OBJECTIVE
To examine the effect of various clinical tracks within the veterinary medical clinical curriculum at Texas A&M University on clinical diagnostic proficiency as determined by pre- and post-training assessment. We expected that the clinical track chosen by the student would impact their measured outcome with bias toward higher scores in their chosen field.

DESIGN
Prospective cohort study.

STUDY POPULATION
32 students from the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University.

PROCEDURES
By use of standardized, written case scenarios, clinical reasoning was assessed twice: once prior to the clinical (fourth) year of the curriculum and again at completion of the clinical year. Students demonstrated their abilities to collect and organize appropriate clinical data (history, physical examination, and laboratory findings), determine clinical diagnoses, and formulate and implement acceptable treatment modalities. Data from clinical assessments were compared for a given cohort and correlated with other measures (eg, grades, standardized test scores, and species-specific curricular track).

RESULTS
Differences were detected in clinical diagnostic proficiency among students in different clinical tracks and for different species groups in the case scenarios. Tracking by species group in the clinical veterinary curriculum appeared to affect development of clinical reasoning and resulted in differential proficiency among cases for differing species groups.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Differences in clinical experiences between small animal tracks and all other track opportunities (large animal, mixed animal, and alternative) influenced the development of clinical proficiency in fourth-year veterinary students during their clinical training period.


Lucid dreams are dreams that involve awareness of dreaming while dreaming. As lucid dreaming is accompanied by heightened cortical activation, e.g., in the prefrontal cortex, it was speculated whether lucid dreaming interferes with the restorative function of sleep. Two cross-sectional studies have found inhomogeneous results regarding the relationship between lucid dream frequency and subjective sleep quality. The present studies included a student sample (N = 444) and a population-based sample (N =1380). Regression analyses revealed a significant relationship between lucid dream frequency and poor sleep quality (this relationship was weaker in the student sample) which disappeared when nightmare frequency was statistically controlled. One possible interpretation of the findings is that lucid dreamers seem to have more nightmares and, therefore, poorer sleep quality, i.e., sleep quality is not directly impaired by having a lucid dream. However, alternative causal explanations are equally plausible, e.g., trait variables like the openness to experience might relate to all these variables. Future research should examine this relationship by comparing within-subject differences in sleep quality between nights with and without the occurrence of a lucid dream using a diary paradigm. Whether intensive practice of lucid dream induction techniques, e.g., the wake-up-back-to-bed technique, might have negative effects on sleep quality cannot yet be answered.


human-rated launch vehicles requires an implementation approach that is robust to failures, especially the failure of sensors used to monitor vehicle conditions that might result in an abort determination. Sensor measurements provide the basis for operational decisions on human-rated launch vehicles. This data is often used to assess the health of system or subsystem components, to identify failures, and to take corrective action. An incorrect conclusion and/or response may result if the sensor itself provides faulty data, or if the data provided by the sensor has been corrupted. Operational decisions based on faulty sensor data have the potential to be catastrophic, resulting in loss of mission or loss of crew. To prevent these later situations from occurring, a Mod ular Arch itecture and Generalized Meth od ology for Sensor Data Qual if ication in Human-rated Launch Vehicles has been developed. Sensor Data Qualification (SDQ) is a set of algorithms that can be implemented in onboard flight software, and can be used to qualify data obtained from flight-critical sensors prior to the data being used by other flight software algorithms. Qualified data has been analyzed by SDQ and is determined to be a true representation of the sensed system state; that is, the sensor data is determined not to be corrupted by sensor faults or signal transmission faults. Sensor data can become corrupted by faults at any point in the signal path between the sensor and the flight computer. Qualifying the sensor data has the benefit of ensuring that erroneous data is identified and flagged before otherwise being used for operational decisions, thus increasing confidence in the response of the other flight software processes using the qualified data, and decreasing the probability of false alarms or missed detections. At a high level, SDQ is called by the flight computer, as required each cycle, to qualify a specific sensor or set of sensors. SDQ first determines the updaterate of the data, and obtains the specified data from the sensor data table. SDQ then consults the data provided by the Mission Manager Function to determine the appropriate subset of pre-defined algorithms, thresholds, and parameters to be used in qualifying specified sensor data. Next, appropriate algorithms are applied to the data. If a given algorithm determines that the data is faulty, the associated data signal accrues a strike from that algorithm for the current flight computer cycle, and the algorithm or algorithms that failed the data are recorded. Having run all applicable fault detection algorithms, the strike counters for each of the applicable algorithm/sensor pairs are then tested for the persistence of any failures. Sensors associated with data that meets persistence criteria are flagged as permanently failed. Alternate embodiments of some of the qualification algorithms used in the Ares SDQ architecture have prior implementations that were incorporated into commercial data qualification development and analysis tools under the SureSense trademark. SureSense has been used to develop and implement real-time data qualification algorithms for groundbased nuclear power generation systems. This work was done by Edmond Wong and Kevin J. Melcher of Glenn Research Center; William A. Maul, Amy K. Chicatelli, Thomas S. Sowers, and Christopher Fulton of QinetiQ North America; and Randall Bickford of Expert Microsystems, Inc. Further information is contained in a TSP (see page 1). Inquiries concerning rights for the commercial use of this invention should be addressed to NASA Glenn Research Center, Innovative Partnerships Office, Attn: Steven Fedor, Mail Stop 4–8, 21000 Brookpark Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44135. Refer to LEW18633-1.


Designers today have access to full-body movement data to explore the rich, interpersonal, non-verbal communication we read, interpret, enact, and perform every day. In this paper, we describe an approach to movement as a design material, where movement is seen as embodied communication. We discuss the mix of qualities in data derived from full-body movement as it encompasses the corporeal and computational, and how to present such data. The aim for this exploration is to tease out the rich communicative potential of fullbody movement for digital interactions by enabling an explorative engagement with movement data. People increasingly move with, for and through technology. We argue that designers need to be aware of the nature of movement data and how such data may be applied, addressed, and influenced. Because we are concerned with the meaning-making design process of movement-based interactions, the main analytical approach taken in this study is communication and social semiotics. We suggest that for interaction design, movement may be parsed by Velocity, Position, Repetition and Frequency. We further describe the development of a tool, Sync, for generating dynamic movement data visualizations, and reflect on abstracting and visualizing movement data in order to inform and enable design processes of movement-based digital interactions.


Polysulfated nanomaterials that mimic the extracellular cell matrix are of great interest for their potential to modulate cellular responses and to bind and neutralize pathogens. However, control over the density of active functional groups on such biomimetics is essential for efficient interactions, and this remains a challenge. In this regard, producing polysulfated graphene derivatives with control over their functionality is an intriguing accomplishment in order to obtain highly effective 2D platforms for pathogen interactions. Here, a facile and efficient method for the controlled attachment of a heparin sulfate mimic on the surface of graphene is reported. Dichlorotriazine groups are conjugated to the surface of graphene by a one‐pot [2+1] nitrene cycloaddition reaction at ambient conditions, providing derivatives with defined functionality. Consecutive step by step conjugation of hyperbranched polyglycerol to the dichlorotriazine groups and eventual conversion to the polyglycerol sulfate result in the graphene based heparin biomimetics. Scanning force microscopy, cryo‐transmission electron microscopy, and in vitro bioassays reveal strong interactions between the functionalized graphene (thoroughly covered by a sulfated polymer) and vesicular stomatitis virus. Infection experiments with highly sulfated versions of graphene drastically promote the infection process, leading to higher viral titers compared to nonsulfated analogues.


The behaviour of migrant women on the labour market is influenced by a variety of factors, among which the culture of the home and host country. Part of the literature investigates the role of home-country culture. This study extends the literature by including a measure for the influence of host-country culture as an additional determinant of the participation of migrant women. The empirical model explains participation from demographics and educational attainment, and uses home- and host-country female participation as proxies for culture. Evidence on the basis of the Dutch Labour Force Survey 1996-2007 suggests that both differences in home-country female participation and the trend in native female participation, as a measure for host-country culture, affect the participation of migrant women. The results suggest that host-country participation is at least as important as home-country participation.


PREMISE OF THE STUDY
Untapped information about allele diversity within populations and individuals (i.e., heterozygosity) could improve phylogenetic resolution and accuracy. Many phylogenetic reconstructions ignore heterozygosity because it is difficult to assemble allele sequences and combine allele data across unlinked loci, and it is unclear how reconstruction methods accommodate variable sequences. We review the common methods of including heterozygosity in phylogenetic studies and present a novel method for assembling allele sequences from target-enriched Illumina sequencing libraries.

METHODS
We performed supermatrix phylogeny reconstruction and species tree estimation of Artocarpus based on three methods of accounting for heterozygous sequences: a consensus method based on de novo sequence assembly, the use of ambiguity characters, and a novel method for incorporating read information to phase alleles. We characterize the extent to which highly heterozygous sequences impeded phylogeny reconstruction and determine whether the use of allele sequences improves phylogenetic resolution or decreases topological uncertainty.

KEY RESULTS
We show here that it is possible to infer phased alleles from target-enriched Illumina libraries. We find that highly heterozygous sequences do not contribute disproportionately to poor phylogenetic resolution and that the use of allele sequences for phylogeny reconstruction does not have a clear effect on phylogenetic resolution or topological consistency.

CONCLUSIONS
We provide a framework for inferring phased alleles from target enrichment data and for assessing the contribution of allelic diversity to phylogenetic reconstruction. In our data set, the impact of allele phasing on phylogeny is minimal compared to the impact of using phylogenetic reconstruction methods that account for gene tree incongruence.


