.446 and a significance level of 0.000 which means that the cash flow variable tends to have different effect in different groups of companies.


We report on the study of industrial and natural aerosol pollutants in various UAE locations. Both indoor and outdoor atmospheres were sampled at residential and work places. The eventual goal of this study is to identify potential health risks of airborne pollutants. The size-dependent distributions of various elements and source apportionment of aerosol particulate matter was determined. Sampling was done using a multi-stage cascade impactor capable of sorting sizes with aerodynamic cut-off diameters ranging from 16 to .0625 micro-m in 9 steps. The samples collected on membrane filters, were studied using X-ray fluoresce (XRF), micro-XRF, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and optical microscopy. Results obtained so far show the main two sources of particulate matter pollutants are: airborne desert dust and airborne dust from building materials. Trace elements on the other hand are related to industrial pollution. Microscopy methods show that mass concentration of fine particles is considerably higher than that of coarse particles. Elemental analysis obtained with micro-XRF show that Ca, Si, Al, and Fe are present on all membranes but dominant on large cut-off membranes ( > 2 micro-m) while Si, P, Zn, S, Cu, K, and Ti are found on small cut-off membranes (< 1 micro-m). Elements appearing in trace quantities are: Zn, Fe, Cu, Br, Pb, Mn and mainly attributed to industrial pollution. It is noted that Ti, for example, is found mainly indoors possibly resulting from wall paints. On the other hand, elements such as Mg, Na, Cl, are originating from sea salts and hence are found both indoors and outdoors. Future work is underway to include complimentary methods such as ion beam techniques such as Proton Induced X-ray Emission(PIXE) and Proton Induced Gamma-ray Emission (PIGE) to identify lighter elements and synchrotron X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy( XAS) for chemical analysis.


To his credit, Professor Sandeep Gopalan has written a provocative Article. As far as I understand it, his argument is first that there is a subset of white-collar crimes "involving corporate fiduciaries taking bad decisions at the expense of shareholders (corporate governance offenses)" (p. 3). Further, for a subset of these offenses that "do not involve fraud as moral wrongfulness" (p. 3), he proceeds to argue "that whichever theoretical justification underpins the decision to criminalize, imprisonment must not follow conviction. The conviction, despite the lack of incarceration, and the consequential sanctions likely to be imposed on the wrongdoer are sufficient to satisfy the three main justifications for criminalization [deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation]." (p. 4). Gopalan thus presents a stimulating argument; indeed, to the extent his goal is to foster intellectual discourse, it is a resounding success. While I applaud Professor Gopalan for his courage, however, I find his thesis uneasy. This Essay summarizes my reactions, and is structured into three principal sections. Part I addresses some minor difficulties I have with the article. Part II seeks to get beyond these relatively small quibbles to argue that the article's overall theoretical framework is implausible: it delimits a category of offenses that is both narrow and unclear at the same time, falls prey to commodifying human behavior through a rational actor model, and fundamentally offers anemic remedies. Part III concludes by arguing that the Article's case study is ultimately unconvincing.


Iterative algorithms such as Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR) are the most popular way to solve large zero-sum imperfect-information games. In this paper we introduce Best-Response Pruning (BRP), an improvement to iterative algorithms such as CFR that allows poorly-performing actions to be temporarily pruned. We prove that when using CFR in zero-sum games, adding BRP will asymptotically prune any action that is not part of a best response to some Nash equilibrium. This leads to provably faster convergence and lower space requirements. Experiments show that BRP results in a factor of 7 reduction in space, and the reduction factor increases with game size.


