The performance of centimeter-sized energy devices is regulated by inhomogeneously distributed nanoscale defects. To improve device efficiency and reduce cost, accurate characterization of these nanoscale defects is necessary. However, the multiscale nature of this problem presents a characterization challenge, as non-destructive techniques often specialize in a single decade of length scales, and have difficulty probing non-destructively beneath the surface of materials with sub-micron spatial resolution. Herein, we push the resolution limits of synchrotron-based nanoprobe X-ray fluorescence mapping to 80 nm, to investigate a recombination-active intragranular defect in industrial solar cells. Our nano-XRF measurements distinguish fundamental differences between benign and deleterious dislocations in solar cell devices: we observe recombination-active dislocations to contain a high degree of nanoscale iron and copper decoration, while recombination-inactive dislocations appear clean. Statistically meaningful high-resolution measurements establish a connection between commercially relevant materials and previous fundamental studies on intentionally contaminated model defect structures, pointing the way towards optimization of the industrial solar cell process. Moreover, this study presents a hierarchical characterization approach that can be broadly extended to other nanodefect-limited energy systems with the advent of high-resolution X-ray imaging beamlines.


Global food system has developed in such a way that is unsustainable, generating inequalities and negative externalities for both human and nature. The unsustainable practices and the longer distance between different links of food value chains altogether jeopardize today food security (FS) and its future development since a sustainable FS relies heavily on the proper functioning of ecosystems. In order to face these challenges, interorganizational network are currently developing across territories.
This communication aim at better understanding the initiation of transnational networking of local actors networks in the sustainable agri-food field. Thus, as part of the transformation of the global and dominant food system towards territorial and sustainable food systems, we aim to better understand why stakeholders from urban and peri urban metropolises engage in transnational networking and what are their expectations related to transnational networking activities. Within this framework, we have structured this paper around the following research question: How does transnational networking could meet the expectations of North-Mediterranean territorial stakeholders in the field of sustainable food and agriculture? To do so, we are trying to let emerge a shared cognitive structure (Knight, 2002) of the networked managerial practices and desired changes.
For this purpose, an exploratory, qualitative, semi-inductive approach is adopted in order to study managerial representations of the actors regarding the network under construction. We realize a longitudinal and embedded case study of a Mediterranean transnational cooperation project related to sustainable urban and periurban agriculture initiated as part of a European Interreg-med project MADRE. The embedded case study encompass six analytical sub-units: Barcelona (Spain), Montpellier, Marseille (France), Bologna (Italy), Thessaloniki (Greece) and Tirana (Albania).


Title of Dissertation: ROMANTIC ATTACHMENT STYLES AND COPING BEHAVIORS IN LONG-DISTANCE ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS Gary Joseph Freitas, Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 Dissertation directed by: Professor Mary Ann Hoffman Department of Counseling and Personnel Services The purpose of the current study was to examine romantic attachment styles and approaches to coping among individuals presently involved in long-distance romantic relationships (LDRs). Those in proximal relationships (PRs) were also recruited for comparison purposes. Results revealed that those in LDRs were significantly younger, lived further apart from their partners, used less confrontation coping, and had lower levels of avoidance of intimacy than their PR counterparts. There were no differences in the proportions of the four romantic attachment styles represented in the LDR and PR sub-samples. For those in LDRs, secure individuals were more satisfied than participants in any other attachment category. Among those in LDRs who were insecurely attached, preoccupied individuals reported greater relationship satisfaction than fearful participants. For those in PRs, secure individuals were more satisfied than those in any other attachment category. Secure and preoccupied individuals in LDRs relied on their partners and others for social support to a greater degree than did fearful participants. Among PR participants, secure individuals reported the highest use of both types of social support. For the most part, fearful (and to a lesser extent preoccupied) individuals in LDRs tended to cope poorly. Different relationships were found among attachment styles and coping for those in PRs. The single best positive predictor of satisfaction for either type of relationship was level of partner-specific social support. This was followed by avoidance of intimacy (a negative predictor) for both LDRs and PRs, and confrontational and distancing coping for LDRs only. Distancing coping was actually associated with higher rates of satisfaction for those in LDRs, whereas confrontational coping tended to predict lower satisfaction. Finally, cluster analysis revealed six distinct clusters in both the LDR and PR subsamples. Three of the LDR clusters had analogous PR counterparts. These included one cluster of individuals who rely almost entirely on their partners for support, one cluster of insecure and deeply unsatisfied individuals, and one cluster of anxious, confrontational but content participants. The other three sets of clusters were quite different for those in LDRs and PRs. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed. ROMANTIC ATTACHMENT STYLES AND COPING BEHAVIORS IN LONGDISTANCE ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS by Gary Joseph Freitas Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2004 Advisory Committee: Professor Mary Ann Hoffman, Chair Professor Elaine A. Anderson Professor Clara E. Hill Professor Robert F. Marcus Dr. Pepper E. Phillips © Copyright by Gary Joseph Freitas 2004


Recent studies suggest that users often retrieve incomplete healthcare information because of the complex and skewed distribution of facts across relevant webpages. To understand the causes for such skewed distributions, this paper presents the results of two analyses: (1) A distribution analysis discusses how facts related to healthcare topics are scattered across high-quality healthcare pages. (2) A cluster analysis of the same data suggests that the skewed distribution can be explained by the existence of three page profiles that vary in information density, each of which play an important role in providing comprehensive information on a topic. The above analyses provide clues towards a model of information
scatter which describes how the design decisions by individual webpage authors could collectively lead to
the scatter of information as observed in the data. The analyses also suggest implications for the design
of websites, search algorithms, and search interfaces to help users find comprehensive information about
a topic.


A study was conducted to determine the effect of culling BVDV carrier animals on the seroconversion against BVDV in the new generation of heifers from a dairy herd located in Arequipa, Peru. Blood samples were collected to 6-12 month old females in four sampling periods: January (n=73), June (n=48), October 2003 (n=48), and January 2004 (n=35) to evaluate their serological status against BVDV and to screen for carrier animals using the virus neutralization and antigen-capture ELISA tests, respectively. The prevalence of BVDV was 80.8 ± 9.0, 56.3 ± 14.0, 50.0 ± 14.2 and 22.9 ± 13.9% in the first, second, third and fourth sampling period, respectively. There were 2.7% (2/73) of carrier heifers in the group sampled in January 2003, and none in the subsequent sampling periods. The incidence of BVDV infection was 12/100 heifers per month from January 2003 till January 2004. The logistic regression test showed that culling of carrier animals in January 2003 reduced the risk of infection in subsequent months. In addition, age was a risk factor for VDVB infection in this group of animals. The results showed that BVDV infection is highly prevalent in herds having carrier animals, and that the culling of PI animals reduce the risk of infection in herd mates as indicated in the literature. The results also suggest that the control and eradication of BVDV in intensive management dairy herds may be possible by identifying and culling carrier animals and without vaccination but ensuring high level of biosecurity.


This paper presents the design and implementation of a fuzzy logic controller using Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL) on a field programmable gate array (FPGA). First, a Sugeno-type fuzzy logic controller with five triangular and trapezoidal membership functions for two inputs and with nine singleton membership functions for one output is examined. The proposed structure is tested with second- and third-order system model using FPGA-in-the-loop simulation via a MATLAB/Simulink environment. Then, for different kinds of fuzzy logic controllers, a new look-up table (LUT) and interpolation-based controller implementation is proposed to eliminate the computational complexity of the primarily designed structure. As a case study, a magnetic levitation system is controlled with an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) trained fuzzy logic controller, then it is simulated and implemented using a LUT-based controller. Finally, we provide a comparison of results.


This book aims to give a comprehensive picture of law, government and the constitution in Malaysia, and to set constitutional developments in their proper political and social context. It is written in such a way that lawyers may see how perspectives other than the purely legal can enrich the understanding of constitutional issues in Malaysia and that others may comprehend the lawyer's perspective on these issues. There has been an increasing interest in constitutional issues in Malaysia since the mid-1980s following a number of important events, including the advent of judicial activism and the curtailment of royal powers. There is now a pressing need for a reappraisal of the Malaysian constitution in terms of its political and social dimensions and dynamics, and the extent of its adherence to, or its interpretation of, those principles which are collectively known as `constitutionalism', that is, democratic government, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the observance of fundamental human rights and liberties. The book examines how the constitution has adjusted to its environment, how it actually operates and how its abstractions differ from reality. The author concludes that the principles of the constitution have been eroded to such a degree that a new constitutional settlement is needed - one which makes it clear what the basic tenets of the Malaysian polity are.


