ABSTRACT Levels of governance (the nation, states, and districts), student subgroups (racially and ethnically minoritized and economically disadvantaged students), and types of resources (expenditures, class sizes, and teacher quality) intersect to represent a complex and comprehensive picture of K-12 educational resource inequality. Drawing on multiple sources of the most recent available data, we describe inequality in multiple dimensions. At the national level, racially and ethnically minoritized and economically disadvantaged students receive between $30 and $800 less in K-12 expenditures per pupil than white and economically advantaged students. At the state and district levels, per-pupil expenditures generally favor racially and ethnically minoritized and economically disadvantaged students compared to white and economically advantaged students. Looking at nonpecuniary resources, minoritized and economically disadvantaged students have smaller class sizes than their subgroup counterparts in the average district, but these students also have greater exposure to inexperienced teachers. We see no evidence that district-level spending in favor of traditionally disadvantaged subgroups is explained by district size, average district spending, teacher turnover, or expenditures on auxiliary staff, but black and Hispanic spending advantage is correlated with the relative size of the black and Hispanic special education population.


Collaboration is a trend in supply networks management, based on the jointly planning, coordination and integration of processes, participating all network entities. Due to the current characteristics of uncertainty in the markets and economic crisis, there is a need to encourage collaboration tools to reduce costs and increase trust and accountability to market requirements. This study presents an overview of the research carried out in the H2020 European Project: Cloud Collaborative Manufacturing Networks (C2NET), which is directed towards the development a cloud platform that consist of, optimization tools, collaboration tools to support and agile management of the network. The collaborative cloud platform allows to collect real time information coming from real-world resources and considering all the actors involved in the process. The collaborative cloud provides real time data gathered from the entire network partners in order to improve their decision-making processes.


Thank you for downloading the big push. As you may know, people have look hundreds times for their favorite books like this the big push, but end up in infectious downloads. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some harmful virus inside their laptop. the big push is available in our book collection an online access to it is set as public so you can get it instantly. Our book servers saves in multiple countries, allowing you to get the most less latency time to download any of our books like this one. Merely said, the the big push is universally compatible with any devices to read.


IZA DP No. 11311 JANUARY 2018 New Evidence on Cyclical Variation in Labor Costs in the U.S.* Employer-provided nonwage benefit expenditures now account for one-third of U.S. firms' labor costs. We show that a broad measure of real labor costs including such benefit expenditures has become countercyclical during 1982-2014, contrary to the conventional view that labor costs are procyclical. Using BLS establishment-job data, we find that even real wages, the main focus of prior literature, have become countercyclical. Benefit expenditures are less rigid than nominal wages, although both components of labor costs have become more rigid. These rigidities, along with the rising relative importance of aggregate demand shocks (including the financial crisis), help explain countercyclical labor costs. JEL Classification: E24, J32, E32


Squash seeds, peduncles, and fruit rind fragments from Archaic period stratigraphic zones of Guila Naquitz cave in Oaxaca, Mexico, are assigned to Cucurbita pepo on the basis of diagnostic morphological characters and identified as representing a domesticated plant on the basis of increased seed length and peduncle diameter, as well as changes in fruit shape and color, in comparison to wild Cucurbita gourds. Nine accelerator mass spectrometer radiocarbon dates on these specimens document the cultivation of C. pepo by the inhabitants of Guila Naquitz cave between 10,000 to 8000 calendar years ago (9000 to 7000 carbon-14 years before the present), which predates maize, beans, and other directly dated domesticates in the Americas by more than 4000 years.


This study aims to identify and quantify applications that are making use of port numbers that are typically associated with other major Internet applications (i.e. port 53, 80, 123, 443, 8000 and 8080) to bypass port-based traffic controls such as firewalls. We use lightweight packet inspection to examine each flow observed using these ports on our campus network over the course of a week in September 2015 and identify applications that are producing network traffic that does not match the expected application for each port. We find that there are numerous programs that co-opt the port numbers of major Internet applications on our campus, many of which are Chinese in origin and are not recognized by existing traffic classification tools. As a result of our investigation, new rules for identifying over 20 new applications have been made available to the research community.


Patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may have persistent symptoms beyond the normally expected illness resolution. This disease was not diagnosed before late 2019, and therefore, we have more limited experience in understanding all of its outcomes. Thus, clinical, functional, and permanent impairment assessment is challenging. Symptoms including fatigue, dyspnea, and cognitive difficulties have been referred to as "post-acute COVID," "long COVID," or "long haulers."
 Patients who present for assessment of causation, maximum medical improvement (MMI), and permanent impairment can be challenging. For some examinees, after 6 to 12 months without outgoing improvement and with appropriate investigation, treatment, and rehabilitation, the examinee can be considered at MMI. However, because this disorder is new and appropriate treatment may be unclear, the time to achieve MMI is less certain. Physicians may use approaches in the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (AMA Guides), to help define MMI. As science evolves, so will our understanding of how to evaluate chronic problems associated with COVID-19.


The boundary value problemin basic enzyme reactions is formulated and approximate expressions for mediator and substrate concentration are presented. This investigation contains a non-linear termrelated toMichaelis- Menten kinetics. In this paper, we obtain the approximate analytical solutions for the non-linear reaction diffusion equations that describe the diffusion and the reaction within a uniform film containing immobilized enzyme and mediator at an electrode surface. Analytical expression pertaining to the mediator and substrate concentration profiles and current response were reported for all possible values of dimensionless parameter i«, i§, i¨ and i. An approximate expression of flux is also derived. The obtained concentration results are compared with the numerical solution acquired using Scilab program and found to be in satisfactory agreement.


The goal of this dissertation is to give programmers the ability to achieve high performance by focusing on developing parallel algorithms, rather than on architecture-specific details. The advantages of this approach also include program portability and legibility. To achieve high performance, we provide automatic compilation techniques that tailor parallel algorithms to shared-memory multiprocessors with local caches and a common bus. In particular, the compiler maps complete applications onto the specifics of a machine, exploiting both parallelism and memory.
To optimize complete applications, we develop novel, general algorithms to transform loops that contain arbitrary conditional control flow. In addition, we provide new interprocedural transformations which enable optimization across procedure boundaries. These techniques provide the basis for a robust automatic parallelizing algorithm that is applicable to complete programs.
The algorithm for automatic parallel code generation takes into consideration the interaction of parallelism and data locality, as well as the overhead of parallelism. The algorithm is based on a simple cost model that accurately predicts cache line reuse from multiple accesses to the same memory location and from consecutive accesses. The optimizer uses this model to improve data locality. It also uses the model to discover and introduce effective parallelism that complements the benefits of data locality. The optimizer further improves the effectiveness of parallelism by seeking to increase its granularity. Parallelism is introduced only when granularity is sufficient to overcome its associated costs.
The algorithm for parallel code generation is shown to be efficient and several of its component algorithms are proven optimal. The efficacy of the optimizer is illustrated with experimental results. In most cases, it is very effective and either achieves or improves the performance of hand-crafted parallel programs. When performance is not satisfactory, we provide an interactive parallel programming tool which combines compiler analysis and algorithms with human expertise.


The conventional approach to comparing tax progression (using local measures, global measures or dominance relations for first moment distribution functions) often lacks applicability to the real world: local measures of tax progression have the disadvantage of ignoring the income distribution entirely. Global measures are affected by the drawback of all aggregation, viz. ignoring structural differences between the objects to be compared. Dominance relations of comparing tax progression depend heavily on the assumption that the same income distribution holds for both situations to be compared, which renders this approach impossible for international and intertemporal comparisons. Based on the earlier work of one of the authors, this paper develops a unified methodology to compare tax progression for dominance relations under different income distributions. We address it as uniform tax progression for different income distributions and present the respective approach for both continuous and discrete cases, the latter also being employed for empirical investigations. Using dominance relations, we define tax progression under different income distributions as a class of natural extensions of uniform tax progression in terms of taxes, net incomes, and differences of first moment distribution functions. To cope with different monetary units and different supports of the income distributions involved, we utilized their transformations to population and income quantiles. Altogether, we applied six methods of comparing tax progression, three in terms of taxes and three in terms of net incomes, which we utilized for empirical analyses of comparisons of tax progression using data from the Luxembourg Income Study. This is the first paper that performs international and intertemporal comparisons of uniform tax progression with actual data. For our analysis we chose those countries for which LIS disposes of data on gross incomes, taxes, payroll taxes and net incomes. This pertains to 15 countries, out of which we selected 13. This gave rise to 78 international comparisons, which we carried out for household data, equivalized data, direct taxes and direct taxes inclusive of payroll taxes. In total we investigated 312 international comparisons for each of the six methods of comparing tax progression. In two thirds of all cases we observed uniformly greater tax progression for international comparisons. In a bit more than one fifth of all cases we observed bifurcate tax progression, that is, progression is higher for one country up to some population or income quantile threshold, beyond which the situation is the opposite, i.e., progression is higher for the second country. No clear-cut findings can be reported for just one tenth of all cases. But even in these cases some curve differences are so small that they may well be ignored. We also test consistency of our results with regard to the six methods of comparing tax progression and present here twelve (Germany, the UK and the US) plus four comparing Germany and Sweden out of the total of 312 graphs, each containing six differences of first moment distribution functions. These differences can be interpreted as intensity of greater tax progression. We demonstrate the overall picture of uniform tax progression for international comparisons using Hasse diagrams. Concerning intertemporal comparisons of tax progression, we present the results for the US, the UK, and Germany for several time periods. We align our findings with respect to major political eras in these countries, e.g., G. Bush senior, W. Clinton, and G. Bush junior for the United States; M. Thatcher, J. Major, and A. Blair for the United Kingdom, and for Germany, the last year before German re-unification (1989), the beginning of H. Kohl's last term as chancellor (1994), and G. Schroder (2000). In addition, we study sensitivity of our results to the equivalence scale parameter.


