This work investigates the uses of the Internet and email in health care and specifically focuses on the use of these technologies in the management and support of patients following kidney transplantation. Health information websites are recognised to differ widely in quality and reliability of their content. This has led to the development of various codes of conduct and rating tools to assess the quality of health websites. However, the validity and reliability of these rating tools and their applicability to different health websites also varies. In principle, rating tools should be available to consumers, require a limited number of elements to be assessed, be assessable in all elements, be readable and be able to gauge the readability and consistency of information provided from a patient's view point.
This study addresses the design and evaluation of a patient-centred transplant online service consisting of a website and e-mail communication. The website focuses on providing health education to patients so that they can conveniently
obtain useful clinical information, as needed in home or workplace settings. The online service was assessed for its acceptability and usefulness from patient's perspectives and for its efficacy in reducing patient's needs to contact primary or
secondary care services regarding day-to-day health issues. The online service was purpose built, informed by a framework developed during this study. The framework can be used by transplant clinicians to develop and maintain their websites.
Work to inform the framework included an evaluation of the quality of information found in kidney and liver transplantation websites. This evaluation used both expert reviews, based on a weighted hformation Scoring (IS) system and involving clinicians in the assessment, and user evaluations where patient's Internet use, and their suggestions about, and interest in, transplant websites were elicited. The use of email in answering health related questions in the group of the patients who took part in the study was also evaluated.
Whilst the hflernet has made it possible for patients and their families to access vast quantities of information that previously would have been difficult for anyone but a physician or librarian to obtain, an important finding of the research is the existence currently of many poor quality websites. The results indicate overall that readily accessible Internet websites for liver or kidney transplantation patients provide a large quantity of, but poor quality, material. Based on surveys of patients needs, the study reported in this thesis highlights the fact that transplant websites should include information about life style in addition to purely medical-related topics. Incorporation of web tools, like email, is shown to effectively help solve many of the daily health problems of patients with organ transplantation. The transplant online service developed as a part of this study showed high levels of patient acceptability and effectively helped reduce the need for patients to access primary or secondary care.
The results of this research support the potential of online services as an innovative approach for patient-centred care in organ transplantation.


Background: Cytogenetics of solid tumors in general is negatively affected by culturing artifacts such as preferential clonal expansion and introduction of chromosomal rearrangements, thus making it difficult to discriminate between primary changes and secondary events. Considering that chromosomal instability is a hallmark of cancer even at the precursor cancer level, it is of a great importance to devise a method of comprehensive chromosome analysis of cancer and cancer precursor cells that can bypass culturing problems as much as possible and that can provide informative karyograms of primary tumors at non-mitosis stages of the cell cycle. Consequently, we have developed a novel approach using chemically induced premature chromosome condensation (PCC) method and combined it with the technique of whole genome chromosome painting assay (M-FISH), in which chromosomal constitution of cancer cells could be detected independent of mitosis and without culture artifact within just three hours after receiving the biopsies. Objectives: 1. To perform karyotype analysis; 2. To define stage specificity; 3. To detect hall-mark(s) of cancer of different origins; 4. To improve therapy regimen by elucidating sensitivity of tumors and patients' lymphocytes to radiation and/or cytostatic drugs. Methods: Chemically-induced PCC method was applied on primary tumors (such as, cervical-, head and neck-, breast- and prostate-cancer) to generate metaphases. Afterwards, these preparations underwent M-FISH. Results: This unique/novel combined assay can give for the first time the possibility to assess genetic instability by detecting spontaneously occurring chromosomal instability (structural and numerical) in different types of primary tumors, as well as adjacent normal cells. It may open up the possibility to detect biomarker(s) for specific type of tumors, that can be used as screening tests. Furthermore, the sensitivity of specific types of tumors as well as patient's normal lymphocytes to cytostatic drugs and/or radiation can be determined. Conclusion: The unique combined state of the art assay we developed can lead to detect biomarker(s) for specific type of cancer. Moreover, for the first time therapy regimen can be individually designed based upon detecting tumors as well as patient's lymphocytes sensitivity.


Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women worldwide, and prognosis is poor for those who experience recurrence or develop metastatic disease, in part due to the lack of active therapeutic directions. The National Cancer Institute convened a Cervical Cancer Clinical Trials Planning Meeting (CTPM) in October 2018 to facilitate the design of hypothesis-driven clinical trials focusing on locally advanced, metastatic and recurrent cervical cancer around the theme of enhancing susceptibility to DNA repair inhibition and DNA damage. Prior to the meeting, a group of experts in the field summarized available preclinical and clinical data to identify potentially active inducers and inhibitors of DNA. The goals of the CTPM focused on identification of novel experimental strategies capitalizing on DNA damage and repair (DDR) regulators and cell cycle aberrations, optimization of radiotherapy as a DDR agent, and design of clinical trials incorporating DDR regulation into the primary and recurrent/metastatic therapies for cervical carcinoma. Meeting deliverables were novel clinical trial concepts to move into the National Clinical Trials Network. This report provides an overview for the rationale of this meeting and the state of the science related to DDR regulation in cervical cancer.


Load performance of gas lubricated, compliant surface foil thrust bearings has an interlocking relationship with the compliance of the bearing and hydrodynamics of convergent wedge surface. Compliance of the bearing consists of supporting spring elements (elastic foundation) and a smooth elastic top foil. In this paper, a class of gas lubricated foil thrust bearings has been investigated analytically utilizing a novel approach which combines Finite Difference (FD) and Finite Element (FE) methods. Solution of the governing hydrodynamic equations dealing with compressible fluid is coupled with the structural resiliency of the foil bearing surfaces. FD method is utilized for hydrodynamic analysis while FE is used to model structural resiliency. Influence coefficients were generated to address the elasticity effects of combined top foil and elastic foundation on the hydrodynamics of thrust bearing, and were used to expedite the numerical solution. Within 2 to 3 iterations the convergence criterion was reached. The overall program logic proved to be an efficient technique to deal with the complex structural compliance of various foil bearing. Case study has been conducted and sample solutions are provided. Unlike prior analytical investigations, the essential effect of the top foil on the performance of the bearing has been elucidated.


The Weather Research and Forecasting model was applied to analyze variations in the planetary boundary layer (PBL) structure over Southeast England including central and suburban London. The parameterizations and predictive skills of two nonlocal mixing PBL schemes, YSU and ACM2, and two local mixing PBL schemes, MYJ and MYNN2, were evaluated over a variety of stability conditions, with model predictions at a 3 km grid spacing. The PBL height predictions, which are critical for scaling turbulence and diffusion in meteorological and air quality models, show significant intra‐scheme variance (> 20%), and the reasons are presented. ACM2 diagnoses the PBL height thermodynamically using the bulk Richardson number method, which leads to a good agreement with the lidar data for both unstable and stable conditions. The modeled vertical profiles in the PBL, such as wind speed, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), and heat flux, exhibit large spreads across the PBL schemes. The TKE predicted by MYJ were found to be too small and show much less diurnal variation as compared with observations over London. MYNN2 produces better TKE predictions at low levels than MYJ, but its turbulent length scale increases with height in the upper part of the strongly convective PBL, where it should decrease. The local PBL schemes considerably underestimate the entrainment heat fluxes for convective cases. The nonlocal PBL schemes exhibit stronger mixing in the mean wind fields under convective conditions than the local PBL schemes and agree better with large‐eddy simulation (LES) studies.


REDD+ may see billions of dollars paid to developing countries to improve forest management. This could potentially provide co-benefits for biodiversity conservation. Whilst this issue has been assessed several times in the existing literature, biodiversity itself has tended to be treated as homogenous. Here we propose a new framework in which to disaggregate and assess potential biodiversity beneficiaries of REDD+: pleiotropy and charisma. Pleiotropy describes the dependence of a species' conservation status on habitat loss alone. Pleiotropically-linked species are threatened principally by forest loss and are most likely to benefit from activities such as reduced deforestation. Non-pleiotropically-linked species are also threatened by other processes such as hunting, and will require extra funding outside REDD+ such as premium payments for their conservation. Charisma describes the degree to which species may be able to generate premiums. We consider that the incorporation of these two dimensions into the REDD+ debate will facilitate a more nuanced discussion of biodiversity co-benefits amongst researchers and other stakeholders than has so far been the norm.


Among many computer scientists, fortran is an f-word. yet, it's still the most widely used language in scientific computing, especially when high performance is required. why is this so? One explanation often given is the huge amount of scientific legacy code in the world-after all, differential equations remain the same over time and so do their solvers, so there's no reason to rewrite such code. But a great deal of new code is written in Fortran95 as well. One of us recently served on a review panel for granting computer time to high-impact scientific computing applications that effectively use thousands of processors, and every single one of the applications he reviewed was written in Fortran. At last year's conference on computational physics in South Korea (CCP2006), most of the plenary speakers who talked about codes used Fortran. Perhaps scientists prefer Fortran because they're productive when using it.