Sickness absence is an empirical phenomenon of all time. Generally, it has a medical cause. However, other factors also appear to have an impact on the actual rate of sickness absence, such as the institutional setting, the business cycle and the economic structure. Many questions on the different dimensions of sickness absence are still not fully answered, since there are great differences between countries, firms and individuals. Since patterns of sickness absence vary from one employer or employee to another, it is essential to investigate the specific transitions or shocks that employees undergo. Examining sickness absence behaviour in relation to job transitions and health shocks should shed more light on the relation between sickness absence and incentives, selection and health. The first part of this dissertation (Chapters 2 and 3) focuses on changes in sickness absence in periods of transitions in the labour market. Chapter 2 examines absenteeism for employees who make a job transition and considers the procyclical nature of absenteeism in the period around transitions between jobs, since both are procyclical. We use economy-wide employer-employee matched data focusing on the period 2004-05. The decrease in absences during the probationary period is smaller than the increase in absence after the notification of termination of the employment contract. The net increase of sickness absence in the period around job transition intensifies the procyclical nature of sickness absence. Chapter 3 takes the period 2004-05 and investigates its rates of absenteeism among newly hired Dutch employees after a period of unemployment in 2002-05. Our results, contrary to the ones in the business cycle literature, show that employees do not react strongly to the incentive of being long-term unemployed, since sickness absence is 1.3 percentage points higher for employees who have been unemployed for more than a year, which suggests that a sorting mechanism dominates the incentive effect. Therefore, in a new job after unemployment, the disciplining effect of this spell on sickness absence is not dominant. The second part of this dissertation (Chapters 4 and 5) focuses on health shocks and their effect on sickness absence behaviour. This part of the dissertation concentrates on two specific health shocks, pregnancies and fractures, which influence sickness absence behaviour. Chapter 4 studies absenteeism in relation to the intensity of the condition. We consider the consequences of including the intensity of the condition in the absence equation by focusing on the development of absence for a homogeneous group of female workers during forty weeks of pregnancy. The results suggest that the intensity of the pregnancy is strengthening the explanatory factors of sickness absence consistent with the relationships suggested in the literature. As the social gradient, health and sickness absence are interrelated, Chapter 5 investigates whether, after controlling for health, there still is a social gradient in sickness absence. In order to address this question, we make use of an unexpected health shock that may lead to sickness absenteeism for one specific medical reason: fractures. We find strong evidence of a social gradient in sickness absence, since the increase is in sickness absence is higher for low-salaried workers than for high-salaried employees.


Stephen Duggins and his fellow extension officers have become local celebrities in rural St. Kitts. Armed with a digital video camera, Stephen travels through the island and produces instructional videos for farmers. He visits local crop farmers to record their concerns and to provide them with feedback about how they can improve crop yields and maximize profits. Back at his rural extension unit office, Stephen plugs the camera into a television set and edits his footage, so that it can be transferred to videotape and converted to any format. His broadcast-quality recordings will make the rounds with other local extension officers, and will be distributed to other farming regions.

Stephen is not alone - rural extension officers in Dominica, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica have also been taught how to use a camera and audio/video production skills to demonstrate new farming techniques and address local issues. Their new skills are the result of the Commonwealth of Learning Media Empowerment (COLME) programme, which was launched in 1999 to address issues in agriculture, forestry, the environment, health and education around the world. The initiative, supported by the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), is an example of COLME´s Open and Distance Learning (ODL) model, which aims to promote the exchange of training and other information among farmers, extension officers and scientists.

The COLME programme activities in the Caribbean focus on fostering agribusiness opportunities and environmental sustainability. The aim is to assist governments in their efforts to move away from their traditional dependency on a single crop - such as bananas in Dominica or sugar in St Kitts and Nevis - and to support small farmers who have been sidelined by imports of mass-produced food products from developed countries.

Video: the most reliable medium
After studying the possibilities for the best Caribbean ODL model, COLME project members, together with local extension staff and farm groups, decided to opt for video, for a number of reasons. On many islands the hilly terrain tends to block radio signals, so that video is by far the most reliable medium. Moreover, visual information tends to be of greater value to farmers, since many of them already have television sets and video players. Most important, video allows extension workers to reach larger numbers of farmers, at a time when extension services are being greatly reduced. In Jamaica, for example, there was one extension officer per 500 farmers in 1990. Since then the number of extension officers has been reduced by more than 50%, while the number of farmers has increased. Yet, in order for extension officers to be able to reach farmers effectively, they need to be directly involved with gathering local content.

Simple video production goes a long way to meeting this requirement. Many extension officers, once they are familiar with the new user-friendly digital production equipment, enjoy the challenge and feel it is an important set of skills that supports their mandate of reaching farmers. The farmers in turn can directly relate to information that is relevant to their own region, valley, field and colleagues.

The COLME programme is going strong. In St Kitts, for example, the extension service has produced a video-based magazine for television, in which farmers are encouraged to adopt new techniques and to diversify production. In Jamaica, video-based extension information has been used at farmers´ group meetings such as agricultural field days sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture. In Tobago, video productions on the environment and forestry have been shown in local schools to make young people more aware of the importance of preserving wetlands.

It should be noted, however, that this initiative will only be sustainable if the region´s agriculture ministries allow the role of the rural extension officer to change. Under the current system, trained field extension officers who are promoted are often transferred from their area of expertise and given administrative duties, creating a serious knowledge gap at field level. More initiatives such as the COLME programme are urgently needed to assist governments in finding new, effective strategies that enable greater numbers of farmers to receive relevant information.

mailto:email@example.com

David Walker is an educational technology/media specialist at the Commonwealth of Learning. For further information, visit

http://www.col.org

www.col.org.


This paper presents microarray BASICA: an integrated image processing tool for background adjustment, segmentation, image compression, and analysis of cDNA microarray images. BASICA uses a fast Mann-Whitney test-based algorithm to segment cDNA microarray images, and performs postprocessing to eliminate the segmentation irregularities. The segmentation results, along with the foreground and background intensities obtained with the background adjustment, are then used for independent compression of the foreground and background. We introduce a new distortion measurement for cDNA microarray image compression and devise a coding scheme by modifying the embedded block coding with optimized truncation (EBCOT) algorithm (Taubman, 2000) to achieve optimal rate-distortion performance in lossy coding while still maintaining outstanding lossless compression performance. Experimental results show that the bit rate required to ensure sufficiently accurate gene expression measurement varies and depends on the quality of cDNA microarray images. For homogeneously hybridized cDNA microarray images, BASICA is able to provide from a bit rate as low as 5 bpp the gene expression data that are% in agreement with those of the original 32 bpp images.


Summary Microsponges are polymeric delivery systems composed of porous microspheres. They are tiny sponge-like spherical particles with a large porous surface. Moreover, they may enhance stability, reduce side effects and modify drug release favorably. Microsponge technology has many favorable characteristics, which make it a versatile drug delivery vehicle. Microsponge Systems are based on microscopic, polymer-based microspheres that can suspend or entrap a wide variety of substances, and can then be incorporated into a formulated product such as a gel, cream, liquid or powder. The outer surface is typically porous, allowing a sustained flow of substances out of the sphere. Microsponges are porous, polymeric microspheres that are used mostly for topical use and have recently been used for oral administration. Microsponges are designed to deliver a pharmaceutical active ingredient efficiently at the minimum dose and also to enhance stability, reduce side effects, and modify drug release.


The lives of people with disease and disability are harmed not only by their conditions but by public response to these conditions in the form of stigma and discrimination. Making sense of this injustice is the focus of this book. The two main sections of the book comprise chapters on 10 specific illnesses and conditions (mental illness, substance abuse, intellectual disability, physical and sensory disabilities, HIV-AIDS, infectious disease, cancer, obesity, childhood disorders, and Alzheimer's disease) and chapters relating to broader issues (stigma and family, overcoming stigma, stigma across cultures, and future directions). The book concludes with observations on what has not worked in overcoming stigma as well as possible future directions.


A hydrogen-powered materials handling vehicle with a fuel cell combines the advantages of diesel/LPG and battery powered vehicles. Hydrogen provides the same consistent power and fast refueling capability as diesel and LPG, whilst fuel cells provide energy efficient and zero emission electric propulsion similar to batteries. In this paper, the performance of a forklift powered by PEM fuel cells and lead acid batteries as auxiliary energy source is introduced and investigated. In this electromechanical propulsion system with hybrid energy/power sources, fuel cells will deliver average power, whilst batteries will handle all the load dynamics, such as acceleration, lifting, climbing and so on. The electrical part of the whole propulsion system for forklift has been investigated in details. The energy management strategy is explained and verified through simulation. Finally, experimental results from a prototype are given to present the validity of analysis and design.


Oral mucosal lesions that are associated with HIV infection can play an important role in guiding the decision to initiate antiretroviral therapy (ART). The incidence of these lesions relative to the timing of ART initiation has not been well characterized. A randomized controlled clinical trial was conducted at the GHESKIO Center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti between 2004 and 2009. 816 HIV-infected ART-naïve participants with CD4 T cell counts between 200 and 350 cells/mm3 were randomized to either immediate ART initiation (early group; N = 408), or initiation when CD4 T cell count was less than or equal 200 cells/mm3 or with the development of an AIDS-defining condition (delayed group; N = 408). Every 3 months, all participants underwent an oral examination. The incidence of oral lesions was 4.10 in the early group and 17.85 in the delayed group (p-value <0.01). In comparison to the early group, there was a significantly higher incidence of candidiasis, hairy leukoplakia, herpes labialis, and recurrent herpes simplex in the delayed group. The incidence of oral warts in delayed group was 0.97 before therapy and 4.27 post-ART initiation (p-value <0.01). In the delayed group the incidence of oral warts post-ART initiation was significantly higher than that seen in the early group (4.27 versus 1.09; p-value <0.01). The incidence of oral warts increased after ART was initiated, and relative to the early group there was a four-fold increase in oral warts if ART was initiated following an AIDS diagnosis. Based upon our findings, candidiasis, hairy leukoplakia, herpes labialis, and recurrent herpes simplex indicate immune suppression and the need to start ART. In contrast, oral warts are a sign of immune reconstitution following ART initiation.


