ON-DEMAND TUTORING IN DISTANCE EDUCATION: INTRINSICALLY-MOTIVATED, SCALABLE INTERPERSONAL INTERACTION TO IMPROVE ACHIEVEMENT, COMPLETION, AND SATISFACTION Peter B. Williams Department of Instructional Psychology and Technology Doctor of Philosophy The purpose of the study was to test an intrinsically-motivated interaction approach, designed to increase distance education support, for both content and motivation, in a cost-effective manner. The literature summarized shows that distance education students desire content and motivational support beyond course materials and are limited in their success without it. Further, while researchers explore increased interaction as a solution, professors usually do not have time for it and attempts to provide it are often restricted by institutions' limited resources. Very little has been published on the effects of distance education tutors and the need for more research in this area has been noted, especially with regards to cost-effective, scalable service models. Even when attempts to increase interaction are successful, they are usually achieved by requiring participation in online discussion boards, making them mechanical and frustrating to students. The proposed solution is an on-demand tutoring service to increase (a) achievement, (b) completion, (c) satisfaction and (d) cost-effectiveness. Participants included Brigham Young University Independent Study students enrolled in a college algebra (MATH 110) course. A quasi-experimental research design, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), graphing techniques, correlation, and chi square analyses were used to determine the effects of the on-demand tutoring intervention. No statistically significant differences were apparent in the midterm scores, final exam scores, satisfaction ratings, or completion rates. However, despite unexpectedly low usage, the tutor appears to have been an adequate substitute for the professor in answering students' questions, and the potential for providing cost-effective on-demand tutoring services seems attainable. A summary of the study's strengths and weaknesses provides insights for improved practice and future research.


The O-GEHL branch predictor has outperformed other prediction schemes using the same set of benchmarks in an international branch prediction contest, CBP-1. In this paper, we present the analysis results on each of the OGEHL branch predictor tables and also on the optimal number of predictor tables. Two methods are subsequently proposed to help increase the O-GEHL prediction accuracy. The first one aims to increase the space utilization of the first predictor table by dynamically adjusting the lengths of branch history regarding to the type of a benchmark currently in execution. The second one adds an extra table into the O-GEHL predictor using the space saved from the sharing of hysteresis bits. Experimental results have confirmed that both schemes improve the accuracy of two different predictor configurations, leading to two promising research directions for future explorations.


Submarine caves are environments of great ecological interest because of the occurrence of peculiar conditions, such as the attenuation of light and reduced water turnover, which can determine oligotrophic conditions from the entrance to the interior part of the cave. These environmental gradients may influence the distribution of the communities inhabiting submarine caves. In this study we investigated the meiofaunal community and nematode assemblages from the sediments inside and outside two submarine caves in Ustica Island Marine Protected Area (southwest Italy): Grotta Falconiera and Grotta dei Gamberi. Consistently with a general pattern of distribution reported by several studies on benthic organisms, our results showed a decrease in the abundance and changes in the taxa composition of the meiofaunal community along the exterior-interior axis of the caves, also highlighting the dissimilarity between the dark and semi-dark communities. We found a significant influence of the availability of organic matter (i.e. phytopigment concentrations) on the distribution and composition of both the meiofauna and the nematode community inside the caves. Different nematode assemblages characterized the inside and the outside of the two caves, with species occurring exclusively in the sediment of both caves, particularly in the dark portions, and completely absent in the external sediments. Environmental features of submarine caves may affect food resources inside the caves and consequently trophic nematode assemblages. Our results showed a difference in feeding strategies between nematodes inhabiting the caves and those living outside, suggesting that in the two caves investigated, bacteria might represent the most important food source for nematodes.


Covert orienting in hearing was examined by presenting auditory spatial cues prior to an auditory target, requiring either a choice or detection response. Targets and cues appeared on the left or right of Ss' midline. Localization of the target in orthogonal directions (up vs. down or front vs. back, independent of target side) was faster when cue and target appeared on the same rather than opposite sides. This benefit was larger and more durable when the cue predicted target side. These effects cannot reflect criterion shifts, suggesting that covert orienting enhances auditory localization. Fine frequency discriminations also benefited from predictive spatial cues, although uninformative cues only affected spatial discriminations. No cuing effects were observed in a detection task


Objective. To determine whether the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value obtained by diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) can be used as a reliable detector of response of carcinoma of the cervix treated with chemoradiotherapy, compared with conventional T2-weighted MRI. Design. A prospective cohort study was performed. Setting. Department of Oncology, Universitas-National Hospital Complex, Bloemfontein. Subjects. Seventeen women with advanced cervical cancer, FIGO staging IIB - IVB, were selected for chemoradiation. Outcome measures. Patients underwent pelvic MRI before therapy, 14 days after onset of therapy, and in the last week of treatment (5th/6th week). Axial and sagittal conventional T2 was followed by DW-MRI in the axial plane from which a tumour region of interest (ROI) was manually drawn to calculate ADC values using b-values of 500 and 1 000 s/mm 2 . Results. ADC values for cervical carcinoma increased after treatment with chemoradiation. The most significant observation was seen 14 days after treatment was started. The mean ADC value increased with 20% (b=500 s/mm 2 ) and 24% (b=1 000 s/mm 2 ) (statistically significant, p<0.05) compared with a decrease in tumour size of only 8%, which was not statistically significant (p=0.075). Responders showed a larger change in ADC values than non-responders. Conclusion. The study showed considerable promise in the ability of ADC to identify early tumour response to therapy. DW-MRI is a non-invasive functional imaging technique that may in future change management in oncology by early identification of non-responders, hence avoiding unnecessary treatment.


Due to the fast societal changes taking place in the life style from joint family concept to nuclear family concept and internationalization of families there are fast emerging issues like how to get a foreign child support order, how to enforce child support orders abroad, how to enforce a foreign child support order in the India, conflicts of laws in selecting a jurisdiction in which to seek support and the pending implementation of the 2007 Hague Treaty on Family Maintenance. We have to examine where similar actions in India are supported or slowed down. There are grey areas in the current immigration and nationality law issues affecting international adoption, surrogacy, Assisted Reproductive Technology and same-sex marriage as well as more conventional international families. We have to explore trustee and lawyer liability for setting up structures which help (even inadvertently) a client evade the tax laws of his/her country of residence, and how the courts in other countries are helping the country of residence enforce its tax laws. Many trustees and tax practitioners are concerned, particularly after the UBS scandal, about setting up offshore structures for nationals of other countries and they no longer wish to turn a blind eye to those countries' tax laws. Many foreign nationals come from countries where it is practically a way of life to have unreported offshore income and assets, but their countries of residence are suddenly beefing up their enforcement activities. Under what circumstances should a trustee or tax practitioner seriously consider turning away a client, and do those circumstances vary depending upon the client's country of residence? There is a great need of comparison of the various ways that different countries handle child custody matters, including international child relocation, and information about various attempts to create uniformity. We have to find the information on entering into a prenuptial agreement, religious prenuptial agreements, and difficult conflicts of laws issues related to the enforcement of such agreements in different jurisdictions. There are issues in Islamic Family Law like jurisprudential history of recognizing Islamic marriage and marital dissolution (talaq and mahr) procedure; current appellate trends, litigation strategy, custody under Sharia law and reciprocal recognition of custody orders. And issues like what to do for a client who owns foreign assets, or one who believes the other spouse or heirs have foreign assets. What if money has been hidden in offshore jurisdictions or placed in trusts or foundations abroad? There are issues that how to bring them into a divorce action or estate dispute either in a particular country or in countries with forced heir-ship and what may need to be done abroad. We have to resolve that how to pierce offshore asset protection trusts to repatriate and divide marital assets that have been transferred to avoid jurisdiction of the forum court. Sometimes there are questions that how to divide major marital assets located in multiple foreign jurisdictions under varied applicable laws and tax regimes and formulate an integrated, cohesive agreement acceptable in the forum court. Still there is no clarity on how to apply Brussels II, the 1980 Hague Convention, the 1996 Hague Convention and/or conflict of laws between the Hague conventions and Brussels II regulation in recognizing foreign court orders with regards to custody, visitation and relocation orders. Now the comparison is required on the conflicts of laws rules that many countries apply in divorce cases; and a consideration of the ways that courts resolve conflicts between jurisdictions (e.g. stays; forum non conveniens; international treaties). Sometimes there is a problem in fixing tax rights when married couples move from one country to another. In that case how the property deemed to be held for tax (and other legal) purposes if the former jurisdiction was a community property or civil law jurisdiction and the new jurisdiction is a common law jurisdiction, or vice versa?


Endospermum malaccense M .A and Shorea parvifolia Dyer are two
commercially important timber species identified as potential plantation species. The
procurement and storage of their seeds are difficult and is a major hindrance to
plantation establishment. Development of micropropagation techniques is being
pursued to provide an alternative in planting stock production.
Micropropagation of E. malaccense was achieved through in vitro production of
plants through axillary shoots development from nodal segment explants of an elite tree.
The explants were initially washed in 10 changes of sterile distilled water, followed by
5 changes of 0.05% (v/v) Tween 20 solution for 10 minutes each . This was then
followed by rinsing in 10 changes of sterile distilled water and subsequently sterilised in
a solution comprising 60 % (v/v) Clorox and 0.05% v/v Tween 20 for 10 minutes. After which they were rinsed 10 times in 300ml sterile distilled water and finally immersed in
70% (v/v) ethanol for 1 minute. Shoots were induced on the nodal segment explants in
MS basal salts supplemented with 22.2 x 10-6 M or 44.4 X 10-6 M. For shoot
multiplication, the best medium is MS supplemented with 44.4 x 10-6 M BAP and
solidified with a mixture of 1.7 g Gelrite and 4g Bacto agar per liter. In vivo rooting
with Seradix 3 was more suitable for in vitro produced shoots of E. maiaeeense,
compared with an in vitro rooting technique.