"It's not a book, it's a play… ": Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Read by the Users of Babelio, a Social Network for Book Readers. On the 31st of July 2016, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a play written by Jack Thorne in collaboration with J. K. Rowling and John Tiffany, was performed for the first time at the Palace Theatre in London. On the same day, the bookshops of Great Britain were literally invaded by the young wizard's fans, whom were curious to know what happens next to their favorite heroes. Thereby, The Cursed Child is a play, not only to be performed, but also – and mostly – to be read. Whereas the Theater Studies, at least in France, consider the drama text mainly as a scenic performance element and thus, limits the drama text reading to text analysis, the reception of Thorne's play allows to ask about the possibility of reading the drama text as a self-sufficient fictional text and invites us to investigate the specificities of this kind of reading. In order to do this, I have analyzed three hundred Cursed Child readers' reviews, which are located on the babelio.com website, one of the biggest French social networks for book readers. It appears that the Cursed Child's readers tend to read that drama text by comparing it to the seven Harry Potter novels. The main two differences perceived within the scope of this comparison (and which the readers often tend to attribute to the dramatic form specificities) are the so-called lack of descriptions and the rapid reading rhythm. However, these differences may receive a completely opposite evaluation, depending on the reader's openness to the dramatic form. In this way, for the "reluctant" readers, it constitutes an obstacle which prevents the fictional immersion and therefore the pleasure of reading, whereas for the "enthusiastic" readers, it allows them to go through a new and pleasant experience. Moreover, it is not unusual to see that the reading of The Cursed Child markedly reduces the reader's reluctance towards the dramatic form. In fact, the reader reviews analysis proves that The Cursed Child text activates the reader's imagination, regardless of his reluctance. Consequently, the Thorne's drama example demonstrates that a drama text can be considered as a self-sufficient fictional text which is able to arouse the pleasure of reading and we can therefore conclude that the reluctance or the pleasure is led by the reader's own readiness to accept the alterity of the dramatic form.


Although studies on unicellular yeast species have yielded considerable information on regulation of the cell cycle, multicellular organisms depend on additional regulatory mechanisms to determine the size of individual organs and the overall size of the organism. Björklund et al. combined RNA interference with flow cytometry to identify genes involved in regulating cell size, cytokinesis, cell death (or apoptosis or both), and progression through the cell cycle in Drosophila S2 cells. In addition to genes classically associated with cell cycle progression, unsupervised hierarchical clustering of genes associated with particular phenotypes implicated various other genes in regulation of the cell cycle, including genes associated with COP9 signalosome activity and with the Wnt, p38βMAPK, FRAP/TOR, and JAK/STAT signaling pathways. The authors conclude that their data will enable a systems biology analysis of cell cycle regulation in metazoans. M. Björklund, M. Taipale, M. Varjosalo, J. Saharinen, J. Lahdenperä, J. Taipale, Identification of pathways regulating cell size and cell-cycle progression by RNAi. Nature 439, 1009-1013 (2006). [PubMed]


Utilizing the first three cycles of the Canadian longitudinal Youth in Transition Survey (YITS), this paper analyses the educational pathways of 6,342 Canadian youth who at age 15 scored below the level considered necessary for effective functioning in a knowledge-based society. The concept of resilience is integrated into a broader sociological framework of acceptance of cultural goals and access to the means for achieving these goals. Within this framework, the multiple effects of two components of resilience on educational outcomes are assessed: a) the availability of social and institutional supports and b) youth's own attitudes, values and behaviours that enabled some of them to overcome the obstacle associated with their limited reading performance. Multinomial logistic regression was used to show that a variety of possible measures of resilience differentiate between dropping out, completing high school, and participating in postsecondary education. Additionally, some aspects of resilience are more effective for avoiding the worst educational outcome (dropping out) while others appear to facilitate achieving the best outcome (participating in postsecondary education). The paper concludes that resilience is better viewed as a sensitizing than a theoretical concept.


ABSTRACT As a result of the treatment of Protomegabaria (Phyllanthaceae) for the Flore du Gabon, some morphological features are highlighted. The two species of the original publication of the genus, Protomegabaria stapfiana (Beille) Hutch. and P. macrophylla Hutch., currently synonymised under the former name, are distinct which is illustrated and demonstrated in the key to the species. Protomegabaria stapfiana and P. macrophylla are lectotypified. Distribution maps of the species are presented and special attention is given to the disjunct area of the third species Protomegabaria meiocarpa J. Léonard.


Objectives. We evaluated a real-time ambulatory care-based syndromic surveillance system in four metropolitan areas of the United States. Methods. Health-care organizations and health departments in California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Texas participated during 2007–2008. Syndromes were defined using International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision diagnostic codes in electronic medical records. Health-care organizations transmitted daily counts of new episodes of illness by syndrome, date, and patient zip code. A space-time permutation scan statistic was used to detect unusual clustering. Health departments followed up on e-mailed alerts. Distinct sets of related alerts ("signals") were compared with known outbreaks or clusters found using traditional surveillance. Results. The 62 alerts generated corresponded to 17 distinct signals of a potential outbreak. The signals had a median of eight cases (range: 3–106), seven zip code areas (range: 1–88), and seven days (range: 3–14). Two signals resulted from true clusters of varicella; six were plausible but unconfirmed indications of disease clusters, six were considered spurious, and three were not investigated. The median investigation time per signal by health departments was 50 minutes (range: 0–8 hours). Traditional surveillance picked up 124 clusters of illness in the same period, with a median of six ill per cluster (range: 2–75). None was related to syndromic signals. Conclusions. The system was able to detect two true clusters of illness, but none was of public health interest. Possibly due to limited population coverage, the system did not detect any of 124 known clusters, many of which were small. The number of false alarms was reasonable.


The stormwater run-off generated in an industrial log yard during eight run-off events was studied with the main focus on the transport of toxic metals. Associations between water quality constituents and potential surrogates were evaluated by correlation analysis. The first-flush phenomenon was verified by normalized M(V) curves. The results have shown that, whereas some metals such as Zn, Ba, Cd, As and Fe were always detected in these waters, others (Cr, Pb, Cu, Ni, V, Co) were not. Large variations in the water constituents' concentrations were observed, with Fe, Pb and V being the most variable ones. Concentrations of Zn and Cu in the run-off waters exceeded the values established by the Swedish environmental authorities in 100% and 97% of samples, respectively. The correlation analyses indicated TSS as a potential surrogate of Pb, V, Co, Ni, As, Ba, Cr and COD (0.949>R>0.808), making it reasonable to state that a treatment system with focus on TSS removal would also reduce toxic metals from these waters. The first-flush phenomenon was evident for most of the constituents. Significant differences (p<0.05) in the first-flush magnitude of different run-off events were observed confirming that hydro-meteorological variables such as dry period, precipitation duration and average intensity play important roles. Metal loads originating from the log yard were mainly composed of Zn, Cu and Ba. Knowledge of the physicochemical characteristics, discharge dynamics and the storm variables involved in the process is a crucial step for the proposal and implementation of a stormwater management programme.


The huge demands for mobile wireless data traffics are increasing rapidly during the recent years. Long-term evolution (LTE) has been standardized by the Third- Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as a new access technology to meet the tremendous requirements of current mobile systems. To further support the network infrastructure and satisfy all the diverse sets of requirements, LTE adopted an advanced and powerful technique such as Multiple-in multiple-out (MIMO) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing OFDM. CQI feedback is an essential technique in describing the channel state information of LTE system. Hence, CQI calculations highly depend on the accuracy of the channel estimation process. A precious channel estimation scheme is necessary to indicate the instantaneous channel condition. Many practical problems in LTE occur when LTE feedback is calculated by CQI. If the user needs to report precise channel state condition, the amount of CQI reported to the eNodeB must be increased. However,increasing the amount of such feedback inevitably results in extra signaling overhead and system performance degradation. Therefore, an appropriate method for CQI estimation and CQI feedback overhead reduction is important. This thesis proposes an adaptive feedback algorithm that uses a threshold scheme to enhance the system throughput while maintaining low Block Error Rate (BLER), Bit Error Rate (BER), and overhead. This proposed feedback mechanism considers the channel quality condition, modulation order, and code rate for various antenna configurations and different user speeds. Results show that the system throughput increases with a stable LTE BLER target and system overhead by using the adaptive threshold of the CQI feedback scheme. This proposed adaptive scheme dynamically adapts the threshold level to Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) variations, thus increasing the throughput and reducing the CQI feedback overhead. This adaptive approach also enhances the tradeoff between system throughput and BLER. Compared with conventional CQI feedback schemes,such as the full feedback, averaging best-m CQI methods, the proposed scheme significantly improves the system throughput while maintaining the BLER target and overhead. The percentage difference from the adaptive threshold CQI feedback scheme is around 2.4% compared with the averaging method, wherein a 2% system improvement occurs across all SNR values. The percentage difference is 2.1%,compared with the full feedback method, with only 0.5% degradation. The results demonstrate that although increasing the antenna was improved the system throughput remarkably but it comes at the cost of BLER performance. Using MIMO 2x2 is highly recommended since it achieves a reasonable results compared with high and low order antenna configurations.


The IASI mission is a versatile mission that fulfills the needs of three different communities: numerical weather prediction, climate research and atmospheric composition monitoring. In order to converge on the design of such an instrument all three communities had to make "reasonable accommodations" 20 years ago, and it turns out that this mission is now recognized as essential for weather forecasting, and for tracking pollutants/greenhouse gases from space. With the launch of MetOp-B and -C and the continuity and new challenges offered by IASI-NG, an exceptional data record will be available in the next few years.
The presentation (movie) illustrates some of the major findings related to atmospheric composition changes as monitored by IASI during the last 10 years. It relies on accurate data available in near real time along with an excellent horizontal coverage. We will show the global scale mapping of gases, along with the detection of dust and ash particles, as well as the potential of the mission to catch special events such as volcanic eruptions, large fires and pollution peaks.