Unlike studies which confine psychologism to the second half of the nineteenth century, and to an explicit claim of psychology as a 'Grundwissenschaft' during that period, this work attempts to trace psychologism's emergence in Greek antiquity, in hedonistic tendencies of the Renaissance, and in British Empiricism. Thus, psychologism figures as a generic concept, embracing a variety of both positivistic and idealistic arguments concerning the localization of normative sciences, particularly aesthetics and literary theory, in psychological space. This study also considers the implicit psychologism of even those psychoaesthetic theories which claimed to be against the exclusive status of psychology. In their actual treatment of aesthetic and literary facts, such theories inadvertently did indeed resort to psychologistic arguments. The position from which I have chosen to look at psychologistically committed aesthetics and literary theory is essentially phenomenological. The author seeks to present psychologism as a central tendency of psychoaesthetics as well as to assert critically psychologism's basic assumptions.


This paper deals with the analysis of the thermal field parameters using the space radiometry information for the infrared channels of MODIS-TERRA/AQUA/MSG satellite data and the infrared/microwave of the ATOVS system onboard NOAA/EPS satellites. Different methods and algorithms have been studied to derive land surface temperature (LST). Relatively homogenous surface emissivity areas from all over Romania were chosen based on the availability of appropriate satellite data and auxiliary data; the latter being used for validation. Each type of data has different ways of being acquired and processed and these are described in details. Two kinds of data (sensor and satellite characteristics and resolution) were taken into consideration in this study in order to estimate the land surface temperature. Modified split-window methods were mainly studied and there were chosen quasi-homogenous bodies were chosen as test areas for the emissivity values. A good correlation between existing LST products were obtained in the case of MSG data. The ATOVS temperature was then compared w ith the LST temperatures in order to find if there is a correlation between satellite derived air temperatures at 2m and LST temperatures, which, if true, could be usefull in estimating LST in cloudy conditions, since ATOVS derived profiles can be calculated with the same accuracy independently of the clod cover. A linear relationship was found.


Many definitions and theories of leadership focus on the innate traits that leaders must possess from birth, others on the characteristics acquired throughout adult life and the processes the individual is exposed to. It is also widely believed that leadership is solely exercised at positions of higher authority in institutions and organizations. Students who are sufficiently fortunate, are exposed to leadership practices during their formal higher and academia education, yet the plethora of leadership educational programs available globally have limited adaptation and applicability to real-world cases, as well as limited foundations and preparation of the prospective leaders for the societies of the future and community needs.  Leadership entails essential elements based on awareness; historical awareness, awareness of self and others, awareness of logical distinctions, and awareness of one's capacity for discrimination (Barrow, 1981). These features are necessary for students to become educated individuals capable to behave and act responsibly while assuming leadership roles in tomorrow's world.

Scholars state that students benefit from exposure to leadership models and practices regardless of the career paths they undertake. Theorists have further posited that educational institutions preparing students to assume leadership roles should focus their instructional methodologies on the early stages of the educational process. Additionally, approaches such as the morfosis paradigm give substantial promise to educational institutional leaders, educators, and their students when education emerges through its lens. Approaches such as these provide students with the best chance to gain skills and capacities enriched with ethics, empathy, and compassion in becoming effective leaders of tomorrow. Moreover, teaching them the significance of accountability, the importance of service learning, and the necessity for demonstration of ethos, compassion and empathy, cultivate the sense of belonging while building on awareness, interaction, and leadership mindsets. Furthermore, implementing SEL methodologies in teaching and learning builds on leader and leadership development.


The pelagic environment is characterized by unevenly distributed resources and risks. Such unpredictability presents adaptive challenges to diverse planktonic organisms including the larvae of benthic marine invertebrates. Estimates of mortality during planktonic development are highly variable, ranging from 0% to 100% per day. Predation is considered a significant source of this mortality, but what explains the variability in estimates of the mortality of marine invertebrate larvae? While differential exposure of larval prey to predators may explain these widely variable estimates, adaptations that reduce vulnerability of marine larvae to predators may also be important. Although there are excellent reviews of predation upon larvae and of larval mortality and defenses, nearly 15 years have elapsed since these topics were formally reviewed. Here, we highlight recent advances in understanding the behavioral, chemical, and morphological defenses that larvae possess and assess their effectiveness in reducing the risk of predation. While recent work confirms that larval mortality is generally high, it also demonstrates that larvae can reduce their risk of predation in several ways, including: (1) temporarily escaping the benthos during vulnerable early stages, (2) producing chemical compounds that reduce palatability, (3) possessing morphological defenses such as spines and shells, and (4) exhibiting induced defensive responses whereby larvae can alter their behavior, morphology, and life histories in the presence of predators. Taken together, these studies indicate that marine invertebrate larvae possess a sophisticated suite of defensive phenotypes that have allowed them to persist in the life cycle of benthic invertebrates for eons.


This article sets out the first direct evidence for the central role of rice cultivation in the origin and development of complex chiefdoms, or kingdoms, in South Sulawesi after c. AD 1200. This evidence comprises Oryza phytoliths recovered from a test pit excavated from the earliest recorded palace site in South Sulawesi. A chronological context is provided by ceramic sherdage recovered from the test pit and from a partial surface survey of the hill on which the site is located. The combined evidence supports our contention that agrarian kingdoms first appeared in the late 13th century as an indigenous response to the availability of trade goods, mainly Indian textiles and Chinese and Southeast Asian ceramic wares. No material or stratigraphic support was found for an alternative theory that South Sulawesi's early kingdoms were primarily trade based, and that their subsequent development was punctuated by an economic and social collapse lasting several decades.


Since the previous Editorial appeared in the March issue, outlining revised publication plans following the postal strike, the anticipated progress has been maintained and we are once again up-to-date. The last parts of the Q.J.G.S. for 1970 have been published. With the despatch in May of literally 'the last Q.J.', Fellows received Indexes and 'Prelims' for Volumes 123, 124 and 125. Those for Vol. 126 are in preparation. The long awaited Memoirs 5 & 6 (by Goldring and Spencer respectively) appeared at the end of March and are now on sale to Fellows. The special offer, prior to the revision of prices for memoirs and special publications, is proving popular. Fellows are reminded that it closes on 1st October. Obituary notices on Fellows who died during 1969 and 1970 are in press while those for 1971 will appear, together with the Annual Report to Council and the audited accounts, in a new Year Book to be published shortly after the A.G.M. in 1972. The May and July issues of the Journal (Vol. 127 Pts. 3 and 4) did not require an Editorial. However, this current issue departs from the normal in several respects. Centenary Celebrations: It is traditional, perhaps particularly in a historical subject like geology, to mark with celebrations the passage of convenient, if arbitrary, periods of time. We congratulate the Edinburgh Department on carrying its hammer for a century and wish them well for the future. This also serves to introduce the title of the joint Centenary meeting


"Squirrels of the World", written by scientists with more than 100 years of collective experience studying these popular mammals, is the first comprehensive examination of all 285 species of squirrels worldwide. The authors reveal virtually every detail of the family Sciuridae, which includes ground squirrels, tree squirrels, flying squirrels, prairie dogs, and chipmunks. Each species-from the familiar gray squirrel of American backyards to the exotic and endangered woolly flying squirrel of Pakistan-is described in a detailed account that includes distinguishing characteristics, ecology, natural history, conservation status, and current threats to its existence. "Squirrels of the World" includes: stunning color photographs that document rare and unusual squirrels as well as common varieties; evolution, morphology, ecology, and conservation status; colorful range maps marking species distribution; images of the skull of each genus of squirrel; and extensive references.


The International Commission on Radiological Protection has recently published draft recommendations which include proposals for new weighting factors, WT for use in calculating effective dose equivalent, now called 'effectance'. The author outlines the concept of effectance, compares committed effectance with the old committed effective dose equivalence and goes onto discuss changes in annual limits on intakes and the maximum organ doses which would result from an intake of an ALI. It is shown that committed effectance is usually, but not always, higher than committed effective dose equivalent. ALIS are usually well below those resulting from the ICRP Publication 30 scheme. However, if the ALI were based only on a limit on effectance it would imply a high dose to specific organs for certain nuclides. In order to control maximum organ doses an explicit limit could be introduced. However, this would destroy some of the attractive features of the new scheme. An alternative would be a slight modification to some of the weighting factors.


A subject of interest in environmental health is the effect of toxic substances upon a developing organism. While other books in this area have addressed laboratory research on animals, "Prenatal Exposure to Toxicants" focuses on the effect of pollutants on the human foetus. The authors begin by outlining the principles of neurodevelopmental toxicology. They then present data on the effects on humans of specific toxicants - lead, methyl mercury, PCBs, alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and cocaine. They discuss substances whose toxic effects have been well documented in animals but not yet in humans, such as chemical solvents, pesticides, carbon monoxide and xenostrogens. In a concluding section, they look at methodologic, regulatory and legal issues. Accessible to both the clinical and the developmental specialist, this book should be useful to toxicologists and other environmental health professionals, behavioural scientists, obstetricians, gynaecologists, paediatricians and geneticists.