This paper argues that scholars of computing, networks, and infrastructures must reckon with the inseparability of "viral" discourses in the 1990s. This co-assembled history documents the reliance on viral analogies and explanations honed in the HIV/AIDS crisis and its massive loss of life, widespread institutional neglect, and comprehensive technological failures. As the 1990s marked a period of intense domestication of computing technologies in the global North, we document how public figures, computer experts, activists, academics, and artists used the intertwined discourses surrounding HIV and new computer technologies to explicate the risks of vulnerability in complex, networked systems. The efficacy of HIV as an analogy is visible in the circulation of viral concepts, fears surrounding interdependence, and emergent descriptions of precarity in the face of a widespread "infrastructure crisis." Through an analysis of this decade, we show how HIV/AIDS discourses indelibly marked the domestication of computing, computer networks, and nested, digitized infrastructures.


ABSTRACT This paper presents new evidence on the implications of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on stock returns. By implementing a long-term focus as well as using subdivided measures for CSR, we cater to the intangible nature and the heterogeneity of CSR activities. We use a novel classification of these activities into nine areas, each belonging to one of the standard environment, social, and governance (ESG) dimensions. Using cross-sectional return regressions and buy-and-hold abnormal returns, we find that firms with strong CSR significantly outperform firms with weak CSR in the mid and long run in certain areas. Firm returns increase up to 3.8% with respect to a one-standard-deviation increase of the CSR rating. In a two-stage least squares (2SLS) approach we verify that the main economic channel for the appreciation of strong CSR stocks is unexpected additional cash flows. The results are relevant for assessing the efficiency of CSR, and have broader implications for asset managers who can expect abnormal returns by investing in firms that exhibit a high CSR in the respective scores and holding the stocks for a longer period.


A 3D wide-azimuth (WAZ) marine streamer survey was designed to image deep objectives below a complex salt structure in a deepwater area of the Gulf of Mexico. Numerous technical and logistical challenges were considered in developing the design for this survey. The final candidate designs were tested with synthetic data modeling and imaging. The final selected wide-azimuth design was used for a survey acquired over the Friesian prospect in the Gulf of Mexico. We present some of the modeling studies supporting the wide-azimuth survey design, as well as acquisition and processing results from the Friesian WAZ pilot project.


Funding information AZA Conservation Endowment Fund; BBC wildlife Fund; Cheyenne Mountain zoos; Columbus Zoo and Aquarium; David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation; Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund; Kolmarden Zoo; Nysether Family Foundation; Whitley Fund for Nature; Woodland Park Zoo Abstract Accurate assessments of the status of threatened species and their conservation planning require reliable estimation of their global populations and robust monitoring of local population trends. We assessed the adequacy and suitability of studies in reliably estimating the global snow leopard (Panthera uncia) population. We compiled a dataset of all the peer-reviewed published literature on snow leopard population estimation. Metadata analysis showed estimates of snow leopard density to be a negative exponential function of area, suggesting that study areas have generally been too small for accurate density estimation, and sampling has often been biased towards the best habitats. Published studies are restricted to six of the 12 range countries, covering only 0.3–0.9% of the presumed global range of the species. Re-sampling of camera trap data from a relatively large study site (c.1684 km) showed that small-sized study areas together with a bias towards good quality habitats in existing studies may have overestimated densities by up to five times. We conclude that current information is biased and inadequate for generating a reliable global population estimate of snow leopards. To develop a rigorous and useful baseline and to avoid pitfalls, there is an urgent need for (a) refinement of sampling and analytical protocols for population estimation of snow leopards (b) agreement and coordinated use of standardized sampling protocols amongst researchers and governments across the range, and (c) sampling larger and under-represented areas of the snow leopard's global range.


ABSTRACT The early atmospheric detection of carbon dioxide (CO2) leaks from carbon capture and storage (CCS) sites is important both to inform remediation efforts and to build and maintain public support for CCS in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. A gas analysis system was developed to assess the origin of plumes of air enriched in CO2, as to whether CO2 is from a CCS site or from the oxidation of carbon compounds. The system measured CO2 and O2 concentrations for different plume samples relative to background air and calculated the gas differential concentration ratio (GDCR = −ΔO2/ΔCO2). The experimental results were in good agreement with theoretical calculations that placed GDCR values for a CO2 leak at 0.21, compared with GDCR values of 1–1.8 for the combustion of carbon compounds. Although some combustion plume samples deviated in GDCR from theoretical, the very low GDCR values associated with plumes from CO2 leaks provided confidence that this technology holds promise in providing a tool for the early detection of CO2 leaks from CCS sites.  Implications: This work contributes to the development of a cost-effective technology for the early detection of leaks from sites where CO2 has been injected into the subsurface to enhance oil recovery or to permanently store the gas as a strategy for mitigating climate change. Such technology will be important in building public confidence regarding the safety and security of carbon capture and storage sites.


Accelerometers are common on many devices, including those required for text-entry. We investigate how to enter text with devices that are solely enabled with accelerometers. The challenge of text-entry with such devices can be overcome by the careful investigation of the human limitations in gestural movements with accelerometers. Preliminary studies provide insight into two potential text-entry designs that purely use accelerometers for gesture recognition. In two experiments, we evaluate the effectiveness of each of the text-entry designs. The first experiment involves novice users over a 45 minute period while the second investigates the possible performance increases over a four day period. Our results reveal that a matrix-based text-entry system with a small set of simple gestures is the most efficient (5.4wpm) and subjectively preferred by participants.


Given the influence of digital technologies on the world at large education and educators are yet again being forced to consider their educational practices. Not all educators have been socialised professionally to use technologies and therefore knowledge gaps exist. This book adds to emerging conversations about the use of technologies to support and indeed replace traditional teaching methodologies in a range of educational settings. It offers an example of innovative approach 'LearningWheel' to bridge the afore mentioned knowledge gap and provides an opportunity for readers to engage with technologies for teaching and learning purposes.

Beginning with an outline of how technologies are shaping the learning landscape more broadly each subsequent chapter takes on a layer of the LearningWheel and sets it in context from a theoretical position. An example wheel is included in each chapter, as are stop and pause questions to prompt educators to engage with the content in a very real sense. By the end of the book readers will have had the opportunity to connect with the LearningWheel (VCoP) in the development of a Learning Wheel unique to this book.


We propose DoReFa-Net, a method to train convolutional neural networks that have low bitwidth weights and activations using low bitwidth parameter gradients. In particular, during backward pass, parameter gradients are stochastically quantized to low bitwidth numbers before being propagated to convolutional layers. As convolutions during forward/backward passes can now operate on low bitwidth weights and activations/gradients respectively, DoReFa-Net can use bit convolution kernels to accelerate both training and inference. Moreover, as bit convolutions can be efficiently implemented on CPU, FPGA, ASIC and GPU, DoReFa-Net opens the way to accelerate training of low bitwidth neural network on these hardware. Our experiments on SVHN and ImageNet datasets prove that DoReFa-Net can achieve comparable prediction accuracy as 32-bit counterparts. For example, a DoReFa-Net derived from AlexNet that has 1-bit weights, 2-bit activations, can be trained from scratch using 6-bit gradients to get 46.1\% top-1 accuracy on ImageNet validation set. The DoReFa-Net AlexNet model is released publicly.


As an Aboriginal author, my thesis is grounded in an Indigenist paradigm; a paradigm that places Indigenous experiences at the center of inquiry and whose goals are to "serve and inform the Indigenous struggle for self-determination" (Rigney, 1997, p. 119). Hence, this thesis is an auto/ethnographic journey based on my lived experiences. Apart from my memories I draw on family documents as well as other printed source material, such as the diaries of my Grandfather and departmental files.

In the era when I was growing up, the cliche of; "Children should be seen and not heard" was popular. Not only that, my mother often told us that we children were never to tell anyone our business or talk about our personal life. Therefore, I never spoke freely about my family's life, my growing up years and how I was ashamed of being an Aboriginal when I was younger. While was raising my four grandchildren, I started thinking about my family's history and how my children and grandchildren knew little of our history. Through reading articles and books by Indigenous authors I came to better understand our history and have come to appreciate that our history must be documented by Indigenous peoples. Although many stories have been written about Indigenous peoples by non-Indigenous writers, these writings tend to perpetuate misconceptions and stereotypes about the First Peoples of Australia. An Indigenist approach seeks to debunk these misconceptions and place the Indigenous experience at the center of the inquiry.

Reflecting on the stories written by Indigenous authors, I decided to follow their example and tell my family's story as best I could, despite my mother's injunction never to tell anyone "our business". Therefore, Annie's Mob is the story of my own life as well as the story of my family, given that my life has unfolded within the context of my family and the historical times in which we lived. I hope my story will encourage other women and men to document their history and leave their stories as a legacy for the future.


This short paper makes the case that most impact assessment (IA) has sustainable development as the stated goal, but that it doesn't deliver sustainable outcomes. A key pillar of sustainable development is equity, both intra-generational (defined after Lamorgese and Geneletti (2013, p.119) as ensuring "equity of opportunity for everyone, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable members of the community and seek to create a good quality of life for everyone") and inter-generational equity (defined after Gibson et al. (2005, p. 235) as favouring "present options and actions that are most likely to preserve or enhance the opportunities and capabilities of future generations to live sustainably"). Notwithstanding the importance of intra-generational equity, this paper focuses on the problem that inter-generational equity presents to IA both because of the prevalence of short-term planning, and because approaches developed to deal with inherent uncertainty associated with impacts considered in the long term are overly resource intensive and therefore impractical. A research focus on IA processes that can deal with inter-generational impacts cost effectively might provide the basis on which to develop an IA tool that actually delivers on its stated goal and fits in with current decision-making norms.