To maximize profit, the monopolist must first determine its costs and the characteristics of market demand. The monopoly firm can determine different prices to different consumers. This business practice is called price discrimination. The basic aim of this paper is to construct a relatively simple chaotic monopoly price growth model that is capable of generating stable equilibria, cycles, or chaos. The monopoly firm is practicing third-degree price discrimination.


The presented picture of the month is a superposition of spaceborne lidar observations and high-resolution temperature fields of the ECMWF Integrated Forecast System (IFS). It displays complex tropospheric and stratospheric clouds in the Arctic winter of 2015/16. Near the end of December 2015, the unusual north- eastward propagation of warm and humid subtropical air masses as far north as 80 8 N lifted the tropopause by more than 3 km in 24h and cooled the stratosphere on a large scale. A widespread formation of thick cirrus clouds near the tropopause and of synoptic-scale polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) occurred as the temperature dropped below the thresholds for the existence of cloud particles. Additionally, mountain waves were excited by the strong flow at the western edge of the ridge across Svalbard, leading to the formation of mesoscale ice PSCs. The most recent IFS cycle using a horizontal resolution of 8 km globally reproduces the large-scaleandmesoscaleflowfeaturesandleadstoa remarkable agreement withthewavestructurerevealed by the spaceborne observations.


By arguing that qualia is meaning or understanding, a new framework for understanding consciousness is developed. In this way, the meaning of yellow and red are uncovered. The suggested solutions are that yellow means "source of light" and red means "important". Also, in the process of arguing that qualia is meaning, remarkable similarities in the structure of qualia are uncovered. In this way, a reason for why very hot and very cold water feel the same, is given. The same behaviour is also shown to take place for colours.


Very Good Jeeves! (1930) is a collection of eleven short stories starring Bertie Wooster in eleven alarming predicaments from which he has to be rescued by his peerless gentleman's gentleman. Whether Bertie is tangling with a red-headed ball of fire such as Roberta Wickham, dealing with an irate headmistress, placating a rampaging aunt, puncturing the wrong hot water bottle, singing 'Sonny Boy', or simply trying to concentrate on his golf handicap, Jeeves is always there to help - though rarely in ways which his employer expects. These brilliantly plotted stories give the essence of Wodehousian comedy.


The 200th anniversary of the birth of F. Engels comes at a time when his contribution to Marxism is being disputed by Neue Lekture and Sraffian authors, based on the alleged discovery of him having distorted Capital. The evidence presented by the new anti-Engelsionists is flimsy and essentially philological hair-splitting arguments. The common ground uniting them is their abhorrence for the existence of Marxism as a coherent theoretical tradition and as a weapon for the revolutionary struggle of the working class for the emancipation of human society.


This paper examines how Fyodor Dostoevsky was used as an example in the debate over genius as a pathological phenomenon in nineteenth century medicine and criminal anthropology. When Dostoevsky's novels became known in Western Europe medical interest in the relation between genius and insanity reached its pinnacle. A known epileptic, Dostoevsky was exceptionally well suited to illustrate Cesare Lombroso's theory of genius as an epileptoid psychosis. Dostoevsky was also claimed as an example by the rivalling Lyon school, whose representatives argued that Dostoevsky's life and works demonstrate that genius is a higher form of health rather than a pathological deviation.


Semantic Categorization of Online Video by Supraja Swarna As internet users are increasing day by day, the users of video-sharing site are also increasing. Video-sharing is becoming more and more popular in e-learing, but the current famous websites like youtube are not structured when it come to serving the purpose of providing educational videos for preschool and high school students. There is a need to fill building more educationally focused video site, where the content is more structured, easy to use, support both direct search and browsing, and follow a particular curriculum for preschool and high school students. This report discuss the issues like categorization and search interface of these sites and propose alternatives to existing ones out there. In this project, I have built an educational website for preschool, high school, and college level students concentrating on improved categorization and search interface of the site. This report provides detail description of my system and the results of comparison between my site and youtube. supraja swarna Page 3 12/15/2008 Semantic Categorization Of Online Video


We study 't Hooft anomalies of discrete groups in the framework of (1+1)-dimensional multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz states on the lattice. Using matrix product operators, general topological restrictions on conformal data are derived. An ansatz class allowing for optimization of MERA with an anomalous symmetry is introduced. We utilize this class to numerically study a family of Hamiltonians with a symmetric critical line. Conformal data is obtained for all irreducible projective representations of each anomalous symmetry twist, corresponding to definite topological sectors. It is numerically demonstrated that this line is a protected gapless phase. Finally, we implement a duality transformation between a pair of critical lines using our subclass of MERA.


It is becoming common clinical practice to shift prostate patients daily based on transabdominal ultrasound (US) or imaging of implanted fiducial markers. This paper investigates the dosimetric impact of these shifts by looking at five patients shifted using an optically guided 3D US localization system and treated with IMRT. Treatment plans were generated for each patient for the following 3 cases: (1) the initial preplan, which represents the ideal case in which no shifts are necessary; (2) a postplan incorporating each day's actual shifts; and (3) a postplan in which no shifts were made but the internal organs move by the amounts indicated by daily US imaging. Results show that when daily shifts are made, doses to the target, rectal wall, and bladder wall are nearly identical to those in the preplan. Equivalent uniform dose (EUD) and tumor control probability (TCP) for these plans were also the same as for the preplans. When no shifts were made, however, the dose distributions were degraded, and the computed target EUD and TCP were lower for all five patients. The magnitude of these differences varied: for three patients, the TCP was only 1%-2% lower than for the preplan. For the other two patients, however, the EUD was reduced by more than 10%, resulting in TCP reductions of 6% and 11%. These results indicate that for a symmetric beam arrangement and properly chosenmargins, shifting the patient each day and treating without recalculating the dose is unlikely toaffect local control or the sparing of normal tissues.


Early antebellum defenders of slavery acknowledged that slavery created problems for southern society. They contended, however, that slave society was better and more natural than other forms of social organization. Thomas R. Dew, William Harper, and James Henry Hammond each expressed a social philosophy in which slavery had a crucial role in preserving social order. They argued from the basis of social organicism, the idea that society should have an elite that controlled the masses. For all three men, slavery represented a system of order that helped balance the dangers of democracy. Significantly, however, all three men recognized that the slave system was not perfect, and despite their defense of slavery, argued that it was a human institution and therefore corruptible.


The sensor system is a key feature for RoboSub. It is expected to provide yaw, pitch, and roll information to the rest of the RoboSub software so that a control system can receive feedback about the current position of the sub. However, sensors have posed a large problem for the club in the past. This document will describe a preliminary investigation into some possible avenues for sensor data acquisition and will outline what the club has learned so far about sensors. This document will additionally outline the pro's and con's of different sensor systems.


Though it appears that the surface accumulation of soil nutrients and the shallower distribution of roots is not detrimental to crop growth and yield under no-tillage management, supportive data with respect to nutrient uptake are scarce. A field plot study was conducted over 3 yr utilizing four tillage treatments: (i) conventional tillage (moldboard plow); (ii) no-tillage (coulter); (iii) no-tillage with shallow (10 to 15 cm) in-row chisel; and (iv) no-tillage with deep (30 to 45 cm) in-row chisel. The objective was to determine the influence of tillage on nutrient uptake and yield of corn by: (i) measuring changes in distribution of soil nutrients; (ii) determining the nutrient status of corn plants; (iii) measuring rubidium (Rb) uptake by corn plants when Rb was placed at various row positions and depths in the soil profile; and (iv) measuring grain yields. No-tillage treatments resulted in a redistribution and concentration of soil nutrients at the soil surface, compared with conventional tillage. However, the nutrient status of plants grown under no-tillage management was equal or superior to those grown by conventional tillage. Furthermore, the activity of roots and the extraction of water and nutrients, as evidenced by Rb uptake, was greater for no-tillage compared with conventional tillage. No-tillage, whether in-row chisel was included or not, resulted in larger plants and greater grain yields. No evidence was obtained that would support deeper placement of nutrients or in-row chisel operations to improve subsoil rooting under no-tillage.


purity hydrogen and the valuable by-product of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can be produced by the methane catalytic decomposition. The methane conversion and the performance of CNTs were determined by the choices of catalysts and the condition of decomposition reaction. In this paper, Ni/MgO and Ni/O-D (oxidized diamond) catalysts were prepared by wetness impregnation method. The effects of reaction temperature and space velocity of methane on the methane conversion were investigated in a fixed-bed. The surface area, structure and micrography were characterized with BET, XPS, SEM, EDS technology. The results showed that the conversion of methane was above 8% within 150 min (T=5000) for 33Ni/O-D catalyst and higher than 25% within 120 min (T=6500) for 41Ni/MgO catalyst. The initial conversion increased with the increasing temperature of the decomposition reaction, but their catalytic activities decreased rapidly while at too higher temperature. To decrease the space velocity of methane was propitious to promote the methane conversion, but not favor of the hydrogen yields. The appearance of carbon resulted from the methane decomposition lied on the support type and the condition of catalytic reaction. It presented as fiber shape on the surface of Ni/O-D at the relatively lower temperature such as 5000 and 5500, but as grain shape stacked on and overlayed on the surface of the metal nickel while at 6500. The carbon fiber can form on the Ni/MgO surface at 6500and the diameter of the carbon fiber increased with the decreasing space velocity.