British Medical Journal, March 10, 1984, p 757 Quality control of home monitoring of blood glucose concentrations By: G. Petranyi, M. Petranyi et al Home monitoring of blood glucose with reagent strips is widely used but there is no information about the quality of the patients' readings at home. We asked 24 patients with more than one year's experience in self-monitoring to collect an additional sample of blood for 14 readings over a two day period. These were examined by an autoanalyzer. A poor, but significant, relation existed between performance ratings and the rank correlation coefficients. There were considerable differences among patients. This small survey shows the need to review patients with unacceptably inaccurate readings and to check their equipment and method of testing. The visual acuity and color sense of patients should also be investigated. Errors may be caused by unsatisfactory blood sampling, use of expired reagent strips, poorly calibrated meters, inappropriate handling of strips, chemical contamination, and psychological factors. Quality control is recommended.


We explore the determinants of land titling by smallholder farmers in Zambia, and evaluate the impacts of titling on land productivity investments. We examine plot-level outcomes, and test for gendered differences in titling impacts. We find generally positive impacts of titling on investments, including strong gender-specific pathways of impact. Although female-headed households are less likely to make investments than male-headed households, female title holders are significantly more likely to make investments than male title holders (at least for labor intensive investments). We posit that these results are related to the systematically weaker rights of women in customary tenure systems, under which the security-enhancement of formal land title plays a relatively greater role in incentivizing long-term farm investments. Our results suggest the importance of facilitating access to titling mechanisms (and other tenure security mechanisms) by female farmers.


Radiation Dose Structured ReportsMultiple diagnostic and/or interventional systems may expose a patient to radiation. The DICOM Information Object Definition (IOD) for these modalities may include acquisition data concerning the irradiation in each image instance produced. Yet, the aggregate irradiation information may not be easily determined from the individual image instances. To alleviate these issues the Radiation Dose Reporting information object was developed. In this session the configuration and organization of DICOM structured reports, and specifically the Radiation Dose Structured Report (RDSR), will be presented. This overview will include the basic construct of structured reporting IOD's and where this content in found in the DICOM standard. The current content and potential future enhancements to the RDSR will be presented. In addition, an overview of a new DICOM work item on the develpment of a Patient Radiation Dose Structured Report and the issues that this new IOD will require will be presented. Learning Objectives: 1. Understand the basic concepts of DICOM structured reporting. 2. Describe the organization of the DICOM standard in relation to structured reporting with references to the relevant parts and sections. 3. Review the current content and recent extensions to the Radiation Dose Structured Report. 4. Discuss the proposed organization for developing a Patient Radiation Dose Structured Report.


ABSTRACT Using reflexive accounts from her own research, the author of this article discusses her struggles as a Japanese feminist anthropologist with what "contribution" actually means in different research contexts. The author compares her dissertation research on a feminist group with her ongoing research project on right-wing opponents of feminism. As a feminist, the author found it relatively easy to practice the idea of contribution with feminists as her research subjects. The situation was much more complex, however, when studying conservative opponents of feminism, whose views were directly oppositional to the author's views and to the human rights principles supported by the American Anthropological Association. By examining her fieldwork experiences on these two types of activists, the author discusses the possibilities and constraints of ethnographic practices such as participant observation, archival research, and contribution to the people anthropologists study and to feminism. The author also discusses the role that the internet is playing in current research contexts, and argues that the distinction between home and field is increasingly blurred. This study complicates the notion of "native anthropology," contending that as the anthropologist engages deeply in politically charged situations in the field, the distinction of native versus other may no longer be accurate. By illustrating complexities surrounding the practice of fieldwork, the author complicates the notion of contribution, and shows that one possible way to grapple with the difficult question of what and to whom to contribute is to listen to diverse, complex voices, not only of feminists but also of their political opponents, antifeminist conservatives.


The opportunistic intracellular bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes has in 30 years emerged as an exceptional bacterial model system in infection biology. Research on this bacterium has provided considerable insight into how pathogenic bacteria adapt to mammalian hosts, invade eukaryotic cells, move intracellularly, interfere with host cell functions and disseminate within tissues. It also contributed to unveil features of normal host cell pathways and unsuspected functions of previously known cellular proteins. This review provides an updated overview of our knowledge on this pathogen. In many examples, findings on L. monocytogenes provided the basis for new concepts in bacterial regulation, cell biology and infection processes.


The increasing number of safety-critical commercial applications has generated a need for components with high levels of reliability. As CMOS process sizes continue to shrink, the reliability of ICs is negatively affected since they become more sensitive to transient faults. New circuit designs must take this fact into consideration, and incorporate adequate protection against the effects of transient faults. This paper presents a novel method for protecting the pipelined execution unit of an embedded processor. It is based on a self-configured architecture with hybrid redundancy that can mask single and multiple errors, which can occur on storage elements due to transient or permanent faults. This concept can be easily applied to any processing architecture of this nature with a high safety integrity level. Results from error-injection experiments are also reported that show that this design can maintain a non-interrupted and failure-free operation under single and double errors with a probability that exceeds 99.4%.


It is no secret that large law firms are struggling in their efforts to retain attorneys of color. This is despite two decades of aggressive tracking of demographic rates, mandates from clients to improve demographic diversity, and the implementation of a variety of diversity efforts within large law firms. In part, law firm retention efforts are stymied by the reality that elite, large law firms require some level of attrition to function properly under the predominant business model. This reality, however, does not explain why firms have so much difficulty retaining attorneys of color — in particular black and Hispanic attorneys. And yet, there may be a relatively simple and low-cost set of incentives that law firm management and the legal profession can put in place to encourage black and Hispanic attorneys to remain at large law firms at higher rates. This Article draws on traditional theories of "the firm" and modern day understandings of workplace discrimination and applies them to the retention problem in large law firms. It argues that by incentivizing equity partners in large firms, who are overwhelmingly white males, to instill greater loyalty in black and Hispanic attorneys, firms can solve a large portion of their retention problem. As equity partners invest more time mentoring black and Hispanic attorneys, they will develop a sense of loyalty to the firm that will decrease the speed and frequency that attorneys of color exit the firm. Firms can then begin Retaining Color.


The transesterification reaction is actually The demand for petroleum is increasing with each passing day. This may be attributed to the limited resources of petroleum crude. In that case it becomes utmost necessity to search for alternative fuels which are renewable and in that biodiesel emerges as a real solution. Biodiesel is a cleaner burning fuel than diesel and a suitable replacement. It is made from non-toxic, biodegradable, renewable resources. Biodiesel can be produced in many ways. The method used in the laboratory was transesterification which is actually replacement of alcohol group from an ester by another alcohol. The reaction was carried out by varying different parameters to find the best conversion of oil to biodiesel. Alkali catalysed transesterification is considered to be the best amongst all methods available for the production of biodiesel from fresh oil. It was found out that the rate of transesterification reaction in a batch reactor increases with temperature. Higher temperatures do not reduce the time to reach maximal conversion. The conversion of triglyceride, diglyceride and monoglyceride appears to be second order upto 10 minutes of reaction time.Our aim is to establish the kinetics of the reaction during transesterification and to do the modeling and predict rate equation for the reaction.


This paper offers a few reflections on the origins, historiography and condition of the field often referred to as Digital Art History (DAH), with references, among others, to the activities of the Computers and the History of Art group (CHArt, est. 1985) and my personal experience, spanning over 20 years, first as a postgraduate student, then doctoral researcher and eventually Lecturer in DAH. The publications and teaching activities of scholars connected to CHArt are seen as indicative of the evolution of the field internationally. Personal experience, or a reality check, is limited to higher education in the UK. The key argument here concerns the questionable benefit of promoting DAH as a discrete discipline and detaching digital practices from the mainstream history of art and its institutions. When introduced in the late 1990s, the 'DAH' served to indicate a dramatic shift in the way art history could be practiced, taught, studied and communicated. The changes were brought about by widening access to computers and information technology. DAH was suggested—"perhaps a little ahead of time— as a new kind of intellectual fusion" (W. Vaughan). It is no longer necessary to argue for the wise use of computers. Digital technology has become part and parcel of teaching, learning and research. It is the History of Art and its more traditional research methods and critical perspectives that are seen at risk of neglect. The theories of crisis, even 'death' of Art History have contributed to general anxiety over the discipline's future. However, a discipline has "the ability and power to control and judge its borders" (R. Nelson). The discipline of Art History is richer and stronger through the fusion of digital scholarship with, not separation, from more traditional methodologies and critical canons. The need to continue with the 'digital' distinction is


Employing a convergent parallel design that combines an experiment and interviews, this study examined the relationship between news media literacy (NML) and political efficacy. The experiment tested the effect of exposure to NML messages on self-perceived media literacy and political efficacy beliefs. Experimental results suggest that NML messages influence self-perceived media literacy, which mediates political efficacy. This study also used interviews to explore how people apply NML skills to their news consumption and the relationship between news media literacy and political efficacy. The experimental and interview findings give us a more complete understanding of the complex relationship between NML and political efficacy and offer insight into the kinds of NML interventions that could be developed using theoretically and empirically validated findings.