A lot of work in ontology – especially the ontology of the ordinary, spatiotemporal world – relies on linguistic analysis and intuitions. In order to establish what there is, one looks for the truth-makers of our true statements. Alas, this is no straightforward business. For one thing, the "surface grammar" of what we say can be misleading. But neither can we trust its "deep structure", for there is no unique way of telling what it is. No analysis can reveal the deep structure of a given statement; at most we can fix it by dint of resisting alternative interpretations. Depending on what we think there is, we must attach a meaning to what we say. Going the other way around – I argue – is illegitimate; it amounts to attributing our own ontological views to the language we share with others.


Background Artemisinin and its derivatives were reported to possess strong regulatory effects on inflammation and autoimmune diseases. This study was designed to examine the therapeutic effects and underlying mechanisms of SM934, a water-soluble artemisinin analogue, on lupus-prone female NZB×NZW F1 mice. Methodology/Principal Findings NZB/W F1 mice were treated orally with SM934 for 3 or 6 months respectively to investigate the effect on clinical manifestations and immunological correlates. To further explore the mechanisms of SM934, ovalbumin (OVA)-immunized or interferon (IFN)-γ-elicited C57BL/6 mice were used. In vivo, treatment with SM934 for 3 or 6 months significantly delayed the progression of glomerulonephritis and increased the survival rate of NZB/W F1 mice. Clinical improvement was accompanied with decreased Th1-related anti-double-strand DNA (dsDNA) IgG2a and IgG3 Abs, serum interleukin (IL)-17, and increased Th2-related anti-dsDNA IgG1 Ab, serum IL-10 and IL-4. SM934 treatment also suppressed the accumulation of effector/memory T cells, induced the apoptosis of CD4+ T cells, while enhancing the development of regulatory T cells in NZB/W F1 mice. In addition, SM934 treatment promoted the IL-10 production of macrophages from NZB/W F1 mice, OVA-immunized C57BL/6 mice and IFN-γ-elicited C57BL/6 mice. In vitro, SM934 enhanced IL-10 production from primary macrophages stimulated with IFN-γ. Conclusions/Significance The results of this study demonstrated that artemisinin analogue SM934 had therapeutic effects on lupus-prone female NZB/W F1 mice by inhibiting the pathogenic helper T cell development and enhancing anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 production.


Francisella tularensis, the causative agent of tularemia, is a potent pathogen in humans and other mammals. The ulceroglandular form of the disease is the most common expression in humans with a clinical picture characterized by a skin ulcer, enlarged regional lymph nodes and fever. Despite being a preferred route of infection, the skin also affords an effective defense barrier against F. tularensis. Doses required to induce infection by intradermal inoculation are several logs higher than those needed for infection by other routes. In the present thesis, the requirements for the local and systemic host defense to intradermal infection with F. tularensis was studied in experimental mouse models. Naive mice and mice immunized by previous infection were challenged, mostly with the live vaccine strain F. tularensis LVS but also with a clinical isolate of F. tularensis. In naive mice, intradermal inoculation of F. tularensis LVS resulted in a rapid increase of bacterial numbers during the first few days in the skin, lymph nodes, spleen and liver, followed by a decrease and eradication of the bacteria within two weeks of inoculation. Immune mice controlled the infection at the site of infection and very few bacteria spread to internal organs. When immunohistochemical staining of skin specimens was performed during the first 3 days, naive mice showed a weak or barely discernible local expression of TNF-α, IL-12 and IFN-γ. In immune mice, the expression of all three cytokines was strongly enhanced, TNF-α and IL-12 within 24 h and IFN-γ within 72 h of inoculation. To investigate the role of T cells in the defense against intradermal infection with F. tularensis LVS, naive and immune T-cell knockout mice (e.g., αβ TCR-/-, γδ TCR-/-, αβγδ TCR-/-) were used. Naive mice lacking the αβ TCR had persistently high bacterial numbers in all organs and died at 4 weeks. Mice lacking the γδ TCR, on the other hand, controlled the infection as effectively as did wild-type mice. To enable αβ TCR-/- and αβγδ TCR-/- mice to survive, antibiotic treatment was given from day 10 to 20 of infection. When intradermally challenged 2 weeks later, these animals were found to control a secondary infection, resulting in decreasing viable counts in skin and lymph nodes and prevention of spread to liver and spleen. The results indicated the presence of a T-cell independent mechanism of resistance and analyses of serum showed high levels of F. tularensis-specific IgM, findings suggesting a role for antibodies in the protection against cutaneous tularemia. To study the effect of F. tularensis-specific antibodies on host resistance, we adoptively transferred immune serum to B-cell-deficient mice. After receiving immune serum, both naive and immunized mice became capable of surviving an otherwise lethal dose of F. tularensis LVS. Moreover, transfer of immune serum to wild type mice, afforded significant protection to a lethal dose of a wild-type strain of F. tularensis subsp. holarctica, as disclosed by reduced bacterial counts in spleen and liver. Finally, we studied the effect of immune serum on the local expression of proinflammatory cytokines and neutrophils in response to an intradermal injection of F. tularensis LVS. As compared to normal serum, transfer of immune serum resulted in increased expression of TNF-α, IL-12 and neutrophils. These findings afford a possible explanation for the effect of specific antibodies in the local host protection in the skin against tularemia.


More than a decade after mobile robots arrived in many research labs it is still difficult to find plan-based autonomous robot controllers that perform, beyond doubt, better than they possibly could without applying AI methods. One of the main reason for this situation is abstraction. AI based control techniques typically abstract away from the mechanisms that generate the physical behavior and refuse the use of control structures that have proven to be necessary for producing flexible and reliable robot behavior. The consequence is: AI-based control mechanisms can neither explain and diagnose how a certain behavior resulted from a given plan nor can they revise the plans to improve its physical performance. In our view, a substantial improvement on this situation is not possible without having a new generation of robot control languages. These languages must, on the one hand, be expressive enough for specifying and producing high performance robot behavior and, on the other hand, be transparent and explicit enough to enable execution time inference mechanisms to reason about, and manipulate these control programs. This paper reports on aspects of the design of RPL-II, which we propose as such a next generation control language. We describe the nuts and bolts of extending our existing language RPL to support explicit models of physical systems, and object-oriented modeling of control tasks and programs. We show the application of these concepts in the context of autonomous robot soccer.


Regional authority in Mycenaean Greece should be reconstructed using excavation data from both palatial centers and hinterland communities. Economic information is the first line of inquiry into this subject because of the presence of the Linear B tablets and the tangible quality of material production in the archaeological record. To this end, this article presents a starting point for reconsidering the use of intrasite artifact distribution in the nonpalatial community of Nichoria in Messenia as a means of detecting the economic relationship between the palatial center at Pylos and one of its regional dependencies. The results of this study indicate that the institutions that structured the hierarchical relationship between Pylos and Nichoria were not based on creating an economic system of staple redistribution to equalize access to resources across the region. Instead, the construction of symbolic hierarchies of value in some resources and the use of those materials in political institutions, such as feasting and the distribution of exotic goods, likely played a significantly greater role in creating regional integration than did economic control. Join the discussion at http://www.ajaonline.org/forum/1554.


Tantalum oxide films were prepared by sol-gel process using tantalum ethoxide Ta(OC2H5)5. The dependence of deposition conditions (i.e. composition of polymeric solutions and spinning rate) on ionic conductivities for tantalum oxide films were studied. The best results achieved for films fabricated by the spin coating technique from clear polymeric solutions. These films had low packing density (rho) equals 3.2 g/cm3 and good proton conductivity (about 10-6 (Omega) -1/cm-1). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was used for studying the compositions of the tantalum oxide films. We report on the use of tantalum oxide films as ion conductors in devices consisting of WO3/Ta2O5/H+ ion storage polymer structure. We found tantalum oxide to have very good properties for proton device applications.


Background: The skin is a dynamic ecosystem of microbes and the source of many chemical compounds that affect human health. Skin-microbiome interactions can cause persistent, psychosocially devastating body smell despite good hygiene. Since odor production is often transient, malodors may not be perceptible during medical examinations. Therefore, having odor complaints can be diagnosed as body dysmorphic disorder and referred for psychological evaluations. Development of simple at-home tests and virtual care programs could improve the diagnosis and management of socially debilitating malodor conditions. Objective: The aim of this study was to assess potential effectiveness of at-home gut microbiome testing in the diagnosis and management of idiopathic body and breath odor and in people are allergic to me (PATM) syndrome. Methods: We contacted participants of prior metabolic body odor (MEBO) and PATM studies and online support groups by email or social media. Individuals who consented to participate were mailed test kits for at-home collection of gut microbiome samples. Participants completed an online survey (specially developed for this study) addressing their symptoms and other quality-of-life indicators at baseline and after sampling. Participants collected stool samples after flare-ups or symptom improvements and mailed them to the laboratory to be processed and analyzed. We evaluated between-group differences in symptom severity, as well as symptom improvement observations for the same individuals. For differential abundance testing of microbial taxa, we performed nonparametric statistical analyses using Mann-Whitney U tests for unpaired samples and Wilcoxon signed rank test for paired samples. Results: A total of 112 individuals from 21 countries consented to participate. About half the participants had been tested for the metabolic disorder trimethylaminuria, and about half of those tested were diagnosed with the disorder. The levels of bacteria previously associated with cutaneous body odor were significantly elevated in gut samples. For the combination of species from Anaerococcus, Corynebacterium, Campylobacter, and Propionibacterium genera, the differences were P=.002 for active (73 participants, 182 samples) versus regression or remission groups (30 participants, 51 samples); P=.01 for those experiencing symptoms most or all of the time (46 participants, 88 samples) versus those who had symptoms sometimes, rarely, or never (25 participants, 74 samples); and P<.001 for improvement of symptoms in the same individuals (22 participants, 43 sets of matched samples). Changes in microbial diversity were significant for betweenbut not within-participant comparisons. Conclusions: Changes in the gut microbiome composition affect MEBO and PATM severity. In particular, an increase in intestinal bacteria producing odor when in skin flexures was associated with increased intensity of self-reported symptoms. The changes were consistent in the within-group and between-group analyses. Our findings support the feasibility of remote and decentralized clinical studies of malodor conditions. Supplementary sample collection procedures may help to meet established research quality standards. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03582826; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03582826 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID): RR2-10.1101/2020.08.21.20179242 (JMIR Dermatol 2020;3(1):e10508) doi: 10.2196/10508 JMIR Dermatol 2020 | vol. 3 | iss. 1 | e10508 | p. 1 http://derma.jmir.org/2020/1/e10508/ (page number not for citation purposes) Gabashvili JMIR DERMATOLOGY