This paper departs from a problem that architects often face: do they really have to choose between their interest in the production of built objects (in their shape, their spatiality, etc.) and their commitment to broader social concerns? Must architects focus on social concerns at the expense of the built object in order to be morally responsible? These questions touch on the relations between autonomy and criticality which have been fiercely debated in recent architectural theory: does criticality rest on autonomy? After introducing these controversies and disentangling the notion of autonomy at their center, I propose to look into the philosophical tradition of pragmatism as offering a way out. Following some recent interpretations of pragmatism, this paper addresses the possibility of an immanent critique, the reconciliation of ethics and aesthetics, the way ethnographies show architectural objects as active participants in design practice, and investigates how a pragmatist view of ecology invites sensitivity to objects' moral claims.


BACKGROUND Spinal subdural epiarachnoid hygroma (SSEH) after lumbar laminectomy is an extremely rare complication. OBSERVATIONS An 84-year-old man presented to the hospital with lower back pain, radicular pain, and numbness in the lateral aspect of the left leg. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed anterior lumbar spondylolisthesis at L3, severe disc herniation at L3–4, and severe lumbar spinal canal stenosis at L3–4 and L4–5. Lumbar laminectomy at L3–4 and L4–5 and discectomy at L3–4 were performed without complications such as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leakage and durotomy intraoperatively. Although lower back pain and numbness at the lateral aspect of the left leg were resolved postoperatively, postoperative MRI showed spinal nerve deviation to the ventral side due to SSEH from T12 to S1. Conservative therapy was performed for asymptomatic SSEH, and MRI 1 week postoperatively indicated improved ventral spinal nerve deviation and reduced SSEH. LESSONS SSEHs after posterior decompression without durotomy are extremely rare. Asymptomatic SSEHs may resolve with conservative treatment. However, surgery should be performed to decompress hygroma in patients with symptomatic SSEH.


Abstract. This study is concerned with the intrinsic temporal scales of the variability in the surface solar irradiance (SSI). The data consist of decennial time series of daily means of the SSI obtained from high-quality measurements of the broadband solar radiation impinging on a horizontal plane at ground level, issued from different Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) ground stations around the world. First, embedded oscillations sorted in terms of increasing timescales of the data are extracted by empirical mode decomposition (EMD). Next, Hilbert spectral analysis is applied to obtain an amplitude-modulation–frequency-modulation (AM–FM) representation of the data. The time-varying nature of the characteristic timescales of variability, along with the variations in the signal intensity, are thus revealed. A novel, adaptive null hypothesis based on the general statistical characteristics of noise is employed in order to discriminate between the different features of the data, those that have a deterministic origin and those being realizations of various stochastic processes. The data have a significant spectral peak corresponding to the yearly variability cycle and feature quasi-stochastic high-frequency variability components, irrespective of the geographical location or of the local climate. Moreover, the amplitude of this latter feature is shown to be modulated by variations in the yearly cycle, which is indicative of nonlinear multiplicative cross-scale couplings. The study has possible implications on the modeling and the forecast of the surface solar radiation, by clearly discriminating the deterministic from the quasi-stochastic character of the data, at different local timescales.


In this chapter we analyse 'intersubjectivity' and related psychological concepts. We focus on distinguishing between causal and definitional issues in early social development, between categorical explanations of what an organism is doing and causal explanations of how or why it is doing it. We argue that intersubjectivity is a taxonomic rather than a causal explanatory concept, a technical concept used to classify interactive behaviours and abilities rather than to denote vehicles or causes of those behaviours and abilities. We begin by examining the idea that intersubjective engagement involves the sharing of mental states and argue that the role of mental states and experience in intersubjective engagement is misconstrued. In the final sections we consider the meaning of declarative pointing.


Background. Neonates in our neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) receive a large amount of radiation with X-rays (XRs) being done daily, even more often with reintubation, repositioning of endotracheal tubes (ETTs) and confirmation thereof, which has been our NICU policy for many years.  Objective. To investigate the feasibility of determining the position of ETTs in neonates by using bedside ultrasonography (BUS), and to compare the results with those obtained from chest XR (CXR) findings. Methods. A prospective, cross-sectional study was done on intubated neonates in the NICU at Universitas Academic Hospital, Bloemfontein, to determine the position of ETTs by using BUS. Results. Thirty intubated patients included in this study had a median age of 13.5 days and a median weight of 1.6 kg. Ninety-three per cent of ETT placements were considered optimal when visualised by BUS, while 73.3% were considered to be placed optimally when CXR was viewed. When CXR and BUS findings were compared regarding optimal placing, the agreement was poor (κ=0.10; 95% confidence interval –0.2 - 0.4). In four patients, the distance from the aortic arch to the tip of the ETT was outside the expected range of 1.5 - 2.2 cm: in two patients it was 2.25 cm (6.7%). BUS measurements were done mainly in extended head (53.3%) or neutral (36.7%) position.  Conclusion. Although poor agreement between CXR and BUS findings was obtained, possibly because of handling of patients with secondary shifting of ETTs, BUS was found not to be comparable with CXR, but an alternative feasible method to determine the optimal position of ETTs in the trachea in neonates when using other reference points, with the added advantage of no radiation exposure.


Twenty immunocompetent patients, four females and 16 males, with severe recurrent genital herpes (median number of recurrences the previous year 16, range (8-24] entered an open continuous long-term suppressive treatment with oral acyclovir (ACV) for 12 months. The study included a dose-titration schedule: (ACV, 200 mg x 4/1-3 months, ACV, 400 mg x 2/4-6 months, ACV, 200 mg x 2/7-9 months, and ACV, 400 mg x 1/10-12 months). Patients with recurrences on steps two and three received an alternative dose of ACV, 200 mg x 3. Otherwise patients entered the previous dose-step. Five (20%) of patients were completely free of symptoms (recurrences and abortive lesions) during the four dose-reduction periods. A further nine patients (50%) could be dose-reduced to 200 mg x 3 without symptoms. Isolates from three patients showed a decrease in virus sensitivity after ceasing treatment. In conclusion, 14/20 of treated patients could be dose reduced to 200 mg x 2-3 without selection of HSV strains showing clinically important decreases in sensitivity towards ACV.


This note gives an introduction to Lagrangian field theories in the presence of boundaries. After an overview of the classical aspects, the cohomological formalisms to resolve singularities in the bulk and in the boundary theories (the BV and the BFV formalisms, respectively) are recalled. One of the goals here (and in [arXiv:1201.0290]) is to show how the latter two formalisms can be put together in a consistent way, also in view of perturbative quantization.


The chemical affinity of graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets with radionuclides (Eu(III) and U(VI)) was determined by macroscopic, spectroscopic and modeling techniques. The macroscopic results showed that the adsorption of Eu(III) and U(VI) on GO nanosheets was independent of ionic strength, indicating that inner-sphere surface complexation predominated their adsorption. The maximum adsorption capacities calculated from a Langmuir model at pH 4.0 and T = 303 K were 208.33 mg U(VI) and 28.70 mg Eu(III) per gram of GO nanosheets, respectively. No hysteresis was observed for both Eu(III) and U(VI) on GO nanosheets when desorption was initiated by lowering solution pH. While desorption was induced by replacing the radionuclide supernatant liquid with radionuclide-free electrolyte solution, the adsorption-desorption hysteresis was observed for U(VI) but not for Eu(III), indicating that the chemical affinity of GO nanosheets with U(vi) was stronger than that of GO nanosheets with Eu(III). The adsorption behaviors of Eu(III) and U(VI) on GO nanosheets can be fitted by a double diffuse layer surface complexation model with the mononuclear monodentate >SOM((n-1)+) and >SOMOH((n-2)+) complexes, and larger log K values of U(vi) was observed as compared to those of Eu(iii). According to the spectroscopic analysis, the irreversible adsorption of U(vi) on GO nanosheets at variable radionuclide concentrations was attributed to the oxygen-containing functional groups.


Perfect reconstruction oversampled filter banks are equivalent to a particular class of frames in l/sup 2/(Z). These frames are the subject of this paper. First, the necessary and sufficient conditions of a filter bank for implementing a frame or a tight frame expansion are established, as well as a necessary and sufficient condition for perfect reconstruction using FIR filters after an FIR analysis. Complete parameterizations of oversampled filter banks satisfying these conditions are given. Further, we study the condition under which the frame dual to the frame associated with an FIR filter bank is also FIR and give a parameterization of a class of filter banks satisfying this property. Then, we focus on non-subsampled filter banks. Non-subsampled filter banks implement transforms similar to continuous-time transforms and allow for very flexible design. We investigate the relations of these filter banks to continuous-time filtering and illustrate the design flexibility by giving a procedure for designing maximally flat two-channel filter banks that yield highly regular wavelets with a given number of vanishing moments.


Proactive public administrators in modern American society are challenged to know and respond to the needs of their diverse constituencies if they are to direct responsive government agencies. However, more than just knowing citizens' needs and responding in kind unilaterally, local government in the community era is expected to engage the public in participative governance. This article describes how one such entity—the police department—is changing with regard to a philosophical shift in how it must conduct business in the future, and in turn, how it might employ community-oriented research methods to assess its progress and effectiveness among the citizens it serves.