Feasibility of bovine submaxillary mucin (BSM) films generated via spontaneous adsorption from aqueous solutions onto polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and polystyrene (PS) surfaces have been investigated as biomimetic coatings for polymeric biomaterials. Two attributes as biomedical coatings, namely anti-fouling properties and lubricity, have been focused on in this study. Optical waveguide light-mode spectroscopy (OWLS) and fluorescence microscopy studies have shown that albumin, fibrinogen, immunoglobulin G, and serum rapidly adsorb onto BSM layers formed on PDMS and PS surfaces. Pin-on-disk tribometry, employing compliant PDMS as tribopairs, has shown that BSM coatings generated on PDMS surface via spontaneous adsorption from aqueous solution has effective lubricating properties, but for very limited duration only.


Using self-exciting threshold autoregressive models, we explore the validity of the law of one price (LOOP) for sixteen sectors in nine European countries. We and strong evidence of nonlinear mean reversion in deviations from the LOOP and highlight the importance of modelling the real exchange rate in a nonlinear fashion in an attempt to measure speeds of real exchange rate adjustment. Using the US dollar as a reference currency, the half-lives of sectoral real exchange rates shocks, calculated by Monte Carlo integration, imply much faster adjustment than the consensus half-life estimates of three to five years. The results also imply that transaction costs vary significantly across sectors and countries.


Throughout its fifty-year history, the American Bar Association (ABA) Standing Committee on Law and National Security (SCOLANS) has strived to address the most important national security law issues and advance understanding among members of the bar and the public. In recent years, SCOLANS has recognized the importance of educating the next generation of lawyers to advise clients concerning national security law, including tensions between security and liberty, and anticipate problems on the horizon. The Journal of National Security Law & Policy (founded with support from SCOLANS) aims to advance the conversation on national security law and policy education and is launching a series that will focus on national security teaching and curricula.


Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), which have nowadays dominated image analysis tasks, constitute feed-forward methods that model increasingly complex data structures and patterns along the subsequent hidden layers of the network. However, the common practice of using the activation features from the last network layer inevitably leads to a visual recognition bottleneck. This is due to the fact that discriminative features for different objects of varying complexity do not need to be extracted from the same layer. To this end, a novel frequency domain analysis of the feature maps of the same as well as of different network layers is proposed. In this way, the proposed method exploits more efficiently the knowledge that is stored in the actual CNN and facilitates in identifying the most discriminative features for every individual object type. Experimental results in a large-scale real-world Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) surveillance and the PASCAL VOC 2012 datasets demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to investigate significant clinical, tumour-related and dosimetric factors among patients with grade 0-1, grade 2 and grade 3 radiation pneumonitis (RP) after stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) for lung tumours.

METHODS
Patients (n=128) with a total of 133 lung tumours treated with SBRT of 50 Gy in 5 fractions were analysed. RP was graded according to the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events v.3.0. Significant factors were identified by univariate and multivariate analyses. Threshold dose-volume histograms (DVHs) were constructed to identify the incidence of RP.

RESULTS
The median follow-up period was 12 months (range, 6-45 months). In univariate analyses, gender, operability, forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1), internal target volume, lung volumes treated with doses >5-30 Gy (V5-30) and mean lung dose were significant factors differentiating between grade 0-1 and grade 2 RP, and V15-30 were significant factors differentiating between grade 2 and grade 3. However, no factors were significant between grade 0-1 and grade 3 RP. Multivariate analysis showed that female gender, high FEV1 and high V15 were significant factors differentiating between grade 0-1 and grade 2 RP. Threshold DVH curves were created based on ≤5% and ≤15% risk of grade 2 RP among patients with grade 0-2 RP.

CONCLUSIONS
Grade 0-2 RP was dose-volume dependent, and female gender and high FEV1 were significant predictive clinical factors for grade 2 RP among patients with grade 0-2 RP. However, incidences of V15-30 in grade 3 RP were significantly lower than those in grade 2 RP, and no significant clinical or tumour-related factors were found. Further studies are needed to identify the mechanism underlying the development of grade 3 RP after SBRT for lung tumours.


Aim/Purpose: This study aims to explore whether instructors and educators should segment portions of instructional video that can be loaded and executed independently of other portions, and how long the segment portion of instructional video should be to effectively influence students' learning, perception, and interaction.

Background: Instructional videos are widely used in higher education for pedagogy purposes, and students expect their face-to-face and online courses to include video for effective instructional and learning outcomes. The literature indicates that researchers suggested that segmented video might assist learning and reduce cognitive burden; however, empirical research does not provide sufficient guidance about how to do it.

Methodology: This mixed-methods study included quantitative data from an online experiment, followed by qualitative data from focus groups to help explain and expand on the quantitative findings. This study compared a 14-minute instructional video with the same content split into three segments, ranging from four to five minutes in length, to explore how segmenting affects students' learning and how students perceive and interact with the video. The quantitative portion of the study used an experimental design with random assignment to control and experimental groups. Participants were randomly assigned by Qualtrics to one of two conditions where they watched either a single long (14-minute) video (the control group) or the same content split into three video segments (the experimental group). Participants in both groups were asked to watch the video(s), take a content knowledge quiz, and respond to an opinion questionnaire. The qualitative portion of the study consisted of focus groups where participants were asked to reflect on their overall perceptions of using online instructional video.

Contribution: This study contributes to the literature knowledge on how students interact with instructional video and how, and if, longer instructional videos should be divided into shorter segments.

Findings: Results from this study indicated that there is no significant difference between the Long Video Group (control group) and the Segmented Video Group (experimental group) on measures of learning, interaction with or perceptions of the video. However, participants who engaged in multitasking activities other than texting performed worse on the learning measure. The focus group participants described a variety of behaviors and preferences for watching the instructional video but expressed a preference for videos that were about 20 minutes long.

Recommendations for Practitioners: For the purpose of building declarative knowledge, the number and length of instructional video segments may be less important than the other instructional materials and strategies instructors and educators provide to support students' interaction with the instructional video.

Recommendation for Researchers: The qualitative findings suggest that while preferred instructional video length may differ based on context, a 20-minute instructional video may be preferred, or at least accepted, in a typical academic setting, though this possibility needs further study.

Impact on Society: Results from this study may help instructors and educators to create high quality instructional video content by acknowledging that decisions about instructional video length and segmenting require professional discretion rather than arbitrary rules regarding video length.

Future Research: Future researchers and practitioners can further evaluate and enhance the importance and design of instructional videos for pedagogical purposes, and additional research is needed before instructors, educators, and the educational field can accept the thought that any video over five or six minutes is considered too long for students' attention span.


Abstract Poisoning in children under 5 years of age is common, the majority of cases are accidental ingestions. Children may ingest pharmaceutical products, household substances, chemicals, plants or street drugs. Most children develop no clinical features or only mild effects and the challenge in managing these children is to identify the 1% who may go on to develop severe clinical effects and require specific management. The latest guidelines on gastric decontamination are reviewed together with developments in the management of poisoning with paracetamol, tricyclic antidepressants, iron, lead and ethylene glycol and methanol. Prevention of childhood poisoning is important and the use of child-resistant packaging and adequate supervision together with the secure storage of household substances are the basis of prevention of accidental childhood poisoning.


Aim of the work: Massive rotator cuff tears are a common source of shoulder pain and dysfunction, especially in middle age patient; these lesions represent about 20% of all rotator cuff tears and 80% of recurrent tears. Some lesions are not repairable or should not be repaired: in this case, a rotator cuff partial repair should be recommended. The aim of the study is to evaluate the outcome of rotator cuff partial repair in irreparable rotator cuff massive tear at medium and long-term follow-up. Materials and method: We have evaluated 74 consecutive patients treated with functional repair of rotator cuff by the same surgeon between 2006 and 2014. We divided patients into 2 groups, obtaining 2 average follow-up: at about 6,5 (group A) and 3 years (group B). In December 2015, we evaluated in every patient ROM and Constant Score. We analyzed difference between pre-operatory data and the 2 groups. Results: We found statistical significant difference in ROM and in Constant Score between pre-operatory data and group A and group B. Between group A and group B there is relevant difference in Constant Score but not in ROM. Conclusions: Partial repair can give good results in a medium follow-up, in terms of pain relief and improvement of ROM, as well as in quality of life. Difference in ROM and Constant Score between group A and group B may indicate the begin of partial repair failure; according to our data, 6-7 years may be the time limit for this surgery technique. (www.actabiomedica.it)


Book synopsis: This book will describe in detail what it is like to be a parent in four different communities in England. The research data that are the basis for this description are interpreted in relation to a number of key factors, include: family social class, ethnic group, length of time on the neighbourhood and the presence of extended family locally.
The book will be of interest to anyone wanting to know more about how to improve the lives of parents and children. Special focus is placed on those families who face disadvantage, either in relation to personal vulnerabilities or in relation to living in neighbourhoods lacking in resources and facilities.


