In this paper, we investigate the possibility of improving the performance of multi-objective optimization solution approaches using machine learning techniques. Specifically, we focus on multi-objective binary linear programs and employ one of the most effective and recently developed criterion space search algorithms, the so-called KSA, during our study. This algorithm computes all nondominated points of a problem with p objectives by searching on a projected criterion space, i.e., a (p-1)-dimensional criterion apace. We present an effective and fast learning approach to identify on which projected space the KSA should work. We also present several generic features/variables that can be used in machine learning techniques for identifying the best projected space. Finally, we present an effective bi-objective optimization based heuristic for selecting the best subset of the features to overcome the issue of overfitting in learning. Through an extensive computational study over 2000 instances of tri-objective Knapsack and Assignment problems, we demonstrate that an improvement of up to 12% in time can be achieved by the proposed learning method compared to a random selection of the projected space.


Background The Internet has revolutionized the health world, enabling self-diagnosis and online support to take place irrespective of time or location. Alongside the positive aspects for an individual's health from making use of the Internet, debate has intensified on how the increasing use of Web technology might have a negative impact on patients, caregivers, and practitioners. One such negative health-related behavior is Munchausen by Internet. Objective Munchausen by Internet occurs when medically well individuals fake recognized illnesses in virtual environments, such as online support groups. This paper focuses on the aspect of Munchausen by Internet in which individuals actively seek to disrupt groups for their own satisfaction, which has not yet been associated with the wider phenomena of Internet trolls (users who post with the intention of annoying someone or disrupting an online environment). Methods A wide-ranging review was conducted to investigate the causes and impacts of online identity deception and Munchausen by Internet drawing on academic research and case studies reported online and in the media. Results The limited research relating to motivation, opportunity, detection, effects, and consequences of Munchausen by Internet is highlighted and it is formally linked to aspects of trolling. Case studies are used to illustrate the phenomenon. What is particularly worrying is the ease with which the deception can be carried out online, the difficulty in detection, and the damaging impact and potential danger to isolated victims. Conclusions We suggest ways to deal with Munchausen by Internet and provide advice for health group facilitators. We also propose that Munchausen by Internet and Munchausen by Internet trolling should be formally acknowledged in a revised version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual DSM-5. This will assist in effectively identifying and minimizing the growth of this behavior as more people seek reassurance and support about their health in the online environment. We also suggest directions for future research.


We examine a multidisciplinary network established to translate genetics science into practice in the British NHS. Drawing on theory about epistemic communities and objects, we describe three stages in their lifecycle (vision/formation, transformation and reincarnation) and epistemic clashes over knowledge objects. Medical academics captured jurisdiction over the network at formation, through their superior knowledge of the nascent genetics discipline, producing epistemic objects reflecting their interests. A governmental community challenged medical academics for jurisdiction but, unable to transform objects by changing their space of representation in performance reporting, ceased funding the network, which then closed. Afterwards, however, a NHS community successfully 'reincarnated' a discarded epistemic object into a technical object in NHS practice. We make a theoretical contribution by developing a processual framework for understanding biomedical innovation, focusing on transforming objects situated between different wider knowledge/power structures. This explains how objects were transformed at micro-level through the interaction and relative power of local communities, influenced by macro-level rules about knowledge formation in wider epistemic, organizational and governmental communities.


College students are constantly influenced by multiple stressors from different aspects of their lives and the society. Life and academic stress often generate difficulties and impact college students' mental health. College students have been stressed by intensive demands of developmental and academic tasks. With current economic contraction, many additional economic stressors could be added onto college students' existing stress levels. This study investigated the perceived economic stress among college students and focused on the differential impacts perceived by both genders and four grade levels. We surveyed 560 undergraduate students to assess their perceived economic stress, especially on employment conditions, economic outlook, and financial burden. Our results reveal statistically significant differences of perceived economic stress among students of grade levels but not between genders. Our research indicates that both male and female college students perceive an equivalent magnitude of economic stress and senior college students perceive highest economic stress. Introduction Stress has been a constant factor existing in our daily functioning (Holmes & Rahe, 1967; Viner, 1999). Downbeat life events, upbeat life changes, and excessive life demands are stressors that directly or indirectly associate with dysfunctional psychological and physiological symptoms (Holmes & Rahe, 1967; Joseph, Mynard, & Mayall, 2000). Literature has reported a correlation between stress and physical illness, such as cardiovascular disorders (Theorell, 1974) and cancer (Jacobs & Charles, 1980). Different types of psychological dysfunction, such as depression (Benjaminsen, 1981), posttraumatic stress disorder (McPherson-Sexton, 2006), and substance abuse (Lindenberg, Gendrop, & Reiskin, 1993) are deemed to have roots in stress. College students need to cope with stress from different aspects of their lives (Mangold, Veraza, Kinkier, & Kinney, 2007). Adjusting to college life, fulfilling developmental tasks, and dealing with unexpected societal events have raised students' stress levels and contributed to the development of college students' physiological problems (Serlachius, Hamer, & Wardle, 2007) and psychological difficulties (Bell & D'Zurilla, 2009). Academic stress is known as an essential stressor of college life (Deroma, Leach, & Leverett, 2009; Ross, Niebling, & Heckert, 1999). Transition from high school to college and from youths to independent adults (Serlachius, Hamer, & Wardle, 2007), and life stress deliver perceived stress with various degrees of intensity and magnitudes (Lunney, 2006; Sowa, 1992). Current economic downturn is around for the past couple of years (Catalano, 2009). The adverse impacts of economic downturn on mental health have become a social issue rather than an isolated or personal condition (Jahoda, 1988). Reports continue to reveal adverse impacts of economic stress that describe the increasing perceived stress (Cokes & Kornblum, 2010) and the potential pathological reactions to economic-induced stress (Fujita & Rao, 2009; Paton, 2008 & 2010; Sifin, 2009). Literature has supported the relationships between economic-induced stress and mental or physical health (Catalano, 1991; Catalano & Dooley, 1983). Unstable economic condition and unemployment have contributed to behavioral difficulties (Catalano & Dooley, 1981; Catalano, Snowden, Shumway, & Kessell, 2007; Dooley, Brook, & Catalano, 1987), less development of self-esteem (Dooley & Prause, 1995), substance abuse (Dragun, Russo, & Rumboldt, 2006), increasing needs of psychiatric care (Catalano & Hartig, 2004), and suicidal behavior (Platt & Hawton, 2000). Even though they are shielded by the college campuses, college students are inevitably exposed to the distressful economic phenomena. Giving their existing academic and life stress, college students now have to spend energy to cope with the economic stress. …


Data publishing using semantic web and linked data techniques enables the sharing of detailed information. Importantly this information is shared using common standards and vocabularies to enable simple re-use. In the digital preservation community, an increasing number of systems are adopting linked data techniques for sharing data, including the PRONOM and UDFR technical registries. In many systems, only current information is being shared. Further, this information is not being described with data relating to who and when it was published. Such basic metadata is seen as essential in all digital preservation systems, however has been overlooked to a large extent when publishing linked data. This failing is partly due to there being very few specifications, reference implementations and verification systems in place to aid with publishing this type of linked data. This publication introduces the Linked Data Simple Storage Specification, a solution that enables careful curation linked data by following a series of current best practise guidelines. Through construction of a reference implementation, this work introduces how historical information can be referenced and discovered in order to build customisable alerting services for risk management in preservation systems.