Western countries have discovered factors influencing small-to-medium enterprises (SME) internationalisation, yet Eastern nations are still struggling for empirical evidence. This article seeks to investigate the influential factors, identify the most influential characteristics driving SMEs to internationalise and develop a model of SME internationalisation within an Eastern-developing nation, Malaysia. A panel of 16 experts, including academicians, policymakers, supporting government agencies, the Chamber of Commerce and research institutes took part in long distance telephone conversations. To ensure the authenticity of the experts' stances, they were selected based on their positions, qualifications, affiliations, age and length of working experience. The Expert Panel was identified from the internet and through personal contacts. Majority of the experts involve directly with the SME development in Malaysia. The underlying assumption of this Expert Panel is to give relevant opinions and a legitimate understanding of the internationalisation process of Malaysian SME. The findings from a modified Delphi Technique indicate that networking is the most influential factor, followed by firm characteristics, industry factor, external influence and motivational aspects. Therefore, a Malaysian model of the factors influencing SME internationalization is derived. To deal with complexity of networking as a crucial means to internationalization, a networking linkages model is proposed for practicality. In particular, this study provides some insights into SMEs internationalisation process and identifies suggestions for future research.


The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of organics and aqueous extracts of some aromatic and medicinal plants harvested in Agadir region (Morocco), against second stage juveniles of Meloidogyne spp. The four plants used are: Asteriscus imbricatus, Lavendula dentata, Pulicaria mauritanica and Globularia alypum. The best results were obtained with A. imbricatus extracts: petroleum ether and chloroform extracts induced respectively 89, 31% and 92, 71% of mortality at 2000 ppm, while the aqueous induced 78, 76% of mortality at 20000 ppm. For this reason these extracts have been tested against Meloidogyne spp in vivo. The results of in vivo test showed that both nonpolar extracts petroleum ether and chloroform of A. imbricatus have an important nematicidal activity at 6000 ppm similar to the effect of chemical nematicid, while the aqueous extract was ineffective. Then the organic extracts of this plant were subjected to a phytochemical screening to get an overview on their metabolites secondary composition. The results showed that the effective extracts in vitro and in vivo are distinguished by the presence of terpenes. The activity demonstrated by A. imbricatus was good enough to propose this plant for further studies at greenhouse and field stages to determine its efficacy in soil.


"Banks won't give a mortgage loan to someone who is only going to be in the country for 1 year," declared the real estate agent. His remark shocked me. I was a tenure-track faculty member at the time, but I was deemed unworthy to receive a line of credit because of my visa situation. I'm a citizen of the Philippines, and the visa that my U.S. institution obtained for me had to be renewed each year. So, on paper it looked as though I only had permission to be in the country for 1 year. My wife and I encountered many such hurdles because of my visa—and they ultimately drove me to quit my faculty position and leave the country.

 ![][1]

ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER

> "Don't sign … until you know that you'll have what you need in your new country."

In hindsight, I didn't take the visa application process seriously enough when I was negotiating my job offer. I was so excited about landing a tenure-track position that I didn't take time to think through what kind of visa and accommodations I would need to make my personal life work. I also assumed that the university had a system in place to deal with foreign hires. I said yes to the job offer and signed on the dotted line.

The first sign of trouble came when I tried to buy a house in our new city. I had moved there ahead of my wife and 1-year-old daughter so that I could look for a neighborhood where we could settle down. But as the real estate agent predicted, mortgage lenders didn't want to gamble on someone with a 1-year visa. I signed a lease for an apartment instead.

After my wife joined me, we needed a car because our sprawling community didn't have a strong public transportation system. But we had trouble securing credit for that, too. In the end, we had to put down more than $3000 as a down payment.

The third, and final, straw came when my wife wanted to return to her work as a nurse after her maternity leave. Prior to our move, she had obtained a license to practice nursing in the United States. But she couldn't apply for jobs because of legal restrictions associated with my visa. That left her feeling frustrated and isolated, unable to establish a professional life in a new country.

Stress ran high in our small one-bedroom apartment. The logical fix to our problems was for me to secure permanent residency status, otherwise known as a green card. But that just brought more problems. I pleaded with my department chair, dean, and provost to support my green card application. But it took 6 months for the university to agree to sponsor my application, and I didn't know how long the review and approval process would take on top of that.

Exasperated by the entire ordeal, I applied for jobs in countries that I thought would be more supportive of foreign workers and their families. I was offered a faculty job in the Netherlands and, within 3 months, my family and I moved across the Atlantic.

That was 1 year ago, and we've been much happier ever since. My wife, who is allowed to work in the Netherlands, is completing a course toward a nursing certification while our daughter, now 3 years old, is at government-subsidized day care. We are renting a nice house and are looking for one to buy. And we've been helped by a government policy that grants a 30% tax exemption for foreign hires for a period of 5 years.

I'm glad we've ended up where we are. But when I look back, I wish that I'd been more prepared and proactive when negotiating my first faculty position. I could have asked the university to apply for a multiyear visa—which, I later learned, is what human resources staff had done for other faculty hires. I could have also requested a guarantee that the university would sponsor my application for permanent residency within a certain period of time and would pay for some immigration-related expenses, such as green card application fees.

I hope that other immigrant scientists take heed from my tale. If you land a job, don't sign on the dotted line until you know that you'll have what you need in your new country.

 [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif


In this study, we use institution-level data for the period 2004 to 2016 from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System to examine the excess revenues of private, four-year nonprofit institutions. We present data on the magnitude of excess revenues for these institutions over this period, examine how excess revenues are associated with different types of private institutions, and how within-institution excess revenues are affected by changes in time-varying factors, such as their size, selectivity, revenue structure, and expense distribution. We find that across most years in our sample, private, four-year nonprofits averaged double-digit excess returns. The results show that variations over time in excess revenues are related to a number of factors, including institution size, yield rates, net tuition revenue, and tuition discount rates.


CCNA Quick Reference Sheets (Digital Short Cut)Eric Rivard, Jim DohertyISBN-10: 1-58705-460-4ISBN-13: 978-1-58705-460-0As a final exam preparation tool, the CCNA Quick Reference Sheets provide a concise review of all objectives on the new CCNA exam (640-802). This digital Short Cut provides you with detailed, graphic-based information, highlighting only the key topics in cram-style format.With this document as your guide, you will review topics on router and switch configuration and troubleshooting, wireless LAN (WLAN), security, IPv6, access control lists (ACL), NAT, Routing Information Protocol (RIP), OSPF, EIGRP configuration and troubleshooting, Frame Relay, and VPNs. These fact-filled Quick Reference Sheets allow you to get important information at a glance, helping you to focus your study on areas of weakness and to enhance memory retention of essential exam concepts.


This study provides a test of the presumption that police recruits with a diverse background, undertaking comparatively long academic training, will refrain from non-legalistic practices. This is tested by longitudinal survey data, covering two cohorts of Swedish police recruits. The results show stable support for the legalistic perspective during academy training. However, during on-the-job training, the recruits become more positive towards non-legalistic practices. This reorientation takes place quite irrespective of the type of duty to which they are assigned. Additionally, neither the recruits' nor their parents' level of education seems to matter. There is some effect of age and gender: young male recruits are somewhat more prone to adopt Dirty Harry-inspired measures – that is, achieving essential ends by tarnished means.


The IPv6 Neighbor Discovery's Router Advertisement message contains
an 8-bit field reserved for single-bit flags. Several protocols have
reserved flags in this field and others are preparing to reserve a
sufficient number of flags to exhaust the field. This document defines
an option to the Router Advertisement message that expands the number
of flag bits available. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


Reasoning about preferences is a major issue in many decision making problems. Recently, a new logic for handling preferences, called Qualitative Choice Logic (QCL), was presented. This logic adds to classical propositional logic a new connective, called ordered disjunction symbolized by ×. That new connective is used to express preferences between alternatives. QCL was not designed to handle conditional preferences, even if it is possible to express an implication with a preference on the left hand side, for instance "(Air France × Virgin) ⇒ Hotel Package". However, using QCL semantics, there is no difference between such material implication "(Virgin × Air France) ⇒ Hotel Package" and the purely propositional formula "(Air France ∨ Virgin) ⇒ Hotel Package ". Indeed, the negation in QCL gets rid of nested ordered disjunctions. Furthermore, the negation in QCL misses some desirable properties from propositional calculus. In this paper, we present a new semantics for the QCL language that addresses those problems. We describe a general framework for handling qualitative preferences. That framework is based on normal form functions that transform general QCL formulas into basic choice formulas, which are simple formulas (ordered disjunction of propositional formulas). We formulate the properties of our normal form function that overcome current QCL limitations.


We show that polarization modulated and polarization multiplexed transmission may be significantly impaired by the polarization scattering induced by intra-channel cross-phase modulation and four-wave mixing. In polarization multiplexed transmission, channel interleaving may be used to mitigate the effect when two-pulse collisions are dominant.


This study presents a systematic comparison of portfolio insurance strategies. We implement a bootstrap-based hypothesis test to assess statistical significance of the differences in a variety of downside-oriented risk and performance measures for pairs of portfolio insurance strategies. Our comparison of different strategies considers the following distinguishing characteristics: static versus dynamic protection; initial wealth versus cumulated wealth protection; model-based versus model-free protection; and strong floor compliance versus probabilistic floor compliance. Our results indicate that the classical portfolio insurance strategies synthetic put and constant proportion portfolio insurance (CPPI) provide superior downside protection compared to a simple stop-loss trading rule and also exhibit a higher risk-adjusted performance in many cases (dependent on the applied performance measure). Analyzing recently developed strategies, neither the TIPP strategy (as an 'improved' CPPI strategy) nor the dynamic VaR-strategy provides significant improvements over the more traditional portfolio insurance strategies.