Beyond the Rope is an interdisciplinary study that draws on narrative theory and cultural studies methodologies to trace African Americans' changing attitudes and relationships to lynching over the twentieth century. Whereas African Americans are typically framed as victims of white lynch mob violence in both scholarly and public discourses, Karlos K. Hill reveals that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries African Americans lynched other African Americans in response to alleged criminality, and that twentieth-century black writers envisaged African American lynch victims as exemplars of heroic manhood. By illuminating the submerged histories of black vigilantism and consolidating narratives of lynching in African American literature that framed black victims of white lynch mob violence as heroic, Hill argues that rather than being static and one dimensional, African American attitudes towards lynching and the lynched black evolved in response to changing social and political contexts.


An essential condition to use mathematics to solve problems is the ability to recognize, imagine and represent relations between quantities. In particular, covariational reasoning has been shown to be very challenging for students at all levels. The aim of the project Interactive Virtual Math (IVM) is to develop a visualization tool that supports students' learning of covariation graphs. In this paper we present the initial development of the tool and we discuss its main features based on the results of one preliminary study and one exploratory study. The results suggest that the tool has potential to help students to engage in covariational reasoning by affording construction and explanation of different representations and comparison, relation and generalization of these ones. The results also point to the importance of developing tools that elicit and build upon students' self-productions


The one book you absolutely need to get up and running with Windows Server 2008 R2. One of the world's leading Windows authorities and top-selling author Mark Minasi explores every nook and cranny of the latest version of Microsoft's flagship network operating system, Windows Server 2008 R2, giving you the most in-depth coverage in any book on the market. Focuses on Windows Windows Server 2008 R2, the newest version of Microsoft's Windows' server line of operating system, and the ideal server for new Windows 7 clients Author Mark Minasi is one of the world's leading Windows authorities and has taught tens of thousands of people to design and run Windows networks Covers Windows storage concepts and skills, Windows Server 2008 IP, WINS, NetBIOS, LMHosts, DNS, creating the simple Active Directory, and creating and managing user accounts Explains Group Policy in Active Directory; files, folders and shares; Sysvol, old and new; sharing printers on the network; remote server administration; connecting Windows clients to your network; working the Web with IIS 7.0; and AD maintenance and recovery Provides workarounds for things that don't quite work as they should and how-tos for many undocumented features Find out everything you want to know-and then some!


ABSTRACT In the Niger Delta, which has prograded onto the African continental shelf and neighbouring oceanic crust since the Eocene, abundant thin-skinned structures provide evidence for slope instability. The structures have detached on shale of the Akata Fm. At the toe-of-slope, the outer thrust belts contain compressional structures. The surface slopes and apical angles of the thrust wedges are small. Also, fore-thrusts alternate with back-thrusts. This is evidence for a small resistance to basal slip and it implies high values of fluid overpressure. Thrust faults are planar through the overburden, but strongly curved beneath it. By analogy with physical models, we take this as evidence for normal fluid pressures through the overburden, and for a pressure ramp, inducing seepage forces, beneath it. The seismic velocity of the Akata Fm. beneath the thrust belts is abnormally slow. This probably results from overpressure. Fluid vents are abundant within hanging-wall anticlines. A large one at a culmination communicates from a fore-thrust to the surface. The contents are seismically transparent, whereas the host rock is well stratified. We attribute the vent to fluidization. A nearby deep well encountered normal fluid pressures throughout the Agbada Fm., but a strong overpressure ramp beneath it. We argue that the most likely mechanism for explaining the observations is chemical compaction as a result of hydrocarbon generation, and it is suggested that the thrust belts have advanced seaward by a feedback mechanism.


The Soviet project was as thoroughly atheist as any geopolitical system seen on the world stage. Yet in a way that V.I. Lenin could have never imagined, one of the main objectives of Soviet authorities has now become a significant factor in Central Asian Muslims converting to Christianity. Russification is the term normally used to describe the social process, whereby non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union became acculturated into Russian patterns of life, thought and worldview during the Soviet era. The result was that many Muslims inhabited both Soviet/Russian and Muslim cultural space, thus creating a new cultural identity that facilitated religious conversion away from Islam. This field research report uses the lens of personal conversion stories to examine some aspects of this phenomenon. Also, the range of personal experiences points towards the need to understand Russification as a spectrum of acculturation.


I am pleased to greet the members of Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the occasion of this Plenary Assembly, and I thank Professor Nicola Cabibbo for his kind words of greeting in your name. The theme of your meeting – "Predictability in Science: Accuracy and Limitations" – deals with a distinctive attribute of modern science. Predictability, in fact, is one of the chief reasons for science's prestige in contemporary society. The establishment of the scientific method has given the sciences the ability to predict phenomena, to study their development, and thus to control the environment in which man lives.


This paper presents a micro-diachronic study of the prosody of Porteno, the Spanish variety spoken in Buenos Aires, by comparing spontaneous speech data collected in 1983 with comparable recordings made in 2008. Porteno Spanish is said to be influenced by Italian due to massive immigration between 1830 and 1950. The question arises of whether the use of "Italian" features in Porteno prosody has increased or decreased since the shift from Spanish-Italian bilingualism to prevailing Spanish monolingualism. Tonal and durational analyses performed on our data reveal that by and large, the presumably "Italian" characteristics remain unchanged, although some significant differences were found between the two time periods with respect to the occurrences of certain pitch accents and boundary tones.


A study of the agricultural factor markets that support the farm economy of the southeastern United States aids the understanding of how farmers change the mix of factors as product and factor prices change. Factor demand elasticities were estimated for capital, land, labour, chemicals, energy and other intermediate inputs. On average, labour accounted for USD 0.410 of every USD 1 spent on agricultural inputs followed by other intermediate inputs, which accounted for USD 0.255. The demands for farm labour and other intermediate inputs were inelastic. The demand for farm chemicals was elastic, which indicates a lack of pricing power by companies that sell them. A substantial reduction in the use of farm chemicals could be achievable by increasing their price. Most of the factors are substitutes with the exceptions of capital and energy, and land and chemicals, which were found to be complements.


The diamond-shaped heterometallic cyanide-bridged complex of iron(II) and copper(I), [CpFe(CO)(μ-CN)2Cu(CH3CN)2]2 (1), has been synthesized from the reaction of K[CpFe(CO)(CN)2] and [Cu(CH3CN)4][BF4] in acetonitrile. Upon the addition of 2−4 equivalents of phosphane ligands to complex 1, the coordination geometry of the copper centers can be varied from trigonal planar as in [CpFe(CO)(μ-CN)2Cu(PCy3)]2 (2), to tetrahedral as found in [CpFe(CO)(μ-CN)2Cu(PCy3)2]2 (3). Analogous derivatives containing other phosphane ligands, namely PMe3, P(p-tolyl)3, PMe2Ph, and PPh2Me have been synthesized as well. Prolonged exposure of complex 3 in CH2Cl2 to excess PCy3 has provided the bimetallic complex [CpFe(PCy3)(CN)(μ-CN)Cu(PCy3)2] (4), where the metal aggregate is disrupted and PCy3 has displaced CO at the iron center. Bidentate phosphane analogs of complex 3 have been prepared by adding two equivalents of dcpe [bis(dicyclohexylphosphanyl)ethane] or dcpp [bis(dicyclohexylphosphanyl)propane] to complex 1. The solid-state structures of several of these diamond-shaped derivatives, in addition to complex 4, have been determined by X-ray crystallography. The overlapping diamond-shaped [Fe2(CN)4Cu2] cores, which form channels within the solids, are blocked by bulky, copper-bound phosphane ligands such as PCy3. However, in the case of the small phosphane PMe3, or the chelating phosphanes dcpe and dcpp, these channels are not blocked by the phosphane ligands; solvent molecules occupy the channels created by the overlapping metal cores instead. Alternatively, the complex [CpFe(CO)(CN)(μ-CN)Cu(dcpm)]2 (13), derived from bis(dicyclohexylphosphanyl)methane(dcpm), possesses two copper(I) centers, each in a distorted trigonal coordination geometry, bridged by two dcpm ligands to form an eight-membered metallacycle with a short CuI···CuI separation of 2.844 A. The third ligand completing each copper's coordination sphere is a nitrogen-bound bridging cyanide group from a CpFe(CO)(CN)2− anion.