Ciao is a public domain, next generation multi-paradigm programming environment with a unique set of features: Ciao offers a complete Prolog system, supporting ISO-Prolog, but its novel modular design allows both restricting and extending the language. As a result, it allows working with
fully declarative subsets of Prolog and also to extend these subsets (or ISO-Prolog) both syntactically and semantically. Most importantly, these restrictions and extensions can be activated separately on each program module so that several extensions can coexist in the same application for different modules. Ciao also supports (through such extensions) programming with functions, higher-order (with predicate abstractions), constraints, and objects, as well as feature terms (records), persistence, several control rules (breadth-first search, iterative deepening, ...), concurrency (threads/engines), a good base for distributed execution (agents), and parallel execution. Libraries also support WWW programming, sockets, external interfaces (C, Java, TclTk, relational databases, etc.), etc. Ciao offers support for programming in the large with a robust module/object system, module-based separate/incremental compilation (automatically -no need for makefiles), an assertion language for declaring (optional) program properties (including types and modes, but also determinacy, non-failure, cost, etc.), automatic static inference and static/dynamic checking of such assertions, etc. Ciao also offers support for programming in the small producing small executables (including only those builtins used by the program) and support for writing scripts in Prolog. The Ciao programming environment includes a classical top-level and a rich emacs interface with an embeddable source-level debugger and a number of execution visualization tools. The Ciao compiler (which can be run outside the top level shell) generates several forms of architecture-independent and stand-alone executables, which run with speed, efficiency and executable size which are very competive with other commercial and academic Prolog/CLP systems. Library modules can be compiled into compact bytecode or C source files, and linked statically, dynamically, or autoloaded. The novel modular design of Ciao enables, in addition to modular program development,
effective global program analysis and static debugging and optimization via source to source program transformation. These tasks are performed by the Ciao preprocessor ( ciaopp,
distributed separately). The Ciao programming environment also includes lpdoc, an automatic documentation generator
for LP/CLP programs. It processes Prolog files adorned with (Ciao) assertions and machine-readable comments and generates manuals in many formats including postscript, pdf, texinfo, info, HTML, man, etc. , as well as on-line help, ascii README files, entries for indices of manuals (info, WWW, ...), and maintains WWW distribution sites.


In addition to benefiting reproducibility and transparency, one of the advantages of using R is that researchers have a much larger range of fully customisable data visualisations options than are typically available in point and-click software, due to the open-source nature of R. These visualisation options not only look attractive, but can increase transparency about the distribution of the underlying data rather than relying on commonly used visualisations of aggregations such as bar charts of means. In this tutorial, we provide a practical introduction to data visualisation using R, specifically aimed at researchers who have little to no prior experience of usingR. First we detail the rationale for using R for data visualisation and introduce the "grammar of graphics" that underlies data visualisation using the ggplot package. The tutorial then walks the reader through how to replicate plots that are commonly available in point-and-click software such as histograms and boxplots, as well as showing how the code for these "basic" plots can be easily extended to less commonly available options such as violin-boxplots. The dataset and code used in this tutorial as well as an interactive version with activity solutions, additional resources and advanced plotting options is available at https://osf.io/bj83f/. This is a pre-submission manuscript and tutorial and has not yet undergone peer review. We welcome user feedback which you can provide using this form: https://forms.office.com/r/ba1UvyykYR. Please note that this tutorial is likely to undergo changes before it is accepted for publication and we would encourage you to check for updates before citing.


Gas hydrates are identified as ice-liked solid, crystalline compounds having polyhedral water cavities, where gas molecules get trapped during operation under high pressure and low temperature condition. These hydrates have a tendency to completely block the pipelines and can cause major operations shutdown, leading to large economic losses and causing high safety risk in transmission pipelines. Thus, annually the oil and gas sector spends over 100 million US $ on purchase of chemical inhibitors that can help to prevent hydrates formation in subsea lines. These inhibitors are classified into two separate categories, the thermodynamic and kinetic inhibitors. The thermodynamic inhibitors act by shifting the hydrates formation temperature and the kinetic inhibitors act by shifting the hydrates formation time. Currently, the thermodynamic inhibitors like Methanol and Methylene ethylene glycol (MEG) are mainly used in industry. These inhibitors are highly flammable and cannot be disposed of easily into the environment. They are required in bulk quantities (>30 wt%) and separate facility is needed for their storage and treatment process. This increases the overall energy cost and leads to major environmental disposal issue. Therefore, there is a high demand for inhibitors that are environmentally friendly and cost effective in oil and gas sector. Ionic liquids (ILs) are salt like compounds that have received attention due to their environmentally friendly, recyclable and non-flammable nature. These ILs have potential to prevent hydrate formation and they can act as both thermodynamic and kinetic inhibitors simultaneously. In this work, the Pyrrolidinium based ILs have been tested as gas hydrate inhibitors and synergistic compounds (Syn) are added with these ILs to improve their overall effectiveness. For the first time, the thermodynamic and kinetic study on ILs has been conducted using high dosage mixture of ILs + Syn on methane rich gas mixture to check their effectiveness in preventing gas hydrates formation. All the experiments are performed using a high pressure rocking cell assembly supplied by PSL Systemtechnik GmBH, at different pressures ranging from (40 to 120) bars. According to the tests results, we have evaluated that the mixtures were able to prevent hydrates formation by providing a temperature shift of up to 2.2°C at low pressures and by delaying hydrates formation time by (6 to 14) hours. These results confirm the dual inhibition behaviour of these mixtures, as they were able to shift hydrates formation temperature and delay hydrates formation time simultaneously. The results were also compared with widely known industrial inhibitor methanol and only a difference of 0.5°C was observed. Thus, this research provides an innovative approach towards development of environmentally friendly inhibitors and to reduce energy cost in the oil and gas industry.


Protein data contain discriminative patterns that can be used in many beneficial applications if they are defined correctly. Protein classification in terms of fold recognition plays an important role in computational protein analysis, since it can contribute to the determination of the function of a protein whose structure is unknown. In this paper, a probabilistic neural network ensemble (PNNE) model is proposed for multi-class protein folds recognition problem. For training and evaluating the proposed method we use two datasets containing 27 SCOP folds. Experimental results show that the proposed method can improve the prediction accuracy and outperform other related approaches.


This study reviews the evidence on the labor market impact of youth employment programs. We analyze the effectiveness of interventions, and factors that influence program performance including country context, target beneficiaries, program design, implementation, and evaluation type. We identify 113 impact evaluations covering a wide range of methodologies, interventions, and countries. The meta-analysis synthesizes the evidence based on 2,259 effect sizes (Standardized Mean Differences) and the statistical significance of 3,105 impact estimates (Positive and Statistically Significant). Just more than one-third of youth employment program evaluations worldwide show a significant positive impact on labor market outcomes - either employment rates or earnings. In general, programs have been more successful in middle- and low-income countries; this may be because programs' investments are especially helpful for the most vulnerable population groups that they target. We conjecture that recent programs might have benefited from innovations in design and implementation. In middle-low income countries, skills training and entrepreneurship programs have had a higher impact. In high-income countries, the role of intervention type is less decisive - much depends on context and how services are chosen and delivered, a result that holds across country types. We find evidence that programs integrating multiple interventions more likely succeed because they respond better to different needs of beneficiaries. Results also point to the importance of profiling and follow-up systems in determining program performance, as well as to incentive systems for services providers.


This paper will give an overview of the evolution of phonic descriptions in 18th century English pronouncing dictionaries, and of the role of prescriptivism within this process. The prescriptive attitudes of orthoepists during this period led them to adopt increasingly detailed and precise transcription systems, and this same prescriptivism, informed by graphocentrism, influenced these systems as well as the individual transcriptions. Our aim is to establish that the prescriptive tendencies that hardened in 18th century England (during the period which saw the rise of what would come to be known as Received Pronunciation) served as a catalyst for a more systematic approach to describing spoken language and graphophonemic conventions. This is linked to prescriptivism as a tool for social demarcation, and a pedagogical necessity, but also as the hallmark of the traditional, accretive approach to knowledge, of which graphocentric bias is one example.


An array of cumulative risk and stress factors, and social inequities, have contributed to high suicides and family and community dysfunction, in two communities in Queensland. An independent, post-program evaluation of the National Empowerment Project (NEP) Cultural, Social and Emotional Wellbeing (CSEWB) Program specifically developed to address these issues was conducted in Kuranda and Cherbourg communities, Queensland in early 2017. Summaries of 153 stories of most significant change (SMSC) and 30 interviews undertaken with participants who completed the CSEWB program informed the evaluation. The evaluation assessed if, and how, the CSEWB program contributed to strengthening the cultural, social, and emotional wellbeing of participants, their families and communities. Participant's interviews describe how the CSEWB Program significantly changed their lives and their families' lives in various constructive and affirming ways to bring about positive outcomes. The extent of significant changes reported are compelling, and they highlight the need for greater government commitment to services and programs which address the social determinants influencing social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) within Indigenous communities around Australia.