This paper reports about the recent advances towards establishing a common platform for adaptive educational hypermedia (AEH) authoring. We present the conversion from MOT, a dedicated authoring system, to AHA! used in this context as delivery system for AEH. Moreover, we describe two new representation languages that emerged in the process: a common format for defining the static material, CAF, and an extended adaptation language for the description of the dynamic behaviour, LAG. Finally, some evaluations are shown and conclusions are drawn.


Through a number of comprehensive reviews, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has recommended that healthcare organizations develop safety cultures to align delivery system processes with the workforce requirements to improve patient outcomes. Until health systems can provide safer care environments, patients remain at risk for suboptimal care and adverse outcomes. Health science researchers have begun to explore how safety cultures might act as an essential system feature to improve organizational outcomes. Since safety cultures are established through modification in employee safety perspective and work behavior, human resource (HR) professionals need to contribute to this developing organizational domain. The IOM indicates individual employee behaviors cumulatively provide the primary antecedent for organizational safety and quality outcomes. Yet, many safety culture scholars indicate the concept is neither theoretically defined nor consistently applied and researched as the terms safety culture, safety climate, and safety attitude are interchangeably used to represent the same concept. As such, this paper examines the intersection of organizational culture and healthcare safety by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings of safety culture, exploring the constructs for measurement, and assessing the current state of safety culture research. Safety culture draws from the theoretical perspectives of sociology (represented by normal accident theory), organizational psychology (represented by high reliability theory), and human factors (represented by the aviation framework). By understanding not only the origins but also the empirical safety culture research and the associated intervention initiatives, healthcare professionals can design appropriate HR strategies to address the system characteristics that adversely affect patient outcomes. Increased emphasis on human resource management research is particularly important to the development of safety cultures. This paper contributes to the existing healthcare literature by providing the first comprehensive critical analysis of the theory, research, and practice that comprise contemporary safety culture science.


Abstract:Former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych's misrule, the popular reaction against it, and the manner of his downfall disrupted the very foundations of Ukraine's still nascent and defective state. While in office, Yanukovych's greed for power and wealth proved devastating to both him and his country. In order to grasp the reasons for the destructive effect of Yanukovych's presidency, one needs to look at the way in which he reconfigured Ukraine's political regime and the strategies that he adopted to maintain power.


Abstract: Natural and anthropogenic eutrophication can increase food supply to basal consumers in aquatic food webs. All else being equal, increased food supply is expected to relax life history trade-offs between egg size and number, resulting in a reduction in egg size over time as individuals that produce more numerous, small eggs exhibit greater fitness. We tested this hypothesis by comparing the sizes of larval shells (PI) of the marine bivalve Nuculana acuta in living and death assemblages collected from surficial seafloor sediments on the Alabama continental shelf; PI size is positively correlated with egg size and can be measured from adult shells. We found that the mean PI size of living N. acuta was approximately three microns smaller than that of the associated death assemblage and that this difference was robust to potential taphonomic biases. This life history shift occurred relatively recently as no trend exists in PI size over the past 3100 years. The live-dead disagreement that we observed is consistent with the history of anthropogenic eutrophication in the Mississippi Bight. These data provide a baseline for comparison with other regions in the Gulf of Mexico that have more sustained histories of anthropogenic eutrophication. More broadly, live-dead comparisons of molluscan life history coupled with age dating of molluscan shells can complement community-level metrics when assessing the impacts of anthropogenic eutrophication on coastal ecosystems, and offer a unique study system for investigating life history adaptation in a field context.


This paper describes the use of naturally occurring nanoporous zeolite (clinoptilolite) for a miniature Knudsen pump. Based on the principle of thermal transpiration, these pumps have no moving parts, and are attractive for applications ranging from gas analyzers to cooling systems. The Knudsen pump requires flow channels that are in the free molecular or transitional flow regimes. Consequently, at atmospheric pressure, the pore diameters should be les100 nm, and large numbers of pores are necessary to permit meaningful flow. The initial prototype, operating at ap50 K above room temperature, achieves a flow rate of ap0.12 seem with a small pressure load at the output, or a maximum pressure of ap2.5 kPa when the flow is blocked. Its packaged volume is 55times55times12 mm .


Current thought in neuropsychology, philosophy of cognition, and science education is synthesized to provide a perspective on modern learning theory and instruction, especially in relation to some emergent ideas in science education reform. A critical analysis of current philosophical perspectives suggests that older dualistic views and those based solely on biological structural-functional analyses may be insufficient to explain an active role of the learner in information processing as included in modern learning theories. An approach emphasizing correlations and patterns in neurocognitive processing of information is suggested. Ten principles of modern neurocognitive science are presented as a context for an analysis of some current models of learning and instruction in science education, categorized generally as "learner-centered." Issues addressed include information processing, constructional processes in memory, self-regulation, problem-solving, and the role of multimodal instructional strategies in enhancing learning. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 81:67–89, 1997.


OBJECTIVE To determine whether the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) catalytic subunits p110-α and p110-β play a role in liver steatosis induced by a high-fat diet (HFD). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Liver-specific p110-α and p110-β knockout mice and control animals for each group were fed an HFD or normal chow for 8 weeks. Biochemical assays and quantitative real-time PCR were used to measure triglyceride, expression of lipogenic and gluconeogenic genes, and activity of protein kinases downstream of PI3K in liver lysates. Fatty acid uptake and incorporation into triglycerides were assessed in isolated hepatocytes. RESULTS Hepatic triglyceride levels in HFD-fed p110-α−/− mice were 84 ± 3% lower than in p110-α+/+ mice, whereas the loss of p110-β did not significantly alter liver lipid accumulation. p110-α−/− livers also showed a reduction in atypical protein kinase C activity and decreased mRNA and protein expression of several lipogenic genes. Hepatocytes isolated from p110-α−/− mice exhibited decreased palmitate uptake and reduced fatty acid incorporation into triglycerides as compared with p110-α+/+ cells, and hepatic expression of liver fatty acid binding protein was lower in p110-α−/− mice fed the HFD as compared with controls. Ablation of neither p110-α nor p110-β ameliorated glucose intolerance induced by the HFD, and genes involved in gluconeogenesis were upregulated in the liver of both knockout animals. CONCLUSIONS PI3K p110-α, and not p110-β, promotes liver steatosis in mice fed an HFD. p110-α might exert this effect in part through activation of atypical protein kinase C, upregulation of lipogenesis, and increased uptake of fatty acids.


Scholars have applied the term "ambient" to journalism to describe the omnipresent nature of news in society through the proliferation of one-way media into public spaces. This approach is based on a one-directional model of mass media where the audience is framed as the receptor of communication. However this paper suggests that we need to reassess the meaning of ambient as applied to news and journalism due to the participatory and interactive characteristics of the networked digital media. The Internet has changed the relationship between journalists and audiences from a one-way, asymmetric model of communication to a more participatory and collective system, where citizens have the ability to participate in the news production process. This paper argues that ambient news has evolved into ambient journalism – an awareness system that offers diverse means to collect, communicate, share and display news and information, from both professional and non-professional sources.


This paper proposes a novel extremely efficient, fully-parallelizable, task-specific algorithm for the computation of global point-wise correspondences in images and videos. Our algorithm, the Global Patch Collider, is based on detecting unique collisions between image points using a collection of learned tree structures that act as conditional hash functions. In contrast to conventional approaches that rely on pairwise distance computation, our algorithm isolates distinctive pixel pairs that hit the same leaf during traversal through multiple learned tree structures. The split functions stored at the intermediate nodes of the trees are trained to ensure that only visually similar patches or their geometric or photometric transformed versions fall into the same leaf node. The matching process involves passing all pixel positions in the images under analysis through the tree structures. We then compute matches by isolating points that uniquely collide with each other ie. fell in the same empty leaf in multiple trees. Our algorithm is linear in the number of pixels but can be made constant time on a parallel computation architecture as the tree traversal for individual image points is decoupled. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method by using it to perform optical flow matching and stereo matching on some challenging benchmarks. Experimental results show that not only is our method extremely computationally efficient, but it is also able to match or outperform state of the art methods that are much more complex.


Network coding is becoming more and more popular in recent years for its ability to improve network throughput and robustness. In this paper, we propose a scheme of joint network coding and channel coding based on Turbo-BICM over multiple-access channel (MAC). The scheme with only a turbo decoder significantly reduces the complexity of system. Moreover, it can offer the best error performance in the high SNR regime. These conclusions are validated by both theoretical analysis and simulation results. Interesting, we also find that a detached scheme, which first operates channel coding then network coding, approaches the upper bound in the low SNR regime.


The underlying pathology of Isolated Coronary Artery Ectasia (ICAE) still remains unknown; however, endothelial dysfunction (ED) may be responsible for the disease process. The aim of this study was to assess the endothelial functions of patients with ICAE in comparison to patients with normal coronary arteries (NCA) by using flow-mediated dilatation (FMD) in the brachial artery. Thirty patients with ICAE, and 30 control subjects with angiographically NCA were included in this study. The FMD was measured in all patients using a high-resolution ultrasonographic system. The results showed that the baseline brachial artery diameters in patients with ICAE were not statistically different from those in patients with NCA (4.3 ± 0.3 vs.4.2 ± 0.3 mm, respectively, p = 0.265). However, the forearm FMD of the patients with ICAE was significantly lower than the values in the control group (8.5 ± 4.0 vs. 13.7 ± 3.0%, p <0.001). In addition, patients with ICAE have significantly higher levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol compared to the control group (114.5 ± 28.8 vs. 97.9 ± 31.5 mg/dL, p = 0.03). Therefore, we conclude that patients with ICAE have more severe ED than patients with NCA, which supports the hypothesis that atherosclerosis may be involved in the pathogenesis of coronary ectasia. Hyperlipidemia may have a key role in the disease process.