This paper analyzes different techniques of the fine grained security of relational databases for the two variables-data accessibility and inference. Data accessibility measures the amount of data available to the users after applying a security technique on a table. Inference is the proportion of information leakage after suppressing a cell containing secret data. A row containing a secret cell which is suppressed can become a security threat if an intruder generates useful information from the related visible information of the same row. This paper measures data accessibility and inference associated with row, cell, and column level security techniques. Cell level security offers greatest data accessibility as it suppresses secret data only. But on the other hand, there is a high probability of inference in cell level security. Row and column level security techniques have least data accessibility and inference. This paper introduces cell plus innocent security technique that utilizes the cell level security method but suppresses some innocent data to dodge an intruder that a suppressed cell may not necessarily contain secret data. Four variations of the technique namely cell plus innocent 1/4, cell plus innocent 2/4, cell plus innocent 3/4, and cell plus innocent 4/4 respectively have been introduced to suppress innocent data equal to 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4 percent of the true secret data inside the database. Results show that the new technique offers better control over data accessibility and inference as compared to the state-of-the- art security techniques. This paper further discusses the combination of techniques together to be used. The paper shows that cell plus innocent 1/4, 2/4, and 3/4 techniques can be used as a replacement for the cell level security.


[1] A comprehensive data set of partial ozone columns was derived from the chargecoupled device (CCD) Actinic Flux Spectroradiometer (CAFS) measurements taken during the Polar 2005, Houston 2005, and Costa Rica 2006 Aura Validation Experiments (AVE). It was used to validate the colocated daytime Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) partial ozone columns along the aircraft tracks over diverse geophysical conditions. Results show that the MLS v.1.5 and CAFS ozone columns agree to better than 3% at pressure levels of 100 and 146 hPa, and to better than 5% at 215 hPa level. The partial ozone column differences between the two systems were the largest during the Polar AVE (PAVE) 2005 campaign (polar region, � 250 hPa pressure level), and the smallest during the CRAVE 2006 campaign (tropics, � 100 hPa pressure level). Overall, the averaged bias between the MLS and CAFS partial ozone column is about 2%, and the standard deviation of the differences is about 2%. The v.2.2 update of the MLS data tends to reduce the bias to less than 1%. In addition, the AVE 2005 campaign uncovered an altitude-dependent bias, where the MLS partial ozone columns above 100 and 146 hPa pressure levels were about 1% higher than the CAFS derived columns, while the bias increased to about 3 % in partial columns integrated above 215 hPa. However, the MLS and CAFS data track each other closely over a wide range of atmospheric conditions, and the differences lie within the combined uncertainties of the two data sets.


The juveniles of gnathiid isopods are one of the most common fish ectoparasites in marine habitats and cause deleterious effects on fish by feeding on host blood and lymph. Reef fishes tend to engage in cooperative interactions with cleaning organisms to reduce their ectoparasite load. Ocean acidification (OA) pose multiple threats to marine life. Recently, OA was found to disrupt cleaner fish behaviour in mutualistic cleaning interactions. However, the potential effects of ocean acidification on this common ectoparasite remains unknown. Here, we test if exposure to an acidification scenario predicted by IPCC to the end of the century (RCP 8.5 – 980 μatm pCO2) affects gnathiid survival. Our results show that ocean acidification did not have any effects on gnathiid survival rate during all three juvenile life stages. Thus, we advocate that the need for cleaning interactions will persist in potentially acidified coral reefs. Nevertheless, to better understand gnathiid resilience to ocean acidification, future studies are needed to evaluate ocean acidification impacts on gnathiid reproduction and physiology as well as host-parasite interactions.


There has been very little research to support clinical practices in dental ozone therapies. The protocols used in dental ozone therapy should fulfill the general guidelines and requirements commonly recognized by healthcare professionals and authorities as evidence-based medicine. To meet these criteria, both ozone dental research and the clinical practice of dentistry should converge. The positive results and advantages of dental ozone therapy should define standard parameters that the dental ozone equipment manufacturers need to follow to develop ozone systems that meet the requirements of both dentists and researchers. The aim of this paper is to review the available published research and to compare it to what the majority of practicing dentists are applying in their practice. Four databases (PubMed; Ovid Medline; Cochrane; ISCO3) were used to search for articles covering the use of ozone in dentistry. Using the key words "ozone in dentistry" on PubMed (last accessed November 2017) retrieved 295 articles. Articles not related to dental ozone and general reviews were excluded (70). The resulting sample size of 225 articles, as well as the retrieved analysis results, are highly indicative to be able to draw conclusions and to formulate future recommendations. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to perform such an analysis. It is not the aim of this paper to critique the published research or the clinical practice of dental ozone therapy. The aim is to elicit the required modifications to research protocols and to evaluate whether dental ozone manufacturers provide the required equipment. This review study used different groupings to evaluate the results. In the "ozone gas only group", a clear deviation between research and clinical practice was noted. In all the other groups, the results were, in general, more congruent. Most of the current dental ozone research has focused on the antimicrobial effects of ozone, using either just ozone gas only, ozonated water only or ozonated oils only. It is highly recommended that dental ozone research change its path. Clinicians have expectations that research will support their clinical uses of ozone. We need to meet the expectations of clinicians through adopting new and different studies. We need to create research that goes past the conventional and well-studied antimicrobial potential of ozone and by using ozone both in gas and water, not separately, plus ozonated oils when applicable...


Social Virtual Worlds (SVW) on the Internet have become increasingly popular during the past decade. Largely unnoticed by Information Systems research, Habbo Hotel, which focuses in teenage users, has advanced to become the largest SVW, boasting ten times more users than Second Life. Despite their increasing usage, business potential and societal impact, limited prior research has focused on understanding the factors that drive users to participate in SVWs. Our case study uses a largely quantitative, hypotheses-testing design to uncover the factors behind continuous SVW participation in Habbo Hotel. A research model is developed from prior IS adoption literature and tested with a sample of 844 German Habbo users using PLS. We substantiate our analysis with a qualitative examination of the reasons reported by the users. Our findings illustrate that Habbo use is driven by the stickiness of the platform, i.e. factors intrinsic to Habbo rather than external social pressure. Users engage in the SVW because of what they gain inside, not what they gain in the 'real' world, nor because of other people's opinions. The qualitative analysis reveals that social experimenting is a common behavior displayed by teenagers in the virtual world. We discuss implications for IS research and practice.


Frequency-selective polarimeters measure the state of polarization of the individual spectral components of a modulated optical signal. They can be used either as stand-alone measuring devices or as parts of adaptive polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) compensators. This paper presents a novel frequency-selective polarimeter based on coherent detection, which has superior accuracy compared to previously proposed direct detection-based counterparts. This is due to the high-frequency resolution and power sensitivity of coherent detection, features that minimize the systematic and random error, respectively, in the measurement of the state of polarization of the individual spectral components of the received optical signal. The accuracy of the measurement is independent of the received signal bit rate and modulation format. The proposed frequency-selective polarimeter is studied both theoretically and experimentally. The primary theoretical contribution of this paper is a unified formalism, which allows the modeling of both direct and coherent detection-based frequency-selective polarimeters. Analytical expressions for the output signal of both types of frequency-selective polarimeters are derived. Based on these expressions, a common algorithm is proposed for the evaluation of the Stokes parameters. In addition, an example error signal is used as a metric in order to test the agreement of the theoretical model with the experimental measurements. The successful operation of the coherent frequency-selective polarimeter is demonstrated experimentally for a 10-Gb/s intensity-modulated nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) optical signal in the presence of first-order polarization-mode dispersion. There is an excellent agreement between theory and experiment.


Large collections of digital images are becoming more and more common, and the users of these collections need computer-based systems to help them find the images they require. Digital images are easy to shrink to thumbnail size, allowing a large number of them to be presented to the user simultaneously. Generally, current image browsing interfaces display thumbnails in a twodimensional grid, in some default order, and there has been little exploration of possible alternatives to this model. With textual document collections, information visualisation techniques have been used to produce representations where the documents appear to be clustered according to their mutual similarity, which is based on the words they have in common. The same techniques can be applied to images, to arrange a set of thumbnails according to a defined measure of similarity. In many collections, the images are manually annotated with descriptive text, allowing their similarity to be measured in an analogous way to textual documents. Alternatively, research in content-based image retrieval has made it possible to measure similarity based on low-level visual features, such as colour. The primary goal of this research was to investigate the usefulness of such similarity-based visualisations as interfaces for image browsing. We concentrated on visual similarity, because it is applicable to any image collection, regardless of the availability of annotations. Initially, we used conventional information retrieval evaluation methods to compare the relative performance of a number of different visual similarity measures, both for retrieval and for creating visualisations. Thereafter, our approach to evaluation was influenced more by human– computer interaction: we carried out a series of user experiments where arrangements based on visual similarity were compared to random arrangements, for different image browsing tasks. These included finding a given target image, finding a group of images matching a generic requirement, and choosing subjectively suitable images for a particular purpose (from a shortlisted set). As expected, we found that similarity-based arrangements are generally more helpful than random arrangements, especially when the user already has some idea of the type of image she is looking for. Images are used in many different application domains; the ones we chose to study were stock photography and personal photography. We investigated the organisation and browsing of personal photographs in some depth, because of the inevitable future growth in usage of digital cameras, and a lack of previous research in this area.


OBJECTIVE
Reduce long waiting lists for ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist review and improve primary ear health care.