The processes of European Union (EU) integration and enlargement have allowed for the emergence of a new regional socioeconomic map in Europe. Border regions, in particular, have been put in a state of flux, where the re-allocation of activities, opportunities and threats is changing their socio-economic role and significance. Thus, border regions have become an issue of great importance during the last fifteen years in both the areas of scientific research and policy making. The overall picture of the actual dynamics occurring in the border regions, once economic barriers have been abolished, however, remains rather unclear. The absence of an appropriate methodological framework for the study of the impact of the EU integration and enlargement dynamics on border regions is evident. The paper proposes a typology for the EU NUTS III border regions, interpreting the socioeconomic dynamics occurring within the enlarged EU space. Primary and secondary data, incorporating quantitative and qualitative determinants for border regions, were elaborated integrated factor and fuzzy clustering analysis techniques. The proposed border regions typology provides the necessary framework to assess the relative position of each EU border region in the EU space.


ABSTRACT Visitors who exhibit place attachment often demonstrate greater concern regarding how a place is managed. However, the extent to which the dimensions of attachment are related to management preferences has not been sufficiently investigated. Place attachment of visitors to coastal campsites along the southern Ningaloo coastline of northwestern Australia and its relation with management preferences were examined via an onsite survey. The relation was investigated using a suite of routines in the non-parametric multivariate statistics package PRIMER v6, providing the first example of the use of these types of statistical approaches in place research. Place attachment was measured using the dimensions of Place Identity, Place Dependence, and Everybody's Happy (a new, affective-based dimension). Within each dimension, significantly different groups of visitors were identified based on differences in their responses to the place attachment survey items. This was achieved using hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis in conjunction with a Similarity Profile (SIMPROF) test. Subsequent analysis using the BVSTEP procedure showed that the pattern of differences among visitors in their responses to place attachment items produced significant though weak correlations with their level of support for various management actions. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of the results for future research on place and associated preferences for management actions.


This paper proposes a two-level framework for the operation of a competitive market for reactive power ancillary services. It is argued that the first-level, i.e. reactive power procurement, be on a seasonal basis while the second-level, i.e. reactive power dispatch, be close to real-time operation. To this effect, a reactive power procurement market model is proposed here taking into consideration system security aspects. This procurement procedure is based on a two-step optimization model. First, the marginal benefits of reactive power supply from each provider with respect to system security are obtained by solving an optimal power flow (OPF) that maximizes system loadability subject to transmission security constraints imposed by voltage limits, thermal limits and stability limits. Second, the selected set of generators is then determined by solving an OPF-based auction to maximize a societal advantage function comprising generators' offers and their corresponding marginal benefits with respect to system security, considering all transmission system constraints. The proposed procedure yields the selected set of generators and zonal price components, which would form the basis for seasonal contracts between the system operator and the selected reactive power service providers.


The Polycomb (Pc) gene is required from the extended germ band stage onwards, to maintain spatially restricted patterns of homeotic gene expression. It has been thought to be involved in the 'stable inheritance of the determined state'. In this paper, we have tested the notion that the Pc gene is required specifically during or after DNA replication to enable the stable transmission of states of gene activity. We found that arresting cell division using the string mutation or blocking DNA replication with aphidicolin failed to prevent ectopic expression of the homeotic gene Ultrabithorax in Pc mutants. Thus, even in the absence of DNA replication, Pc is required to maintain spatially restricted patterns of homeotic gene expression. The role of the Pc gene product in the stable repression of homeotic gene transcription is discussed.


The prospect of a justification defence in cases of direct sex discrimination is universally
criticised by academic commentators on the ground that it would subvert the goal of
equality that underlies sex discrimination and equal treatment legislation. At the outset
the thesis examines the differences between the sexes, how these differences can be used
to explain the distinction between direct and indirect sex discrimination and considers
various concepts of equality. Building on various elements of the existing justification
defences for indirect sex discrimination and disability discrimination, this thesis
constructs a model justification defence. The impact on equality of such a defence is
assessed by reference to the main existing legislative exceptions for direct sex
discrimination and various judicial exceptions that have been created, in the main, by the
European Court of Justice. Further, the thesis considers whether the blanket prohibition
against the use of sex stereotypes is warranted and the extent to which they might be
permitted under the model defence. The conclusions reached are that criticism of the
potential defence is overstated. Rather than undermining the goal of sex equality, such a
defence could in fact enhance the degree of legal protection as long as the criteria of the
defence are stringently drawn. Indeed, in relation to some areas of direct sex
discrimination, for example pregnancy and maternity, the introduction of such a defence
could enhance the degree of equality. Moreover, the introduction of such a defence
could introduce a greater degree of openness and clarity into this complex area of law.


Initially, domesticated African cattle were of taurine type. Today, we find both African Bos taurus and Bos indicus cattle, as well as their crossbreeds, on the continent of Africa and they all share the same set of African taurine mitochondrial DNA haplogroups. In this study, we report genetic variation as substitutions and insertions/deletions (indels) on both the X and Y chromosomes, and use the variation to assess hybridization between taurine and indicine cattle. Six African cattle breeds (four Sanga breeds, including Raya Azebu, Danakil, Caprivi, Nguni; and two Zebu breeds, including Kilimanjaro Zebu and South Kavirondo Zebu) were screened for six new X-chromosomal markers, specifically three single nucleotide polymorphisms and three indels in the DDX3X (previously DBX) and ZFX genes, and five previously identified Y-chromosomal markers in the DDX3Y (previously DBY) and ZFY genes. In total, 90 (57 bulls and 33 cows) samples from the African breeds were analysed. We identify five diagnostic haplotypes of indicine and taurine origins on both the X and Y chromosomes. For each breed, the level of indicine introgression varies; in addition to pure taurine, indicine and hybrid X-chromosome individuals, recombinant X-chromosome variants were also detected. These markers are useful molecular tools for assessing the level of indicine admixture in African cattle breeds.


Introduction Studies have demonstrated the high agreement of several remote neuropsychological tests using video teleconferencing (VTC) with face-to-face (FTF) tests. However, the reliability of the remotely administered Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale cognitive subscale (ADAS-cog), one of the most commonly used neuropsychological tests to detect cognitive decline, has not been substantially elucidated, particularly in Japanese populations. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the reliability of the remotely administered ADAS-cog compared with FTF-administered ADAS-cog among elderly Japanese participants. Methods Participants aged ≥60 years with and without cognitive impairment, i.e. those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), those with dementia and healthy controls (HCs), were assessed with the ADAS-cog using VTC and FTF testing at an interval of >2 weeks and <3 months. The assessment order (VTC or FTF) was randomized by participants. Participants' scores were compared among the entire sample, as well as subgroups, using intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) in a mixed-effects model. Results A total of 73 participants were included in the study (36 men; age, 76.3 ± 7.6 years). The ICC for the ADAS-cog total score was high in the entire sample (0.86), whereas ICCs were moderate to high for the subgroups (MCI: 0.63, dementia: 0.80 and HC: 0.74). Discussion The results indicate that a VTC-administered ADAS-cog could be an alternative for an FTF-administered ADAS-cog, although further replication studies with larger sample sizes and a wider range of cognitive functionalities are warranted.


In this paper are identified several factors which affect a potential user's willingness to use recycled water for agricultural irrigation. This study is based on the results of a survey carried out among farmers in the island of Crete, Greece. It was found that a higher level of income and education are positively correlated with a respondent's willingness to use recycled water. Income and education are also positively correlated with a potential user's sensitivity to information on the advantages of using non-conventional water resources. Overall, extra information on the advantages of recycled water has a statistically significant impact on reported degrees of willingness to use recycled water.


The structure−property relationships of new polymorphs of the chiral herbicide imazamox were investigated by X-ray diffraction, hot stage microscopy (HSM), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Four different polymorphs of imazamox(R) were found. The relationship between different crystal forms, relative thermal stability, and possible conversions pathways was explored. Racemic imazamox, for which no polymorphic modifications could be observed, was also characterized in the solid state.


In the Specialization Project, we looked at methods of performing safety analysis in the early stages of development based upon the use of boilerplates and ontologies. Based on our work, we suggested two approaches for performing safety analysis: global hazards using can-cause chains and human failure modes. The method of global hazard focus on identifying events in a system that can cause hazards which affects the environment it operates in. The method of human failure modes introduces generic failures for human, in order to identify hazards related to the operator of the system. We were interested in assessing how good our suggested methods were in identifying hazards during the safety analysis. To do this, we chose to create two research questions to be answered in this thesis: RQ1: Is it easier to discover possible environment threatening hazards with global hazards and can-cause chains? RQ2:Is it easier to discover possible operator hazards with human failure modes? To answer our research questions, we chose perform an experiment with students using the suggested methods for safety analysis of two systems. The experiment gave us a good illustration of how the procedure would work in a real hazard analysis project. The results for global hazards with can-cause chains indicate that the method is not in a state where it can be used for safety analysis as of yet. There are still too many ambiguities as too how the chains should be created, and the feedback from the students indicates that it is difficult to learn and use the method. The algorithm needs to be further structured and we must obtain better documentation of how to perform it. The data from the experiment indicate that human failure modes have proven to be efficient at identifying operator related hazards. The method was given overall favorable feedback from the students, and appeared to identify many of the hazards in the test case. Our hypothesis was that it would be better than the method of system diagrams at identifying operator related hazards. The results from the experiment support this hypothesis.