Studies on pyrolysis of different ranks of coal viz. Jeypore (sub-bituminous), Swang (Bituminous), Dakra Bukbuka (Sub-bituminous), Mahuda (High rank) and Neyveli lignite (Lignite), in presence of different alkalies viz. Sodium hydroxide, sodium carbonate, calcined lime and calcium carbonate were carried out under different reaction conditions for the production of clean and green fuel hydrogen. Pyrolysis of different ranks of coals in presence of sodium hydroxide produces clean and green fuel hydrogen. Amongst the various coals used, the maximum yield of gas obtained was 3.2l/10 g of coal with hydrogen content of 80 % (v/v) from the medium rank Swang coal (carbon 85.5% on dmf basis). It was also observed that two coals of same carbon and hydrogen content exhibit different behavior due to their different chemical and physical makeup. For example, the coal which has rich vitrinite maceral produces better yield of hydrogen in comparison to other coals having more of inertinite maceral. Effect of temperature, nature of alkali, coal-alkali ratio, rank of coal, coal particle size etc. on the yield and quality of gas obtained from coal-alkali interaction were studied to find out optimum reaction conditions. It was found that 6000C is the optimum temperature and 1 : 1.3 is the optimum coal : alkali ratio for this reaction. This paper reports the data obtained on five coals-four alkalies interaction under optimum reaction conditions. No tarry product was obtained during the course of pyrolysis of coal in presence of alkali. Similarly, under optimum reaction conditions, no carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide were found as it reacted with alkali. It is well known that the hydroaromatic part of the coal is mainly responsible for production of tarry component during coal pyrolysis and CO & CO2 are the products of coal pyrolysis. But addition of alkali changes the reaction mechanism of normal pyrolysis of coal in such a way that no tarry product was obtained. The active hydrogen of methylene interacts with hydrogen of sodium hydroxide to form hydrogen gas at the temperature range from 3500C to 4000C. Aromatic hydrogen also participates in the same fashion but the elimination temperature range for aromatic hydrogen is higher than that of active methylene groups. Under optimum reaction conditions, the yields of hydrogen and methane were 500 m3 and 75 m3 per ton of coal, respectively. The recovery of alkali was 87%. Part of alkali has reacted with the mineral matter. The results have been interpreted in terms of macerals, functional groups, aromaticity and hydroaromaticity of coal.


We introduce a conceptually simple yet effective model for self-supervised representation learning with graph data. It follows the previous methods that generate two views of an input graph through data augmentation. However, unlike contrastive methods that focus on instance-level discrimination, we optimize an innovative feature-level objective inspired by classical Canonical Correlation Analysis. Compared with other works, our approach requires none of the parameterized mutual information estimator, additional projector, asymmetric structures, and most importantly, negative samples which can be costly. We show that the new objective essentially 1) aims at discarding augmentation-variant information by learning invariant representations, and 2) can prevent degenerated solutions by decorrelating features in different dimensions. Our theoretical analysis further provides an understanding for the new objective which can be equivalently seen as an instantiation of the Information Bottleneck Principle under the self-supervised setting. Despite its simplicity, our method performs competitively on seven public graph datasets. The code is available at: https://github.com/hengruizhang98/CCA-SSG.


Robotic soccer is a complex domain where, rather than hand-coding computer programs to control the players, it is possible to create them through evolutionary methods. This has been successfully done before by using genetic programming with high-level genes. Such an approach is, however, limiting. This work attempts to reduce that limit by evolving control programs using genetic programming with low-level nodes.


Irradiation from radioactive elements, such as cobalt-60, or an electron beam, can be applied to raw materials to prevent the proliferation of plagues or to kill bacteria that could be present in ready-to-eat foods or industrialised ingredients. It is therefore an important tool in food safety and food security. Food contamination by some pathogenic bacteria, such as Salmonella sp. or Escherichia coli, is still a recalcitrant problem faced by the food industry, even in countries where the highest quality control measurements are applied. The present paper is intended to be an overview on the roles of irradiation treatment on different sectors of the food industry with a focus on relevant aspects such as food contamination risks, the irradiation process itself and public concern about new technologies.


Male entrepreneurs are the beneficiaries of the overwhelming majority of venture capital investments. But are their ideas really better investment opportunities for VCs than those pitched by women?
According to our research, the answer is "not necessarily." In a two-part study, we observed that venture capitalists adopt markedly different stereotypical notions of female and male entrepreneurs
during their decision-making processes. These stereotypical notions, which cast men as having traits better suited to starting successful companies, don't hold up when compared with venture performance data from annual reports. In other words, there is no statistical evidence that a host of myths about female entrepreneurs is true.