Feminists in film studies have been surprised to find evidence of so many women who worked as producers, directors, and writers during the first decades of the silent motion picture industry.1 Few had imagined how many women worked in the United States, nor how many had pursued two-continent careers, crossing not only the Atlantic but the Pacific, nor how many crossed borders within continents in search of opportunity. Western feminism, however, has not automatically produced the right research questions, and if ever there was a case to be made for comparative national, worldinclusive feminist studies, this is that case.2 A great triumph of feminism has been its critique of the limits that have historically been placed on women's success in the working world, but feminism has not necessarily prepared us for so many striking exceptions to the rule. We did not expect, for instance, to find silent-era film producer Bahiga Hafez in Cairo, Egypt.3 Thus when we extrapolate from the first world to everywhere else, we risk underestimating whole worlds of women. A revised rule of thumb for research on women in the international silent film industries might then be this: in parts of the world we once thought women could not possibly have worked as producers, directors, or writers, they will be found. Corollary to the rule that women might be found where we least expect is the rule that a woman producer might have worked in more than one national industry or even that she left one part of the world to start a motion picture venture in another. Stephanie Socha traveled from her native Poland, for instance, to start a film acting school in Lima, Peru, before directing and producing Los abismos de la vida (1929).4 Fern Andra, a circus performer from Watseka, Illinois, left her hometown and by 1915 had set up the Fern-Andra Film Studio in Berlin, Germany.5 With preliminary research uncovering so many multiple-nation careers, we may begin to ask how so many women dreamed and then facilitated the global reach the new industry promised, a question that might not have been asked with regard to men.6 The continental moves of celebrated male emigre directors has explained entire schools of exported and imported visual style. Certainly the female equivalent of a world style is the diva form developed by Danish actress Asta Nielsen in The Abyss (1911).7 We can trace the diva's bodily attitude and downward-spiraling narrative from Denmark to Germany to Italy to Mexico.8 A distinction, however, needs to be made here between circulating motion picture prints and the transnational careers of motion picture personnel. For we are interested in asking about non-correlation as well as correlation. In the most perfect correlation, prints traveling ahead prepared the opportunity for a cross-continental career, as in the case of American Florence Turner, whose motion picture popularity in Britain made it possible for her to start Turner Films, Ltd., in London in 1913.9 There, with Larry Trimble, she produced and starred in the extant short Daisy Doodad's Dial (1914), as well as later feature films. Turner, the former "Vitagraph Girl," is only one example of an actress who could claim international star recognition and thus take advantage of the creative and economic opportunities that opened up in that first decade. Here let us not take for granted the practice, predominant in the West, of women taking women's roles. If men had played women's roles, as they did in Japanese silent cinema, actresses would not have been on the set to prove their indispensability and thus eventually to have been able to parlay box office success into investment capital.10 Women producers and writers (some of whom were effectively directors) are significant for what they tell us about economic mobility and job fluidity. The opportunities for women in the first decade constitute a case study in which neither class nor gender disqualified job seekers. In addition, in an industry so new it is remarkable to find the apparent ease with which some women moved between national industries, even given a language difference. …


We have reported that chemical modification of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) with polyethylene glycol (PEG) markedly increases its antitumor potency without any adverse side effects. MPEG-TNF-alpha, especially, in which 56% of the lysine amino groups of TNF-alpha are coupled with PEG, exhibits 100-fold more antitumor activity in vivo than native TNF-alpha in the Meth-A murine sarcoma model. In this study, we investigated the pharmacokinetics of PEG-modified TNF-alpha with various molecular sizes to clarify the mechanisms of the enhanced antitumor potency of MPEG-TNF-alpha. The plasma half-lives of modified TNF-alpha increased with increasing molecular size. The decreased plasma clearance of modified TNF-alpha was partially caused by the shielding effect of the proteolytic sites in TNF-alpha by the attached PEG and the decreased transport from blood to various tissues. Almost all native TNF-alpha was uniformly distributed to the kidney and reticuloendothelial system within 1 hr of an intravenous administration, and rapidly disappeared from these tissues at 3 hr. However, very little native TNF-alpha was transported into the tumor. The absolute distributed amount and distribution profile of modified TNF-alpha to tissues other than the tumor were the same as those of native TNF-alpha, whereas the plasma levels of the modified TNF-alpha were higher than plasma levels of the native TNF-alpha. The tumor distribution of modified TNF-alpha was markedly enhanced compared with native TNF-alpha and gradually increased over time. About 9-fold more MPEG-TNF-alpha was distributed to the tumor than native TNF-alpha. Thus, we found that the marked increase in the antitumor potency of PEG-modified TNF-alpha resulted from the enhanced blood residency and tumor accumulation. The antitumor effect of MPEG-TNF-alpha against sarcoma-180 other than Meth-A fibrosarcoma was also about 100 times greater than that of native TNF-alpha when systemically administered. The optimal PEGylation of TNF-alpha facilitated its antitumor potency and MPEG-TNF-alpha may be useful systemic antitumor therapeutic drug.


Objective: Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) is a commonly recognized condition in athletes characterized by activity-related hip pain and stiffness, which if left untreated can progress to hip osteoarthritis. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of symptomatic FAI on performance in young athletes based on the hypothesis that athletes with FAI would show deficits in performance compared with healthy controls. Design: The functional performance of a cohort of preoperative, competitive sportsmen with symptomatic FAI (FAI group, n = 54), was compared with that of a group of age, sex and activity-level matched controls (n = 66). Outcome Measures: Participants performed functional tests including a 10-m sprint, a modified agility T-test, a maximal deep squat test and a single-leg drop jump (reactive strength index). Hip range of motion was assessed by measuring maximal hip flexion, abduction, and internal rotation (at 90 degree hip flexion). Results: The FAI group was significantly slower during the 10-m sprint (3%, P = 0.002) and agility T-test (8%, P < 0.001); flexion, abduction, and internal rotation values for the FAI group were reduced compared with controls (P < 0.001). No significant differences between groups were identified for squat depth or reactive strength index. The FAI group also reported higher levels of anterior groin pain during the 10-m sprint, modified agility T-test, and while squatting. Conclusions: Many sportsmen with confirmed FAI continue sports participation up to and after diagnosis, despite issues with activity-related pain and stiffness. This study highlights the functional limitations in speed, agility, and flexibility that are likely to be present in this group of FAI patients.