In the face of an increasingly pressing refugee crisis, host organizations have become a key context for refugee integration (Bimrose & McNair, 2011). Successful integration is critical to refugees' well-being. However, our theoretical understanding of this process is still limited. This is partly because research centering on refugees is scarce, and the literature lacks a unifying framework to explain how varied integration practices could address refugee needs. To address this gap, the current study applies self-determination theory (SDT) to systematically understand how organizational practices may support refugees' autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs. To do so, I examine refugee (vs. non-refugee) perceptions of organizational support helpfulness and explore its underlying processes (e.g., needs deprivation, work centrality). Findings suggest that refugees tend to view autonomy and relatedness practices as especially helpful, and these relationships are mediated through higher work centrality. I conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of the findings for refugee workplace integration.


Apart from natural reassortment, co-circulation of different avian influenza virus strains in poultry populations can lead to generation of novel variants and reassortant viruses. In this report, we studied the genetics and functions of a reassorted non-structural gene (NS) of H9N2 influenza virus collected from back yard poultry (BYP) flock. Phylogenetic reconstruction based on hemagglutinin and neuraminidase genes indicates that an isolate from BYP belongs to H9N2. However, the NS gene-segment of this isolate cluster into genotype Z, clade 2.2 of the highly pathogenic H5N1. The NS gene plays essential roles in the host-adaptation, cell-tropism, and virulence of influenza viruses. However, such interpretations have not been investigated in naturally recombinant H9N2 viruses. Therefore, we compared the NS1 protein of H9N2 (H9N2/NS1) and highly pathogenic H5N1 (H5N1/NS1) in parallel for their abilities to regulate different signaling pathways, and investigated the molecular mechanisms of IFN-β production in human, avian, and mink lung cells. We found that H9N2/NS1 and H5N1/NS1 are comparably similar in inhibiting TNF-α induced nuclear factor κB and double stranded RNA induced activator protein 1 and interferon regulatory factor 3 transcription factors. Thus, the production of IFN-β was inhibited equally by both NS1s as demonstrated by IFN stimulatory response element and IFN-β promoter activation. Moreover, both NS1s predominantly localized in the nucleus when transfected to human A549 cells. This study therefore suggests the possible increased virulence of natural reassortant viruses for their efficient invasion of host immune responses, and proposes that these should not be overlooked for their epizootic and zoonotic potential.


As the first line of defence against external stimuli, the airway epithelium undergoes frequent injury during an adult life. This is countered by repair mechanisms that ensure the integrity of the epithelium. It has been established that there are resident stem/progenitor cells localized within specific niches throughout the respiratory tract. Stem/progenitor cells are activated according to the severity of the insult and are thought to be responsible for repairing the airway epithelium. It has been difficult to isolate those stem cells.

In this study, an in vitro human bronchial epithelial model was adapted and characterised. In culture, a pseudostratified epithelium was observed, with basal, ciliated, and secretory cells. Mucus production was also seen in this model. A scrape-wound of the model was employed to study the responses of the airway epithelium to injury. It was observed that migration and then proliferation, of CD44 expressing basal cells, are the first events that take place after scrape-wounding. Up-regulation of CD44 was also observed at the edge of the wounds early post-wounding. This suggested a key role for CD44-expressing basal cells in migration and proliferation after wounding, also suggesting this population may contain a progenitor cell population.

Investigation of the secretory profile of the airway epithelium post-wounding revealed an increase in a number of cytokines and growth factors. In particular, IL-6, IL-8, ENA-78, and RANTES were all elevated compared with unwounded cultures.

A side population (SP) was identified in differentiated and undifferentiated human bronchial epithelial cells in at least some cultures accounting for 0.1-1.15% of cells present.

In summary, the epithelium is important in airway wound repair with basal cells appearing to contain the progenitor population in this human bronchial epithelial cell (HBEC) model. Moreover, SP studies suggested the presence of SP in at least some cultures, which might contribute to airway regeneration. The secretory profile of the airway epithelium post-wounding indicates up-regulation of specific cytokines, which may be important in the pathogenesis of lung diseases such as asthma and COPD. This model should prove useful to assess wound repair pathways and may be of use in the future for proof of concept studies on novel therapeutic agents.


Prior research suggests that greater parental involvement in the safety and learning of their young novice driver can have a positive impact on their childrs safety. Safer driving agreements, which typically involve a formal statement of driving conditions and restrictions ratified by a driver and another party, most often parents, are an increasingly common initiative to enhance young novice driver safety. However, there are few formal evaluations of such initiatives and the limited available research suggests only modest differences in traffic violations, and minimal impacts on crash involvement. The current paper reports on an assessment of the potential efficacy of safer driving agreements in the Australian context, via a literature review and extensive stakeholder and community consultations. Specifically, discussions were conducted with an expert panel of United States researchers and program developers; a survey was completed with Australian police, transport and motoring stakeholders; and focus groups and surveys were completed with young drivers and parents. Overall, results suggested mixed understanding of, and support for, safer driving agreements in Australia, with issues relating to voluntary participation and accurate monitoring of behaviour cited as major barriers. Indeed, the potential effectiveness of the initiative was largely perceived as being limited to those young drivers who are already safety conscious, and as being dependent on existing strong relationships with parents (e.g., trust, honesty and respect). Implications of the study and recommendations for future research are discussed.


Most research on teas has focused on organic composition and less attention has been given to the mineral composition. The aim of this study was to examine and compare the mineral compositions (Na, Mg, K, Ca, P, S, Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu and Al) of eight commonly consumed teas. The teas included three traditional black or green teas (from Africa, China and Sri Lanka) and five herbal teas – two from South America (mate and coca) and three from South Africa (rooibos, honeybush and Athrixia phylicoides). Analyses were conducted on five samples of dry tea leaves of each of the teas and their infusions (steeping time: 6 min) using identical techniques in inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). It was found that each tea has a unique mineral profile. Dry tea leaves and their respective infusions also exhibited different mineral profiles. The tea infusions that contained relatively higher concentrations of beneficial minerals were mate, coca and Athrixia. High levels of aluminium were found in the traditional black and green teas whilst rooibos was high in sodium. Although teas are not rich sources of nutrients, the consumption of mate could contribute significantly to dietary manganese requirements.


Molecular Dynamics simulation has been used for the past 20 - 30 years to study interfacial properties of liquids though the foundations for these studies were laid as far back as 1791 when the astronomer Joseph Dalambre used the time reversible algorithm, commonly called the Verlet algorithm, for the integration of Newton's equations. Some of the properties obtained from Molecular Dynamics, commonly called MD, simulation are density profiles, system configurations, as well as stress or pressure tensor profiles. Generally, the surface tension has been calculated by integrating the stress tensor profile over the width of the interfacial region. In an effort to circumvent the stress tensor calculation and the technical difficulties associated with extensions to include many-body interactions, I will study the feasibility of implementing an equality recently developed by C. Jarzynski to determine the equilibrium surface free energy and, subsequently, the surface tension of an immiscible L-J fluid from an ensemble average of a set of non-equilibrium simulations. In addition to exploring suitable systems for this study, we explore relative computational efficiency of the second method. We also compare the equilibrium free energy difference computed by the Jarzynski method to the apparent free energy difference computed by the Irving-Kirkwood (IK1) approach. We conclude first that both the Jarzynski and IK1 approaches can be useful tools in simulating immiscible liquid systems. The Jarzynski relation is quite effective at extracting free energy differences associated with interfacial area changes in systems comprised of closely spaced, interacting interfaces. For isolated interfaces, the IK1 method is still the best approach for obtaining interfacial tension. We also find that a fast switching Jarzynski algorithm is as efficient and much less costly to implement than a slow switching method.


This paper discusses the main regularities of the influence of chlorine-containing bleaching agents on the diffuse reflection spectra of cellulose pulp. General rules are given for the use of optical technologies to monitor the consumption of such reagents in cellulose-bleaching processes. A description is given of the structural features and the most important technical-operational characteristics of an optospectral whiteness sensor intended to regulate the consumption of chlorine-containing bleaches and the production process flow. Wavelengths 457, 600, and 1000nm are used to measure the reflectance. Based on an analysis of the results of production tests, recommendations are given for optimizing the use of such a sensor to make it possible to eliminate the influence of concentration changes of the cellulose pulp and the reduction during operation of the transparency of the sensor's input window, caused by its being "overgrown" in the process flow.


We discuss two types of `regularity point', points of continuity and R-points for Banach function algebras, which were introduced by the first author and Somerset in an earlier paper on non-regularity for Banach function algebras. We show that, even for the natural uniform algebras $R(X)$ (for compact plane sets X), these two types of regularity point can be different. We then give a new method for constructing Swiss cheese sets $X$ such that $R(X)$ is not regular, but such that $R(X)$ has no non-trivial Jensen measures. The original construction appears in the first author's previous work. Our new approach to constructing such sets is more general, and allows us to obtain additional properties. In particular, we use our construction to give an example of such a Swiss cheese set $X$ with the property that the set of points of discontinuity for $R(X)$ has positive area.