There is a general consensus that world food production has to be increased significantly to fulfill the growing demand until 2050. However, at the same time resource use efficiency has to be improved due to declining resource bases (oil, phosphor) and the environmental effects of inputs (pesticides, nitrogen). Solving this paradox of "producing more with less" will rely, for example, on applying inputs according to attainable yield levels. However, attainable differs from year to year due to different weather conditions (attainable yield and risk relationships). Furthermore, soil conditions affect the water storage for plant uptake. Traditionally, field trials have been conducted to assess attainable yield in a certain regions. In regions with well-developed extension service it was possible to develop simple empirical yield response relationship to climate and fertilizer based on a range of field trials. Such data rich environments are usually restricted to the developed world and mostly lacking in the developing countries. However, simple empirical yield models like for example the French and Schultz approach for southeastern cannot capture the complex interaction between the factors, which determine attainable yield (water, solar radiation, rainfall, nitrogen, soil properties). So that it is not possible to develop site specific management recommendations, which are necessary to improve resource use efficiency and closing the yield gap.
Therefore, crop modelling, mainly in modern simulation frameworks like APSIM or DSSAT has been widely used in the scientific community for setting such yield targets, in particular for wheat and maize. However, for other crops and certain conditions such as soil constraints there is less information found in the literature (Chapter I). With this in mind, the main objective of this thesis was to develop/adapt crop model approaches for oil palm plantations in Indonesia, oilseed rape production in Europe and wheat cropping in southeastern Australia to set yield targets applicable for agronomists, farmers or plantation managers i.e. taking data availability and the socioeconomic context of the crop production system into account. After selection and adaption all model approaches presented in this study were evaluated against field trial data. Finally, challenging the idea of crop usage for sustainable intensification, all three models were applied to typical problems in the respective production systems.
In the first research chapter (chapter II) a new physiological based oil palm model (PALMSIM) is presented. Assessing potential yield in oil palm based on crop modelling depicts a challenge. First of all there are few models available, which are rarely tested against field trial data. Secondly, these models are data input intensive in parameterization and in terms of running them. The high data demand for oil palm modeling is lacking, such as the essential basic and necessary data such as soil information, cultivar parameter and long-term weather records. This makes the application of standard modelling approaches (daily time step, detailed water balance etc.) unlikely. PALMSIM therefore follows the idea of being both simple enough in terms of data and at the same time incorporates sufficient plant physiological knowledge to be generally applicable across sites with different growing conditions. The version presented in chapter II simulates potential yield based on incoming solar radiation only and therefore only gives realistic yield levels for optimal growing conditions. Nevertheless, it was possible to evaluate the model against field trial data from Indonesia and Malaysia. In the next chapter (chapter III), the PALMSIM model is extended by incorporating a simple water balance. This is often used in oil palm cultivation to assess water deficiency. The improved PALMSIM version is then used to exemplify and illustrate the use of crop modelling in oil palm sustainable intensification, the extension into marginal degraded sites, and the increase of productivity in existing plantations. One case study presented in this chapter makes use of a recent report by the World Resource Institute, which aims to identify degraded sites in Kalimantan. PALMSIM was run for water-limited potential on a 0.1°grid for Kalimantan and overlaid with the suitability map produced in the above-mentioned report. Results show that 8.1% of the suitable land has a potential productivity of more than 40 Mg FFB /ha. The largest proportion (35.6% of the suitable land or 115,300 km2) falls into the category between 35 and 40 Mg FFB ha. In the second case study presented in the paper, PALMSIM was setup for six plantation sites in Indonesia. Long-term weather data was derived using WorldClim data in the stochastic weather generator MarkSim. In all six sites, best management practices were introduced in five blocks. As a comparison, similar blocks were selected and managed following standard practice in the plantation. The potential and water-limited yield was then simulated for each plantation. This shows that potential yields are generally higher in Sumatra than in Kalimantan due to higher solar radiation. Water deficiency was a problem at two sites, either due to low rainfall or soil constraints. The gap between water-limited yield and actual yield differs from location to location, and therefore requires a site-specific analysis of the factors causing the yield gap. To sum up, in the two case studies the scope for sustainable intensification at regional and at plantation level was explored in a quantitative manner - a novel approach to oil palm production.
While the scale of decision making for oil palm is often regional, plantation or the smallest unit the block level, the scale and the challenges for German oilseed rape production is field scale (typically 1-4 ha) and needs a more powerful approach in terms of factors which are taken into account. Winter oilseed rape production is typically characterised by low nitrogen (N) use efficiency. Defining site-specific fertiliser strategies based on field trials and crop modelling may help to improve the ecological efficiency of this crop. However, no model has been evaluated for winter oilseed rape that simulates the growth of the plant as limited by the interaction of water and N. In this chapter the APSIM canola model, originally developed for the temperate regions of Southeast Australia, was adapted for conditions in Germany and tested successfully against measured data (biomass, grain yield, leaf area index, N-uptake and soil mineral N) from three sites around Gottingen and with different N-fertiliser rates. In the second part of the study the evaluated model was used in a simulation experiment to explore site specific climate and soil related production limitations to match fertiliser rates to these yield targets. Simulation results indicates that water supply plays a critical role when maintaining high N use efficiency and simultaneously grain yields of 4000 kg ha-1.
In the last chapter ASPIM was again used to develop site-specific recommendations; here for a case study from southeastern Australia. (annual average rainfall of 250-300 mm). Field productivity shows enormous spatial variation. Since these differences are largely related to soil variation in fertility, subsoil constraints (high salt, Boron levels) and plant available water capacity, three distinctively different zones - low subsoil constrained sandy zone, moderately subsoil constrained zone, and severe subsoil constrained, clay soil - were defined for one field at five sites in the Mallee. To assess the scope of zone-specific management, zone specific yield and soil properties were surveyed for each site in 2006 and 2007. Additionally, the crop model APSIM was parameterised for these challenging soils (taking subsoil constraints into account), successfully tested against the observed yield data and finally used to carry out a long term simulation experiment investigating the response of the three zones to nitrogen fertilisation over multiple seasons (50 years). For the severe constrained zone, simulated and observed yields were well related to rainfall, indicating that this soil zone is limited by water. Nitrogen fertilisation above the standard rate (30 kg/ha) should be avoided, especially in low rainfall years. Simulated and observed yields for the low constrained zone showed a weaker relationship with rainfall. Simulation analysis suggested a potential increase of production on these sandy soils due to higher N-input as evaporation rate and the organic matter content (lower N-supply) are lower than for the other two soil zones.
Across the three case studies, crop modelling has provided useful insights for setting yield ceilings. However, the development and the application of crop models have to be system specific. Currently, we are not able to simulate tropical plantation crops in a similar manner to annual crops like maize and rice, due to missing data in terms of validation, but even more so in terms of input data (soil and especially weather data). A compromise might be for the current situation the PALMSIM model, which still gives useful information despite its low input demand. However, in contrast it was relatively easy to develop for the annuals oilseed rape and wheat site-specific simulation analysis, which can serve as blueprint to improve perennial crop modelling.


Environmental protection through implementation of green energies is progressively becoming a daily reality. Numerous sources of green energy were introduced in recent years. Although this process initially started with difficulties, it finally resulted in an acceleration and implementation of new green energy technologies. Nonetheless, new major obstacles are emerging. The most worldwide difficult obstacle encountered, especially for wind and photovoltaic electric power plants, is the not regular and predictable green energy production. This study proposes solutions designed to solve this unpleasant aspect of irregular production of green energy. The basic idea refers to the construction of specially designed nuclear power plants acting as energy buffers. Nuclear power plants, indeed, may behave as proper energy buffers able to work to a minimum capacity when the green energy (i.e., wind power or PV) is steadily produced (namely, when the energy generated by the turbines or PV panels is at full constant capacity) but that can also run at progressively increased capacities when the wind or solar energy production reduces or stops. The work get two major contributions: 1-propose to the achievement of an energy buffer using nuclear power plants (for the moment on nuclear fission); 2-shows some theoretical aspects important needed to carry out the reaction of the fusion.


How empathic are battle-experienced war veterans and demobilized ex-combatants? Individuals who have participated in war-related violence tend to show an increased risk of mental health problems, which makes their readaptation to postconflict civilian life much more difficult. This study is the first systematic attempt to evaluate whether war experiences are potentially related to empathic deficit among veterans. Based on a sample of 624 demobilized ex-guerrillas and ex-paramilitaries from the Colombian armed conflict, we identify 3 clearly distinct empathic profiles, suggesting that, while lack of empathy is not generalized among ex-combatants, there is an important subgroup of veterans who present such a dispositional profile. Identification of this critical subgroup will be crucial to policies aimed at assisting postconflict reintegration efforts.


The species distribution in northern Europe is influenced by the last glaciation. An increasing number of phylogeographic studies reveal possible glacial refugia and colonization pattern for different species, however, little is known of migration routes of mosses. The phylogeography of Sphagnum wulfianum have been studied to find out how genetic variation is distributed in Europe and possible immigrations routes into Scandinavia after the last glaciation. Genetic diversity statistics show that genetic variation in microsatellite loci is extremely low (He=0.028±0.09) in this species and that populations are highly differentiated (FST=0.74). Low genetic variation may bedue to one or several bottlenecks in the past and/or colonization of northern Europeby repeated founder events. Methods based on Bayesian approaches (STRUCTURE)and coalescence theory (IM and MIGRATE) show that there is two main genetic clusters, and that these diverged recently (1812 years ago). There may have been two immigration routes into Scandinavia after the last glaciation, one from south-east across the Baltic Sea and one from east through Russia and Finland.


Will greater diversification benefit our economy? While many think it will, few are explicit about what they mean by diversification or what an "ideal" level would be. Even fewer recognize that favoured policies to promote diversification could actually do more harm than good. There are many ways to measure diversification in Canada, and each measure tells a different story. Canada's GDP and employment, for example, are more diverse than many other countries, including the U.S.  Employment is also more diversified today than at any point in its recent history, even in resource-rich provinces. Perhaps surprisingly, Alberta and Saskatchewan lead the country in employment diversity. Even accounting for non-resource jobs that are indirectly linked to resources does not reveal resource-rich provinces to be less diverse than others. To be sure, by other measures they are less diverse and more volatile, so we gather and analyze a wealth of data to paint a full, nuanced, and sometimes surprising picture of diversification in Canada. But does diversification even matter? Economists, for centuries, have found gains from specializing in areas where we have a comparative advantage. Subsidizing certain selected industries therefore risks causing economic damage by distorting activity and displacing workers and investment from more valuable uses. Policy-makers should therefore focus on neutral policies: create a favorable investment climate, facilitate adjustment and re-training, encourage savings (including by government), and so on. We discuss the pros and cons of various options. At the end of the day, responsible governments must define their objectives clearly, and recognize the costs of policies meant to achieve those objectives. We cannot hope to have a sensible debate on economic policy without full and complete information. If it matters, measure it.