Planar motion of a non-deformable wheel under the action of non-ideal unilateral constraints is considered. The mathematical description of this phenomenon has a form of a non-smooth initial value problem. The non-smoothness of this problem means that its solution is determined by an absolutely continuous function having a discontinuous first derivative. For this reason, a collision problem describing abrupt changes of velocity has been formulated next to the equations of motion specifying the acceleration. The non-idealness of constraints means that the constraint reaction force includes also a component resulting from the friction between the wheel and the constraints. Differential equations specifying acceleration of the wheel making contact with the constraints and algebraic equations for determining the changes in the wheel's velocity at the moment of collision have been formulated in the paper. The principal task in these formulations is to determine the reaction forces of the considered constraints. This task is specified by the relationships between acceleration and the constraint reaction force components. In the description of the collision, these relations refer to the post-collision velocities and reaction force impulses. For determining an approximate solution of the formulated wheel motion problem, an original numerical method and a computer program for wheel motion simulation have been developed. Selected results illustrating the changes in displacements and velocity have been presented.


Fruit and vegetable consumption among California's fourth and fifth graders appears to be lower than in adults, and there is little literature reporting large-scale interventions that increase consumption. A oneyear evaluation funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was conducted with 3,966 students in 49 schools located in three geographically distant school communities. One community conducted intervention activities in the schools (T1), one conducted activities in school and community channels (T2), and the third served as a control. Behavioral and attitudinal changes were based on one-day food diaries administered preintervention and postintervention. Consumption rose in T1 and T2% and 14%, respectively, while dropping 12% in the control group (p<.05, control different from T1 and T2. While behavioral changes can occur in the school environment, even larger changes can be made when the school interventions are accompanied by community-wide involvement.


Annotating datasets is one of the main costs in nowadays supervised learning. The goal of weak supervision is to enable models to learn using only forms of labelling which are cheaper to collect, as partial labelling. This is a type of incomplete annotation where, for each datapoint, supervision is cast as a set of labels containing the real one. The problem of supervised learning with partial labelling has been studied for specific instances such as classification, multi-label, ranking or segmentation, but a general framework is still missing. This paper provides a unified framework based on structured prediction and on the concept of infimum loss to deal with partial labelling over a wide family of learning problems and loss functions. The framework leads naturally to explicit algorithms that can be easily implemented and for which proved statistical consistency and learning rates. Experiments confirm the superiority of the proposed approach over commonly used baselines.


The characterization of the temporal profile of plasmonic fields is important both from the fundamental point of view and for potential applications in ultrafast nanoplasmonics. It has been proposed by Stockman et al (2007 Nat. Photonics 1 539) that the plasmonic electric field can be directly measured by the attosecond streaking technique; however, streaking from nanoplasmonic fields differs from streaking in the gas phase because of the field localization on the nanoscale. To understand streaking in this new regime, we have performed numerical simulations of attosecond streaking from fields localized in nanoantennas. In this paper, we present simulated streaked spectra for realistic experimental conditions and discuss the plasmonic field reconstruction from these spectra. We show that under certain circumstances when spatial averaging is included, a robust electric field reconstruction is possible.


Modern day vehicles come equipped with a large number of sensors, actuators and ECU's with sophisticated control algorithms, which requires engineering activities from various disciplines. An automotive system is developed in various stages with multiple stakeholders involved at each stage. Each stakeholder provides a distinct view point on system representation, which makes it challenging to bridge the gaps in developing a holistic understanding of the system functionality. The safety critical nature of automotive systems induces timing and dependability concerns that must be addressed at all stages. Furthermore, the relatively long development life-cycle of automotive systems makes it imperative to have a clear strategy for long term evolution. To deal with these challenges, model based techniques are applied in the industry for automotive systems development. System engineers use a suitable architecture description language (ADL) to represent the system architecture at several levels of abstraction. A number of system architecture description and software architecture standards have been developed in the automotive industry to streamline the development process. However, most of these standards are elaborate and need a fair amount of understanding before they can be applied. In this work, we explore the application of existing system architecture description and software architecture standards. Our main contribution is a Power Window Controller (PWC) system demonstrator that illustrates the methodology described by EAST-ADL and AUTOSAR. Through this case study, we intend to highlight the key aspects and gaps in the application of EAST-ADL & AUTOSAR. Starting from features and requirements, we have analyzed the impact of architectural decisions at each stage of automotive system development. We also performed Design verification, timing analysis & dependability analysis to ensure correctness of the system. Lastly, considerations regarding variability have been discussed to support evolution.


Production potential of blood clam (Anadara granosa) in Bang-tabun Bay was examined by integrating data for size distribution, growth rate, and aquatic environmental factors. Collection of data was conducted from December 2011 to May 2012. Blood clam culture areas from three muddy tidal flats; Don Bon flat, Don Klang flat, and Don Tuen flat located from the north to the south of the bay, respectively, were studied. Length and weight of clams at each station varied each month depending on the growth potential of the clam and culture management practices of farmers. The growth rate of blood clam throughout this study period ranged from 0.1–0.8 g/month. The results revealed significant correlations between blood clam growth rate, chlorophyll a and salinity. Blood clam growth rate was most rapid at the station on Don Tuen flat, which exhibited the highest overall salinity and chlorophyll a. Don Klang flat and Don Bon flat can be adversely affected by freshwater runoff and food availability limiting the utility of these areas. Overall results indicate that among the three muddy tidal flats selected for this study, Don Tuen flat is the most suitable area for blood clam culture.


Feature request management systems are popular tools for gathering and negotiating stakeholders' change requests during system evolution. While these frameworks encourage stakeholder participation in distributed software development, their lack of structure also raises challenges. We present a study of requirements defects and failures in large scale feature request management systems, which we build upon to propose and evaluate two distinct solutions for key challenges in feature requests. The discussion forums on which feature request management systems are based make it difficult for developers to understand stakeholders' real needs. We propose a tool-supported argumentation framework, DoArgue, that integrates into feature request management systems allowing stakeholders to annotate comments on whether a suggested feature should be implemented. DoArgue aims to help stakeholders provide input into requirements activity that is more effective and understandable to developers. A case study evaluation suggests that DoArgue encapsulates the key discussion concepts on implementing a feature, and requires little additional effort to use. Therefore it could be adopted to clarify the complexities of requirements discussions in distributed settings. Deciding how much upfront requirements analysis to perform on feature requests is another important challenge: too little may result in inadequate functionalities being developed, costly changes, and wasted development effort; too much is a waste of time and resources. We propose an automated tool-supported framework for predicting failures early in a feature request's life-cycle when a decision is made on whether to implement it. A cost-benefit model assesses the value of conducting additional requirements analysis on a body of feature requests predicted to fail. An evaluation on six large-scale projects shows that prediction models provide more value than the best baseline predictors for many failure types. This suggests that failure prediction during requirements elicitation is a promising approach for localising, guiding, and deciding how much requirements analysis to conduct.


Researchers believe that rice in developed countries such as Japan became an inferior good a few decades ago. This study employs the flexible complete demand system for the recent cross-sectional data in Japan. Our results clearly show that rice in Japan is a normal good contrary to the preceding studies. The objective of this research is to analyze the food consumption patterns and to conduct econometric analysis of food demand structure. We use the monthly basis cross-sectional household data, Annual Report on the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) in 1997. Food items are non-glutinous rice, bread, noodle, fresh fish, and shellfish, fresh meat, milk, eggs, fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, fats and oil, and food away from home. We apply various single equation models: Working-Leser model is estimated by OLS, Heckman's two-step estimator, and Tobit estimator. All coefficients have correct signs and are statistically significant. For the complete demand system analysis, we apply the almost ideal demand (AIDS) system. To correct a censored dependent variable problem, we additionally utilize a censored regression approach. Results from AIDS models show that the expenditure elasticity of rice is positive and close to one. Marshallian and Hicksian own-price elasticities for rice are highly elastic for all models. Fresh meats and rice are mild complements in all models; however, fresh fish and rice show the mixed results.


Relative Navigation of Micro Air Vehicles in GPS-Degraded Environments David Orton Wheeler Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, BYU Doctor of Philosophy Most micro air vehicles rely heavily on reliable GPS measurements for proper estimation and control, and therefore struggle in GPS-degraded environments. When GPS is not available, the global position and heading of the vehicle is unobservable. This dissertation establishes the theoretical and practical advantages of a relative navigation framework for MAV navigation in GPS-degraded environments. This dissertation explores how the consistency, accuracy, and stability of current navigation approaches degrade during prolonged GPS dropout and in the presence of heading uncertainty. Relative navigation (RN) is presented as an alternative approach that maintains observability by working with respect to a local coordinate frame. RN is compared with several current estimation approaches in a simulation environment and in hardware experiments. While still subject to global drift, RN is shown to produce consistent state estimates and stable control. Estimating relative states requires unique modifications to current estimation approaches. This dissertation further provides a tutorial exposition of the relative multiplicative extended Kalman filter, presenting how to properly ensure observable state estimation while maintaining consistency. The filter is derived using both inertial and body-fixed state definitions and dynamics. Finally, this dissertation presents a series of prolonged flight tests, demonstrating the effectiveness of the relative navigation approach for autonomous GPS-degraded MAV navigation in varied, unknown environments. The system is shown to utilize a variety of vision sensors, work indoors and outdoors, run in real-time with onboard processing, and not require special tuning for particular sensors or environments. Despite leveraging off-the-shelf sensors and algorithms, the flight tests demonstrate stable front-end performance with low drift. The flight tests also demonstrate the onboard generation of a globally consistent, metric, and localized map by identifying and incorporating loop-closure constraints and intermittent GPS measurements. With this map, mission objectives are shown to be autonomously completed.