The development of single-component photocatalysts with narrow bandgaps (2.0–3.0 eV) has been one of the most important goals for photocatalytic H2 production, for which I–III–VI multinary sulfides play an important role due to their widely tunable composition-dependent bandgap. However, simultaneous bandgap narrowing and photocatalytic activity enhancement in the I–III–VI sulfides are often difficult to achieve due to increased defect states. Here, a series of Cu–In–Zn–S quantum dots (QDs) were synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method focusing on a more profound understanding of bandgap tuning and the subsequent effect on the photocatalytic process by controlling the Cu content. The bandgap of the QDs can be effectively tuned from 2.90 eV to 1.98 eV with an increasing Cu : In ratio from 0.05 : 10 to 2.5 : 10 and a color change from light yellow to dark red. The QDs show photocatalytic H2 production activity even without any cocatalyst, but it quickly starts to decrease with the Cu/In ratio over 0.1 : 10 (bandgap of 2.59 eV), which highly limits the potential for visible light photocatalysis. Interestingly, Pt-loading effectively enhanced not only the tolerance of Cu incorporation, but also enabled a high H2 production activity even with further bandgap narrowing down to ∼2 eV. The best photocatalytic performance of 456.4 μmol h−1 g−1 was achieved for the Cu : In : Zn ratio of 1 : 10 : 5 with a bandgap of 2.27 eV. This increased tolerance of Cu content may result from a combined effect of charge separation by Pt as the cocatalyst that alleviated the Cu-induced charge recombination. The enhanced charge separation was proved by the photoluminescence quenching of the QDs with the cocatalyst. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy was further used to study the charge separation properties of this photocatalytic system. This is the first observation of the cocatalyst-enhanced tolerance of Cu resulting from the competition of cocatalyst-induced charge separation and defect-induced charge recombination in multinary sulfides, which provides an interesting view and design guideline for the development of narrow bandgap photocatalysts.


Glass fibre reinforced polyester (GRP) has been used in sewer pipes for decades, and has demonstrated excellent performance in concentrated sewerage. It is well documented that sulphuric acid – developed through the action of bacteria such as thiobaccillus concretivorus and thiobaccillus ferrooxidans – may aggressively attack any pipe material. Over the years GRP pipe samples have been subjected to an array of different tests to establish their lasting performance. One of the greater challenges when conducting such tests is the time factor. To get any meaningful results, samples have to be exposed to the chemical environment at elevated strains or temperatures for a considerable time. To determine the long-term properties the data has to be analysed statistically and extrapolated into the unknown to predict a limiting strain for use in pipe design. The acid test method proving the long-term performance of GRP pipes was first standardized by ASTM in 1978, and has been in use ever since. GRP pipe producers have collected a remarkable amount of test results based on this method. The method calls for at least 10 000 hours of testing with at least 18 samples, but as the test is relatively simple to conduct – and does not require much space – a great number of samples have been left exposed to acid for much longer time periods. This paper addresses the results of such longer-term tests and how they relate to the standardized method and regression analysis. Over 600 data-points are analysed, with times-to-failure ranging from a few hours up to 28 years. Analysis of the data demonstrates an interesting bi-linear behaviour, rather than the straight line regression predicted by the shorter and smaller database. The results suggests that the standardized method is indeed quite conservative and that with this additional information the safety margins are shown to be higher than expected and extrapolation even up to 150 years can be realized. Inspection and testing of samples taken from sewer pipes that have been in service for almost 24 years – and found to be in impeccable condition – further corroborate these findings. CV Högni Jónsson received his master's degree in civil engineering from the University of Colorado in 1981. He started his career in structural and hydraulic design and analysis of waterways, tunnels and dams for hydroelectric power plants, and additionally applying numerical models to hydrologic phenomena and flood analysis. In the early nineties his interests turned to composite materials and since then he has been working on research and development of fibre reinforced plastics, mainly for use in pressure vessels and piping systems. He is a member of CEN and ISO standardisation committees for GRP pipes and currently holds the position as Director of Research and Development for the Amiantit Group, which is among the world's leading suppliers of pipe systems and technologies. Contact Högni Jónsson Flowtite Technology P.O. Box 2059 3202 Sandefjord Norway e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com Pipeline Technology Conference 2007


This thesis is concerned with the implications of the financial liberalisation of the Chinese economy for savings, investment, monetary policy and the exchange rate, in China.
In the first part, the financial repression hypothesis is tested on savings and investment, with the result that there is some evidence to support the complementarity between money and physical capital in China since 1987, although this effect is shown to have become weaker over the sample period as liberalisation has taken place.
The second issue is to investigate the consequences of interest rate liberalisation in China, using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. There are two main findings. First, raising deposit rates serves to alter the division of production between consumption and investment and to improve the efficiency of the monetary policy transmission mechanism through interest rates. Second, the deregulation of deposit and loan rates leads to less volatility in inflation as interest rates are allowed to partly absorb shocks to the economy. Other monetary policies under financial repression in China are examined as well. The results based on the DSGE model suggest that the interest rate rule is more effective and powerful than the conventional money growth rule and the adjustment of the required reserve ratio helps little to contain inflation. In addition, the administrative window guidance on bank loans contributes to less volatility of inflation and stabilises the deregulation process of deposit and loan rates.
The final part of the thesis examines the sources of the volatility in real exchange rate, which are shown to stem essentially from demand shocks, although up to a quarter of the volatility comes from relative supply disturbances, perhaps reflecting the importance of supply-side reform in China since the early 1990s.


This study investigated different modalities of videos in a flipped classroom for English writing classes in an intensive English program at a state university in Turkey. This quasi-experimental study was conducted with six experimental groups (n= 109) and one control group (n = 18). The dataset included the participants' scores of an essay pretest and two posttests, namely, recall and essay posttests. The data analysis showed that the experimental group viewing the video lecture which includes simultaneous presentation of animation and on-screen text followed by a narration in a user-paced environment outperformed the control group on the recall posttest. The groups studying the video lecture including animation with simultaneous narration and sequential on-screen text in a whole presentation and in a part-by-part presentation outperformed the control group on the essay writing posttest. In the whole presentation, participants studied all the parts of a video in a system-paced design and answered the related questions whereas participants studied each part of a video and answered the related questions in a part-by-part presentation. The paper provides a discussion and a set of recommendations on how to design flipped classrooms.


Under very general conditions, the total quadratic variation of a jump-diffusion process can be decomposed into diffusive volatility and squared jump variation. We use this result to develop a new option valuation model in which the underlying asset price exhibits volatility and jump intensity dynamics. The volatility and jump intensity dynamics in the model are directly driven by model-free empirical measures of diffusive volatility and jump variation. Because the empirical measures are observed in discrete intervals, our option valuation model is cast in discrete time, allowing for straightforward filtering and estimation of the model. Our model belongs to the affine class enabling us to derive the conditional characteristic function so that option values can be computed rapidly without simulation. When estimated on S&P500 index options and returns the new model performs well compared with standard benchmarks.


This report describes the results of the Water Valuation and Pricing project, which aims to provide insight into the relevance of economics to typical problems found in irrigated agriculture. It first considers the theoretical basis for the use of economic instruments, then considers their usefulness in the context of five case studies of irrigated areas - in Egypt, India, Indonesia, Morocco and Ukraine. The case studies confirm that competition for scarce water and shortage of funds are widespread. The study provides insight into the current price paid for water, the cost of service provision, and the value to irrigators of the water they receive. The analysis shows that volumetric pricing is unlikely to be relevant to demand management because the price of water at which demand and supply would be balanced is so high as to substantially reduce farm incomes. This socio-political problem, plus the technical and administrative complexity of measuring and accounting for water, and the crucial distinction between water applied to the field and water consumed by the crop make water pricing an unsuitable approach to balancing supply and demand.


Background and Aim: Creatine supplementation is the most popular supplement used as an ergogenic and therapeutic aid. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of creatine supplementation on apoptotic factors Bcl-2, Bax and Bcl-2/Bax ratio in middle-aged men during acute resistance exercise. Material and Method: In a placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomized, parallel study, twenty seven men (mean age 45.59±5.43) were randomly assigned to 3 groups: supplement group (n=10) received 20 g of creatine monohydrate per day and placebo group (n=10) received maltodextrin for one week. Our control group included 7 men. On the 8 day, the subjects in the experimental groups performed an acute resistance exercise with 80% of one repetition maximum. The controls did not perform any exercises. Blood samples were collected one day before supplement intake (Pre) and immediately after acute exercise (Post) for the measurement of serum Bcl-2 and Bax concentrations. Results: Bcl-2 significantly increased by 118/78 percent in creatine group (p<0.05) and reduced by 7/36 percent in placebo group (p>0.05) in the Post compared to the Pre exercise stage. In the Post exercise stage, serum Bax protein concentration increased in the placebo group by 17/98 percent (p<0.05) but did not change in the creatine group in comparison to the Pre exercise stage (p>0.05). The alteration percent of Bcl-2/Bax ratio was significantly higher in the creatine group after exercise (p<0.05) whereas in the placebo group it was lower compared to the Pre exercise stage (p<0.05). No changes were detected in the control group. Conclusion: Based on the results of the study acute resistance exercise, caused apoptosis which was confirmed by increased Bax and decreased alternation percent of Bcl-2/Bax ratio in the placebo group, but creatine monohydrate can provide a protective effect against apoptosis by increasing Bcl-2 and Bcl-2/Bax ratio. Thus, use of creatine supplementation may be useful for prevention of apoptotic cell death induced by stress of acute intense exercise.