In this paper, I want to argue that what I call "production theories" theories that purport to account for the value of a work of art instrumentally and in terms of something experienced by audience members in attending to the work are insufficient to account for artistic value. The production theories I will discuss include those of Monroe Beardsley, Nelson Goodman, Leo Tolstoy (for lack of a more current pure affective theory), and Alan Goldman (whose account may be seen as an amalgam of the first three). The first three of these theorists represent the most popular and central production theories, those focused,in the case of Beardsley, on the value of a work of art grounded in its ability to produce in an audience member an aesthetic experience; in the case of Goodman, to produce in an audience member a certain cognitive experience; and, third, in the case of Tolstoy, to produce in an audience member a certain emotional state. I think that none of these theories entirely accounts for artistic value. Though with others, I reject intrinsic accounts of artistic value, I think that if instrumental accounts which turn on producing something in attenders are not entirely sufficient, there may be another extrinsic value account worth considering. This paper will make use, in addition to that of the above named theorists, of the work of George Dickie and of a recent paper of mine simply entitled "Artistic Value,"[1] which suffered from an absence of the case I want to try to make here.


The joint power control and base station (BS) assignment problem is considered under Quality-of-Service (QoS) constraints. If a feasible solution exists, the problem can be efficiently solved using existing distributed algorithms. Infeasibility is often encountered in practice, however, which brings up the issue of optimal admission control. The joint problem is NP-hard, yet important for QoS provisioning and bandwidth-efficient operation of existing and emerging cellular and overlay/underlay networks. Recognizing this, there have been several attempts to develop reasonable heuristics for joint admission and power control. This contribution takes a more disciplined approach. The joint problem is first concisely formulated as a constrained optimization problem, whose objective combines the BS assignment, admission, and power control components. The formulation also allows for multicasting. A geometric programming approximation is then developed, which forms the core of a heuristic, yet well-motivated centralized algorithm that generates approximate solutions to the original NP-hard problem. Numerical results against an enumeration baseline illustrate the merits of the approach.


In this important and original book, eminent scholar Barbara Herrnstein Smith describes, assesses, and reflects upon a set of contemporary intellectual projects involving science, religion, and human cognition. One, which Smith calls "the New Naturalism," is the effort to explain religion on the basis of cognitive science. Another, which she calls "the New Natural Theology," is the attempt to reconcile natural-scientific accounts of the world with traditional religious belief. These two projects, she suggests, are in many ways mirror images-or "natural reflections"-of each other. Examining these and related efforts from the perspective of a constructivist-pragmatist epistemology, Smith argues that crucial aspects of belief-religious and other-that remain elusive or invisible under dominant rationalist and computational models are illuminated by views of human cognition that stress its dynamic, embodied, and interactive features. She also demonstrates how constructivist understandings of the formation and stabilization of knowledge-scientific and other-alert us to similarities in the springs of science and religion that are elsewhere seen largely in terms of difference and contrast. In Natural Reflections, Smith develops a sophisticated approach to issues often framed only polemically. Recognizing science and religion as complex, distinct domains of human practice, she also insists on their significant historical connections and cognitive continuities and offers important new modes of engagement with each of them.


Considering suicide is a public health problem, this study identified misconceptions about patients at risk of suicide as well as strategies to manage patients and their families, also verifying changes in conceptions and attitudes throughout graduation. We applied a questionnaire with five categories: "medical confidentiality," "deontology," "medical negligence," "graduation," and "myths and conceptions". One hundred and twenty-six subjects participated in the research: 45 (35.7%) first-year medical students, 48 (38.1%) interns, and 33 (26.2%) doctors. The variables were analyzed, and the difference between groups was significant for 15 questions (62.5%). In one question (myths and conceptions) the answers were distant from the expected, and in two questions (myths and conceptions, deontology) the result did not give adequate information. We observed improvements at medical graduation for most of the studied aspects; among the deficiencies, we highlight those related to compulsory notification, electroconvulsive therapy, and the responsibility of doctors.


Yokogawa developed the PX8000 precision power scope, a high-accuracy power meter, which can measure reactor losses in inverters, motors and the like, by analyzing waveforms. The major specifications of the instrument are as follows: basic accuracy is 0.2%, voltage measurement bandwidth is DC and 0.1 Hz to 20 MHz (-3dB, typical), and current measurement bandwidth is DC and 0.1 Hz to 10 MHz (-3dB, typical). The PX8000 offers the functionality usually provided by a waveform measuring instrument, such as a variety of triggers, tracking, statistical processing, and waveform parameter calculation functions. Furthermore, to improve measurement accuracy at low power ratios this product comes with a de-skew function for correcting signal delays from the current sensor and a data latency adjustment function. This paper describes the PX8000, focusing on a newly developed element dedicated for power measurement and technology for phase correction.


This chapter about the use of antithrombotic agents during pregnancy is part of the Seventh ACCP Conference on Antithrombotic and Thrombolytic Therapy: Evidence Based Guidelines. Grade 1 recommendations are strong and indicate that the benefits do, or do not, outweigh risks, burden, and costs. Grade 2 suggests that individual patients' values may lead to different choices (for a full understanding of the grading see Guyatt et al, CHEST 2004; 126:179S-187S). Among the key recommendations in this chapter are the following: for women requiring long-term vitamin K antagonist therapy who are attempting pregnancy, we suggest performing frequent pregnancy tests and substituting unfractionated heparin (UFH) or low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) for warfarin when pregnancy is achieved (Grade 2C). In women with acute venous thromboembolism (VTE), we recommend adjusted-dose LMWH throughout pregnancy or IV UFH for at least 5 days, followed by adjusted-dose UFH or LMWH for the remainder of the pregnancy and at least 6 weeks postpartum (Grade 1C+). In patients with a single episode of VTE associated with a transient risk factor that is no longer present, we recommend antepartum clinical surveillance and postpartum anticoagulants (Grade 1C). In patients with a single episode of VTE and thrombophilia or strong family history of thrombosis and not receiving long-term anticoagulants, we suggest antepartum prophylactic or intermediate-dose LMWH or minidose or moderate-dose UFH, plus postpartum anticoagulants (Grade 2C). In patients with multiple (two or more) episodes of VTE and/or women receiving long-term anticoagulants, we suggest antepartum adjusted-dose UFH or adjusted-dose LMWH followed by long-term anticoagulants postpartum (Grade 2C). For pregnant patients with antiphospholipid antibodies (APLAs) and a history of two or more early pregnancy losses or one or more late pregnancy losses, preeclampsia, intrauterine growth retardation, or abruption, we suggest antepartum aspirin plus minidose or moderate-dose UFH or prophylactic LMWH (Grade 2B). We suggest one of the following approaches for women with APLAs without prior VTE or pregnancy loss: surveillance, minidose heparin, prophylactic LMWH, and/or low-dose aspirin, 75 to 325 mg/d (all Grade 2C). In women with prosthetic heart valves, we recommend adjusted-dose bid LMWH throughout pregnancy (Grade 1C), aggressive adjusted-dose UFH throughout pregnancy (Grade 1C), or UFH or LMWH until the thirteenth week and then change to warfarin until the middle of the third trimester before restarting UFH or LMWH (Grade 1C). In high-risk women with prosthetic heart valves, we suggest the addition of low-dose aspirin, 75 to 162 mg/d (Grade 2C).


Many applications are facing the problem of learning from an objective dataset, whereas information from other auxiliary sources may be beneficial but cannot be integrated into the objective dataset for learning. In this paper, we propose an omni-view learning approach to enable learning from multiple data collections. The theme is to organize heterogeneous data sources into a unified table with global data view. To achieve the omni-view learning goal, we consider that the objective dataset and the auxiliary datasets share some instance-level dependency structures. We then propose a relational k-means to cluster instances in each auxiliary dataset, such that clusters can help build new features to capture correlations between the objective and auxiliary datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that omni-view learning can help build models which outperform the ones learned from the objective dataset only. Comparisons with the co-training algorithm further assert that omni-view learning provides an alternative, yet effective, way for semi-supervised learning.


The Cape Playhouse, Route 6A, Dennis Village. The Cape Playhouse is America's oldest professional summer theater. Founder, Raymond Moore moved an abandoned Unitarian meetinghouse to land on Old King's Highway he had acquired in the 1920s. The theater opened in 1927 with a play starring Basil Rathbone. Henry Fonda and Bette Davis, a former playhouse usher, made their acting debuts here.


Endometriosis is a medical condition that involves abnormal growths of tissue resembling the endometrium [3], which is the tissue that normally lines the inside of the uterus [4]. Those growths, called endometrial lesions, typically form outside the uterus [4], but can spread to other reproductive organs such as ovaries and fallopian tubes [5]. Endometrial lesions swell and bleed during menstruation [6], which can cause painful and heavy menstruation [6], as well as infertility [7]. As of 2021, there is no cure for endometriosis [8], although medical therapies such as birth control [9] pills and GnRH analogues can treat the painful symptoms of endometriosis [8]. More than eleven percent of women between the ages fifteen and forty-four in the US have endometriosis [8], which can often decrease a woman's quality of life due to painful symptoms and impair her reproductive potential.