This presentation focusses on the analysis of the fundamental characteristics of traffic enforcement systems for the improvement of traffic safety and the development of a framework of principles and proposals for enforcement programs of selected traffic violations in rapidly developing countries. The methodology used includes a wide review of international literature as well as processing, evaluation and ranking of particular enforcement actions of traffic violations such as speeding, non-use of seat belt and helmet, drinking and driving and mobile phone use. A framework of principles is developed along with special actions within the integrated enforcement programs of selected violations with special emphasis to the particular driver behaviour and safety characteristics in the rapidly developing countries (pedestrian and motorcycle safety, inadequate infrastructure, lack of road safety culture).


The purpose of this study was to analyze data according to gender, age, cause, number of traumatized teeth, time elapsed before treatment and type of tooth from the records of traumatized children. A retrospective study was conducted in the Department of Paediatric Dentistry at the University Dental Clinic in Zagreb, Croatia using the documentation of 128 patients (61 males and 67 females) aged 1 month to 6 years with injuries of primary teeth between February 2009 and January 2013. Trauma was seen in 217 primary teeth, which implies that the number of injured primary teeth was 1.69 per child. The maxillary central incisors were the most frequently affected teeth (81.1%), they were followed by maxillary lateral incisors, while the least affected were mandibular central incisors. Traumatic dental injuries involved periodontal tissue 2.82 times more frequently than hard dental and pulp tissue. The main cause of teeth injury was fall (67.2%) and the majority of injuries occurred at home (51.6%) (p<0.05). Of 128 patients who received treatment 71 (55.5%) also had soft-tissue injuries. The distribution of soft-tissue injuries by gender (35 males, 36 females) was not statistically significant. Comparing children with soft-tissue injuries and those without them, a statistically significant difference was found in the time of arrival (p<0.01). The results of this study showed the need of informing about preventive measures against falls at home and the methods of providing first aid in dental trauma injuries.


Presented here are the results of a series of experiments which explore the dissociation patterns of the clusters [O(H2O)n]+ and O4+2O, where n is in the range 1−5. These clusters have been studied in order to identify reaction channels which may convert O2+, as seen in the E-region of the ionosphere, into H+(H2O)n clusters, which are the dominant ions in the lower D-region. Each [O(H2O)n]+ ion can be viewed as a half-collision intermediate in the sequence of bimolecular hydration reactions, which are thought to lead to the formation of proton hydrates. Three different methods of cluster dissociation have been investigated, unimolecular (metastable) decay, collision-induced fragmentation, and photodissociation by visible laser radiation (450−690 nm). The experiments show that the intermediates [O(H2O)n]+, for n in the range 2−5, preferentially dissociate to form (H2O)n+ ions, a route which is largely favored over proton hydrate formation. For the first member of the series, O2+2O, both collisional activation and photoexcitation lead to the appearance of O2+ and H2O as the major fragments. For the trimer, [O(H2O)2]+, the principal photofragment is (H2O)2+ but a significant fraction of H3O+ is also observed. Each of the photodissociation channels observed for O2+2O and [O(H2O)2]+ exhibits a much wider wavelength dependency than has been observed in previous experiments (Smith, G. P.; Lee, L. C. J. Chem. Phys. 1978, 69, 5393. Beyer, R. A.; Vanderhoff, J. A. J. Chem. Phys. 1976, 65, 2313). However, we are able to reproduce these earlier measurements by monitoring the photodissociation of "cold" clusters in the form O2+2Ar and [O(H2O)Ar]+. A new photodissociation cross section of (9 ± 2) × 10-18 cm2 has been determined for the reaction O2+2O + hv → O2+ + H2O in the wavelength range 450−690 nm. Taken in conjunction with the solar radiation flux at 87 km, the magnitude of the corresponding unimolecular rate constant (10.8 s-1) suggests that the above process in association with "warm" ions may provide an important sink, which could explain the low O2+2O ion concentration observed in the ionosphere (McCrumb, J. L. Planet. Space Sci. 1982, 30, 559). A new rate constant of 2.4 s-1 has also been estimated for the photodissociation of "warm" [O(H2O)2]+ in conjunction with the solar radiation flux at 87 km.


Threshold Implementations (TI) are provably secure algorithmic countermeasures against side-channel attacks in the form of differential power analysis. The strength of TI lies in its minimal algorithmic requirements. These requirements have been studied over more than 10 years and many efficient implementations for symmetric primitives have been proposed. Thus, over the years the practice of protecting implementations matured, however, the theory behind threshold implementations remained the same. In this work, we revise this theory by looking at the properties of correctness, non-completeness, and uniformity as a composable security model. We prove that this model provides first-order and higher-order univariate security in the glitch-robust probing model which lets us expand the theoretic framework of TI. We first provide a link between uniformity and the notion of non-interference, a known composable security notion building out the probing model. We then relax the notion of non-completeness which helps the design of secure expansion and compression functions. Lastly, we provide generalisations of the threshold notions to allow for general secret sharing schemes and provide examples of how different sharing schemes affect the security and efficiency of the countermeasure.


Despite the controversial discussion around the definition and extent of the role of interpreters in legal settings (Hale, 2008), academics, practisearchers and increasingly interpreter users seem to agree on the crucial role of legal interpreting for both institutional and non-institutional users. When a linguistic barrier exists, interaction in prisons, courtrooms, asylum hearings, or between police officers and victims, suspects or witnesses, relies on interpreters and is modified by the very bilingual and multicultural nature of the interpreter-mediated encounter. Legal interpreting is dependent upon legislative, political and socioeconomic changes, such as the adoption of interpreting regulations or changes in migration policies; and researchers are making admirable efforts for the professionalization of legal interpreting. This review article describes the evolution of research on legal interpreting during the past ten years (2008-2017), and analyses the trends emerging and the focal points of research activity in the field. For the purposes of this review, publications on legal interpreting were compiled (including court, police, prison, asylum, immigration and military interpreting), and a database was created. Overall, 464 publications were collected and coded per setting and main theme, and reviewed for identification of salient themes and trends


High-throughput structure determination based on solution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy plays an important role in structural genomics. Unfortunately, current NMR structure determination is still limited by the lengthy time required to process and analyze the experimental data. A major bottleneck in protein structure determination via NMR is the interpretation of NMR data, including the assignment of chemical shifts and nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE) restraints from NMR spectra. The development of automated and efficient procedures for analyzing NMR data and assigning experimental restraints will thereby enable high-throughput protein structure determination and advance structural proteomics research. In this dissertation, we present the following novel algorithms for automating NMR assignment and protein structure determination. First, we develop a novel high-resolution structure determination algorithm that starts with a global fold calculated from the exact and analytic solutions to the residual dipolar coupling (RDC) equations. Our high-resolution structure determination protocol has been applied to solve the NMR structures of the FF Domain 2 of human transcription elongation factor CA150 (RNA polymerase II C-terminal domain interacting protein), which have been deposited into the Protein Data Bank. Second, we propose an automated side-chain resonance and NOE assignment algorithm that does not require any explicit through-bond experiment to facilitate side-chain resonance assignment, such as HCCH-TOCSY. Third, we present a Bayesian approach to determine protein side-chain rotamer conformations by integrating the likelihood function derived from unassigned NOE data, with prior information (i.e., empirical molecular mechanics energies) about the protein structures. Fourth, we develop a loop backbone structure determination algorithm that exploits the global orientational restraints from sparse RDCs and computes an ensemble of loop conformations that not only close the gap between two end residues but also satisfy the NMR data restraints. Finally, to facilitate NMR structure determination for large proteins, we develop a novel algorithm for predicting the Hα chemical shifts by exploiting the dependencies between chemical shifts of different backbone atoms and integrating the attainable structural information. All the algorithms developed in this dissertation have been tested on experimental NMR data with collaborators in Dr. Pei Zhou's and our labs. The promising results demonstrate that our algorithms can be successfully applied to high-quality protein structure determination. Since our algorithms reduce the time required in NMR assignment, it can accelerate the protein structure determination process.


Over the last twenty years, breast cancer novels have quietly become a large subgenre within popular romance, reflecting both the increase in public breast cancer awareness and the commercialization of that awareness. The emergence of this subgenre both reflects and participates in a shift of what is acceptable to say about breast cancer and expands the range of romance novel topics, including, among other innovations, cancer narratives for lesbian and African American characters. While still liable to many of the criticisms leveled by feminists in the 1980s and beyond, romances can tell new stories as well as the old ones, expanding an inadequate set of cultural and emotional vocabularies. The space for feeling that this genre opens has produced a new reading community and is at least one of the major ways that romance has been and continues to be rewritten. Contradictory movements have accompanied greater freedoms in discussing breast cancer, and this essay argues that feminists can find in romance novels a powerful site, supplementary to feminist theory and activism, for elaborating a productive and critical public breast cancer discourse.