DESIGN
A retrospective evaluation of ear health care after the implementation of an ear health program (EHP).

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS
School children in Aboriginal communities in the Fitzroy Valley of Western Australia.

KEY MEASURES FOR IMPROVEMENT
Access number of children screened for ear disease, effectiveness-referral letter completeness (history, otoscopy, tympanometry, audiometry), patient management and waiting time until first ENT contact.

INTERVENTIONS
EHP--an electronic referral template, ear health nurse, ear health educator and telehealth ENT specialist review.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Screening rates, timely ENT review and improved primary care management.

RESULTS
Number of children screened increased from 148 per 18 months to 710. Nearly twofold increase in numbers of patients referred to ENT (32, 66). A reduction in median waiting time from 141 days to 22 days for ENT review using telehealth. Content of referral letters showed an increase in essential information--otoscopy, audiometry and tympanometry. Primary care management in accordance with guidelines improved.

CONCLUSIONS
The addition of an ear health team increased access to appropriate primary care management and the time to contact with ENT was reduced by using an electronic template and telehealth sessions.


Context. With the entry of smart-phones on the market in the beginningof 2007, the integration of an mp3 player, camera and gps into an all in onedevice. As the integration was realized, creating and storing own contentbecame easier. Therefore the need of more storage became a problem as thesmart-phones were limited in capacity. The 3G network was on the rise andthe cloud solutions could help to contribute to the storage problems usersstarted to have.Objectives. In this study we will evaluate what can be done with use casesin terms of quality attributes, seeing it from a users perspective by havingusers rank use cases for cloud services. With further investigation we willmake a contribution of what the differences between public and personalclouds are.Methods. Use-cases were found by the conducted empirical study andwere based on a Systematic mapping review. In this review, a number ofarticle sources are used, including Google search, Bth summon and Googlescholar. Studies were selected after reading the articles and checked if thepapers matched our defined inclusion criteria. We also designed a surveywith variable amount of questions depending on what the participant wouldanswer. The questions were featured in terms of functionality interpretedfrom the use-cases found in the SLM.Results. Through our SLM we found six different use-cases which were Recovery, Collaborative working, Password protection, Backup, Version tracking and Media streaming. The identified quality attributes gave two or moremappings to their corresponding use-case. As for the comparison betweendifferent clouds, only two out of six use-cases where implemented for the Personal cloud.Conclusions. This gave us the conclusion that the vendors have beenmostly focusing on the storage part of the Personal cloud, but there are solutions in order to increase the functionalities. Those solutions will probably not fit everyone as it includes open source software, with skills of handling installation and other procedures by the user.


There have been lots of theoretical and empirical debates about the impact of demographic transition on the financial market. The main economic theory that is often cited to explain the causality is the lifecycle hypothesis. Since this hypothesis suggests that a lifetime saving pattern of individuals will have an inverted U-shape profile, there is a widely concern for the 'market meltdown scenario' whereby the stock market might collapse following the retirement of baby-boomers who will begin to dissipate their accumulated wealth. However, the actual dissaving rates of retired households appear to be relatively low. Therefore, no consensus regarding the actual causality of the demographic impact on asset prices has been reached.
This thesis attempts to solve this puzzle by arguing that the strong relationship between asset prices and demographic variables observed since the 1960s may primarily result from a shift in the institutional structure of the financial market. The emergence of financial institutions, particularly pension schemes, has changed the way that the financial market operates. Instead of directly holding assets themselves, households have been using financial services provided by these institutions to manage their investments. By using a panel data from the Family Expenditure Survey, lifetime households' participation rates in occupational pension schemes and personal pension plans are shown to significantly exhibit a strong hump-shape age pattern with a peak at 35-45. Interestingly, this age group has further been proved to have a long-term significant impact on UK equity prices. After analysing DB pension schemes employed by FTSE100 firms, the long-term asset allocation of these investors appears to significantly be influenced by the age structures of their policyholders. Therefore, the insight gleaned from this thesis strongly suggests that the investment behaviour of pension schemes may represent the underlying mechanism explaining the strong correlation between asset prices and demographic patterns.


This thesis posits a dialogue between ancient Greek and modern English theatres and gives evidence of this dialogue by relating Merent aspects of modem theatre to the recent performance reception in England of specific Greek texts or images which are concerned with women possessed of or by some extraordinary power.

Chapter I opens with an account of the aims and scope of the thesis, and discusses some of the problems of translating ancient Greek tragedies onto modem English stages. Each of the following chapters examines some aspect of late twentiethcentury English theatre in relation to its reception through performance of a Greek original text or theme.
Chapter 2 deals with changes in English theatre over the last three decades, as reflected by versions of the Bacchae. Chapter 3 is about the role of the actress in performing Medea. Chapter 4 discusses how playwrights have translated for theatre some ancient Greek myths concerning women and sex. Chapter 5 considers the use of Antigone in the field of drama in education, and Chapter 6, the part women theatre practitioners have played in translating Greek drama into English theatres, with special reference to two productions of 'anti-war' plays: the Royal National Theatre's Women of Troy and the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Phoenician Women.

The final section of the last chapter reflects on the way the anxieties of male creators and consumers of Greek tragedies about women with power have been interpreted in English theatres, and the importance of the study of reception through performance for scholars working on the original texts.


The Internet is an efficient information search tool whose growth may have caused a structural change in information search and acquisition behaviors. This study investigates the effects of growing Internet accessibility on these behaviors. Using U.S. public library circulation counts to quantify changes in the use of information resources, the analysis indicates that greater Internet accessibility contributes to increased demand for traditional information sources. That is, a complementary relationship exists between Internet and traditional sources. Further, the results suggest that limiting Internet access can reduce the demand for traditional content. These outcomes imply that improvements in Internet accessibility can have profound effects on human capital development.


ABSTRACT Cch1, a putative voltage-gated calcium ion channel, was investigated for its role in ascus development in Gibberella zeae. Gene replacement mutants of CCH1 were generated and found to have asci which did not forcibly discharge spores, although morphologically ascus and ascospore development in the majority of asci appeared normal. Additionally, mycelial growth was significantly slower, and sexual development was slightly delayed in the mutant; mutant mycelia showed a distinctive fluffy morphology, and no cirrhi were produced. Wheat infected with Δcch1 mutants developed symptoms comparable to wheat infected with the wild type; however, the mutants showed a reduced ability to protect the infected stalk from colonization by saprobic fungi. Transcriptional analysis of gene expression in mutants using the Affymetrix Fusarium microarray showed 2,449 genes with significant, twofold or greater, changes in transcript abundance across a developmental series. This work extends the role of CCH1 to forcible spore discharge in G. zeae and suggests that this channel has subtle effects on growth and development.


We present the UK Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Hub for Offshore Robotics for Certification of Assets (ORCA Hub), a 3.5 year EPSRC funded, multi-site project. The ORCA Hub vision is to use teams of robots and autonomous intelligent systems (AIS) to work on offshore energy platforms to enable cheaper, safer and more efficient working practices. The ORCA Hub will research, integrate, validate and deploy remote AIS solutions that can operate with existing and future offshore energy assets and sensors, interacting safely in autonomous or semi-autonomous modes in complex and cluttered environments, co-operating with remote operators. The goal is that through the use of such robotic systems offshore, the need for personnel will decrease. To enable this to happen, the remote operator will need a high level of situation awareness and key to this is the transparency of what the autonomous systems are doing and why. This increased transparency will facilitate a trusting relationship, which is particularly key in high-stakes, hazardous situations.


Deconstruction and pragmatism constitute two of the major intellectual influences on the contemporary theoretical scene; influences personified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. Both Rortian pragmatism, which draws the consequences of post-war developments in Anglo-American philosophy, and Derridian deconstruction, which extends and troubles the phonomenological and Heideggerian influence on the Continental tradition, have hitherto generally been viewed as mutually exclusive philosophical language games. The purpose of this volume is to bring deconstruction and pragmatism into critical confrontation with one another through staging a debate between Derrida and Rorty, itself based on discussions that took place at the College International de Philosophie in Paris in 1993. The ground for this debate is layed out in introductory papers by Simon Critchley and Ernesto Laclau, and the remainder of the volume records Derrida's and Rorty's responses to each other's work. Chantal Mouffe gives an overview of the stakes of this debate in a helpful preface.


Background: Undernutrition is the leading underlying cause of death among under-five children in Nigeria. The few functioning inpatient health facilities are unable to carry the heavy prevalence burden. The community management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) targets children aged 6–59 months with severe acute malnutrition (SAM), providing maximum access, coverage, and appropriate clinical and nutritional care before life-threatening complications set in. Aim: The aim of this study is to evaluate the outcome of the outpatient therapeutic program (OTP) component of CMAM using the SPHERE indicators,a rural Nigerian community. Settings and Design: Jigawa state is located in the Sahel region of Northwestern Nigeria. It is a prospective cross-sectional study. Statistics: Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.5 statistical software. Descriptive statistics was used. Materials and Methods: Prospective data were collected from 16 United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)-assisted CMAM OTP sites in three local governments areas between its inceptions in July 2010 and end in August 2011 in a rural Nigerian state. The estimated number of children with SAM in communities and the actual number of children with SAM enrolled into the CMAM program was used to calculate the point treatment coverage in the CMAM program was used to calculate the point treatment coverage. Results: were represented in tables and graphs. Analyzed data were compared with the minimum SPHERE indicators as cutoff points for outcome performance. Result: A total of 24,419 children were admitted to the program accounting for 12% of the SAM target population with 12,073 children seen in in the three LGA that are assisted by UNICEF. Of 7,742 (64%) children who exited the program, 58% were cured and 40% defaulted, and all these children fell below the accepted minimum SPHERE standards. Death occurred in 2% and none were discharged non-recovered. Only 27% of the government-owned health facilities in these the selected local government areas were utilized to provide CMAM services. Conclusion: The performance of the CMAM program in Nigeria is 58% cure rate, 40% defaulter rate and 2% death rate standards. Large number of children with SAM were cured and prevented from dying.