A 76-year-old woman with unspecified congenital
heart disease was admitted on April 25th for TIA. She had a possible
history of atrial fibrillation. A slight fever was noted on admission. Her ECG
was abnormal, as well as her transthoracic echocardiography (TTE). Troponin I
was slightly increased. On May 11th, a stroke occurred, in relation
with an occlusion of the basilar artery. The patient was transferred to our institution for an emergency desobstruction. A
dramatic improvement allowed her to be discharged to a rehabilitation
center on May 18th. However, she was re-hospitalized on June 5th,
due to sepsis and neurological worsening. MRI showed new ischemic brain
lesions. Several episodes of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation were documented, as
well as pulmonary hypertension. Effective heparin therapy was initiated and
transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) was requested this time. It revealed a
congenital valvular heart disease (a subaortic membrane), complicated by
infective endocarditis. Despite a monitoring of aPTT, a fatal hemorrhagic shock
occurred. We report this unfortunately remarkable case to address the following
important points: 1) In the setting of a neurological event, abnormal ECG
and/or abnormal TTE and/or Troponin I elevation may indicate a cardioembolic
mechanism and therefore seek a cardiac source of embolism. 2) When TTE fails to
identify a cardiac source of embolism, TEE should be performed, especially when
a preexisting heart disease is suspected or known. 3) The multiplicity in space
(infarcts in both the anterior and posterior circulation, or bilateral) and/or
the multiplicity in time (infarcts of different age) may indicate a
cardioembolic stroke. 4) Congenital subaortic membrane predisposes to infective
endocarditis. 5) When anticoagulant therapy is initiated on strong arguments in
a septic patient (much discussed in infective endocarditis), aPTT monitoring
alone may not be enough. An anti-Xa monitoring may be more appropriate.


We present Project Malmo - an AI experimentation platform built on top of the popular computer game Minecraft, and designed to support fundamental research in artificial intelligence. As the AI research community pushes for artificial general intelligence (AGI), experimentation platforms are needed that support the development of flexible agents that learn to solve diverse tasks in complex environments. Minecraft is an ideal foundation for such a platform, as it exposes agents to complex 3D worlds, coupled with infinitely varied game-play.

Project Malmo provides a sophisticated abstraction layer on top of Minecraft that supports a wide range of experimentation scenarios, ranging from navigation and survival to collaboration and problem solving tasks. In this demo we present the Malmo platform and its capabilities. The platform is publicly released as open source software at IJCAI, to support openness and collaboration in AI research.


The study assessed the effects of three pre-treatment techniques on dormancy and germination of seeds of Afzelia africana (Sm. ex Pers), an endangered tree species in Savanna ecozone of Nigeria. The three pre-treatment techniques are: soaking in cold water for 1, 12 and 24 h, soaking in hot water (100◦C) for 1, 12 and 24 h and soaking in 10, 50 and 98% concentrated sulphuric acid (H2SO4) for 5, 10 and 30 min. Experiments were performed based on a completely randomized design with four replicate.  The results show that cold water pre-treatment of A. africana seeds only gave a fair germination percentage (33.33 to 53.33%) and reduced dormancy period. On the other hand, the effect of hot water pre-treatment on the seeds gave adverse result (26.67 to 36.67%). Although A. africana seeds under control treatment gave an impressive germination, which did not differ significantly from the results of other pre-treatment techniques (F-cal = 2.6777; P-level = 0.1180; P < 0.05), acid pre-treatments yield a more uniform and regular germination. Thus, while the seeds of A, africana could be germinated without pre-treatment, to attain higher percentage germination and reduced dormancy period, the seeds should be pre-treated with sulphuric acid.

 Key words: Dormancy, pre-treatment techniques, germination percentage, Afzelia africana, ex situ conservation.


Layered Li-rich Ni, Mn, Co (NMC) oxide cathodes in Li-ion batteries provide high specific capacities (>250 mAh/g) via O-redox at high voltages. However, associated high-voltage interfacial degradation processes require strategies for effective electrode surface passivation. Here, we show that an acidic surface treatment of a Li-rich NMC layered oxide cathode material leads to a substantial suppression of CO2 and O2 evolution, ~90% and ~100% respectively, during the first charge up to 4.8 V vs. Li+/0. CO2 suppression is related to Li2CO3 removal as well as effective surface passivation against electrolyte degradation. This treatment does not result in any loss of discharge capacity and provides superior long-term cycling and rate performance compared to as-received, untreated materials. We also quantify the extent of lattice oxygen participation in charge compensation ("O-redox") during Li+ removal by a novel ex-situ acid titration. Our results indicate that the peroxo-like species resulting from O-redox originate on the surface at least 300 mV earlier than the activation plateau region around 4.5 V. X-ray photoelectron spectra and Mn-L X-ray absorption spectra of the cathode powders reveal a Li+ deficiency and a partial reduction of Mn ions on the surface of the acid-treated material. More interestingly, although the irreversible oxygen evolution is greatly suppressed through the surface treatment, our O K-edge resonant inelastic X-ray scattering shows the lattice O-redox behavior largely sustained. The acidic treatment, therefore, only optimizes the surface of the Li-rich material and almost eliminates the irreversible gas evolution, leading to improved cycling and rate performance. This work therefore presents a simple yet effective approach to passivate cathode surfaces against interfacial instabilities during high-voltage battery operation.


Bivalve molluscs can concentrate contaminants, including pathogenic microorganisms, from the water column during their normal filter-feeding activity. In the European Union, the risk of human and animal faecal contamination in bivalves is estimated by determining the concentration of Escherichia coli in time-series samples from production areas. A structured field study was undertaken to determine the extent to which such concentrations varied between sites, sampling occasions and shellfish species and to determine the residual variability of the method. E. coli was enumerated in three species of bivalve mollusc (Crassostrea gigas, Mytilus spp. and Pecten maximus) co-located in each of three geographically separate commercial shellfisheries. The data were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA). This showed that the effects of site, sampling occasion, species and site/sampling occasion interaction were all significant. The proportion of variation due to site was markedly greater than that due to other factors. Post-ANOVA analysis showed that the concentration of E. coli in P. maximus was significantly higher than in the other two species. Mytilus spp. and C. gigas exhibited comparable levels of E. coli. The observed standard deviation of the most probable number method in the study was 0.33 log(10).


The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine is a worldwide organization of physicians dedicated to the promotion, protection, and support of breastfeeding and human lactation. Its mission is to unite into one organization members of the various medical specialties with this common purpose.


In this study, the molecular mechanism of Aven in taxane induced apoptosis were studied in ER(+) MCF-7 and ER(-) MDA-MB-231 cell lines. Taxanes, paclitaxel and docetaxel, are cytotoxic agents which act by promoting deformation of stable microtubules, inhibiting the normal dynamic reorganization of microtubule networks required for mitosis. First the dose kinetics of apoptotic response towards the above mentioned drugs with these two cell lines were established. Cytotoxicity was determined with MTT assay after cells were treated with the drugs for 24 hours. 50nM Paclitaxel treatment for 24h inhibited growth of MCF-7 by 58 percent and MDA-MB-231 by 44 percent. Whereas 50nM Docetaxel caused growth inhibiton by 55 percent and 70 percent for 24h in MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cell lines respectively. Then Aven protein levels in response to these drugs were studied by western blot analysis. The western blot results showed that Aven protein levels were not changing in response to taxanes in these cell lines. After that the effect of the drugs on protein-protein interaction was investigated with CoIP experiments. Endogeneous Bcl-xL protein was immunoprecipitated with specific Bcl-xL antibody and then immunoblotting was done with anti-Aven antibody. The interaction of Aven with Bcl-xL was not abolished with taxane treatment. The phosphorylation of Bcl-xL with taxane treatment was also shown by western blot analaysis. The overexpression of Aven by transfection of both cell lines with pSG-HA-Aven plasmid was performed and then Aven overexpression was checked by western blot analysis. As a control, immunoprecipitation of total protein extract with anti-HA antibody was made. But results showed non-specific binding of endogeneous Aven to HA antibody. As a second strategy, gene silencing was used. Aven expression was downregulated by Hs_Aven_3HP siRNA and protein level. The mRNA level of Aven was determined first with one step RT PCR and then with quantitative real time RT PCR. The downregulation of Aven was 2.3 fold in MCF-7 cells and 1.7 fold MDA-MB-231 cells. After that, taxane induced apoptotic cell death was investigated by M30 Apoptosense ELISA Kit. The overexpression study showed that taxane induced apoptosis in MCF-7 cells increased by 2 fold. Whereas downregulation of Aven protects MCF-7 cells from apoptosis induced by taxanes. For cisplatin, Aven overexpression resulted in less apoptotic cell death in MCF-7 cells. In MDA-MB-231 cells, overexpression of Aven sensitizes cells for apoptotic cell death. When Aven was downregulated, drugs induced less apoptotic cell death.


Abstract We conducted a large-scale, multiple-year study in harvested areas of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii [Mirbel] Franco) forests in western Washington, examining the effectiveness of control methods on the widespread invasive shrub Scotch broom [Cytisus scoparius (L.) Link]. We tested both chemical and physical control methods, using three different approaches that are management relevant: (1) triclopyr, a POST herbicide, at different times of year and on different-sized plants; (2) cutting (or brushcutting) of mature individuals; and (3) scarification of soil surface to remove seedlings once versus multiple times. We measured initial mortality, seed germination, and percent cover of C. scoparius in plots for 3 yr following treatments. Triclopyr treatment resulted in greater mortality and reduced percent cover compared with all other treatments with the effect persisting for 2 yr after spraying. Further, triclopyr had the same effect on C. scoparius cover and mortality irrespective of time of year applied. Similar to soil scarification, triclopyr treatments resulted in a flush of seedlings, suggesting that removal of conspecific competitors and not soil disturbance per se promotes seed germination. Brushcutting was generally effective in reducing C. scoparius cover in the short term, but effects did not persist as long as triclopyr treatments, in part due to large differences in stump resprouting rates across sites. Soil scarification to remove seedlings, even over multiple years, did not result in reduced C. scoparius cover. Triclopyr is an effective approach for controlling both emerging and established stands of C. scoparius.