Background: This paper deals with the statistical and methodological study conducted in order to assess the possibility of combining in one study, Phase 2 and 3 clinical trials of the Russian drug Hexasense based on 5-aminolevulinic acid hexyl ester. Methods: Hexasense drug is intended for fluorescence diagnosis of bladder cancer (the route of administration - intravesical instillation of solution). The clinical trial involved a comparative study of the effectiveness of diagnostic fluorescence depending on the exposure time of the drug solution in the bladder (1 and 2 hours). This is due to the fact that the time interval of 2 hours checked on the research Phase 1 used to cause inconvenience to patients. Results: After selecting the optimal diagnostic mode (a task of Phase 2) it is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of the selected mode as compared to standard white-light cystoscopy (a task of Phase 3). Comparison of the effectiveness of two diagnostic fluorescence diagnostic modes with different exposure time of solution of 1 and 2 hours has been planned. At the second stage, the selected fluorescence diagnosis mode will be compared with the results of a standard white-light cystoscopy obtained in the same group of patients. A difference of 10% will be taken for significant differences in values of sensitivity and specificity. The statistical analysis showed that the required number of patients at a significance level of 2.5%, power of 80%, and for minimum difference in proportions of 10% subject to the correction of 10% for the dropout and unassessed patients would be 134 people (two groups of 67 patients). In this case, the same sample of patients allows comparing reliably the effectiveness of two diagnoses with the correction for multiplicity of comparison. Application: This will help to minimize the number of patients involved in the study and not reduce the accuracy of the results at the same time. The Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation authorized the clinical trial of the drug Hexasense with Phases 2 and 3 combined.


In the highly anticipated first appellate court decision focussing on the adequacy of ATE policies for security of costs, the Court of Appeal in Premier Motorauctions Ltd & Ors v (1) PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (2) Lloyds Bank PLC [2017] EWCA 1872 overturned the High Court decision and held that the Claimants' ATE policy without anti-avoidance provisions was not sufficient for the Defendants' security of costs. The Claimants are now required to put up £4million to continue with the claim a useful reminder that security for costs applications can be a powerful weapon for defendants in litigation.


ABSTRACT This contribution assesses the EU's external political integration capacity: its ability to promote democracy and governance effectiveness in non-member and new member states. Based on macro-quantitative data, we examine the political trajectory of Central European, South-east European, and post-Soviet countries. We find that democracy and governance effectiveness have improved overall in the past 20 years. However, Eastern Europeans have been moving on distinct sub-regional paths and have been unable to catch up with the old member states. Our analysis of the EU impact shows a robust effect of EU accession conditionality. By contrast, we do not find a systematic effect of conditionality in the absence of membership incentives. Once countries become members, the EU's political integration capacity weakens, too. Finally, we observe that the EU has a stronger effect on governance effectiveness than on democracy.


In 2004, McLaughlin, Black-Hawkins and McIntyre published a literature review that explored the ways in which individual teachers, whole schools and groups of networked schools were engaging in practitioner research and enquiry. In the light of significant changes to the education landscape, the empirical research in this article provides an account of engagement with 25 school leaders to explore what schools are doing in the area of practitioner 'research' or 'enquiry' today. Although teachers in schools may both use research and generate findings, this research was particularly concerned with the generation of professional knowledge through research and enquiry in schools in England today. A sample of school leaders was interviewed to establish their current approach. Findings include questions about the effects on teachers' dissatisfaction in the face of a revealed gap between actuality and idealism, the possible evolution of a new teacher-educator population and the effects on those working in higher education as they address the shifting needs of twenty-first-century teacher education. As school-based research continues to be a factor, this represents a timely scoping of the thinking of school senior leaders and considers the implications of this developing practice.


The study sought to identify the trends in Medical professionals' use of different types of information resources, particularly electronic resources, to develop their teaching, ongoing research activities, and their own personal knowledge at National Medical Library (NML). The problem has been studied based on the information available in the open literature and a survey conducted on the usage patterns, interaction and impact of EIS on medical professionals at National Medical Library (NML) for the year 2010-2011. A well structured 200 questionnaires distributed for the collection of primary data. Valid 193 questionnaires collected and analyzed. The result showed a growing interest in EIS among the users at NML. The survey showed that majority of respondents marked that library possessed useful EIS for the medical community. Awareness among the users about the availability and preference of EIS was found highly satisfactory. Majority of the respondents (100%) use journals of Cengage Learning and journals from Royal Society of Medicine Press. Electronic Information Resources were mostly used for research needs and highly impact on research. The EIS is better for accessing current & Comprehensive information. 100% marked to a very high extent electronic resources have become a substitute for printed materials. The Library needs to undertake a review to identify other databases that may be needed, to promote the use of e-resources in teaching and learning, and to develop the search skills of faculty and students.


Your role is to investigate the Global Government and Church Abuse Crisis, to document, review, recommend and to take further actions based on its findings


It is not all the IT that can bring the competitive advantage for the enterprises; also it is not all the IT which produces significant influence to the competition that will certainly be able to bring the competitive advantage for the enterprises. To the former, this paper classifies the IT apply on enterprises value chain on the perspective of obtaining competitive advantages, namely, support type, tool type, function type, flow type and inter-enterprises type, also differentiates their possible influence to competition. To the latter, this paper induces two key policies for enterprises obtaining competitive advantages by applying IT: improving the level of alignment of IT strategy and business strategy, training and applying IT capability.


This study aims to analyze the problems in cooperative institutions located in the Batam City, especially issues concerning the resources of civil servants of the cooperative service, coaching programs and assistance of the cooperative service, infrastructure facilities from the cooperative office, communication and coordination between cooperatives with stakeholders. The population in this study is cooperative in Batam City area, especially in nine districts with 844 cooperatives. This research uses qualitative research with case study approach because the problem in this research happened directly in real life. Case study data can be obtained not only from the cases studied, but also can be obtained from all parties who know and know the case well. In other words, the data in the case study can be obtained from various sources but limited in the case to be investigated. The results showed that the Office of PMP KUKM Batam City to enliven the cooperatives of 922 cooperatives and 526 of them have died and some are dispersed, never know despair. Coaching and mentoring programs, training human resources of cooperative, fixing infrastructure, and connecting communications and coordination between cooperatives and stakeholders, never enough even there is always the latest effort like cooperative consultation clinic. The counseling consultative clinic is directed or follows the roadmap or milestone in the short, medium and long term.


The deregulation of financial services in the European Union and the development of information technology have fostered recent changes in the European banking industry. This process, that has affected market competition, has been accelerated by the establishment of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This paper makes a comparative analysis of the market conditions for banking sectors in Spain and France (EMU participation countries) and UK and Denmark (not participating in EMU) in order to assess the effects of the adoption of the Single currency in banking market conditions. This comparison is made distinguishing between commercial banks and non-profit financial institutions.


Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) has helped thousands of adults haunted by traumatic events. But what about children? Millions of children witness violence in the home and in the streets. Many others are traumatized by accidents, natural disasters, abuse, and neglect. This book shows that EMDR can be successfully applied to children, which can ensure their mental health, growth, and development. Through the Eyes of a Child demystifies the application of EMDR for children, from the first session with the parents to later sessions with children at all developmental stages. The adult protocol is modified so that it can be applied to children as young as two years old (and possibly younger). A system of classification of childhood trauma that allows therapists to predict a child's response to EMDR is presented. Myriad cases illustrate the use of EMDR with various traumas. Many examples of simple traumas are presented, including automobile accidents, lightning strikes, bereavement, and specific phobias such as a fear of animals. In addition, cases illustrate success with complex traumas, where aspects of the trauma are ongoing and EMDR becomes part of several possible therapeutic interventions. EMDR is also discussed as an intervention for children who have problems that are not caused by trauma. Case illustrations show how EMDR can be used with children with ADHD, anxiety, depressive, or reactive attachment disorders, as well as learning difficulties and somatoform disorders. With its compelling, frank style, Through the Eyes of a Child will appeal to all who are interested in applying this revolutionary new therapy with children.


Variational representations of f -divergences are central to many machine learning algorithms, with Lipschitz constrained variants recently gaining attention. Inspired by this, we define the Moreau-Yosida approximation of f -divergences with respect to the Wasserstein- 1 metric. The corresponding variational formulas provide a generalization of a number of recent results, novel special cases of interest and a relaxation of the hard Lipschitz constraint. Additionally, we prove that the so-called tight variational representation of f - divergences can be to be taken over the quotient space of Lipschitz functions, and give a characterization of functions achieving the supremum in the variational representation. On the practical side, we propose an algorithm to calculate the tight convex conjugate of f -divergences compatible with automatic differentiation frameworks. As an application of our results, we propose the Moreau-Yosida f -GAN, providing an implementation of the variational formulas for the Kullback-Leibler, reverse Kullback-Leibler, χ 2 , reverse χ 2 , squared Hellinger, Jensen-Shannon, Jeffreys, triangular discrimination and total variation divergences as GANs trained on CIFAR-10, leading to competitive results and a simple solution to the problem of uniqueness of the optimal critic.


Making a high-dimensional (e.g., 100K-dim) feature for face recognition seems not a good idea because it will bring difficulties on consequent training, computation, and storage. This prevents further exploration of the use of a high dimensional feature. In this paper, we study the performance of a high dimensional feature. We first empirically show that high dimensionality is critical to high performance. A 100K-dim feature, based on a single-type Local Binary Pattern (LBP) descriptor, can achieve significant improvements over both its low-dimensional version and the state-of-the-art. We also make the high-dimensional feature practical. With our proposed sparse projection method, named rotated sparse regression, both computation and model storage can be reduced by over 100 times without sacrificing accuracy quality.


Parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP) is a peptide hormone which, when abundantly produced by certain tumours, and released into the systemic circulation, stimulates via an endocrine-like pathway, bone resorption and renal calcium reabsorption, by interacting with a receptor that it shares with parathyroid hormone (PTH), the PTH/PTHrP type 1 receptor (PTH1R). PTHrP is undetectable in the circulation of normal subjects, but is produced in a paracrine/autocrine fashion during foetal and adult life by a number of normal cells and tissues, playing important roles in regulating cell proliferation, differentiation, and development. Tumours derived from the gastrointestinal tract that are not normally associated with hypercalcaemia, such as pancreatic adenocarcinoma, are known to express PTHrP. The expression of PTH1R has not been examined in pancreatic adenocarcinoma: there is no published literature detailing the evaluation of expression of PTHrP and PTH1R in gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumours or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). PTHrP and PTH1R protein was found, utilising immunohistochemistry, to be expressed by tumour cells in the majority of cases of a series of resection specimens of pancreatic adenocarcinoma and gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumours, and all HCC studied. Furthermore, PTHrP and PTH1R were detected by western immunoblotting of cell lysates, and by immunohistochemistry in cells, from tumour cell lines derived from the above tumour types. Immunohistochemical expression of PTHrP, PTH1R, and the cell proliferation marker Ki67 was assessed and scored in tissue from normal liver, cirrhotic liver, putative neoplastic precursor lesions macroregenerative (MRN) and dysplastic nodules (DN) , and HCCs. Immunopositivity for PTHrP correlated with the Ki67 score, and both sequentially increased from normal liver, to cirrhotic liver, to MRNs, to DNs, with a gradient of expression that peaked in tumour cells. Amino-terminal PTHrP (1-34) peptide was fluorescently labelled and observed to be taken up by HepG2 cells, confirming that these cells express functional PTH1R. The common expression of both PTHrP and PTH1R implies a possible autocrine/paracrine role for PTHrP/PTHIR in these tumours. The positive correlation in expression of PTHrP with Ki67, and sequential rise in the continuum of normal liver through to HCC, qualifies PTHrP as a likely candidate to influence hepatocyte and HCC growth. Agents that target the PTHrP/PTHIR system may have a therapeutic potential in these gastrointestinal malignancies that are frequently refractory to existing treatments.


The assembly of core histones and DNA into periodic nucleosome arrays is mediated by ACF, an ISWI-containing factor, and NAP-1, a core histone chaperone, in an ATP-dependent process. We describe the isolation of Drosophila acf1 cDNA, which encodes the p170 and p185 forms of the Acf1 protein in ACF. Acf1 is a novel protein that contains two PHD fingers, one bromodomain, and two new conserved regions. Human WSTF, which is encoded by one of multiple genes that is deleted in Williams syndrome individuals, is the only currently known mammalian protein with each of the conserved motifs in Acf1. Purification of the native form of Acf1 led to the isolation of ACF comprising Acf1 (both p170 and p185 forms) and ISWI. Native Acf1 did not copurify with components of NURF or CHRAC, which are other ISWI-containing complexes in Drosophila. Purified recombinant ACF, consisting of Acf1 (either p185 alone or both p170 and p185) and ISWI, catalyzes the deposition of histones into extended periodic nucleosome arrays. Notably, the Acf1 and ISWI subunits function synergistically in the assembly of chromatin. ISWI alone exhibits a weak activity that is approximately 3% that of ACF. These results indicate that both Acf1 and ISWI participate in the chromatin assembly process and suggest further that the Acf1 subunit confers additional functionality to the general 'motor' activity of ISWI.


We review the 2013 Antarctic ozone hole, making use of various ground-based, in-situ and remotely-sensed ozone measurements, ground-based measurements of ultraviolet radiation and meteorological reanalyses. Based on analysis of 34 years of satellite records spanning 1979-2013 (which excludes 1995), we find that in terms of maximum area, minimum ozone level and total ozone deficit, the ozone hole in 2013 was typical of other years of moderate ozone loss. The estimated integrated ozone mass effectively depleted within the ozone hole of 2013 was approximately 1037 Mt, which was the 17th largest deficit on record and 41% of the peak deficit observed in 2006. Anomalously cold winter temper-atures in the lower stratosphere over Antarctica and concurrent strong and stable vortex conditions favoured the potential for strong ozone depletion in 2013. However, anomalous warming of the polar vortex that occurred from late Au-gust limited the overall severity of ozone depletion during spring, and resulted in the relatively early breakup of the ozone hole in mid-November.


This article analyzes the work of Georges Perec and On Kawara, two artists who have radically recast our understanding of space and time in literature and the visual arts, through the lens of the author's post-modern dance practice and scholarship. Both artists, deeply affected by the chaos of World War II, began working in the mid-twentieth century: experimental author Georges Perec (1936-1983), known for his affiliation with OuLiPo ( Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle , or Workshop for Potential Literature), the organization founded in 1960 to ratchet up the possibilities for conceiving and creating utterly new, or 'potential', literature, and On Kawara (1932-2014), the Conceptual artist known for his large-scale recasting of personal and historical time, and his conversion of 'private life' into vast archives of documentary recording. The article looks both at spatial elements in the work of these artists, and at spatialized responses to their words and objects. It investigates Perec's and Kawara's divergent ideas of the everyday, as articulated through their practices—particularly their commitment to compositional scores and games exemplifying the ludic, and their insistence on the importance of seeing and noticing—and the implications of those practices, and the work they produced, regarding facticity, embodiment, self-representation, transformation, and, above all, the ongoing articulation of space and, by extension, time. Informed by work in human geography; affect, literary, and performance theory; and phenomenology, and by the writer's experience in dance as a practice and area of scholarship, the article links these practices and ideas to those of post-modern dance to explore the fluid relationships among space, movement, bodies, and objects.


Neural datasets often contain measurements of neural activity across multiple trials of a repeated stimulus or behavior. An important problem in the analysis of such datasets is to characterize systematic aspects of neural activity that carry information about the repeated stimulus or behavior of interest, which can be considered "signal", and to separate them from the trial-to-trial fluctuations in activity that are not time-locked to the stimulus, which for purposes of such analyses can be considered "noise". Gaussian Process factor models provide a powerful tool for identifying shared structure in high-dimensional neural data. However, they have not yet been adapted to the problem of characterizing signal and noise in multi-trial datasets. Here we address this shortcoming by proposing "signal-noise" Poisson-spiking Gaussian Process Factor Analysis (SNP-GPFA), a flexible latent variable model that resolves signal and noise latent structure in neural population spiking activity. To learn the parameters of our model, we introduce a Fourier-domain black box variational inference method that quickly identifies smooth latent structure. The resulting model reliably uncovers latent signal and trial-to-trial noise-related fluctuations in large-scale recordings. We use this model to show that predominantly, noise fluctuations perturb neural activity within a subspace orthogonal to signal activity, suggesting that trial-by-trial noise does not interfere with signal representations. Finally, we extend the model to capture statistical dependencies across brain regions in multi-region data. We show that in mouse visual cortex, models with shared noise across brain regions out-perform models with independent per-region noise.


This study determines organic-matter (OM) composition in the different color layers of a stratified hypersaline microbial mat and verifies the hypothesis that each layer includes a distinct group of lipids. The relation of precursor lipids from the microbial mat to the hydrocarbon composition in fossil records was also evaluated. To that end, the composition was studied of glycolipids (GLs), phospholipids (PLs), and "neutral" lipids (NLs, including hydrocarbons, n-alkanols, sterols, hopanols, free fatty acids, and wax esters) in four different color layers (A–D; depth intervals: up to 0.5 cm, 0.5–1.0 cm, 1.5–3.0 cm, and 3.0–6.0 cm, respectively) of a stratified hypersaline mat from the Vermelha Lagoon, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
 Microscopic characterization revealed the presence of 16 cyanobacterial morphospecies, with predominance of Microcoleus chthonoplastes. The notable prevalence of saturated straight-chain fatty acids (FAs), n-16:0 and n-18:0 and their monounsaturated counterparts, n-16:1 and n-18:1 in all three lipid fractions (GLs, PLs, and NLs), associated with the domination of n-C17 alkane and n-C17:1 alkene among the hydrocarbons confirmed the main imprint of cyanobacteria. The composition of the studied lipid classes implies the contribution of sulfate-reducing bacteria such as Desulfomicrobium sp. strain, purple sulfur bacteria, as well as the possible input of Geobacter spp. and Desulfovibrio spp., particularly in the deeper layers.
 The notable decrease in total extractable lipids (TELs) yield from layers A to D indicates that lipid synthesis is far more intense by photosynthesizing cyanobacteria than by anaerobic microorganisms. The content of PLs was uniform and low (< 5%) in all layers, implying their extremely quick degradation. GLs, followed by NLs, were the most abundant in all layers indicating the medium, which is characterized by carbon source excess and limited nitrogen source, which regulates microorganism growth. The upper layers, A (green) and B (reddish-brown) differ from those lower, C (dark brown greenish) and D (brown) according to the NLs/GLs ratio, which is higher in the former.
 The lipid compositions reveal distinctions between the individual layers in the microbial mat. The observed layers clearly differ according to the amount of high-molecular-weight (C22–C31) n-alkanes and long-chain (C21–C30) n-alkanols, the content of phytol, bishomohopanol, tetrahymanol, C27–C29 sterols, the stanol/stenol ratio in the neutral lipid fraction, as well as the content of branched (iso and anteiso) FAs and w9/w7 FA ratio in the GLs fraction. The mentioned parameters imply a greater contribution of sulfate-reducing and purple sulfur bacteria to layer B, higher impact of photosynthetic red algae in upper layers A and B, the elevated contribution of marine ciliate species, feeding on bacteria to layers B and C, as well as the increment of anoxygenic phototrophic and heterotrophic bacteria to layer D. The greatest capability for the synthesis of hydrocarbons is observed in layer B.
 The composition of lipid classes in the microbial mat showed a significant relationship with the most important biomarkers' fingerprints in the source rocks extracts and petroleum derived from the carbonate hypersaline environments, including the distribution of n-alkanes, a high abundance of phytane and gammacerane, as well as a distribution of C27–C29 regular steranes. Therefore, these results offer an insight into the transformation of microbial OM during the sedimentation processes in a hypersaline environment and its contribution to the fossil record.