History Received: 201 5/ 11/ 08 Accepted: 2016/ 01/ 05 Objectives: Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) is one of the most common infections in women and the second most common complication after anemia during pregnancy that causes many complications in mothers as well as fetuses and since health behaviors have crucial role in development of UTI. This study was performed to determine predictors of preventive behaviors of the UTI in pregnant women in Zahedan based on health belief model (HBM) framework. Methods: This was descriptive study conducted by a questionnaire based on HBM construct among 140 pregnant women in Zahedan in 2013. The data were analyzed usingSPSS16.0 software and statistical test as pearson correlation test, regression Results: finding showed that there was a low significant positive correlation between awareness, HBM constructs and UTI preventive behaviors . (p <0.05). Also self-efficacy had the greatest impact on the behavior which was statistically significant (β= 0.547). Conclusion: According to the results, the design of an educational program based on HBM, with an emphasis on the self-efficacy, can be effective in promoting preventive behaviors of UTI.


Healthy macroinvertebrate communities are typically composed of a few abundant taxa and many relatively rare taxa. These rare taxa tend to be sensitive to pollution and, in aggregate, are important indicators of water quality (e.g., EPT taxa richness that combines Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera taxa). Rare taxa lead to community data sets that contain large numbers of zero values that are often a source of difficulty in data processing and analysis. A hierarchical zero‐inflated Poisson model is developed to study the responses to watershed urbanization of a group of macroinvertebrates taxa (EPT taxa) often used as indicators of good water quality and a healthy stream ecosystem. The zero‐inflated Poisson model is parameterized with a unimodal curve for the abundance model and a logit‐linear model for the zero model. The hierarchical model is used to integrate responses of individual taxa into a community level response. The emphasis of the model is on estimating the probability that an observed 0 represents the true absence of a taxon. By modeling the probability of true absence as a function of watershed level urbanization intensity both at individual taxon level and at the community level, we are able to develop a stressor‐specific tolerance indicator to (1) separate truly sensitive EPT taxa from more tolerant taxa, and (2) compare the responses of different communities to the same stressor or responses of the same community in different regions. We document the development of the model and the process of integrating individual taxon models into a community model. The model is applied to a data set collected for study of the effect of urbanization on stream ecosystems.


This article presents findings from a pioneer study addressing the first co-action between students with intellectual disabilities and an Academy of Music in Sweden. The aim of the article is to study and discuss subject positions that are constructed in rhythmic lessons related to a gathering where students with intellectual disabilities interact with a group of Master of Education in Music students at an Academy of Music, and also to describe how constructions of identity are manifested in the interaction between the actors. With poststructuralist and social constructionist theories as theoretical framework, video observations were conducted to enable an overarching view of the pedagogic practice. The findings reveal that the gathering between the groups becomes an expression of inclusion functioning as exclusion, since the teacher's position the students with intellectual disabilities in ways that obstruct equal interaction with the other student group. Finally, implications of the findings are discuss...


Traditionally multi-variate normal distributions have been the staple of data modeling in most domains. For some domains, the model they provide is either inadequate or incorrect because of the disregard for the directional components of the data. We present a generative model for data that is suitable for modeling directional data (as can arise in text and gene expression clustering). We use mixtures of von Mises-Fisher distributions to model our data since the von Mises-Fisher distribution is the natural distribution for directional data. We derive an Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm to flnd the maximum likelihood estimates for the parameters of our mixture model, and provide various experimental results to evaluate the \correctness" of our formulation. In this paper we also provide some of the mathematical background necessary to carry out all the derivations and to gain insight for an implementation.


The spread of the HIV and AIDS pandemic in the African context today calls for a critical refl ection on the virtue of justice. The author begins by describing in a broad manner recent perspectives on justice. He then examines the meaning of justice in the context of HIV AIDS, with a limited focus on religious healthcare, especially the Christian tradition that is a major partner in healthcare delivery in Africa.


This study examines the reporting on legal cannabis in order to explore the operation of neoliberal ideology in journalistic discourse. Cannabis legalisation is here understood as a way for capitalism to create new market opportunities, besides being a turn away from the so-called 'war on drugs'. The study understands neoliberalism as operating via market-based logics that are interrelated with other social logics, such as those pertaining to journalism (Phelan 2014). Critical discourse analysis is used for studying Swedish newspaper reporting on legal cannabis between 2013 and 2018. The study shows that a struggle between market-based logics and journalistic practices is visible, where journalism has difficulties in challenging core tenets of neoliberal ideology. The article concludes with a discussion of how the current conditions of journalism limit its ability to challenge neoliberal perspectives.


Inter-relay interference (IRI) challenges the operation of two-path relaying systems. Furthermore, the unavailability of the channel state information (CSI) at the source and the limited detection capabilities at the relays prevent neither eliminating the interference nor adopting joint detection at the relays nodes. Improper signaling is a powerful signaling scheme that has the capability to reduce the interference impact at the receiver side and improves the achievable rate performance. Therefore, improper signaling is adopted at both relays, which have access to the global CSI. Then, improper signal characteristics are designed to maximize the total end-to-end achievable rate at the relays. To this end, both the power and the circularity coefficient, a measure of the impropriety degree of the signal, are optimized at the relays. Although the optimization problem is not convex, optimal power allocation for both relays for a fixed circularity coefficient is obtained. Moreover, the circularity coefficient is tuned to maximize the rate for a given power allocation. Finally, a joint solution of the optimization problem is proposed using a coordinate descent method based on alternate optimization. The simulation results show that employing improper signaling improves the achievable rate at medium and high IRI.


Recent years have been marked by a significant increase in interest in green technologies, which have led to radical changes in the way electric power is generated and utilized. These changes have been accompanied by greater utilization of DC-based distributed generators (DGs), such as photovoltaic (PV) panels and fuel cells, as well as DC-based load demands, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and modern electronic loads. In addition to accommodating these technologies, future distribution systems (DSs) will also need to support the integration of additional battery storage systems with renewable DGs. A further factor is the number of policies that have been implemented in Ontario, Canada, with the goal of encouraging the use of clean energy. The first, the feed-in-tariff (FIT) program, was introduced to promote the application of renewable DGs, including PV panels and wind DGs, and a second, new program that offers incentives for switching to EVs has been announced recently. The result is that future DSs must include additional DC loads and DC-based DGs along with their present AC loads and energy resources. Future DSs should thus become AC-DC hybrids if they are to provide optimal accommodation of all types of AC and DC loads and DGs. These considerations accentuate the need for reliable techniques appropriate for the planning and operation of future hybrid DSs. This thesis presents new directions for the planning and operation of AC-DC hybrid DSs. The main target of the research presented in this thesis is to optimally accommodate the expected high penetration of DC loads and DC-based DGs in future DSs. Achieving this target entailed the completion of four consecutive parts: 1) developing a unified load flow (LF) model for AC-DC hybrid DSs, 2) introducing an energy management scheme (EMS) for the optimal operation of AC-DC hybrid DSs, 3) introducing a planning model to determine the optimal AC-DC network configuration that minimizes the costs of the hybrid DS, and 4) developing a reliability-based planning technique for the simultaneous optimization of the DS costs and reliability. The first part of this research introduces a novel unified LF model for AC-DC hybrid DSs. The LF model can be applied in hybrid DSs with a variety of configurations for AC/DC buses and AC/DC lines. A new classification of DS buses is introduced for LF analysis. Three binary matrices, which are used as a means of describing the configuration of the AC and DC buses and lines, have been employed in the construction of the unified power equations. The LF model is generic and can be used for both grid-connected and isolated hybrid DSs. The new model has been tested using several case studies of hybrid DSs that include different operational modes for the AC and DC DGs. The effectiveness iv and accuracy of the developed LF model has been verified against the steady-state solution produced by PSCAD/EMTDC software. The second part presents a two-stage EMS that can achieve optimal and reliable operation for AC-DC hybrid DSs. The first stage introduces a network reconfiguration algorithm to determine the optimal day-ahead reconfiguration schedule for a hybrid DS, while considering the forecasted data for load demands and renewable DGs. The objective of the reconfiguration algorithm is the minimization of DS energy losses. The second stage introduces a real-time optimal power flow (OPF) algorithm that minimizes the DS operation costs. In addition, a load-curtailment-management (LCM) technique is integrated with the OPF algorithm in order to guarantee optimal and reliable DS operation in the case of abnormal operating conditions. The third part presents a novel stochastic planning model for AC-DC hybrid DSs. Taking into account the possibility of each line/bus being AC or DC, the model finds the optimal AC-DC hybrid configuration of buses and lines in the DS. It incorporates consideration of the stochastic behavior of load demands and renewable DGs. The stochastic variations are addressed using a Monte-Carlo simulation (MCS). The objective of the planning model is the minimization of DS investment and operation costs. The developed planning model has been employed for finding the optimal configuration for a suggested case study that included PV panels, wind DGs, and EV charging stations. The same case study was also solved using a traditional AC planning technique in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the hybrid planning model and the associated cost-savings. The last part of this research introduces a stochastic multi-objective optimization model for the planning of AC-DC hybrid DSs. The introduced model determines the optimal AC-DC network configuration that achieves two objectives: 1) minimizing system costs, and 2) maximizing system reliability. Network buses and lines can become either AC or DC in order to achieve the planning objectives. The model features an MCS technique for addressing stochastic variations related to load demands and renewable DGs. The developed model has been tested using a case study involving a hybrid DS that included a variety of types of loads and DGs. Solving the same case study using a traditional AC planning technique provided verification of the benefits offered by the developed model, whose efficacy was confirmed through a comparison of the AC and hybrid Pareto fronts. The developed planning framework represents an effective technique that can be used by DS operators to identify the optimal AC-DC network configuration of future hybrid DSs.