A murine monoclonal antibody, which binds to an epitope on the major outer membrane protein of Chlamydia trachomatis and with species specificity in the micro-immunofluorescent assay, effectively neutralized in vitro two antigenically distinct serovars of C. trachomatis. Optimal concentrations of both organism and antibody were required to produce maximal neutralization of the organism. Neutralization was less effective and more variable at lower dilutions of antibody than at higher dilutions, suggesting a prozone phenomenon. A radiolabeled attachment assay demonstrated that attachment of elementary bodies was unaffected by earlier treatment with antibody and that neutralization occurred at a step after attachment. The epitope to which this antibody is directed, on the major outer membrane protein of C. trachomatis, may have an important role in determining infectivity of the organism.


Transplanting the wisdom of the mayapple Etoposide, a topoisomerase inhibitor, is used to treat various cancers. However, etoposide isn't that easy to get. Its precursor comes from the very slow-growing mayapple plant. Lau and Sattely used bioinformatics, heterologous enzyme expression, and kinetic characterization, to work out the pathway that makes the precursor in mayapple (see the Perspective by O'Connor). They then successfully transplanted the full biosynthetic pathway into tobacco plants. Science, this issue p. 1224; see also p. 1167 A small woodland plant gives up its secrets for synthesizing a useful chemotherapeutic agent. [Also see Perspective by O'Connor] Podophyllotoxin is the natural product precursor of the chemotherapeutic etoposide, yet only part of its biosynthetic pathway is known. We used transcriptome mining in Podophyllum hexandrum (mayapple) to identify biosynthetic genes in the podophyllotoxin pathway. We selected 29 candidate genes to combinatorially express in Nicotiana benthamiana (tobacco) and identified six pathway enzymes, including an oxoglutarate-dependent dioxygenase that closes the core cyclohexane ring of the aryltetralin scaffold. By coexpressing 10 genes in tobacco—these 6 plus 4 previously discovered—we reconstitute the pathway to (–)-4′-desmethylepipodophyllotoxin (the etoposide aglycone), a naturally occurring lignan that is the immediate precursor of etoposide and, unlike podophyllotoxin, a potent topoisomerase inhibitor. Our results enable production of the etoposide aglycone in tobacco and circumvent the need for cultivation of mayapple and semisynthetic epimerization and demethylation of podophyllotoxin.


The presence of pollutants in water promotes negative impacts on aquatic organisms. Among the methods of wastewater treatment, the use of sorbent materials is one of the most outstanding due to its efficiencies and easy implementation. Orange peels had become value-added products for these purposes. Activated carbon as a sorbent material was prepared using orange peel as a precursor. The resulting material was physicochemically characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Fourier transform infrared radiation (FTIR); structural changes were identified and related to sorption capacity using a model pollutant. Results of sorption indicated natural dried orange peel which presented a sorption capacity of 149.26 mg/g, while sorbentactivated carbon presented a sorption capacity of 2342.91 mg/g. The recovery of orange peel to obtain potential interest materials provided benefits for wastewater treatment.


In "The Baptism of Early Virginia", Rebecca Anne Goetz examines the construction of race through the religious beliefs and practices of English Virginians. She finds the seventeenth century a critical time in the development and articulation of racial ideologies - ultimately in the idea of "hereditary heathenism," the notion that Africans and Indians were incapable of genuine Christian conversion. In Virginia in particular, English settlers initially believed that native people would quickly become Christian and would form a vibrant partnership with English people. After vicious Anglo-Indian violence dashed those hopes, English Virginians used Christian rituals like marriage and baptism to exclude first Indians and then Africans from the privileges enjoyed by English Christians - including freedom. Resistance to hereditary heathenism was not uncommon, however. Enslaved people and many Anglican ministers fought against planters' racial ideologies, setting the stage for Christian abolitionism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Using court records, letters, and pamphlets, Goetz suggests new ways of approaching and understanding the deeply entwined relationship between Christianity and race in early America.


In the preceding paper in this issue [Ost, T. W. B., Miles, C. S., Munro, A. W., Murdoch, J., Reid, G. A., and Chapman, S. K. (2001) Biochemistry 40, 13421-13429], we have established that the primary role of the phylogenetically conserved phenylalanine in flavocytochrome P450 BM3 (F393) is to control the thermodynamic properties of the heme iron, so as to optimize electron-transfer both to the iron (from the flavin redox partner) and onto molecular oxygen. In this paper, we report a detailed study of the F393H mutant enzyme, designed to probe the structural, spectroscopic, and metabolic profile of the enzyme in an attempt to identify the factors responsible for causing the changes. The heme domain structure of the F393H mutant has been solved to 2.0 A resolution and demonstrates that the histidine replaces the phenylalanine in almost exactly the same conformation. A solvent water molecule is hydrogen bonded to the histidine, but there appears to be little other gross alteration in the environment of the heme. The F393H mutant displays an identical ferric EPR spectrum to wild-type, implying that the degree of splitting of the iron d orbitals is unaffected by the substitution, however, the overall energy of the d-orbitals have changed relative to each other. Magnetic CD studies show that the near-IR transition, diagnostic of heme ligation state, is red-shifted by 40 nm in F393H relative to wild-type P450 BM3, probably reflecting alteration in the strength of the iron-cysteinate bond. Studies of the catalytic turnover of fatty acid (myristate) confirms NADPH oxidation is tightly coupled to fatty acid oxidation in F393H, with a product profile very similar to wild-type. The results indicate that gross conformational changes do not account for the perturbations in the electronic features of the P450 BM3 heme system and that the structural environment on the proximal side of the P450 heme must be conformationally conserved in order to optimize catalytic function.


Academic Libraries traditionally offered support for a variety of information related queries. As the storage and delivery of information changed, libraries increasingly became involved in supporting students to use the new technologies and the widening focus of Higher Education to encompass the development of skills for life, added another new dimension. It was no longer enough simply to provide students with an answer but rather to support them to develop the skills to enable them to find answers themselves. The impact of the widening participation agenda meant that different levels and methods of support were required as standard and often over a 24x7 period. The deficit support model began to give way to a more holistic, collaborative view of student support within libraries and learning styles/ help seeking behaviours began to be taken into account (Weaver 2008). The "Learner Support Model" was introduced by Library and Learning Services in 2004/5 as part of an overall strategy to enhance student learning, retention, performance and achievement. All students do not automatically have effective research, IT or study skills but those who do develop those skills will make increased use of high quality information sources, are liable to return better academic performances and are therefore more likely to complete their programmes. The generic nature of the support model ensures that students can access support wherever they are; in whatever discipline area they are working and at whatever time they need it. In the four years since the model was implemented it has moved from a theoretical ideal to a well subscribed support service handling around 90,000 enquiries per year. The Learner Support Model has been showcased at conferences, evaluated through feedback and now developed to a position where it can be extended to other services and student facing academic support areas of Northumbria University and beyond.


Fruits of twelve quince (Cydonia oblonga Mill.) commercial cultivars and selections were compared in the ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) and total phenolic content (TPC) of intact and peeled fruits. The antioxidant capacity and total phenolic content ranged between 5.99 and 63.10 mmol AA/100 g FW, and 3.92 and 12.83 g GA/100 g FW, respectively. These ranges cover an almost 8-times variation among the tested genotypes in case of antioxidant capacity and also declares two-times variation for total polyphenolic content. Cultivars 'Aromate' and 'Bereczki' possessed the lowest antioxidant capacity and 'Roman portugal' and 'Bereczki' had the lowest polyphenolic contents. In contrast, cultivars 'Champion' and 'Konstantinapolyi' possessed the highest antioxidant capacity and 'Mezőturi' and 'De Husi' had the highest polyphenolic contents. The Pearson's coefficient was relatively moderate but significant (r=0.51) indicating a weak interdependence between FRAP and TPC values of quince fruits. Our results led us to the conclusion that quince might be considered as a valuable source of antioxidants and polyphenolics.


The Secret Army is the definitive work on the Irish Republican Army. It is an absorbing account of a movement that has had a profound effect on the shaping of the modern Irish state. The secret army in the service of the invisible Republic has had a powerful effect on Irish events over the past twenty-five years. These hidden corridors of power interest Bell and inspired him to spend more time with the IRA than many volunteers spend in it. This book is the culmination of twenty-five years of work and tens of thousands of hours of interviews. Bell's unique access to the leadership of the republican movement and his contacts with all involved--British politicians, Irish politicians, policemen, arms smugglers, and others committed or opposed to the IRA--explain why The Secret Army is the book on the subject. This edition represents a complete revision and includes vast quantities of new information. Bell's book gives us vital insight into our times as well as Irish history. This edition of The Secret Army contains six new chapters that bring the history of this clandestine organization up to date. They are: The First Decade, The Nature of the Long War, 1979-1980"; "Unconventional Conflict, The Hunger Strikes, January 1980-October 3, 1981"; The Protracted Struggle, September 1981-January 1984"; "War, Politics, and the Split, January 1984-December 1986"; The Troubles as Institution, 1987-1990" and The Armed Struggle Transformed, 1991-1996, The End Game." In his new introduction, Bell reflects on his decades of research, the experiences he has had, and the people he has met during his extensive visits to Ireland.


Recent empirical studies have established that deviations from the Uncovered Interest Parity (UIP) condition may be different across macroeconomic regimes. We extend this work to account for possible nonlinearities and endogeneity by estimating a Threshold Vector Autoregression (TVAR) model. Using carry trade proxies as in Brunnermeier et al. (2009) alongside a measure of realized exchange rate volatility, we endogenously identify two volatility regimes: low and high. Simulating an incentive to open a carry-trade position through an orthogonal shock to the interest rate differential, we find that carry trade performance varies across different regimes. This suggests that UIP deviations are more pronounced in the low volatility state and non-linearities play a role in explaining the forward bias.