The recent crisis has pointed out the need to re-examine the adequacy of the banks corporate governance principles in order to evaluate whether additional guidance and clarification are necessary referring to particular key areas. We aim to assess if the regulatory response to the banking corporate governance failures has been adequate. Our findings show that the regulatory intervention, led both to non-binding rules developed by international organizations, and binding rules issued by regulatory authorities, has been mainly guided by the idea that financial institutions are systemically relevant. Secondly, we outline that another common choice has been a prompt regulatory response in order to overcome the main corporate governance weaknesses developed during the crisis, with a specific focus on remuneration policies and risk management. Thirdly, it is possible to conclude that, observing the more recent regulatory interventions dealing with corporate governance after the global financial crisis, a rule-based approach is prevailing on the lighter principle-based approach.


Proper defoliation of cotton is critical to maximize both harvest efficiency and fiber quality. Increased levels of leaf grade or trash resulting from inadequate defoliation can lead to decreases in fiber quality and value. Inherent characteristics of cultivars, such as leaf pubescence levels and defoliation practices influence the efficacy of cotton defoliation. This study aimed to determine the impact of leaf pubescence and defoliation strategies on defoliation success and fiber quality in cotton. Treatments included a factorial of four cultivars and two defoliation treatments. Cultivars included two smooth-leaf cultivars and two cultivars with greater leaf pubescence ratings. Defoliation treatments included a standard program and an aggressive program with increased rates of the same defoliant mixture and the addition of a desiccant. There were few instances of a cultivar-by-defoliation strategy interaction, however, both cultivar and defoliation strategy had a significant effect on defoliation ratings. The aggressive defoliation treatment decreased defoliation and increased desiccation in all three locations but did not influence yield or fiber quality. In two of three locations, cultivars with higher leaf pubescence ratings resulted in increased leaf grades and HVI trash ratings compared with the smooth leaf cultivars. The results of this study suggest that the defoliation strategy can impact efficacy of defoliation, whereas leaf pubescence characteristics influence fiber quality parameters.


We present a preliminary search for D-D mixing using the decays D → Kππ, additionally presenting Dalitz-plot distributions and a measurement of the branching ratio for this mode. A new tagging technique is used to produce the doubly Cabibbo-suppressed Dalitz plot, which in turn is used to motivate the method used for the D-mixing search. We analyze 230.4 fb of data collected from the BABAR detector at the PEP-II collider. Assuming CP conservation, we find RM < 0.054% with 95% confidence, and we estimate that the data are consistent with no mixing at a 4.5% confidence level. We present D-mixing results both with and without the assumption of CP conservation.


Background Mobile health (mHealth) offers potential benefits to both patients and healthcare systems. Existing remote technologies to measure respiratory rates have limitations such as cost, accessibility and reliability. Using smartphone sensors to measure respiratory rates may offer a potential solution to these issues. Objective The aim of this study was to conduct a comprehensive assessment of a novel mHealth smartphone application designed to measure respiratory rates using movement sensors. Methods In Study 1, 15 participants simultaneously measured their respiratory rates with the app and a Food and Drug Administration-cleared reference device. A novel reference analysis method to allow the app to be evaluated 'in the wild' was also developed. In Study 2, 165 participants measured their respiratory rates using the app, and these measures were compared to the novel reference. The usability of the app was also assessed in both studies. Results The app, when compared to the Food and Drug Administration-cleared and novel references, respectively, showed a mean absolute error of 1.65 (SD  =  1.49) and 1.14 (1.44), relative mean absolute error of 12.2 (9.23) and 9.5 (18.70) and bias of 0.81 (limits of agreement = –3.27 to 4.89) and 0.08 (–3.68 to 3.51). Pearson correlation coefficients were 0.700 and 0.885. Ninety-three percent of participants successfully operated the app on their first use. Conclusions The accuracy and usability of the app demonstrated here in individuals with a normal respiratory rate range show promise for the use of mHealth solutions employing smartphone sensors to remotely monitor respiratory rates. Further research should validate the benefits that this technology may offer patients and healthcare systems.


ABSTRACT The DNA mismatch repair pathway is well known for its role in correcting biosynthetic errors of DNA replication. We report here a novel role for mismatch repair in signaling programmed cell death in response to DNA damage induced by chemical carcinogens. Cells proficient in mismatch repair were highly sensitive to the cytotoxic effects of chemical carcinogens, while cells defective in either human MutS or MutL homologs were relatively insensitive. Since wild-type cells but not mutant cells underwent apoptosis upon treatment with chemical carcinogens, the apoptotic response is dependent on a functional mismatch repair system. By analyzing p53 expression in several pairs of cell lines, we found that the mismatch repair-dependent apoptotic response was mediated through both p53-dependent and p53-independent pathways. In vitro biochemical studies demonstrated that the human mismatch recognition proteins hMutSα and hMutSβ efficiently recognized DNA damage induced by chemical carcinogens, suggesting a direct participation of mismatch repair proteins in mediating the apoptotic response. Taken together, these studies further elucidate the mechanism by which mismatch repair deficiency predisposes to cancer, i.e., the deficiency not only causes a failure to repair mismatches generated during DNA metabolism but also fails to direct damaged and mutation-prone cells to commit suicide.


Objectives To determine whether maternal obesity during pregnancy is associated with increased mortality from cardiovascular events in adult offspring. Design Record linkage cohort analysis. Setting Birth records from the Aberdeen Maternity and Neonatal databank linked to the General Register of Deaths, Scotland, and the Scottish Morbidity Record systems. Population 37 709 people with birth records from 1950 to present day. Main outcome measures Death and hospital admissions for cardiovascular events up to 1 January 2012 in offspring aged 34-61. Maternal body mass index (BMI) was calculated from height and weight measured at the first antenatal visit. The effect of maternal obesity on outcomes in offspring was tested with time to event analysis with Cox proportional hazard regression to compare outcomes in offspring of mothers in underweight, overweight, or obese categories of BMI compared with offspring of women with normal BMI. Results All cause mortality was increased in offspring of obese mothers (BMI >30) compared with mothers with normal BMI after adjustment for maternal age at delivery, socioeconomic status, sex of offspring, current age, birth weight, gestation at delivery, and gestation at measurement of BMI (hazard ratio 1.35, 95% confidence interval 1.17 to 1.55). In adjusted models, offspring of obese mothers also had an increased risk of hospital admission for a cardiovascular event (1.29, 1.06 to 1.57) compared with offspring of mothers with normal BMI. The offspring of overweight mothers also had a higher risk of adverse outcomes. Conclusions Maternal obesity is associated with an increased risk of premature death in adult offspring. As one in five women in the United Kingdom is obese at antenatal booking, strategies to optimise weight before pregnancy are urgently required.


Wetlands are areas inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support a prevalence of vegetation adapted for life in saturated conditions (Federal register, Circular 33; 1984). There is no clear boundary between open water and wetland on the one hand and wetland and terrestrial communities on the other hand (Bradbury and Grace, 1983). Wetlands are seen as diverse mosaics of landforms, communities and environments acting as interfaces between terrestrial and aquatic systems (Naiman et al, 1998; Junk and Piedade, 2005). Clement (1905) and Hansen and Di Castri (1992) use the concept of ecotone to represent them as tension zones between plant communities. Junk (1980) and Odum (1985) argue that wetlands have a status of specific ecosystems because soil water saturation, anaerobic conditions, and flooding, provide specific environmental conditions that result in specific biogeochemical processes, organisms specific adaptations, and particularities in community structure and development (Junk and Piedade, 2005; Junk, 1980; Odum, 1981). Flooded forests, also referred to as forested wetlands, are wetlands with a significant component of woody vegetation, living in temporarily or permanently waterlogged or inundated soils (Lugo, 1990; Beard, 1944; Naiman et al., 1998; Trochain, 1957).


Psychological distress is a significant and growing issue in society. In particular, depression and anxiety are leading causes of disability that often go undetected or late-diagnosed. Automatic detection, assessment, and analysis of behavioural markers of psychological distress can help improve identification and support prevention and early intervention efforts. Compared to modalities such as face, head, and vocal, research investigating the use of the body modality for these tasks is relatively sparse, which is partly due to the limited available datasets and difficulty in automatically extracting useful body features. To enable our research, we have collected and analyzed a new dataset containing full body videos for interviews and self-reported distress labels. We propose a novel approach to automatically detect self-adaptors and fidgeting, a subset of self-adaptors that has been shown to correlate with psychological distress. We perform analysis on statistical body gestures and fidgeting features to explore how distress levels affect behaviors. We then propose a multi-modal approach that combines different feature representations using Multi-modal Deep Denoising Auto-Encoders and Improved Fisher Vector Encoding. We demonstrate that our proposed model, combining audio-visual features with detected fidgeting behavioral cues, can successfully predict depression and anxiety in the dataset.


Soil contamination by heavy metals has become a widespread dangerous problem in many parts of the world, including the Mediterranean environments. This is closely related to the increase irrigation by waste waters, to the uncontrolled application of sewage sludge, industrial effluents, pesticides and fertilizers, to the rapid urbanization, to the atmospheric deposition of dust and aerosols, to the vehicular emissions and to many other negative human activities. In this context, this paper predicts the spatial distribution and concentration level of copper (Cu) in the 195 km2 of Nahr el-Jawz watershed coastal area situated in northern Lebanon using a geographic information system (GIS) and regression-tree analysis. The chosen area represents a typical case study of Mediterranean coastal landscape with deteriorating environment. Fifteen environmental parameters (parent material, soil type, pH, hydraulical conductivity, organic matter, stoniness ratio, soil depth, slope gradient, slope aspect, slope curvature, land cover/use, distance to drainage line, proximity to roads, nearness to cities, and surroundings to waste areas) were generated from satellite imageries, Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), ancillary data and/or field observations to statistically explain Cu laboratory measurements. A large number of tree-based regression models (214) were developed using (1) all parameters, (2) all soil parameters only, and (3) selected pairs of parameters. The best regression tree model (with the lowest number of terminal nodes) combined soil pH and surroundings to waste areas, and explained 77% of the variability in Cu laboratory measurements. The overall accuracy of the predictive quantitative copper map produced using this model (at 1 : 50,000 cartographic scale) was estimated to be ca. 80%. Applying the proposed tree model is relatively simple, and may be used in other coastal areas. It is certainly of significant interest to local governments and municipalities. It will serve several development projects concerned with improving the environmental conditions and the quality of living in coastal areas.