A fairly recent innovation in environmental policy--and one that is favored by a number of economists--payments for environmental services (PES) are beginning to be implemented in order to protect water sources in Latin America. In a typical scheme, compensation is given to people in the upper reaches of watersheds, who in return refrain from land uses that exacerbate flooding, seasonal water shortages, and other problems at lower elevations. The receptivity of rural households to PES varies considerably, depending much on individual circumstances and livelihood strategies. For people who engage only in subsistence farming, which was long the economic mainstay of the African, Asian, and Latin American countryside, giving up a few hectares that yield little output in exchange for an unvarying conservation payment can be appealing, even if that payment is modest. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In contrast, PES may be less attractive to rural dwellers with diverse sources of income. For example, numerous households in E1 Salvador have risen out of poverty by starting micro-enterprises, working in clothing factories, etc. Nevertheless, they do not abandon farming entirely. Since few of these households have savings accounts or deal in other ways with financial institutions, growing some of their own food is the way most of them deal with the downside risks of off-farm employment. Clearly, any payments directed toward households of this sort would need to reflect the de facto insurance value of resources needed for subsistence whenever there is a shortfall in off-farm earnings. To clarify linkages between households' participation in PES initiatives and their livelihood strategies, we have carried out field research in a rural community in the Ecuadorian Andes, thanks to support provided by the US Agency for International Development and the US Department of Agriculture. Based on this research, we conclude that the poorest rural households depend heavily on subsistence farming and would also accept lower conservation payments than those demanded by other segments of the population, who have higher living standards because of off-farm work but who also deal with the risks of that work by growing some of their own food. If households that are non-diversified and poorer are actually paid less--as would make sense if environmental services are to be secured at least cost--then PES initiatives are not the best way to alleviate rural poverty, contrary to the claims of those who are enthusiastic about this approach to poverty reduction. Conservation Payments and Risk-Aversion Fluctuations in earnings have been shown to detract significantly from the well-being of low-income house-holds in the countryside, so a conservation payment that does not vary has obvious attractions. This is particularly true for people who are risk-averse and survive entirely on the food they produce. The minimum payment such people will accept in return for not cultivating a few hectares is directly related to the average value of the crops they expect to raise on that land--an average value that is quite modest on average. Actually, the minimum payment is less than the average value if output is variable (as it always is) and if the recipient is risk-averse, as rural households tend to be. While much of the rural population in the developing world engages solely in subsistence farming, a large and growing segment has two or more sources of income and consequently tends to be less impoverished. The latter segment of the rural population predominates in many watersheds where conservation initiatives are being undertaken. These settings are not out of reach of cities and other market hubs, so opportunities exist to complement the production of one's own food with an alternative--such as earning wages or running a microenterprise. Two observations can be made about these alternatives. One is fairly well known, which is that off-farm work usually pays better than subsistence production. …


AIM
To assess the potential use of plasma and urine levels of tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases 1 (TIMP-1) in urothelial cancer.

METHODS
TIMP-1 levels were determined in urine and plasma from healthy donors (n=26), patients with bacterial bladder infection (n=24), urothelial bladder adenoma (n=3) or adenocarcinoma (n=7).

RESULTS
Free and total TIMP-1 in plasma were weakly but significantly correlated with age; urinary TIMP-1 was not. A strong correlation between free and total TIMP-1 in plasma was observed, with an average ratio of 0.85. No correlation between total TIMP-1 in urine and plasma was found (p=0.55). No significant differences in free or total TIMP-1 in plasma were found between healthy individuals, patients with cystitis or bladder cancer (p=0.4). Urinary TIMP-1 levels were significantly increased in patients with cystitis (p=0.001). No apparent differences in TIMP-1 levels were found in patients with bladder cancer at different stages.

CONCLUSION
Our previous observation of a weak but significant correlation between plasma TIMP-1 and age was confirmed. Likewise, an association between free and total TIMP-1 in plasma with a ratio of 0.85 was established. No correlation between plasma and urine TIMP-1 was found. Measurement of TIMP-1 in plasma and/or urine is apparently not useful for the identification of bladder cancer.


The purpose of this thesis is to examine the effectiveness of distance learning within post-registration community nurse education. In this context, 'effectiveness' is defined as being useful to the student or 'fit for purpose' and it focuses on the educational experience. The study, which was designed in two stages, aimed to investigate whether learning support needs were similar for full-time adult students and distance learners. In the first stage, an original survey instrument was designed and posted to a group of nursing students who had undertaken a diploma-level course (n=169). A response rate of 69% was achieved. It aimed to determine whether the learning and educational support needs were similar between these two groups. The findings suggested that the learning and educational needs were alike and suggested the need for proactive support with adult learners, irrespective of their mode of study. In the second stage, a phenomenological approach was used to determine the experiences of the first cohort of graduates from a distance-learning degree course in community nursing (n=6); their community supervisors (n=9) and the academic staff involved with the course(n=7). Each group interpreted the meaning of 'effectiveness' in varying ways. The findings confirmed that distance learning is an effective mode of education, providing that the students' learning is facilitated and supported by regular contact with course tutors and other students. The significance of this study is in the model of supportive learning which was developed in light of the findings that will assist in the effectiveness of distance learning. The model has five elements within it, addressing 'student characteristics 1, 'tutor characteristics', 'student-student contact', 'course content' and the relationship between the student and tutor. It is proposed that this model could be used for the support of students, as a framework for staff development and for course evaluation.


This is the first large-scale modeling study of iceberg trajectories and melt rates in the Southern Ocean. An iceberg model was seeded with climatological iceberg calving rates based on a calculation of the net surface accumulation from each snow catchment area on the Antarctic continent. In most areas, modeled trajectories show good agreement with observed patterns of iceberg motion, though discrepencies in the Weddell Sea have highlighted problems in the ocean general circulation model output used to force the iceberg model. The Coriolis force is found to be important in keeping bergs entrained in the coastal current around Antarctica, and topographic features are important in causing bergs to depart from the coastal regions. The modeled geographic distribution of iceberg meltwater joining the ocean has been calculated and is found in many near-coastal regions to be comparable in magnitude to the excess of precipitation over evaporation (P-E).


Shading languages are the major class of programming languages for a modern mainstream Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The programs of those languages are called "Shaders" as they were originally used to describe shading characteristics for computer graphics applications. To make use of GPU accelerated shaders a sophisticated rendering Application Programming Interface (API) is required and the available rendering APIs at the present time are OpenGL, Direct3D, Vulkan, and Metal. While Direct3D and Metal are only supported on a limited set of platforms, OpenGL and Vulkan are for the most part platform independent. On the one hand, Direct3D is the leading rendering API for many real-time graphics applications, especially in the video game industry. But on the other hand, OpenGL and Vulkan are the prevalent rendering APIs on mobile devices, especially for Android with the largest market share. Each rendering API has its own shading language which are very similar to each other but varying enough to make it difficult for developers to write a single shader to be used across multiple APIs. However, since the enormous appearance of mobile devices many graphics systems are reliant on being platform independent. Therefore, several rendering technologies must be provided as back ends. The naive approach is to write all shaders multiple times, i.e. once for each shading language which is errorprone, highly redundant, and difficult to maintain. This thesis investigates different approaches to automatically transform shaders from one high-level language into another, so called "cross-compilation" (sometimes also referred to as "trans-compilation"). High-level to high-level translation is reviewed as well as algorithms with an Intermediate Representation (IR) such as Standard Portable Intermediate Representation (SPIR-V). We are focusing the two most prevalent shading languages, which are firstly OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) and secondly DirectX High Level Shading Language (HLSL), while Metal Shading Language (MSL) is only briefly examined. The benefits and failings of state-of-the-art approaches are clearly separated and a novel algorithm for generic shader cross-compilation is presented.