Recreational waters are monitored worldwide to protect bathers from infectious diseases caused by waterborne pathogens associated with the pollution of natural recreational waters by human and animal feces. Water quality standards are typically based on measurements of the concentrations of fecal indicator organisms (Escherichia coli and Enterococcus) and are becoming more stringent.

A complicating factor is the time required (18-36 hours) for completion of conventional culture-based methods (as approved by the US EPA or ISO institutions). During the lag time between sample collection and availability of results indicator and pathogen levels, weather and water conditions may change and thus related health risk may also change. By using new rapid analytical tools, critical control points can be monitored to provide information so that management actions can have an impact on the exposure risk.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the capacity of two new alternative methods for the rapid and routine enumeration of E. coli and Enterococci in bathing waters: fluorimetric assays based on the measurement of enzymatic activities, and quantitative RT-PCR. Both methods are fast (1 hour for 6 samples analysed by one fluorescence spectrophotometer; 3 hours for the simultaneous analysis of 15 to 96 samples by RT-PCR) and their results (for the microbiological criteria of current European regulations) compared with those from the standard methods are congruent in more than 81% of analysed samples. Because these methods provide a faster assessment of water quality, they have the potential to significantly reduce health risk resulting from exposure to recreational waters and also reduce errors in beach closing.


I. INTRODUCTION Before 1990, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware was a sleepy backwater. During the entire decade of the 1980s, Phoenix Steel-whose only plant was located in Delaware-was the only large, public company to file there.1 In 1990, two large, public companies-Continental Airlines and United Merchants and Manufacturers-filed in Delaware. They constituted 7% of the twenty-nine large, public companies filing in the United States that year.2 From 1990 to 1996, Delaware's market share steadily increased to 87% (thirteen of fifteen cases).3 In just seven years, Delaware had become the bankruptcy reorganization capital of the United States.4 Lynn LoPucki and Sara Kalin recently suggested that the Delaware bankruptcy court's spectacular success in winning market share may have been accompanied by an equally spectacular failure in the reorganizations that the court processed during those years.5 Their suggestion was based principally on an empirical finding that by February 2000, nine of the thirty companies (30%) emerging from bankruptcy reorganization in Delaware from 1991 to 1996 had filed bankruptcy a second time.6 Excluding New York-which had a refiling rate almost as high as Delaware's (23%)-only four of the seventy-five large, public companies (5%) emerging from bankruptcy in other courts during the same period filed a second time.7 LoPucki and Kalin's study made only a preliminary attempt to discover the reasons for Delaware's higher refiling rate. But, as their findings on the disparity of refiling rates gained wide publicity,8 bankruptcy scholars, lawyers, and judges offered a variety of possible explanations. Most of those explanations sought to exonerate the courts. Some argued that refiling is an inadequate measure of success, IMAGE FORMULA9 because it ignores distressed debtors that fail without refiling.9 Some argued that the firms filing in Delaware might have been more difficult to reorganize because they had more complex capital structures10 or more serious business problems.11 Others argued that Delaware's high refiling rate was economically efficient,12 implying that other courts should ease their standards and accept higher refiling rates. Still others argued that it was impossible to know whether Delaware was doing a worse job without knowing the individual reasons that each reorganization failed.13 This Article reports the results of a study designed to confirm that Delaware's and New York's higher refiling rates indicate higher failure rates and to begin the inquiry into the reasons for those higher failure rates. Part II describes the universe of cases studied, the sources of data, and the method by which the data were gathered. IMAGE FORMULA11 Part III describes four criteria for evaluating the success of reorganized firms and applies them to determine whether Delaware and New York reorganizations are less successful than reorganizations in other courts. Part III concludes that in the five years after emerging, Delaware- and New York-reorganized firms refiled more often, failed to perform their plans more often, suffered greater losses, and even went out of business due to financial distress more often. Part IV compares, on several criteria, the firms entering reorganization in Delaware and New York with those entering reorganization elsewhere but finds no reason to believe that the Delaware- or New York-reorganized firms differed in ways that made them more difficult to reorganize. Part V considers and rejects the claim that the two courts' high failure rates might be efficient. Part VI examines several differences in the bankruptcy process as it operates in Delaware, New York, and other courts, concluding that certain differences in Delaware's reorganization process appear to contribute to Delaware's high failure rates. Part VII offers some additional conclusions and speculations on other, as-yet-untested features of Delaware reorganization that might also contribute to Delaware's high failure rates. …


The Navier-Stokes equations, which describe flows of fluids and gases, possess hidden properties that are discovered when studying the consistency of the conservation law equations involved into the set of NavierStokes equations. Under such an investigation one obtains a nonidentical evolutionary relation for entropy as a state functional. This relation discloses peculiarities of the solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations due to which the Navier-Stokes equations can describe not only the change of physical quantities (such as energy, pressure, density) but also processes such as origination of waves, turbulent pulsations. From the evolutionary relation it follows that the Navier-Stokes equations possess solutions of two types, namely, the solution that is not a function and the solution that is a discrete function. The solutions of the first type are defined on nonintegrable manifold (like a tangent one) and describe the non-equilibrium state of a flow. And the solutions of the second type are defined on integrable structure and describe the locally equilibrium state of a flow. The transition from the solutions of the first type to ones of the second type describes the process of origination of turbulence. 1 Moscow State University, Russia. E-mail: email@example.com. Article Info: Received : June 2, 2014. Revised : August 3, 2014. Published online : August 31, 2014. 92 Hidden properties of the Navier-Stokes equations. These results are obtained due to the skew-symmetric forms the basis of which are nonintegrable manifolds.


Abstract The Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology's (IRIS) Education and Public Outreach (EPO) program is committed to advancing awareness and understanding of seismology and geophysics while also inspiring careers in the earth sciences. To achieve this mission, the IRIS EPO program combines the content expertise of the consortium membership with the educational and outreach expertise of IRIS staff members to create programs, products, and services that target a range of audiences, including students and teachers in grades six through 12, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers, and the general public. Since 1998, the IRIS EPO program has produced a portfolio of freely available products and services and offers a rich repository for anyone who teaches seismology-related topics and/or communicates seismology research to the general public.


In this paper, we present Satgen, the first implicit generative model of real-world Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) formulas. Our approach uses unsupervised machine learning techniques to generate new formulas by mimicking the structural properties of a given input formula Phi. We proceed in two phases: first, we construct the Literal-Incidence Graph (LIG) of Phi. This is used by a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to generate new LIGs that exhibit graph-theoretic properties similar to those of the LIG of Phi. In the second phase, we extract a formula whose LIG would correspond to the generated graph. We show that generating such a formula is equivalent to finding a minimal clique edge cover of the given graph, which we tackle efficiently using a greedy hill-climbing algorithm. We verify experimentally that our approach generates formulas that closely resemble a given real-world SAT instance, as measured by a range of different metrics.


We propose a model that assumes that receiving and providing social support on Facebook reduces stress, which subsequently improves life satisfaction. The model also hypothesizes that self-esteem moderates the relationship between receiving social support via Facebook and life satisfaction and the relationship between providing social support via Facebook and life satisfaction. Applying mediation and moderation analyses to data collected from undergraduate students taking an introductory communication course at a U.S. public university ( N = 382) yielded three results. First, there was no significant indirect effect of receiving social support on life satisfaction via stress. Second, providing social support increased stress, which subsequently reduced life satisfaction. Finally, self-esteem moderates the relationship between providing social support and life satisfaction: Among students with low self-esteem, providing social support significantly improved life satisfaction; however, among students with high self-esteem, providing social support did not influence life satisfaction. Implications of the findings are discussed.


We consider four dimensional lie groups equipped with left invariant Lorentzian Einstein metrics, and determine the harmonicity properties of vector fields on these spaces. In some cases, all these vector fields are critical points for the energy functional restricted to vector fields. We also classify vector fields defining harmonic maps, and calculate explicitly the energy of these vector fields. Then we study the minimality of critical points for the energy functional.


The recent shifts in China's auto industry policy from development only, through development with emission control, to development with cleaner vehicle technology demonstrates that China is attempting to balance the challenges of economic development, environmental protection and energy security. National policies and programmes have played a major role in implementing this shift, but the greening of the auto sector is challenged by major obstacles, such as the high cost of manufacturing cleaner vehicles and building new infrastructure, and the low immediate economic benefits to consumers and producers. It is unrealistic to expect China to limit vehicle production or to transition to hydrogen vehicles quickly. However, China can move to cleaner vehicle technology by implementing both short- and long-term policies that reduce individual conventional vehicle emissions by strengthening vehicle emission standards, advancing fuel quality, promoting hybrid vehicles together with other alternative fuel vehicles, and preparing for an eventual transition to hydrogen vehicles. The government should also establish incentive policies for cleaner vehicle production and purchases, promote investment in infrastructure, strengthen partnerships between government and industry, disseminate information to raise public awareness, and encourage multinationals to use China as a testing ground for innovative hybrid and hydrogen vehicles.