BACKGROUND
Four retrospective studies have reported premature mortality in patients with hypopituitarism with standard mortality ratios (SMRs) varying between 1.20 and 2.17. Patients with hypopituitarism have complex endocrine deficiencies, and the mechanisms underpinning any excess mortality are unknown. Furthermore, the suggestion has emerged that endogenous growth-hormone deficiency might account for any excess mortality. We aimed to clarify these issues by doing a large prospective study of total and specific-cause mortality in patients with hypopituitarism.

METHODS
We followed up 1014 UK patients (514 men, 500 women) with hypopituitarism from January, 1992, to January, 2000. 573 (57%) patients had non-functioning adenomas, 118 (12%) craniopharyngiomas, and 93 (9%) prolactinomas. SMRs were calculated as the ratio of observed deaths to the number of deaths in an age-matched and sex-matched UK population.

FINDINGS
The number of observed deaths was 181 compared with the 96.7 expected (SMR 1.87 [99% CI 1.62-2.16], p<0.0001). Univariate analysis indicated that mortality was higher in women (2.29 [1.86-2.82]) than men (1.57 [1.28-1.93], p=0.002), in younger patients, in patients with an underlying diagnosis of craniopharyngioma (9.28 [5.84-14.75] vs 1.61 [1.30-1.99], p<0.0001), and in the 353 patients treated with radiotherapy (2.32 [1.71-3.14] vs 1.66 [1.30-2.13], p=0.004). Excess mortality was attributed to cardiovascular (1.82 [1.30-2.54], p<0.0001), respiratory (2.66 [1.72-4.11], p<0.0001), and cerebrovascular (2.44 [1.58-4.18], p<0.0001) causes. There was no effect of hormonal deficiency on mortality, except for gonadotropin deficiency, which, if untreated was associated with excess mortality (untreated 2.97 [2.13-4.13] vs treated 1.42 [0.97-2.07], p<0.0001). Multiple regression analyses identified age at diagnosis, sex, a diagnosis of craniopharyngioma, and untreated gonadotropin deficiency as independent significant factors affecting mortality.

INTERPRETATION
Patients with hypopituitarism have excess mortality, predominantly from vascular and respiratory disease. Age at diagnosis, female sex, and above all, craniopharyngioma were significant independent risk factors. Specific endocrine-axis deficiency, with the exception of untreated gonadotropin deficiency, does not seem to have a role.


Contact between Egypt and the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age, especially the relationship between Minoan Crete and New Kingdom Egypt, has been the subject of much study. The relationship between the Greek (Mycenaean) mainland and Egypt is generally regarded as a more elusive topic, and most scholars seem to consider interaction between the two a matter of irregular exchange via middlemen (e.g., on Cyprus, in the Levant), rather than direct contact. This paper seeks to stimulate new thinking on this subject by positing the possibility that exchange between the two was more than a haphazard phenomenon, arguing that it was, instead, a highly organized system that involved the active engagement of the ruling elite at Mycenae as well as the pharaonic court. Using both archaeological and paleobotanical data and focusing my examination on the import into Egypt of Mycenean pottery, particularly stirrup jars, which are known generally as containers for olive oil, I demonstrate that olives and/or olive oil were a crucial part of this Late Bronze Age interstate connection.


Features: The importance of effective communication between pathologists, breast imagers, medical geneticists, experts in nursing, psycho-social support, and rehabilitation, as well as surgical, medical, and radiation oncologists in providing optimal patient care is demonstrated. The latest major clinical trials are covered, along with the information they provide on early detection and management of breast cancer. Illustrations and tables that emphasize breast imaging, microscopic and gross histology, anatomy, and procedural technique enhance visual understanding. Algorithms on problem management in all aspects of breast disease from benign processes to breast carcinoma inform clinical practice. New chapters have been added on pathology of in situ carcinomas, prophylactic contralateral mastectomy, implications of obesity in breast cancer, and an overview of survivorship issues To keep perspectives fresh and updated, over one third of the authors are new to this edition


Objective
The minimally invasive fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is the current gold standard for the diagnosis of thyroid nodule malignancy. However, the correct discrimination of follicular neoplasia often requires more invasive diagnostic techniques. The lack of suitable immunohistochemical markers to distinguish between follicular thyroid carcinoma and other types of follicular-derived lesions complicates diagnosis, and despite most of these tumours being surgically resected, only a small number will test positive for malignancy. As such, the development of new orthogonal diagnostic approaches may improve the accuracy of diagnosing thyroid nodules.

Design
This study includes a retrospective, multi-centre training cohort including 54 fresh-frozen follicular-patterned thyroid samples and two independent, multi-centre validation cohorts of 103 snap-frozen biopsies and 33 FNAC samples, respectively.

Methods
We performed a genome-wide genetic and epigenetic profiling of 54 fresh-frozen follicular-patterned thyroid samples using exome sequencing and the Illumina Human DNA Methylation EPIC platform. An extensive validation was performed using the bisulfite pyrosequencing technique.

Results
Using a random forest approach, we developed a three-CpG marker-based diagnostic model that was subsequently validated using bisulfite pyrosequencing experiments. According to the validation cohort, this cost-effective method discriminates between benign and malignant nodules with a sensitivity and specificity of 97 and 88%, respectively (positive predictive value (PPV): 0.85, negative predictive value (NPV): 0.98).

Conclusions
Our classification system based on a minimal set of epigenetic biomarkers can complement the potential of the diagnostic techniques currently available and would prioritize a considerable number of surgical interventions that are often performed due to uncertain cytology.

Significance statement
In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of people diagnosed with thyroid nodules. The current challenge is their etiological diagnosis to discount malignancy without resorting to thyroidectomy. The method proposed here, based on DNA pyrosequencing assays, has high sensitivity (0.97) and specificity (0.88) for the identification of malignant thyroid nodules. This simple and cost-effective approach can complement expert pathologist evaluation to prioritize the classification of difficult-to-diagnose follicular-patterned thyroid lesions and track tumor evolution, including real-time monitoring of treatment efficacy, thereby stimulating adherence to health promotion programs.


This thesis aims to explore two main issues. First we study crude oil prices in view of weak-form efficiency. Thereupon we look into different hedging strategies that could be used to stabilize income in a market with high volatility. The data used are crude oil prices of West Texas Intermediate between 1987 and 2010. We conclude that the spot crude price and the 3 month future price for the same oil type are weak-form efficient. The two prices tend towards a long-run equilibrium and differences in prices are quickly adjusted. OPEC's role in the market is discussed as a weakness to price efficiency. Based on efficient prices, we find that the minimum variance hedging method gives the lowest risk, but a naive hedge ratio is easiest to implement in a business strategy for a risk averse management. On the other hand, a risk neutral oil company would get a higher added return by merely buy and sell in the spot market. By introducing a multiple risks hedging model consisting of price risk and exchange rate risk, we suggest that a Norwegian company could reduce its total risk of the portfolio by increasing its exposure in the currency market.


Consider immunotherapy rather than depot corticosteroid treatment for hay fever

The prevalence of hay fever (seasonal allergic rhinitis) has increased dramatically over the past four decades in the United Kingdom, with a doubling from 10 per 1000 people in the 1970s to 20 per 1000 in the 1980s.1 The British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology has published guidelines on the management of rhinitis that recommend that, when measures for avoiding pollen are insufficient, treatment should be either oral or topical antihistamine, to be taken as required, or topical sodium cromoglycate, to be taken regularly.2 If these treatments are ineffective, intranasal corticosteroids should be taken regularly, with oral or topical antihistamines added if required. If this stepped programme is adhered to the vast majority of patients will respond, but if patients fail to respond systemic corticosteroids may be used.

Over the last few decades the practice of treating severe symptoms with depot corticosteroids has become common, mainly because the duration of treatment of 4–6 weeks is often sufficient to cover the whole season. If the season is exceptionally severe or the patient experiences prolonged symptoms as a result of multiple allergies (for example, a combination of tree and grass pollen allergy), more than one depot corticosteroid injection may be required. Oral corticosteroids are less commonly used, perhaps because of the inconvenience of taking daily medication for 6–8 weeks every year.

The United Kingdom is unusual in the developed world in that it has minimal provision of allergy services, hence only small numbers of patients with severe seasonal allergic rhinitis have access to immunotherapy despite the growing evidence for the efficacy of this treatment. 3 4 We report a case of a man who developed avascular necrosis of both hip joints after depot corticosteroids were used to treat his …


Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have dominated the field of Computer Vision and achieved great success due to their built-in translation equivariance. Group equivariant CNNs (G-CNNs) that incorporate more equivariance can significantly improve the performance of conventional CNNs. However, G-CNNs are faced with two major challenges: spatial-agnostic problem and expensive computational cost . In this work, we propose a general framework of previous equivariant models, which includes G-CNNs and equivariant self-attention layers as special cases. Under this framework, we explicitly decompose the feature aggregation operation into a kernel generator and an encoder, and decouple the spatial and extra geometric dimensions in the computation. Therefore, our filters are essentially dynamic rather than being spatial-agnostic. We further show that our E quivariant model is parameter E fficient and computational E fficient by complexity analysis, and also data E fficient by experiments, so we call our model E 4 -Net. Extensive experiments verify that our model can significantly improve previous works with smaller model size. Especially, under the setting of training on 1 / 5 data of CIFAR10, our model improves G-CNNs by 5%+ accuracy, while using only 56% parameters and 68% FLOPs.