This Article presents one of the first empirical studies of federal religious freedom cases since the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Hobby Lobby. Critics of Hobby Lobby predicted that it would open the floodgates to a host of novel claims, transforming "religious freedom" from a shield for protecting religious minorities into a sword for imposing Christian values in the areas of abortion, contraception, and gay rights.
Our study finds that this prediction is unsupported. Instead, we find that religious freedom cases remain scarce. Successful cases are even scarcer. Religious minorities remain significantly overrepresented in religious freedom cases; Christians remain significantly underrepresented. And while there was an uptick of litigation over the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate — culminating in Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor — those cases have subsided, and no similar cases have materialized. Courts continue to weed out weak or insincere religious freedom claims; if anything, religious freedom protections are underenforced.
Our study also highlights three important doctrinal developments in religious freedom jurisprudence. The first is a new circuit split over the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The second is confusion over the relationship between the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses that is currently plaguing litigation over President Trump's travel ban. The third is a new path forward for the Supreme Court's muddled Establishment Clause jurisprudence.


The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of linguistic representations among young Quebec adults between 25 and 35 years old. Few studies have dealt with this subject since the 1990s, and the more recent work has been concerned with future teachers (Remysen, 2002) or high school students (Razafimandimbimanana, 2005). I chose to focus on young Quebec adults raised after the Quiet Revolution and the adoption of the Charter of the French Language (1977) and who are not working in a field related to language in order to determine if, on the one hand, linguistic representations have changed since the 1990s and, on the other hand, if the facts of not being a "language professional" and of not being assessed by a learning institution anymore could affect their attitude towards language. Based on a corpus of interviews conducted with 30 young Quebec adults living in and around Sherbrooke, this study aims firstly at collecting the opinions of my informants on various themes related to linguistic representations in Quebec, i. e. superiority of French from France, the threat of English in Quebec, the use of anglicisms, the degeneration of French in Quebec, the concept of mistakes and the complexity of written French. Second, I identify the normative criteria revealed in the informants' discourse that are used to assess the French that is spoken in Quebec. This identification is based on an argumentative analysis of the epilinguistic discourse in order to shed light on commonplaces, which are clues of what the informants view as being part of the common standards. Based on the criteria I found, in combination with the standards of A.-M. Houdebine's linguistic imaginary, I developed a hierarchy allowing to determine, on the one hand, which criteria most often lead to a conclusion, and on the other hand, which ones are only used as a concession, indicating that they are acknowledged as a common standard but not taken up by the informant. As some commonplaces are not agreed upon in the discourse on language, I analyse the discourse in which these contradictions are found while paying special attention to the scope of the arguments put forward and to the dissociation of concepts, which helps foster a better understanding of these apparent contradictions. The results of this research reveal, among the group of a speakers interviewed, a certain tolerance towards discrepancies from the standard described in reference works as well as a certain indifference regarding the standard coming from France. Moreover, the normative criteria that bear the greatest argumentative weight are criteria associated to the use of the language, not to the standard of reference. This distinction between use and standard is also found in the explanation of contradictions, which means that the informants make a distinction between assessment of their own use of French and assessment of the use of others (for instance using French of France) and between the spoken language and the "ideal" language. The conclusions drawn from the various analyses carried out in this study reveal a greater linguistic security among my informants than among the populations that had been examined in previous studies.


"THE BURLAP BAG FELT ROUGH AND SCRATCHY AGAINST MY CHEEK, BUT IT ALSO smelled earthy and deceptively comforting. Thick bandages already covered my eyes so the bag's only purpose was to frighten me. And it worked. I knew I had entered another dimension. "Are these words from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison? From the detention center at Guantanamo? From Afghanistan? They very well could be, but these are the words" of Olga Talamante, a 55-year-old Chicana activist from California, describing her experience as a torture victim 32 years ago in an Argentina prison in 1974. Talamante's memories of when she was tortured are never far from the surface. The publication of the long-suppressed pictures of Abu Ghraib victims last year and the report from the U.N. Commission on Human Rights finding that practices conducted at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo amounted to torture (Brecher and Smith, 2006) lifted the curtain on the uses of torture in President Bush's war on terrorism and rekindled memories of Talamante's horror. "'Every time I read a new story about U.S. forces participating in similar acts, it takes me back to that secret torture room," she says. The fact that a debate has arisen and even exists" regarding the use of torture outraged her and prompted to speak out about her experiences again after over 30years. It is our hope that this interview contributes to strengthening the human rights and social justice perspective within the present discourse on torture, in addition to denouncing the current increased U.S. practice of using and legitimating torture to ostensibly obtain a greater benefit or good. In May 2006, a U.N. anti-torture panel of nine experts in Geneva charged with monitoring U.S. compliance with the Convention Against Torture ratified in 1994 by President Clinton (see Box 1) rebuked the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies and recommended closing the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba and stopping the transfer of suspected terrorists" to countries where they may face torture. Acknowledging that there had been mistreatment of detainees, the U.S. made a commitment that all government agencies, including contractors, were to be prohibited from engaging in torture at all times and in all places, and that suspects would not be transferred to countries where they were more likely to endure torture. However, the U.N. committee was skeptical about the sincerity of the U.S. in complying with such pledges and challenged its assertion that some parts of the 1994 anti-torture convention do not apply in times of war (Lynch, 2006). Their skepticism is understandable, given that the Bush administration has usurped the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution (Savage, 2006). Among those he can ignore are military rules and regulations, which would cover the treatment of detainees and torture. The week before, the Council of Europe issued a separate investigative report that said that the U.S. had created a "reprehensible network" of dealing with terror suspects, highlighted by secrete prisons believed to be in Eastern Europe and other nations around the world. Box 1 : CIA's Hidden History of Torture Despite claims to the contrary by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others that "we don't torture," the fact is that torture is neither a recent nor an aberrant U.S. practice. Alfred W. McCoy (2006b) points out that the U.S. has long relied on a psychological, not physical, form of torture, which is masked by the absence of any visible scars, complicating any legal definition of torture. A closer examination reveals a hidden history of CIA torture. From 1950 to 1962, the agency led a costly effort to crack the code of human consciousness, an endeavor that culminated in the creation of psychological torture--the first revolution of this cruel science in centuries. …


We revisit the optimization from samples (OPS) model, which studies the problem of optimizing objective functions directly from the sample data. Previous results showed that we cannot obtain a constant approximation ratio for the maximum coverage problem using polynomially many independent samples of the form {S_i, f(S_i)}_{i=1}^{t} (Balkanski et al., 2017), even if coverage functions are (1-\epsilon)-PMAC learnable using these samples (Badanidiyuru et al., 2012), which means most of the function values can be approximately learned very well with high probability. In this work, to circumvent the impossibility result of OPS, we propose a stronger model called optimization from structured samples (OPSS) for coverage functions, where the data samples encode the structural information of the functions. We show that under three general assumptions on the sample distributions, we can design efficient OPSS algorithms that achieve a constant approximation for the maximum coverage problem. We further prove a constant lower bound under these assumptions, which is tight when not considering computational efficiency. Moreover, we also show that if we remove any one of the three assumptions, OPSS for the maximum coverage problem has no constant approximation.