This study emphasized the most and least frequent vocabulary learning strategies that English language teachers encourage students to use, and the strategies that students actually use to build their vocabulary. Finding out whether the students' most used strategies were teacher-encouraged or independently-learned was another point of interest. The participants included 20 male and 23 female learners of English of ages 18 to 22, all of them students in the Arts program at a Southern Congolese high school. They completed a Likert-scale questionnaire of 34 statements and four short-answer questions. Statistical and content analysis methods were employed. The study revealed contextual guessing and dictionary use to be the most frequently encouraged and used strategies, whereas pronunciation and flashcards were the least frequently encouraged and used. These strategies showed  no significant difference between the teacher-encouraged and the student-used strategies, which provided evidence about the important role that language teachers play in students' learning in general, and in strategy in particular. Furthermore, the majority of participants attributed their frequently-used strategies to their teachers' practices and advice. Further discussion stresses the potential reasons why pronunciation receives less attention.


This study was conducted to investigate the effect of watery chromium chloride on lipid profile and some serum parameters of broilers. Eighty newly hatched cubb broiler chicks were equally distributed to four groups of 20 chicks each. The first group fed basal diet and normal water, the second group fed high fat diet and normal water, the third group fed a basal diet and water supplemented with chromium chloride (30 mg chromium chloride / liter water), the fourth group fed high fat diet and water supplemented with chromium chloride. Blood samples were collected for the determination of serum lipoproteins,glucose,total lipids,triglycerides,cholesterol, thyroid hormones and leptin hormone. Chromium decreased VLDL and LDL but increased HDL. A reduction in serum glucose was observed with watery chromium supplementation. Serum total lipids and triglycerides were non significantly decreased but serum cholesterol was significantly decreased with watery chromium supplementation. Serum thyroid hormones were non significantly increased but the serum leptin hormone was significantly increased with watery chromium supplementation.


Enzymatically cross-linked hydrogels can be formed in situ and permit highly versatile and selective tethering of bioactive molecules, thereby allowing for a wealth of applications in cell biology and tissue engineering. While a number of studies have reported the bioconjugation of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins and peptides into such matrices, the site-specific incorporation of biologically highly relevant polysaccharides such as hyaluronic acid (HA) has thus far not been reported, limiting our ability to reconstruct this key feature of the in vivo ECM. Here we demonstrate a novel strategy for transglutaminase-mediated covalent linking of HA moieties to a synthetic poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) macromer resulting in the formation of hybrid HA-PEG hydrogels. We characterize the ensuing matrix properties and demonstrate how these cytocompatible gels can serve to modulate the cellular phenotype of human mammary cancer epithelial cells as well as mouse myoblasts. The use of HA as a novel building block in the increasingly varied library of synthetic PEG-based artificial ECMs should have applications as a structural as well as a signaling component and offers significant potential as an injectable matrix for regenerative medicine.


Summary Among the insects inhabiting endorheic, temporary and highly saline small lakes of central Spain during dry periods, tiger beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae: Cicindelinae) form particularly rich assemblages including unique endemic species. Cephalota dulcinea López, De la Rosa & Baena, 2006 is an endemic, regionally protected species that occurs only in saline marshes in Castilla-La Mancha (Central Spain). Here, we report that C. dulcinea suffers potential risks associated with counter-attacks by ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), while using them as prey at one of these marshes. Through mark–recapture methods, we estimated the population size of C. dulcinea at the study marsh as of 1352 individuals, with a sex ratio slightly biased towards males. Evident signs of ant defensive attack by the seed-harvesting ant Messor barbarus (Forel, 1905) were detected in 14% of marked individuals, sometimes with cut ant heads still grasped with their mandibles to the beetle body parts. Ant injuries have been more frequently recorded at the end of adult C. dulcinea yearly activity, and in similar proportions in males and females, perhaps because the similar body mass of the two sexes makes the output of interactions similar. Because antennae and tarsi were particularly involved in such injuries, consequences on both chemosensory and locomotion abilities may be expected. Future studies may discover if ants are effectively a costly prey for this endangered tiger beetle.


In this paper we estimate the short-term effects of a French retraining program that was intended to improve reemployment prospects of displaced workers. Our empirical analysis uses non-experimental data collected by the French Ministry of Labour. Transitions from unemployment to permanent vs. temporary jobs are assumed to be generated by a dependent competing risks duration model. Moreover we assume that program entry but also direct transitions from the program to employment are both affected by a selectivity process depending on observable and unobservable individual heterogeneity. We find mixed evidence regarding relevance of the program. For displaced workers who join the program, program participation increases the average probability to obtain a permanent job by 8 points (passing from 42 to 50%). However, for displaced workers who do not join the program, this average probability would have been increased by 28 points (passing from 43 to 71%) had they participated in the program. We conclude that, although the program has been globally effective, it has been insufficiently proposed to the displaced workers who would have benefited the most from it.


Risk minimization for nonsmooth nonconvex problems naturally leads to firstorder sampling or, by an abuse of terminology, to stochastic subgradient descent. We establish the convergence of this method in the path-differentiable case, and describe more precise results under additional geometric assumptions. We recover and improve results from Ermoliev-Norkin by using a different approach: conservative calculus and the ODE method. In the definable case, we show that first-order subgradient sampling avoids artificial critical point with probability one and applies moreover to a large range of risk minimization problems in deep learning, based on the backpropagation oracle. As byproducts of our approach, we obtain several results on integration of independent interest, such as an interchange result for conservative derivatives and integrals, or the definability of set-valued parameterized integrals.


The basic care of sugar gliders is often misunderstood. While sugar gliders may be similar in size and resemblance to other small animal pets, their daily needs are very different. Knowing a sugar glider's needs helps it remain safe and healthy, and develop a great relationship with its owner. When cared for properly sugar gliders are gentle and loving pets that can live up to 15 years. Anatomy 101 Small marsupials, sugar gliders have an average body length of 5 to 8 inches and an average weight of 3 to 6 ounces. They are native to Australia, Indonesia, Tasmania and New Guinea. Sugar gliders are nocturnal, arboreal and volant — three terms meaning that they are awake at night, live in trees and are capable of flight. To provide quality care for sugar gliders, you must know several of their distinguishing anatomical features. Sugar gliders are marsupials, so all females have a pouch. Unlike the kangaroo and koala, the sugar glider's pouch is vertical instead of horizontal. The pouch can be seen by examining the underbelly of a sugar glider. It looks like a small vertical slit. Female sugar gliders have live births. Their offspring, called joeys, are about the size of a grain of rice when born. They crawl into the female's pouch and attach to a teat. Joeys will continue to grow over the next 10 weeks while safely tucked inside the pouch. After several weeks the joeys will have grown enough to be seen as a visible bump on one or both sides of the pouch. The pouch is usually closed unless pregnant or nursing and should never have drainage or foul odor. Occasionally a pouch becomes infected and must be examined by a veterinarian. For the full article, pick up the 2012 issue of Critters USA or click here to buy the issue.


The participatory politics and civic engagement of youth in the digital age. Read Online at connectedyouth.nyupress.org There is a widespread perception that the foundations of American democracy are dysfunctional, public trust in core institutions is eroding, and little is likely to emerge from traditional politics that will shift those conditions. Youth are often seen as emblematic of this crisis-frequently represented as uninterested in political life, ill-informed about current-affairs, and unwilling to register and vote. By Any Media Necessary offers a profoundly different picture of contemporary American youth. Young men and women are tapping into the potential of new forms of communication such as social media platforms, spreadable videos and memes, remixing the language of popular culture, and seeking to bring about political change-by any media necessary. In a series of case studies covering a diverse range of organizations, networks, and movements involving young people in the political process-from the Harry Potter Alliance which fights for human rights in the name of the popular fantasy franchise to immigration rights advocates using superheroes to dramatize their struggles-By Any Media Necessary examines the civic imagination at work. Before the world can change, people need the ability to imagine what alternatives might look like and identify paths by which change can be achieved. Exploring new forms of political activities and identities emerging from the practice of participatory culture, By Any Media Necessary reveals how these shifts in communication have unleashed a new political dynamism in American youth.