All the contributors to this compilation knew Bion personally and were influenced by his work. They include: Herbert Rosenfeld, Frances Tustin, Andre Green, Donald Meltzer and Hanna Segal.Wilfred R. Bion has taken his place as one of the foremost psychoanalysts of our time, yet it is only within recent years that the impact of his achievements are being felt. His death has stilled his pen and voice but demands a restatement of his view by those who have been most influenced by him. Bion's greatness lay, not only in the odd vertices of his incredible observations, but in the resources of his epistemological vastness, his respect for truth obtained in the disciplined absence of memory and desire, and his paying such scrupulous attention to and interpreting of recombinant constructions he achieved with mental elements their functions, and their transformations. His was the Language of Achievement, which is the tongue begotten by patience. Of note is his introduction of Plato's theory of forms and Kant's categories into psychoanalytic metapsychology, to say nothing of his mathematical, group and religious theories.The contributors to this memorial all knew him either as analysands, supervisees, or colleagues. Virtually all of the psychoanalysts-analysands of Melanie Klein are represented as well, bearing testimony to his importance as a pathfinder for post-Kleinian thinking, to say nothing of post-Freudian. Their contributions can be thought of as prisms which refract Bion's profound but often recondite Language of Achievement into the differentiated color spectrum of sensible meaning for clinical reflection and practice.Contributors include: Ignacio Matte Blanco, Robert H. Gosling, Andre Green, Leon Grinberg, James Grotstein, Martha Harris, Betty Joseph, Sydney Klein, Robert Langs, Isabel Menzies Lyth, Donald Meltzer, Roger Money-Kyrle, Michael Paul, Frank Philips, Herbert Rosenfeld, Richard J. Rosenthal, Hanna Segal and Frances Tustin.


Magnetic resonance spectroscopy imaging (MRSI) is a promising and developing tool in medical imaging. Because of various difficulties imposed by the imperfections of the scanner and the reconstruction algorithms, its applicability in clinical practice is rather limited. In this paper, we suggest an extension of the constrained reconstruction technique (SLIM). Our algorithm, named B-SLIM, takes into account the the measured field inhomogeneity map, which contains both the scanner's main field inhomogeneity and the object-dependent magnetic susceptibility effects. The method is implemented and tested both with synthetic and physical two-compartment phantom data. The results demonstrate significant performance improvement over the SLIM technique. At the same time, the algorithm has the same computational complexity as SLIM.


Problem-based learning (PBL) is a constructivist pedagogy in which students learn in small groups by working on real-world problems. Despite its many benefits, however, this pedagogy is still not widely used in K-16 classrooms, especially with large numbers of students. Traditional human-facilitated PBL places intense demands on faculty to facilitate problem-solving sessions with small groups of students; on the other hand, most educational technologies do not provide PBL's collaborative problem-solving experience. We propose a cognitive model of the problembased learning process. We present a software environment called CaseBook that allows instructors to author and share problems and provides students with a pedagogically-sound PBL experience based on the cognitive model. CaseBook has been used in high school and undergraduate chemistry and biology classes, and we discuss results from two studies in actual classrooms.


Objective. To determine the attitudes, beliefs and knowledge of talented young athletes residing in Gauteng regarding prohibited performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and anti-doping rules and regulations. Methods. This was a survey study using a quantitative research approach. South African TuksSport academy athletes at the High Performance Centre, University of Pretoria, and competitive high-school athletes at four private high schools in Gauteng completed the survey. A selfdetermined, structured questionnaire was used to establish the attitudes, beliefs and knowledge of the athletes. Results. A total of 346 (208 males, 138 females) athletes, mean (standard deviation) age 16.9 (1.4) years participated in the survey. According to this survey, 3.9% of the athletes in this survey admitted to using a prohibited PED and more than 14.0% of the athletes said they would consider using a prohibited PED if they knew they would not get caught. Ambition (46.0%) and emotional pressure (22.5%) were the primary reasons why the athletes would consider using prohibited PEDs. Even though coaches appeared to be one of the main sources of information (on PEDs and anti-doping rules), only 42.1% of the athletes felt that they were well informed. Conclusion. Controlling doping by means of testing is important. However, it may be necessary to put more emphasis on changing attitudes towards doping and implementing additional educational programmes.


Background: C7-D1 disc herniation is rare in comparison with other cervical levels. The incidence rates are between 3.5% and 8%. The cervicothoracic junction disc herniation can be operated posteriorly or anteriorly. The anterior approach can be challenging because of the difficulty of access resulted from the manubrium. In this article, we present our experience about cervicothoracic junction disc herniation (C7-T1) surgery. Materials and Methods: Between January 2008 and December 2017, 21 patients have been operated for solitary C7-T1 disc herniation. We operated 12 male patients and 9 female patients. Eight patients have been operated by the anterior approach, and 13 patients underwent surgery by the posterior approach. The mean symptoms duration was 11.4 months. Results: All patients had C8 cervicobrachial neuralgia. Other clinical presentations were numbness, tingling sensation, and weakness. All patients improved after surgery. We had no significant complication. Conclusion: We did not find a great difference between the clinical features of cervicothoracic herniated disc and other cervical levels. The anterior approach seems more difficult to carry out in particularly in large patients with the short neck. The posterior approach can be used for all types of patients except in the case of medial disc herniation.


Title of Document: EXPLORING THE EXPERIENCES OF THREE TEACHERS AT A SUMMER YOUTH MUSIC CAMP: ―AS POSITIVE FOR THE FACULTY AS IT IS FOR THE KIDS‖ Leah Rachel Belin, Master of Arts, 2009 Directed By: Dr. Janet Montgomery, Music Education The purpose of this single case study ethnography was to explore the experiences of three music teachers at a summer youth music camp (SYMC) at a large university outside a metropolitan area on the East Coast. This exploration was intended to investigate the following research questions: (a) Why did the participants choose to participate in SYMC, (b) How did the participants benefit from participation in SYMC, and (c) How did the experiences of the participants relate to the professional and nonprofessional aspects of SYMC? Data analysis revealed two major themes: nonprofessional aspects of participation and professional aspects of participation. The professional aspects of camp were of more benefit to the participants and were a stronger motivation for participation than the nonprofessional aspects. The results of the present study held implications for SYMC as a learning community and as an opportunity for professional development for music teachers. EXPLORING THE EXPERIENCES OF THREE TEACHERS AT A SUMMER YOUTH MUSIC CAMP: ―AS POSITIVE FOR THE FACULTY AS IT IS FOR THE KIDS‖


Despite the growing prominence of generative adversarial networks (GANs), optimization in GANs is still a poorly understood topic. In this paper, we analyze the "gradient descent" form of GAN optimization i.e., the natural setting where we simultaneously take small gradient steps in both generator and discriminator parameters. We show that even though GAN optimization does not correspond to a convex-concave game (even for simple parameterizations), under proper conditions, equilibrium points of this optimization procedure are still \emph{locally asymptotically stable} for the traditional GAN formulation. On the other hand, we show that the recently proposed Wasserstein GAN can have non-convergent limit cycles near equilibrium. Motivated by this stability analysis, we propose an additional regularization term for gradient descent GAN updates, which \emph{is} able to guarantee local stability for both the WGAN and the traditional GAN, and also shows practical promise in speeding up convergence and addressing mode collapse.


DNS tunneling techniques are often used for malicious purposes but network security mechanisms have struggled to detect these. Network forensic analysis has thus been used but has proved slow and effort intensive as Network Forensics Analysis Tools struggle to deal with undocumented or new network tunneling techniques. In this paper we present a method to aid forensic analysis through automating the inference of protocols tunneled within DNS tunneling techniques. We analyze the internal packet structure of DNS tunneling techniques and characterize the information entropy of different network protocols and their DNS tunneled equivalents. From this, we present our protocol prediction method that uses entropy distribution averaging. Finally we apply our method on a dataset to measure its performance and show that it has a prediction accuracy of 75%. Our method also preserves privacy as it does not parse the actual tunneled content, rather it only calculates the information entropy.


Pd-conditioned graphite tubes, placed in the furnace of an AAS
instrument, were used for entrapment of germane as generated in an
associated flow-injection system. Two different approaches were tested
with the ultimate aim of allowing multiple determinations,
 i.e.
,
introduction of the modifier as a Pd salt solution, and use of
electrolytically Pd pre-coated tubes. While the former treatment resulted
in satisfactory analytical performance, although requiring separate
regeneration of the tubes prior to each sampling sequence, the
electrolytically pre-coated tubes did not function satisfactorily. This in
turn led to a closer investigation as to the function of Pd in entrapping
hydrides and releasing the analyte. Based on an evaluation of the
behaviour of the two types of tubes, supplemented by scanning tunnelling
microscopy studies of tubes with and without modifier and treated in
different ways, it is shown that heating at 2600 °C results in a
physical–chemical change of the modifier in the electrolytically
coated tubes; however, this change leads only to a loss of the ability of
the modifier to entrap the hydrides, while the stabilizing effect is
maintained.


It is widely recognized that livestock production is very important to humans because it provides us food, incomes, employment, nutrients and risk insurance. However, it also contributes to a range of serious environmental problems, including the climate changing emissions, acidification of natural environments and eutrophication. Since in different parts of Europe animal production is highly concentrated in certain areas, it is very important to accurately determine the gas release of the major air pollutants emitted from animal waste (i.e. ammonia, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide) in order to ensure a safe workplace as well as to reduce the emission of these gases.
Gas release behaviours of ammonia, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide were studied when the slurry was disturbed. In a farm there are many disturbances which can affect the emission of these gases. This study focuses in the slurry addition disturbance, which tries to simulate the pig's behaviour. That means that the slurry addition was performed randomly in space and time. Two types of slurry were studied: one from slaughtering pigs (30-95 kg) and the other from small pigs up to about 30 kg. Ammonia emissions showed a decrease right after performing each addition, followed by an increase while carbon dioxide emissions show an immediate increase followed by a sharp decrease. Hydrogen sulphide emissions were much higher during disturbances, showing an unpredictable pattern release.
It was also investigated how the pH was affected by the slurry addition and how it changes during time by measuring the pH in the surface layers (at a depth of 0.5-1cm) and in the inner layers (at a depth of 4 and 6 cm). The results show an increase of the pH after disturbances and the formation of a pH gradient from deeper to top layers.