"Video games are kids' stuff" may be still in the minds of many people. But the video games industry is far beyond its infancy and has already grown into a multi-billion dollar business. The NPD Group reports that in 2007 the revenues generated in the U.S. with video game soft- and hardware for consoles and personal computers reached a total of 18.8 billion dollars, a 40 percent increase over 2006. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the global sales will even surpass those of the music industry within the next years. With the success of the Internet, online games are a constantly increasing part of these sales. According to DFC Intelligence, the worldwide online game market will grow to over 13 billion dollars in 2011. The probably most successful online game genre today is that of the so-called Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). This kind of games provides vast virtual worlds, where thousands of players can meet and interact simultaneously. Most of these worlds are persistent, i.e. they may be online for years. They are hosted on Internet servers which are online 24/7 and players can join and leave the game whenever they like to. The persistence of the game world allows for long-term development of virtual avatars with individual characteristics and possessions. The leader of the MMOG market today is Blizzard Entertainment with the title World of Warcraft. In the beginning of 2008, World of Warcraft had 10 million subscribers (each paying up to 15 dollars per month) and a market share of 62 percent. Developing todays video games is a complex and cost-intensive task and multiplayer online functionality has a significant share in this. In 2008, the first video game hit the 100 million dollar mark for development costs. In addition to that, publishers of online games need to provide the necessary services to allow their customers to play the game over the Internet. Traditionally, most online games and nearly all MMOGs are built relying on the Client/Server architecture. The client software runs on the player's computers and shows only an audio-visual representation of the game world. It accepts commands issued by the player and transmits them to the server. Processing the commands and managing the state of the game is completely done on the server-side. Thus, to be able to handle hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously, large amounts of computing power and network bandwidth are required. Additionally, the service requires a large staff for server maintenance, software updates, billing and customer services. The provision of the World of Warcraft service did cost about 200 million dollars since its launch in November 2004. In addition to the effort of maintaining a multiplayer online game service after its launch there arises another challenge: keeping the game free of cheaters. A cheater may be defined as a user that performs an action that gives an advantage over his opponents that is considered unfair by the game developer. One must be aware that cheating is a major concern in multiplayer games as it seriously affects the game experience of honest players. Especially for subscription-based online games this is fatal, since customers will cancel their subscriptions if the experience doesn't meet their expectations. Game publishers usually do not hesitate to close the accounts of players that they believe to have cheated. For example, in 2006 Blizzard Entertainment announced in their forums that they have banned 59,000 players from World of Warcraft within a single month.


Gait based person recognition is an emerging technique in this recent era. Most of the biometrics system requires high resolution and proximity sensors. Gait based identification is used for identification, authentication and gender calculation. Due to various reasons, 5 to 15% of persons are not having normal walk pattern because of drug abuse or habitual and medical rehabilitation. So it is mandatory to classify normal or abnormal walk. Steppage gait, circumduction gait, Charlie Chaplin gait and antalgic gait are taken into consideration for this data base. In this modern time by using computer vision based techniques, normal and abnormal walk pattern can be identified. This paper considers gait cycle of a person of abnormal walk and his height and width are taken as feature vectors. K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) Classifiers are used to classify normal and abnormal gait patterns. The Artificial Neural Network (ANN) classifier outperforms well than K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN) and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) classifiers and it produced good recognition rate using this feature vectors.


We discovered that biofuels from low-input high-diversity mixtures of native perennial prairie plants grown on degraded soil can provide similar bioenergy gains and greater greenhouse gas benefits than current corn ethanol produced from crops grown in monoculture on fertile soil with high inputs. Russelle et al.'s technical concerns are refuted by a substantial body of research on prairie ecosystems and managed perennial grasslands.


In this paper, we present a new approach to identify the position of an optic disc in retinal fundus images. The proposed algorithm is based on a tensor voting to analyze vessel structures, and the position of the optic disc is identified by mean-shift based mode detection. The core technique consists of three preprocessing stages that enhance local contrasts through illumination equalization, and we extract vessel patterns by tensor voting in equalized images. Lastly, the position of the optic disc is identified by mode detection that is based on mean-shift procedure. Our approach is evaluated against a dataset including healthy retinal images and diseased retinal images. The experimental results show that the proposed method can exactly identify the position of the optic disc from retinal fundus images.


This paper examines representations of daydreaming in the correspondence, journals, and novels of Charlotte Bronte as a case study for the often hidden conflict between medical histories and first-person accounts of mental states. While the emerging field of nineteenth-century psychology diagnosed daydreaming as an intense and involuntary state of consciousness analogous to trances, sleep states, opiates, and mental illnesses, accounts by daydreamers themselves represented their daydreams as critical, rational, and conscious alternatives to dissatisfactions in their social and economic realities. By foregrounding this latter perspective in Bronte's letters and in Shirley , I argue for a re-evaluation of the relationship between the disciplinary authority of medical science and the historical individual's experience of their own mind, and for a more optimistic view of volition and autonomy, both in studies of Bronte and in medical humanities research more generally. This more hopeful reading of the literary and historical record enabled by an investigation of the common daydream also suggests the methodological value of shifting away from our existing focus on mental disorder and abnormality towards the significance of healthy, everyday, yet historically significant modes of consciousness.


Objective: To explore the value of 18F-deoxyglucose (18F-FDG) PET/CT in diagnosing distant lymph node metastasis of gynecological malignancies.
Method: 28 patients, initially confirmed with gynecological malignancies using pathological examination and other examinations-related, were enrolled in the study. They all underwent operation, and received preoperative 18F-FDG PET/CT scan and postoperative pathological examination. The findings of pathological examination were defined as the golden standard of diagnosis. The accuracy, specialty, and sensitivity of the routine CT and 18F-FDG PET/CT in diagnosing distant lymph node metastasis were counted. The maximal standard uptake value (SUXmax) of the patients with or without distant lymph node metastasis was compared.
Results: In 28 patients with gynecological malignancies diagnosed by postoperative pathological examination, 13 (46.43%) were confirmed with distal lymph node metastasis, and 15 (53.57%) without it. The accuracy, specialty, and sensitivity of 18F-FDG PET/CT was 82.14%, 100.00%, and 61.54% in separate, and that of the routine CT which was 50.00%, 73.33%, and 23.08%, respectively. 18F-FDG PET/CT had higher accuracy, specialty, and sensitivity than the routine CT, with a significant difference (P 0.05).
Conclusion: 18F-FDG PET/CT has higher accuracy in detecting distant lymph node metastasis of gynecological malignancies, and provides favorable guidance for clinical practice, deserving spread.


Long-reach passive optical networks (LR-PONs) are able to effectively support the growing demand of traffic originating from residential and business customers. Failures of metro/core (M/C) nodes serving the traffic to/from the access networks covered by LR-PONs, may potentially affect hundreds or thousands of customers. One way of guaranteeing 100% survivability from single-node failures is to apply dual-homing, where each LR-PON is connected to two M/C nodes, and combine it with node-disjoint dedicated-path protection (DPP). In this paper, we present a new approach to provide network survivability against single M/C node failures. Instead of applying dedicated path protection (DPP) strategy, which can require huge amount of extra resources, we combine an unprotected network design with a dynamic multilayer restoration algorithm. Our aim is to determine a suitable amount of resource overbuild (in terms of extra transponders) needed to provide average connection availability close to that guaranteed by DPP. Preliminary results show that dimensioning for the worst-case scenario among a set of predefined M/C node failures, i.e., the one disrupting the highest number of connections, yields to a cost-effective strategy requiring up to 35% less transponders than DPP, while offering the same average connection availability.


In the present research, we discuss the results of analysis of coherent light beams carrying an optical vortex and propagating through the isotropic medium with a complex surface microrelief and its application to super resolution microscopy. It was shown, that phase analysis of singular beam with single charged centered optical vortex allow to retrieve information about sample surface relief. High spatial resolution caused by vortex helical phase sensitivity to disturbances in wave front after reflection or spreading through studying sample, which can be optically transparent or have a reflecting surface. This method applicable for non-destructive testing of live cells and biological tissues in real-time regime with exceeding optical diffraction limit. Vertical resolution of a microscope based on the phase singularity of Laguerre-Gaussian beams of low order can be achieved down to 5,27 nm for helium-neon laser source for optically transparent and reflecting surfaces.
Keywords: optical vortex, phase, microscopy, singularity


Two independent trafficking pathways remove phosphorylated MLKL from the plasma membrane to avert necroptosis. Exit the necroptosis executioner In cells dying by necroptosis, the pseudokinase MLKL becomes phosphorylated and competent to rupture the plasma membrane. However, the appearance of phosphorylated MLKL does not always lead to necroptosis, prompting Fan et al. to investigate how the activity of this necroptosis executioner is suppressed. They found that phosphorylated MLKL could be directed by flotillin-1 and flotillin-2 into lipid rafts and, subsequently, lysosomes. In addition, phosphorylated MLKL could be ejected from cells in exosomes in a pathway dependent on the ESCRT proteins ALIX and syntenin-1. These mechanisms may be safeguards to ensure that only signals of sufficient intensity induce necroptosis. Necroptosis is a form of regulated necrosis that is implicated in various human diseases including Alzheimer's disease. Necroptosis requires the translocation of the pseudokinase MLKL from the cytosol to the plasma membrane after its phosphorylation by the kinase RIPK3. Using protein cross-linking followed by affinity purification, we detected the lipid raft–associated proteins flotillin-1 and flotillin-2 and the ESCRT-associated proteins ALIX and syntenin-1 in membrane-localized MLKL immunoprecipitates. Phosphorylated MLKL was removed from membranes through either flotillin-mediated endocytosis followed by lysosomal degradation or ALIX–syntenin-1–mediated exocytosis. Thus, cells undergoing necroptosis need to overcome these independent suppressive mechanisms before plasma membrane disruption can occur.