To securely leverage the advantages of Cloud Computing, a lot of research has happened in the area of "Secure Query Processing over Encrypted Data". As a concrete use case, many encryption schemes have been proposed for securely processing k Nearest Neighbors (SkNN) over encrypted data in the outsourced setting. Recently Zhu et al.[1] proposed a SkNN solution which claimed to satisfy following four properties: (1)Data Privacy, (2)Key Confidentiality, (3)Query Privacy, and (4)Query Controllability. However, in this paper, we present an attack which breaks the Query Controllability claim of their scheme. Further, we propose a new SkNN solution which satisfies all the four existing properties along with an additional essential property of Query Check Verification. We analyze the security of our proposed scheme and present the detailed experimental results to showcase the efficiency in real world scenario.


William Faulkner wrote during a tumultuous period in southern racial consciousness, between the years of the enactment of Jim Crow and the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the South. Throughout the writer's career, racial paradigms were in flux, and these shifting notions are reflected in Faulkner's prose. Faulkner's fiction contains frequent questions about the ways in which white Americans view themselves with regard to race along with challenges to the racial codes and standards of the region, and complex portrayals of the interactions between blacks and whites. Throughout his work, Faulkner contests white identity--its performance by whites and those passing for white, its role in shaping the South, and its assumption of normative identity in opposition to non-white "Others." This is true even in novels without a strong visible African American presence, such as As I Lay Dying, The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion. Faulkner and Whiteness explores the ways in which Faulkner's fiction addresses and destabilizes the concept of whiteness in American culture. Collectively, the essays argue that whiteness, as part of the Nobel Laureate's consistent querying of racial dynamics, is a central element. This anthology places Faulkner's oeuvre--and scholarly views of it--in the contexts of its contemporary literature and academic trends exploring race and texts.


Because efficient compilation of information allows managers and business leaders to make the best decisions for the financial solvency of their organizations, data analysis is an important part of modern business administration. Understanding the use of analytics, reporting, and data mining in everyday business environments is imperative to the success of modern businesses.

Utilizing Big Data Paradigms for Business Intelligence is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on how to address the challenges of data extraction in business intelligence using the five "Vs" of big data: velocity, volume, value, variety, and veracity. This book is ideally designed for business analysts, investors, corporate managers, entrepreneurs, and researchers in the fields of computer science, data science, and business intelligence.


We present Monocle, a system that systematically monitors the network data plane, and verifies that it corresponds to the view that the SDN controller builds and tries to enforce in the switches. Our evaluation shows that Monocle is capable of fine-grained per-rule monitoring for the majority of rules. In addition, it can help controllers to cope with switches that exhibit transient inconsistencies between their control plane and data plane states.


ABSTRACT The barley cv. Bolivia carries two leaf rust (Puccinia hordei) resistance genes, Rph2 and Rph6, and is the only known source of the latter gene. A resistant line (Bolivia-Rph6) carrying Rph6 only was obtained in the F(4) generation of a cross between cv. Bolivia and the susceptible cv. Bowman via progeny testing with differential isolates of the leaf rust pathogen. Genetic analyses and bulk segregant analysis using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) markers localized Rph6 on the short arm of barley chromosome 3H at a distance of 4.4 centimorgans (cM) distal from RFLP marker MWG2021 and 1.2 cM proximal from RFLP marker BCD907. The allelic relationship of Rph6 to other leaf rust resistance genes mapping to this region of chromosome 3H (namely Rph5 and Rph7) were tested using crosses among cvs. Magnif 102 (carrying Rph5), Bolivia-Rph6 (Rph6), and Cebada Capa (Rph7). Segregation analyses indicated that Rph6 is allelic to Rph5 and closely linked to Rph7. The data generated from this study will facilitate breeding for leaf rust resistance via marker-assisted selection and provide a starting point for positional gene cloning.


Previous research on Gen 3:15b, known as part of God's curse to the snake, has highlighted the interpretation difficulties with regard to the verb שוף. However, the ambiguity involves more words as well as the grammar of the verse. This article revisits the curse proposing an ambiguous reading as the Hebrew text offers it. First, the lexical ambiguity of the words שוף, ראש, and עקב enters multiple ideas of hurting, guarding, threatening and blowing; head and poison; heel and crafty trickster. Secondly, the grammatical structure of the verse adds to the indefinite nature. The words ראש and עקב can function as relative accusatives as in the traditional rendering or as vocatives or appositions to subject or object. Thirdly, the deliberate confusion allows connecting small and larger narratological units. It reveals a play between two characters, the snake and God, trying to outclass each other in terms of craftiness. Thus, the ambiguous language in Gen 3:15b is not a problem; it is the key to interpretation.


Gandev, S., 2017. Walnut propagation using a hot water installation and growing the obtained plants in containers. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 23 (1): 83–85 Walnut is among the fruit species diffi cult to be propagated and therefore different techniques and methods have been developed all over the world to improve the survival percentage of the new plants. The aim of the present experiment was to study the possibility of walnut propagation using a hot water installation and growing the obtained plants in containers. The experiment was carried out in the period 2013-2015 at the Fruit-Growing Institute. One-year old seedlings of common walnut (Juglans regia L.) were used as rootstocks, grafted with 'Izvor 10' cultivar. The plants were put for callus formation in the constructed hot water installation. Successfully propagated plants were grown in containers for two years. The results show that the developed hot water installation leads to obtaining 83.1% of successfully propagated plants. It was established that the newly grafted plants could be grown in containers for two years. After the fi rst year the average stem diameter was 14.2 mm and the average plant height 22.4 cm. In the second year of growing in the containers the plants reached an average stem diameter of 24.5 mm and an average height of 110.8 cm. The conclusion was drawn that the constructed hot water installation favoured the production of a high percentage of successfully propagated plants, which could be grown in containers for two years.


We examined the tracking of blood glucose, the development of prediabetes, and estimated their genetic contributions in a prospective, healthy, rural Chinese twin cohort. This report includes 1,766 subjects (998 males, 768 females) aged 6–21 years at baseline who completed a 6-year follow-up study. Oral glucose tolerance test was performed for all subjects at both baseline and follow-up. We found that subjects with low fasting plasma glucose (FPG) or 2 h post-load glucose (PG) levels at baseline tended to remain at the low level at follow-up. Subjects in the top tertile of baseline plasma glucose tended to have a higher risk of developing prediabetes at follow-up compared to the low tertile: in males, 37.6% vs. 27.6% for FPG and 37.2% vs. 25.7% for 2hPG, respectively; in females, 31.0% vs. 15.4% for FPG and 28.9% vs. 15.1% for 2 h PG, respectively. Genetic factors explained 43% and 41% of the variance of FPG, and 72% and 47% for impaired fasting glucose for males and females, respectively; environmental factors substantially contribute to 2hPG status and impaired glucose tolerance. In conclusion, in this cohort of healthy rural Chinese children and adolescents, we demonstrated that both FPG and 2hPG tracked well and was a strong predictor of prediabetes. The high proportion of children with top tertile of blood glucose progressed to prediabetes, and the incidence of prediabetes has a male predominance. Genetic factors play more important role in fasting than postload status, most of which was explained by unique environmental factors.


We present a method that is capable of handling process variations to evaluate analog/RF test measurements at the design stage. The method can readily be used to estimate test metrics, such as parametric test escape and yield loss, with parts per million accuracy, and to fix test limits that satisfy specific tradeoffs between test metrics of interest. Furthermore, it provides a general framework to compare alternative test solutions that are continuously being proposed toward reducing the high cost of specification-based tests. The key idea of the method is to build a statistical model of the circuit under test and the test measurements using nonparametric density estimation. Thereafter, the statistical model can be simulated very fast to generate an arbitrarily large volume of new data. The method is demonstrated for a previously proposed built-in self-test measurement for low-noise amplifiers. The result indicates that the new synthetic data have the exact same structure of data generated by a computationally intensive brute-force Monte Carlo circuit simulation.


Smallholder dairy production represents a promising income generating activity for poor farmers in the developing world. Because of the perishable nature of milk, marketing arrangements for collection, distribution and sale are important for enhanced livelihoods in the smallholder dairy sector. In this study we examined the relationship between market quality and basic feeding and breeding practices at farm level. We define market quality as the attractiveness and reliability of procurement channels and associated input supply arrangements. We took as our study countries, India with its well-developed smallholder dairy sector, and Ethiopia where the smallholder dairy industry has remained relatively undeveloped despite decades of development effort. We conducted village surveys among producer groups in 90 villages across three States in India and two Regions in Ethiopia. Producer groups were stratified according to three levels of market quality – high, medium and low. Data showed that diet composition was relatively similar in India and Ethiopia with crop residues forming the major share of the diet. Concentrate feeding tended to be more prominent in high market quality sites. Herd composition changed with market quality with more dairy (exotic) cross-bred animals in high market quality sites in both India and Ethiopia. Cross-bred animals were generally more prominent in India than Ethiopia. Herd performance within breed did not change a great deal along the market quality gradient. Parameters such as calving interval and milk yield were relatively insensitive to market quality. Insemination of cross-bred cows was predominantly by artificial insemination (AI) in India and accounted for around half of cross-bred cow inseminations in Ethiopia. Data on perceptions of change over the last decade indicated that per herd and per cow productivity are both increasing in high market quality sites with a more mixed picture in medium and low-quality sites. Similarly dairy-derived income is on the increase in high market quality sites. This is accompanied by a strong increase in stall feeding at the expense of grazing. The study indicates that the first constraint to intensification of dairy production in Ethiopia is the genetic quality of the herd. There is less scope for improved AI provision in India since the cross-bred herd is mainly serviced by AI already. However, as for Ethiopia, there is considerable scope for closing yield gaps in India through improved feed use and supply. Results strongly show that well-developed markets with good procurement arrangements are key for sustainable dairy intensification.