Immune response to T cell independent type 2 (TI-2) Ags, such as bacterial polysaccharides, is severely impaired in X-linked immunodeficient (XID) mice. In this study, we investigated the involvement of a proliferation-inducing ligand (APRIL) or BAFF and their receptors in the unresponsiveness of XID mouse to TI-2 Ags. We discovered that whereas serum BAFF levels were increased, the expression of the APRIL and BAFF receptor transmembrane activator and calcium-modulator and cyclophilin ligand interactor (TACI) was severely reduced in XID B cells. Moreover, B cells from XID mouse were unable to secrete Igs in response to APRIL or BAFF. In correlation with reduced TACI expression and impaired TACI function, APRIL or BAFF did not activate the classical NF-κB pathway in XID cells. Also correlating with the unaltered expression of BAFF receptor, BAFF stimulation induced the activation of the alternative NF-κB pathway in XID cells. Moreover, activation of MAPK pathway was ablated in APRIL-stimulated XID cells. Prestimulation of XID B cells with the TLR9 agonist, CpG led to a significant increase in TACI expression and restored TACI-mediated functions. CpG prestimulation also restored TACI-mediated signaling in APRIL- or BAFF-stimulated XID B cells. Finally, immunization of XID mouse with the prototype TI-2 Ag NP-Ficoll induced IgG and IgM Abs when CpG was given with NP-Ficoll. Collectively, these results suggest that reduced TACI expression is responsible for the unresponsiveness of XID mouse to TI-2 Ags and BCR activation controls TACI expression.


We report the observation of single top-quark production using 3.2 fb(-1) of pp[over ] collision data with sqrt[s]=1.96 TeV collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab. The significance of the observed data is 5.0 standard deviations, and the expected sensitivity for standard model production and decay is in excess of 5.9 standard deviations. Assuming m(t) = 175 GeV/c(2), we measure a cross section of 2.3(-0.5);(+0.6)(stat + syst) pb, extract the CKM matrix-element value |V(tb)| = 0.91 + or - 0.11(stat + syst) + or - 0.07(theory), and set the limit |V(tb)| > 0.71 at the 95% C.L.


On January 13, 2001, barely one month after the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, (1) a group of 554 legal academics calling themselves "Law Professors for the Rule of Law" took out a full-page ad in the New York Times that essentially accused the Court's majority of being faithless to the rule of law. In full, the advertisement read: BY STOPPING THE VOTE COUNT IN FLORIDA, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT USED ITS POWER TO ACTAS POLITICAL PARTISANS, NOT JUDGES OF A COURT OF LAW We are Professors of Law at 120 American law schools, from every part of our country, of different political beliefs. But we all agree that when a bare majority of the U.S. Supreme Court halted the recount of ballots under Florida law, the five justices were acting as political proponents for candidate Bush, not as judges. IT IS NOT THE JOB OF A FEDERAL COURT TO STOP VOTES FROM BEING COUNTED By stopping the recount in the middle, the five justices acted to suppress the facts. Justice Scalia argued that the justices had to interfere even before the Supreme Court heard the Bush team's arguments because the recount might "cast a cloud upon what [Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election." In other words, the conservative justices moved to avoid the "threat" that Americans might learn that in the recount, Gore got more votes than Bush. This is presumably "irreparable" harm because if the recount proceeded and the truth once became known, it would never again be possible to completely obscure the facts. But it is not the job of the courts to polish the image of legitimacy of the Bush presidency by preventing disturbing facts from being confirmed. Suppressing the facts to make the Bush government seem more legitimate is the job of propagandists, not judges. BY TAKING POWER FROM THE VOTERS, THE SUPREME COURT HAS TARNISHED ITS OWN LEGITIMACY. AS TEACHERS WHOSE LIVES HAVE BEEN DEDICATED TO THE RULE OF LAW, WE PROTEST. (2) The advertisement singled out Justice Scalia by name for specific condemnation The charge of faithlessness to the rule of law leveled by the Law Professors for the Rule of Law was made in the context of a single case. An assessment of the charge in that context would require a detailed discussion of Bush v. Gore, and that is not my project here. Instead, I use the allegations of the Law Professors for the Rule of Law as an opportunity to take a broader view of Justice Scalia's nearly two decades on the Supreme Court. Specifically, l propose an empirical test of Justice Scalia's commitment to the rule of law measured over the course of his career. Of course, someone who is generally committed to the rule of law could lapse from the path in particular cases, and someone who is generally unconcerned about the rule of law might hew to it, either deliberately or accidentally, on some occasions. My focus is on Justice Scalia's general commitment to the rule of law, not to whether any such commitment was instantiated in Bush v. Gore. The threshold problem with such an inquiry is that the charge, as it appears in the January 13, 2001 advertisement, is too vague to admit as either proof or disproof. The phrase "the rule of law" is one of the most contested concepts in the legal lexicon; there is serious question whether the term even admits of a verbal definition. (3) Indeed, in 1989, Justice Scalia wrote a short article about his philosophy of judging entitled The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules, (4) which never defined, either directly of indirectly, what Justice Scalia meant by (5) the rule of law. Accordingly, the 554 signers of the advertisement may each have had a different conception of "the rule of law" in mind when they accused Justice Scalia of disregarding it. At least one member of the Law Professors for the Rule of Law, however, has specified a conception of the rule of law that permits empirical investigation. …


Feeding recommendations for captive wild ruminants strictly restrict the use of high-starch/low fibre concentrates and fruits and vegetables, because of their potential to induce acidotic conditions in the forestomach. Nevertheless, such items are still used, and actual measurements documenting the consequences are rare. We used a captive moose ( Alces alces ) and two domestic cows ( Bos primigenius f. taurus ), equipped with intraruminal pH sensors, to monitor the short-term effects of five diets (a 'natural diet' of browse for moose and grass hay for the cows; a grass diet; an alfalfa hay diet; and a diet where concentrates, apples and carrots were offered, along with an ad libitum roughage source, at two increasing levels – ration 1 and 2, respectively). Lowest mean pH and highest pH variability were measured on ration 2. The provision of concentrates/produce in two meals per day (0800 and 1600) resulted in distinct pH differences between day and night periods. Differences in the amount of roughages accepted (for example, the moose refused the freshly cut grass, and the cows had low intakes on the alfalfa hay offered) could explain differences in the level and course of pH observed between diets. No particular species differences were noted that did not relate to roughage acceptance. These results underline that using roughages, and restricting/avoiding the use of concentrates and produce, will result in more stable forestomach conditions that are possibly favourable for ruminant health.


This paper examines the relationship between environmental policy and "green" innovation in shipbuilding. The primary motivating question of this work is whether there is evidence of: i) technology push from innovation that enables environmental policy initiatives; and/or, ii) policy pull that induces innovation leading to "green" ships. This paper focuses on four environmental categories of technological innovation in the shipbuilding industry, encompassing oil spill recovery, emissions control, climate change mitigation and ballast water treatment. The analysis draws upon documents filed at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to proxy for policy measures, and uses patent data of the Worldwide Statistical Patent Database, maintained by the European Patent Office (EPO), to account for innovation. Our results show a similar trend between patent activity and IMO document submissions over the years 1998 to 2012 for the two environmental categories, climate change mitigation and emissions control. The key contribution of this work are to provide more insights into environmental policy in shipbuilding and its role in innovation activity, as well as to develop a rich dataset focused on IMO policies aimed at encouraging improved environmental performance by ships.


Extra high voltage transmission lines are designed to transfer large amount of power from one location to another. The length exposed to the environment is a major reason for occurrence of faults on the lines. A fault on a high voltage transmission line affects the stability of the overall power system, which sometimes leads to permanent damage of the equipment. Travelling wave theory on transmission line systems based on faults and others parameter is presented. Voltage and current travelling waves are generated when a fault occurs on the transmission line. The velocity of propagation of travelling waves is finite and the level of the waves decreases with increase in the distance traveled. Information about the fault can be obtained by analyzing the travelling waves. A few travelling wave techniques, which are based on analog signal processing, to locate the location in transmission lines, are proposed in this thesis. The travelling waves are extracted from the modal voltages and currents at the single and multi terminals of the transmission line. The techniques identify and locate the fault by using the information contained in the waves. A power system has been modeled in the results of single phase to ground fault. From the wave, arrival and reflection times are obtained and then used in different formulas for both single and multi end to determine the fault locations. The techniques have been simulated using PSCAD/EMTDC and their performance has been tested on 2 Busbars and IEEE 15 Busbars test systems. The results reveal that the technique is able to locate the fault. Multi end approach result is found to be more accurate than single end technique.