This paper complements the findings of Atal, Nopo and Winder (2010) on gender and ethnic wage gaps for 18 Latin American countries circa 2005 by analyzing gender wage gaps for the same countries between circa 1992 and circa 2007. During this span the overall gender earnings gaps dropped about 7 percentage points, while the unexplained component dropped between 3 and 4 percentage points, depending on the control variables used. The gap declined most notably among workers at the bottom of the earnings distribution, with children at home, the self-employed, part-time workers and those in rural areas – the segments of the labor market that were previously reported as having the highest unexplained gender disparities. Most of the reduction in unexplained gaps occurred within segments rather than due to the composition of labor markets. The paper additionally finds a limited role for job tenure in explaining gender wage gaps.


Research aims:
My film project seeks to explore and capture the way that race and gender are performed on screen, and the ways in which the medium and the form of representation can reinforce or challenge stereotypes.

Research Question
To what extent are ethnicity and gender performative?
To what extent is that performance constrained by western stereotypical perceptions of the exotic Oriental?
To what extent are those perceptions negative?
To what extent can performance allow the performer to take ownership of and manipulate those stereotypes?
What implications such goals have on the filmmaking process and the resulting shape of the film?

If gender is 'performed', 'manufactured through a sustained set of acts, posited through the gendered stylization of the body', (Butler, 1999) then can the same also be said of race? Do we act out in ways that consolidate an impression of what it is to be Chinese, for example, which lies at the core of my project? Current postmodern critiques of identity are thus also of interest here, and in relation to performativity, masquerade, mimicry, drag and simulacrum are key terms used in this diverse approach to notions of identity. It is the investigation of these aspects of performance that comprise the research questions for this project.


The objective of this study was to evaluate the sensory characteristics of coffees from Coffea arabica L. groups, in municipalities located in the Campo das Vertentes mesoregion, in the State of Minas Gerais. Natural and parchment coffees, after drying, consisted of 100% mature fruits. The experiment was carried out on 14 coffee farms located in the municipalities of Carmo da Mata, Oliveira, Santo Antonio do Amparo and Bom Sucesso, in the 2016/17 agricultural crop. In order to conduct the study, coffee fruit collections of nine groups of commercial cultivars were submitted to two types of post-harvest processing, known as "terrarium nut" and "parchment", combinations that resulted in 250 samples. Sensory analysis was performed according to the protocol of the Specialty Coffee Association - SCA, with panelists accredited by the Coffee Quality Institute - CQI. The natural post-harvest processing (terrarium nut) showed higher scores for most groups of cultivars when compared to parchment processing. Cultivars Topazio, Bourbon Amarelo, Catucai Amarelo, Icatu Amarelo and Icatu Vermelho stood out with the highest averages for all sensory attributes.

 Key words: Coffee arabica L., sensory analysis, Specialty Coffee Association (SCA), quality.


A well-known objection to prioritarianism, famously levelled by Mike Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve, is that it wrongly ignores the unity of the individual in treating intra-personal cases like inter-personal cases. In this paper we accept that there should be a moral shift between these cases, but argue that this is because autonomy is a relevant consideration in intra-personal but not inter-personal cases, and one to which pluralist prioritarians ought to attend. To avoid this response, Otsuka and Voorhoeve must (and do) assume we know nothing about the subjective information of the person being chosen for. But we show that this commits them to two controversial assumptions: that welfare consists in an objective list of goods, and – if one accepts an unorthodox but plausible account of the relationship between risk aversion and rationality – that there is only a narrow range of rational risk aversions. Only prioritarians who accept both these assumptions are on the hook of Otsuka and Voorhoeve's objection; for all others, the examples have insufficient information, and so lose their sting.


The problem of lot sizing, sequencing and scheduling multiple products in flow line production systems has been studied by several authors. Almost all of the researches in this area assumed that setup times and costs are sequence –independent even though sequence dependent setups are common in practice. In this paper we present a new mixed integer non linear program (MINLP) and a heuristic method to solve the problem in sequence dependent case. Furthermore, a genetic algorithm has been developed which applies this constructive heuristic to generate initial population. These two proposed solution methods are compared on randomly generated problems. Computational results show a clear superiority of our proposed GA for majority of the test problems.


Speakers of many different languages use the Internet. A common activity among these users is uploading images and associating these images with words (in their own language) as captions, filenames, or surrounding text. We use these explicit, monolingual, image-to-word connections to successfully learn implicit, bilingual, word-to-word translations. Bilingual pairs of words are proposed as translations if their corresponding images have similar visual features. We generate bilingual lexicons in 15 language pairs, focusing on words that have been automatically identified as physical objects. The use of visual similarity substantially improves performance over standard approaches based on string similarity: for generated lexicons with 1000 translations, including visual information leads to an absolute improvement in accuracy of 8-12% over string edit distance alone.


The paper goal was to analyze the dynamics and distribution of maize cultivated area and production in Romania and in its regions of development, using empirical data provided by the National Institute of Statistics for the period 2007-2013. The statistical parameters: mean, deviation standard and coefficient of variation were determined in order to characterize each indicator. With 2.5 million ha cultivated with maize Romania came on the top position in the EU-28.For maize production, it is on the 2nd position after France. Romania's production increased more 2.7 times in the analyzed period, and the contribution of the development regions to it was the following one in 2013: 22.29 % South Muntenia, 18.18 % South East, 18.19 % North East, 13.06 % South West Oltenia, 12.47 % West, 9.68 % North West, 5.69 % Central part and 0.44 % Bucharest-Ilfov. The means, standard deviations and the variation coefficients proved that both the cultivated area and maize production registered a high variation from a region to another. The discrepancies among the regions concerning soil and climate conditions, farm size, technical endowment, applied technologies, maize varieties, farm management resulted in a high variability of production performance. For Romania, maize is a strategic crop which could cover both the internal market, and become a good product for export on the foreign market. As a result, the Romanian farmers should be aware that the yield growth must be their main objective which should be reached using high potential hybrids resistant to drought and diseases, and extending irrigation systems.


This paper reflects on the ethical procedures encountered, and methodological strategies adopted, in order to develop and conduct qualitative research with children to explore their relationship to, and through, information and communication technologies (ICT). The study was conducted in Australia, which like many other nations, adopted a formal, mandatory institutional ethics framework historically formed in response to real and potential unethical and harmful research. This is now associated with a broader agenda of of risk-management and protection in universities which must be managed to enable the right of children to participate fully in research that affects them. Since calls for more multi-dimensional research with children and ICT have been made (Livingstone and Helsper, 2007; Livingstone, 2010), few academic studies have delved into the ethical processes and negotiations involved in such research, especially within academic institutions that are bounded by strict ethical and risk-management processes. This paper contributes to the growing field of appropriate research methods and methodologies, and their circumspection, for study with ICT connected-children, and adds to the growing debates around ethically including children in academic research.


Abstract Kerberosaurus manakini, gen. et sp. nov. (Dinosauria, Hadrosauridae) is described on the basis of disarticulated skull elements from the Maastrichtian Tsagayan Formation of Blagoveschensk, Far Eastern Russia. This flat-headed hadrosaur is characterized by a unique morphology of the lateral wall of the braincase, a particularly narrow frontal, a depressed rostral margin of the parietal, a strong, wide and flattened crest around the circumnarial depression, and a very prominent hook-like palatine process on the maxilla. A phylogenetic analysis, based on 21 cranial characters, indicates that, among hadrosaurines, Kerberosaurus is the sister taxon of a monophyletic group formed by Prosaurolophus and Saurolophus. Several independent hadrosaurid lineages migrated from western North America to eastern Asia, probably by late Campanian to early Maastrichtian time. At the end of the Maastrichtian, completely different dinosaur faunas developed in both regions, indicating some kind of geographical or paleoecological barrier.


A first-principles self-consistent model that couples plasma and neutral physics suitable for the simulation of turbulent plasma behavior in the tokamak SOL is presented. While the plasma is modeled by the drift-reduced two fluid Braginskii equations, a kinetic model for the neutrals is developed, valid in short and in long mean free path scenarios. The model includes ionization, charge-exchange, recombination, and elastic collisional processes. The solution of the neutral kinetic equation is implemented within the GBS plasma turbulence code (Ricci et al 2012 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 54 124047) and it is performed by using the method of characteristics. The details of the numerical implementation are discussed. Finally, we show initial results of the first self-consistent simulations of plasma turbulence and neutral dynamics.


The Fairchild Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence Research (FLAIR) was inaugurated in October, 1980, with the purposes of introduction AI Technology into Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation, and of broadening the AI base of its parent company, Schlumberger Ltd. The charter of the laboratory includes basic and applied research in all AI disciplines. Currently, we have significant efforts underway in several areas of computational perception, knowledge representation and reasoning, and AI-related architectures. We also engage in various tool-building activities to support our research program. The current computational environment includes several large mainframes dedicated to AI research, a number of high-performance personal scientific machines, and extensive graphics capabilities.


About the book: As globalisation advances, education is increasingly crossing borders - national, regional, sectoral and institutional. At the same time, educational systems are having to respond to other profound changes, such as the knowledge explosion, the changing interaction between the public and private spheres, and the increasingly rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT). The present volume deals with distance higher education systems - especially those designed for lifelong learners - in the context of these changes, emphasising the need for international co-operation and for well thought-out policies in areas ranging from funding, appropriate use of ICTs and quality assurance. Aimed at planners, policy-makers and other stakeholders, the book is intended to be a practical tool for capacity-building and decision-making.