ANGIPARSTM is a new herbal extract which has been produced in oral, topical, and intravenous forms. The present article contains preliminary results of the study which was planned to evaluate the efficacy and safety of orally applied ANGIPARSTM and to compare it with the combination of oral and topical forms and also with conventional therapy in patients with diabetic ulcers of the lower extremities. Twenty one patients with diabetic foot ulcers were divided into 3 groups. The first group received 100 mg of oral ANGIPARSTM twice a day for 6 weeks in addition to conventional therapies. In the second group, ANGIPARSTM gel 3% was added to the oral form of the same product besides the conventional therapies for the same period of time. Finally, in the third group which was considered as control, only conventional therapies were performed. The patients were followed for 6 weeks. Parameters such as granulation tissue formation, skin epithelization, and wound surface areas changes were analyzed to determine the effectiveness of the compound in wounds healing. Furthermore, drug safety was assessed by monitoring adverse events and by clinical and laboratory evaluations. The study data showed significant differences between the intervention and control groups with respect to efficacy and tolerability. In each intervention group, primary wound healings occurred following 2 weeks. Complete wound healing which was greater than 70% improvement in wounds surface areas was achieved in 83% and 100% of group 1 and group 2 participants, respectively after 6 weeks. On the other hand, at the same period of time, only 22.2% of patients in control group revealed complete healing. Therefore, ANGIPARSTM had significant positive effect in increasing the incidence of complete wound closure compared with control group (p = 0.042). However, our evaluations indicated that adding topical treatment with 3% gel once a day to the oral therapy with the same product did not make significant difference in healing outcomes statistically (p = 0.769). Clinical and paraclinical evaluations did not show any adverse events during the study. This study showed that in diabetic foot ulcers, either treatment with oral ANGIPARSTM capsules (100mg) twice a day or combination therapy with oral and topical forms, in conjunction with good wound care significantly increased the incidence of complete wound closure. In addition, the application of this product was safe and did not make any unexpected adverse event.


The South China Sea (SCS) and its surrounding areas are geologically highly heterogeneous from the interactions of multiple plates in Southeast Asia (Eurasian plate, Indian‐Australian plate, Philippine Sea plate, and Pacific plate). To understand the tectonics at depth, here we combined bulletin and handpicked data to conduct Pn tomography of the region. The results show distinct features that are correlated with the complex geology at surface, suggesting a lithosphere‐scale tectonics of the region. Low Pn velocities are found along a belt of the western Pacific transpressional system from the Okinawa Trough and eastern East China Sea, across central and eastern Taiwan orogeny, to the island arcs of the Luzon Strait and the entire Philippine Islands, as well as under the Palawan Island and part of the continental margin north of the Pearl River Basin. High velocities are found under Ryukyu subduction zone, part of the Philippine subduction zone, part of the Eurasian subduction beneath the southwestern Taiwan, and the continent‐ocean boundary between the south China and the SCS basin. The Taiwan Strait, the Mainland SE coast, and the main SCS basin sea are relatively uniform with average Pn values. Crustal thicknesses show large variations in the study region but also coherency with tectonic elements. The Pn pattern in Taiwan shows linear trends of surface geology and suggests strongly lithosphere‐scale deformation of the young Taiwan orogenic belt marked by the deformation boundary under the Western Foothill and the Western Coastal Plain at depth, and the crustal thickness shows a complex pattern from the transpressional collision. Our observations are consistent with rifting and extension in the northern margin of the SCS but are not consistent with mantle upwelling as a mechanism for the opening and the subsequent closing of the SCS. The Philippine island arc is affected by volcanisms from both the Asian and Philippine Sea subductions in the south but mainly from the Asian subduction in the north and under the Luzon Strait.


Abstract This project is part of my practice of resisting aspects of visual culture and deconstructing images that is partly indebted to 1960s conceptual text-based artists, letterism, and Situationists, but also correlated to orthodox attitudes towards the image. It examines restrictions that Israel places upon Palestinian telecommunications in the West Bank, such as the locations of radio masts placed within Israel, the height Palestinian networks are permitted to build their masts, and that illegal Israeli settlers living illegally inside Palestine enjoy 3/4G coverage while Palestinians receive 2G. These technological infringements inhibit the movements for everyone in the West Bank and Gaza where civilians can be more easily and cheaply monitored and arrested, which is reflected in the Israeli arrests of Palestinians for a range of alleged offences on Facebook or Twitter, particularly incitement. These restrictions affect the way we receive and disseminate information, which was felt as a tourist/gentile/interloper visiting Palestine for the first time, unsure how to respond to the paranoia of being monitored or being in the wrong place. The project was made during a period of forced abstinence of Facebook and Twitter due to the paranoia of working between Lebanon and Israel, and so is a manual version of Facebook's pin-dropped album where the geographical data and time-stamp has been pulled via a simple desktop application from each JPEG's file. The response I hope reflects an overwhelming urge not to overly rely on visual representation, and to instead state as minimally as possible what the work is and to simply provide the raw data of the image.


Studies have shown that religion is strongly associated with opposition of abortion in the U.S. However little is known about the effects of religion in non-Western societies where non-Judeo Christian religious traditions have been dominant. Using a nationally representative sample of married women in Taiwan we investigate how religion affects attitudes toward abortion and contraception use in a Chinese cultural context. Our analysis indicates that conservative religious groups Taiwan Protestants and the New Religious Movement (Yi-Guan-Dao) are more likely to disapprove of abortion particularly when household financial constraints or out-of-wedlock pregnancy is the reason compared to Chinese traditional religionists (i.e. Buddhists and Taoists). However Chinese traditional religionists tend to disapprove of birth control except for sterilization after reaching the desired number of children. The nonreligious tend to favor abortion and birth control more under all circumstances. Despite these attitudinal differences we find no significant effect of religion in predicting the likelihood of having abortion. (authors)


1. Carbamazepine had an antidiuretic effect in six patients with neurohypophyseal diabetes insipidus due to various causes. The effect was qualitatively similar to that of antidiuretic hormone. 2. At the time of maximal antidiuresis plasma arginine vasopressin levels, measured by radioimmunoassay, were below the limit of detectability in all patients. 3. In one of two control subjects a temporary decrease in water excretion was observed during administration or carbamazepine. 4. In the two control subjects plasma arginine vasopressin levels dropped from normal to below the level of detectability during administration of the drug. 5. It is concluded that the antidiuretic effect of carbamazepine is not the result of releasing endogenous antidiuretic hormone or of prolonging its half-life. 6. The most likely explanation for the observed results is either a direct effect of carbamazepine on the distal renal tubular cell or an increase of renal responsiveness to endogenous antidiuretic hormone.


Rechargeable batteries are necessary for the decarbonization of the energy systems, but life‐cycle environmental impact assessments have not achieved consensus on the environmental impacts of producing these batteries. Nonetheless, life cycle assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool to inform the development of better‐performing batteries with reduced environmental burden. This review explores common practices in lithium‐ion battery LCAs and makes recommendations for how future studies can be more interpretable, representative, and impactful. First, LCAs should focus analyses of resource depletion on long‐term trends toward more energy and resource‐intensive material extraction and processing rather than treating known reserves as a fixed quantity being depleted. Second, future studies should account for extraction and processing operations that deviate from industry best‐practices and may be responsible for an outsized share of sector‐wide impacts, such as artisanal cobalt mining. Third, LCAs should explore at least 2–3 battery manufacturing facility scales to capture size‐ and throughput‐dependent impacts such as dry room conditioning and solvent recovery. Finally, future LCAs must transition away from kg of battery mass as a functional unit and instead make use of kWh of storage capacity and kWh of lifetime energy throughput.


We present experimental results on the influence of magnetic fields and laser polarization on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) using Rydberg levels of $^{87}$Rb atoms. The measurements are performed in a room temperature vapor cell with two counter-propagating laser beams at 480nm and 780nm in a ladder-type energy level scheme. We measure the EIT spectrum of a range of $ns_{1/2}$ Rydberg states for $n=19-27$, where the hyperfine structure can still be resolved. Our measurements span the range of magnetic fields from the low field linear Zeeman regime to the high field Paschen-Back regimes. The observed spectra are very sensitive to small changes in magnetic fields and the polarization of the laser beams. We model our observations using optical Bloch equations that take into account the full multi-level structure of the atomic states involved and the decoupling of the electronic $J$ and nuclear $I$ angular momenta in the Breit-Rabi regime. The numerical model yields excellent agreement with the observations. In addition to EIT related experiments, our results are relevant for experiments involving coherent excitation to Rydberg levels in the presence of magnetic fields.


Oocytes were purified from the temperature-sensitive fertilization-defective fer-1(b232ts) mutant of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and used for comprehensive mass spectrometric analysis. Using stringent criteria, 1165 C. elegans proteins were identified; at lower stringency, an additional 288 proteins were identified. We validate the high degree of sample purity and evaluate several possible sources of bias in the proteomic data. We compare the classes of proteins identified in the current oocyte proteome with protein classes identified in our previously determined oocyte transcriptome. The oocyte proteome appears enriched in proteins likely to be needed immediately upon fertilization, whereas the transcriptome appears enriched in molecules and processes needed later in embryogenesis. The current study provides fundamental background information for future more detailed studies of oocyte biology.