This paper succinctly summarises Australia's evolving policy debate over Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). Part I sketches some regional and global context. Part II briefly revisits the Productivity Commission's report of 2010, and longer-standing concerns from the political left, which coalesced in the 2011 Gillard Government Trade Policy Statement eschewing ISDS in all future investment treaties or Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Part III focuses on the new Abbott Government's policy since 2014, which reverts to a case-by-case assessment – resulting in ISDS being omitted from Australia's FTA with Japan, but being included in its bilateral FTAs with Korea (KAFTA) and China. In Parliament, the main opposition Labor Party continues to voice concerns about ISDS, but voted with the Abbott Government on legislation implementing KAFTA, which was then ratified. Labor Party members of a Senate Committee also sided with ruling Coalition members in recommending against enactment of a broader "anti-ISDS Bill", proposed by a Greens Party Senator to legislatively preclude ISDS provisions in future treaties, albeit primarily on the basis that this would excessively constrain the executive branch's responsibility to negotiate international agreements. Part IV suggests that Australia's major political parties now have an opportunity to develop a shared and sustainable policy stance on this vexed issue, underpinned by the recent parliamentary inquiries and media attention as well as ongoing empirical and theoretical research.


This discussion paper describes the review and development of a standardised moderation of assessment process in the School of Nursing and Midwifery. This initiative was the result of collaboration between two nursing course coordinators and a Centre for Learning and Development academic who provided the scholarship of moderation of assessments. A review of the current moderation processes revealed the potential for variation amongst markers especially due to the large number of new and sessional academic staff. A recommendation from the review was the need for a moderation process that provides evidence for reporting and is not difficult for academic staff to implement. The purpose of this initiative was to develop that moderation process based on literature of good practice. Once the process was determined, a second purpose was to raise awareness with staff and pilot the implementation of the process. This is the first of several papers expected to showcase the process and guidelines developed.


Beryllium is one of the most widespread rare elements in granitic pegmatites. These rocks have been historically the sole industrial source of this metal (e.g., Norton et al. 1958), and they still contribute a significant proportion of the global output of beryllium ores. Hand-cobbed beryl constitutes a substantial proportion of beryllium ore concentrates in Africa, Asia and South America, although non-pegmatitic, rhyolite-related bertrandite ores are virtually the single source in North America (Petkof 1975).

The mineralogy of beryllium in granitic pegmatites is strongly diversified, but very "imbalanced" in terms of numbers of species per mineral class on one hand and of the paragenetic role, distribution and abundances on the other. Only a very few Be minerals form at the magmatic stage of pegmatite consolidation, with beryl absolutely dominant among them. Phosphates constitute most of the late subsolidus phases, with silicates a close second, but the number of the phosphate occurrences is very low and volumes are negligible. A few oxide, hydroxide and borate minerals complement the spectrum. So far, no other mineral classes are represented, although the occurrence of some arsenates is considered possible.

Part of the reason for the pattern above is the crystal-chemical behavior of Be, one of the classic amphoteric elements, which acts as a cation in acidic environments but participates in complex anions under alkaline conditions. Thus beryllo(alumino)silicates and beryllo-phosphates of alkali and alkaline-earth cations are widespread, in contrast to silicates or phosphates of beryllium with no other cations, or Al only. Be2+ is always tetrahedrally coordinated with oxygen (BeO4)6−, or with oxygen and hydroxyl (BeO3OH)5−.

The divalent charge on Be renders substitutions for other tetrahedrally coordinated oxycomplex-forming cations, such as Si, Al or P, difficult. It is possible only by charge-balancing via additional alkali or alkaline-earth …


The Burr type X distribution is considered as a life time random variable of a product whose lots are to be decided for acceptance or otherwise on the basis of sample lifetimes drawn from the lot. The sample is divided into various groups in order to develop a group sampling plan in such a way that the life testing experiment is terminated as soon as the first failure in each group is observed. The acceptance criterion based on the theory of order statistics is proposed and is shown to be more economical than a criterion proposed in the earlier similar works.


This research aims to find out how the utilization of academic information on site www.stainmetro.ac.id seen from the analysis of the intensity of the access, completeness of information, the content of the information presented and the motivation of the use of the information. The methods used in this study is descriptive survey method where the researcher gives an overview of facts and data obtained from questionnaire, interview, observation and study library. The population in this research is the entire STAIN Jurai Siwo Metro students still active amounted to 3955 students and had access the site www.stainmetro.ac.id. Sampling techniques using purposive sampling obtained 98 respondents. The results intensity of the access students quite often, completeness of information quite complete, the contents are complete enough academic information presented is quite clear and quite motivated students to search for information on academic sites. So it can be inferred that the site quite useful as www.stainmetro.ac.id media information for students in search of academic information as lecture schedules, announcements, scholarships, and a list of values. Key words : academic information, information media


In this paper we consider a natural robustness question for a model for structural acoustics. This model, which has been of great interest in recent years, is represented by a wave equation in $\R^2$ coupled to a Kelvin--Voigt beam; the coupling is natural physically, and is represented mathematically by highly unbounded operators. We assume that the observation consists of point evaluation of the beam position, the beam velocity, and the wave velocity. We are interested in the effect of arbitrarily small delays in the feedback loop on a controller that uses these observations. We show that it is not possible to construct a dynamic stabilizer of a very general form---including static feedback---such that the stabilization is robust with respect to delays in the feedback loop. In order to do this we need to carefully analyze the input-to-output map. Finally, we relate these results to already existing numerical results obtained for a Galerkin approximation of the system.


In this paper, to learn multiple tasks sharing same inputs, a two-layer architecture for a reservoir based recurrent neural network is proposed. The inputs are fed into the general workspace layer where the weights are adapted to provide maximum information for the next layers in an unsupervised approach. The outputs from this layer drive the task specific layers where the corresponding weights are optimized in a supervised process concerning the output error for each given task. Simulation results on a two-task example show that the proposed layered scheme outperforms other approaches, namely, the one with multiple readouts on a single reservoir and the one with two separate reservoirs.


While business sustainability has been defined as the protection of the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, we still have little understanding of how to facilitate investments in practices geared at long-term sustainability. In this paper we seek to understand the conditions that facilitate a long-term business perspective. We investigate how family ties to future generations can facilitate the adoption of sustainable practices. Using data from 248 wineries in the U.S. collected through a survey questionnaire, we show that ties to future generations, measured as the intention of the owner of the winery to pass down the winery to their children, positively impacts the adoption of sustainable certification. We also found that winery owners were motivated by both positive potential market outlook for sustainable wine and increase in quality of their product associated with certification, and that the market outlook motivation was stronger for higher levels of certification.


In this paper the viscosity of novel photopolymerizable liquid encapsulants (PLEs) for microelectronic devices was characterized as a function of the particle size distribution of the fused silica filler. Microelectronic devices are typically encapsulated using a transfer molding process in which the molding compound flows over the leadframe and wire bonds as it fills the mold. The molding compound should have a low viscosity to minimize problems such as: (1) incomplete mold filling; (2) lead frame movement during cavity filling; and (3) displacement of the wires that connect the die with the leadframe (wire sweep). We have developed a photopolymerizable liquid encapsulant using an epoxy novolac-based vinyl ester resin that may alleviate these problems. In this contribution, we have investigated the blending of two different particle size distributions of fused silica to tailor the viscosity of PLEs for microelectronic applications. We have characterized the viscosity of highly filled PLEs containing 70.0, 72.0, and 74.0 wt% silica, and found that a blend of particle size distributions with a particle size ratio of 3.13 resulted in the best viscosity reduction. In addition, the PLE viscosity decreased slightly with increasing concentration of a silane coupling agent. The resulting PLEs exhibit low viscosities at ambient temperature while maintaining desirable material properties for microelectronic applications.


World-renowned physicist and bestselling author Stephen Hawking presents a revolutionary look at the momentous discoveries that changed our perception of the world with this first-ever compilation of seven classic works on physics and astronomy. His choice of landmark writings by some of the world's great thinkers traces the brilliant evolution of modern science and shows how each figure built upon the genius of his predecessors. On the Shoulders of Giants includes, in their entirety, On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres by Nicolaus Copernicus; Principia by Sir Isaac Newton; The Principle of Relativity by Albert Einstein; Dialogues Concerning Two Sciences by Galileo Galilei with Alfonso De Salvio; plus Mystery of the Cosmos, Harmony of the World, and Rudolphine Tables by Johannes Kepler. It also includes five critical essays and a biography of each featured physicist, written by Hawking himself.


Following his Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (1994) and the Shorter Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (2000), the Columbia History of Chinese Literature intends to complement these two widely used readers. Edited by Victor H. Mair, the 55 chapters of this single-volume history of Chinese literature are chronologically arranged with thematic chapters interspersed. Indeed, a closer look at the chapters reveals that the book at hand follows the traditional dictum of wen shi zhe bu fenjia, i.e. that literature, history and philosophy should not be separated but regarded as one field of studies. Hence the scope of this history goes far beyond the scope of what is traditionally subsumed under the heading of literature. In addition to the topics (all genres and periods of poetry, prose, fiction, and drama) that one expects in a book of this sort, wit and humour, proverbs and rhetoric, historical and philosophical writings, classical exegesis, literary theory and criticism, traditional fiction commentary, as well as popular culture, the impact of religion upon literature, the role of women, and the relationship with non-Chinese languages and peoples (ethnic minorities, Korea, Japan, Vietnam) feature as topics of individual chapters. Most of the chapters are written by leading specialists in those areas and are highly informative as well as concisely presented. Moreover, a number of chapters are thought-provoking enough to inspire questions that may lead towards a more focused research on hitherto neglected or less well-documented topics. In this sense, The Columbia History of Chinese Literature may also be perceived as a potential major impetus for further developments in the study of pre-modern and modern Chinese literature and related fields. Since the volume aims at bringing the riches of China's literary tradition into focus for a general readership, the majority of chapters can probably be best described as outlines of specific developments that should encourage readers to consult more specialized publications.