Title - Evaluation of Biochemical parameters evincing atherogenic potency in Type 2 Diabetic Retinopathy.
Objectives- Poor glycemic control leads to hypomagnesemia, uncontrolled hyperglycemia associated with high incidence of micro vascular complications such as retinopathy, nephropathy and cardiovascular problems in type 2 Diabetes mellitus. The chief aim of the study is to obtain possible biochemical indices level in all the groups. Materials and methods- The current study was under taken in total 90 subjects divided in to three groups, includes thirty control (Group-1), thirty diabetics with out complications of retinopathy (Group-2) and thirty diabetics with retinopathy (Group-3). Fasting Blood sugar level, fructosamine, magnesium, microalbuminuria, cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL-cholesterol and HDL-cholesterol were analyzed in all the groups.
Results-Decreased serum magnesium observed in Group-3 compared to Group-1 was a significant observation and also significant correlation present between fructosamine, magnesium and microalbuminuria level. Our study results also indicate that the diabetic retinopathy patients have hypercholesterolemia, hypertriglyceridemia, elevated LDL-cholesterol lipoprotein fraction and significantly decreased HDL-cholesterol lipoprotein fraction which are responsible for micro vascular changes.
Conclusion- Hypomagnesemia, hyperglycemia, increased fructosamine and increased lipid profile with decreased HDL-cholesterol level indicates the probability and possibility of atherogenicity.


This paper examines how women's control of forest governance translates into environmental policy outcomes. . The analysis finds that when women have a slight majority in local forest governance, these forests have significantly more basal area (a biophysical proxy for above ground biomass) and more stringent institutions. These results suggest that women's control of local forest institutions can have a significant, positive effect on forest outcomes. The main contribution of this paper is to causally identify the effect of women's control on forest outcomes through the use of a regressiondiscontinuity design


Abstract. Increasing urbanization is likely to intensify the urban heat island effect, decrease outdoor thermal comfort, and enhance runoff generation in cities. Urban green spaces are often proposed as a mitigation strategy to counteract these adverse effects, and many recent developments of urban climate models focus on the inclusion of green and blue infrastructure to inform urban planning. However, many models still lack the ability to account for different plant types and oversimplify the interactions between the built environment, vegetation, and hydrology.
In this study, we present an urban ecohydrological model, Urban Tethys-Chloris (UT&C), that combines principles of ecosystem modelling with an urban canopy scheme accounting for the biophysical and ecophysiological characteristics of roof vegetation, ground vegetation, and urban trees. UT&C is a fully coupled energy and water balance model that calculates 2 m air temperature, 2 m humidity, and surface temperatures based on the infinite urban canyon approach. It further calculates the urban hydrological fluxes in the absence of snow, including transpiration as a function of plant photosynthesis. Hence, UT&C accounts for the effects of different plant types on the urban climate and hydrology, as well as the effects of the urban environment on plant well-being and performance.
UT&C performs well when compared against energy flux measurements of eddy-covariance towers located in three cities in different climates (Singapore, Melbourne, and Phoenix).
A sensitivity analysis, performed as a proof of concept for the city of Singapore, shows a mean decrease in 2 m air temperature of 1.1 ∘C for fully grass-covered ground, 0.2 ∘C for high values of leaf area index (LAI), and 0.3 ∘C for high values of Vc,max (an expression of photosynthetic capacity). These reductions in temperature were combined with a simultaneous increase in relative humidity by 6.5 %, 2.1 %, and 1.6 %, for fully grass-covered ground, high values of LAI, and high values of Vc,max, respectively. Furthermore, the increase of pervious vegetated ground is able to significantly reduce surface runoff.


The general public mostly remembers George Armstrong Custer for his fatal action at Little Big Horn. Richard Yates is, to some extent, remembered for his periodic drunken behavior while he was Illinois Governor during the Civil War. Both public conceptions follow the old maxim, "A half-truth is worse than a whole lie," because it obscures the positive attributes, contributions, and actions of each of these notable characters in American history. Custer actively participated in the Battle of 1st Bull Run, the Peninsula Campaign, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Overland Campaign, the Wilderness, Yellow Tavern, Shenandoah Valley Campaigns of 1864, the siege of Petersburg, and the Appomattox Campaign. He was present at the Appomattox surrender. After the Civil War, Brevet Major General Custer returned to the Regular Army with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. 7th Cavalry. On June 25, 1876, Custer and his entire command were killed at Little Big Horn. Custer's wife, Libbie, published books on his life, which contributed greatly to his image as a "tragic military hero," and so, Custer's very distinguished Civil War record has been overshadowed by his fate at Little Big Horn. Richard Yates was elected Governor of Illinois in the 1860 election that put his friend, Abraham Lincoln, into the White House. Yates was an outspoken opponent of slavery. He was personally and actively involved in raising volunteer soldiers for Illinois and became known as the "Soldiers' Friend," a title he both earned and welcomed. When the war began, Illinois Governor Yates sent more troops to aid the Union than any other state. As early as April 19, 1861, Yates sent armed troops to Cairo and other locations in order to save and secure the arms stored there, so that this essential equipment would not fall into the hands of southern sympathizers. Yates gave U.S. Grant his first recognition as a soldier in the Civil War by appointing him as mustering officer for the state and afterward, Colonel of the 21st Illinois Regiment. He gave Lincoln much-needed support for his Emancipation Proclamation. He set up a training camp which later became Camp Douglas, the prisoner of war encampment in Chicago. Yet, when Yates was elected U.S. Senator in January of 1865, he served only one term. The reason, in part, for his not gaining a second term was his reputation - rightly or wrongly - for being an ineffectual drunkard. We will attempt to determine if this "classification" is justified as we explore the value of Governor Yates in the Civil War. Richard Yates was born in Warsaw, Gallatin County, Kentucky, on January 18, 1815. He moved to Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1831, and graduated from Illinois College in 1835. He studied law at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and was admitted to the bar in 1837, when he then opened his law practice at Jacksonville, Illinois. In July of 1839, he married Catherine Geers of Lexington, Kentucky.' An intimate friend of Yates, William Pitt Kellogg, described him as "Striking in appearance, with bright auburn hair and bright blue eyes." Yates was elected to the Illinois State House of Representatives and served from 1842 to 1845, and again from 1848 to 1849. As a Whig candidate, he was elected to the United States Congress from 1851 to 1855, but was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election. He served as Illinois Governor from 1861 through 1865, when he was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate, where he served from 1865 to 1871. He was not a candidate for re-election. President Grant then appointed Yates as a United States commissioner to inspect a land-subsidy railroad. While on this assignment, Yates died suddenly of a stroke caused by a brain hemorrhage in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 27, 1873. He is buried in Diamond Grove Cemetery, Jacksonville, Illinois.2 Richard Yates was a veteran politician by the fall of 1860 when he attended the Republican Convention in Chicago as a candidate for Governor of Illinois. …


The therapeutic potentials of methanol stem bark extract of Trilepisium madagascriense was determined using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry to identify its bioactive compounds of pharmaceutical importance while the antimicrobial activities were assayed in vitro by agar well diffusion and macrobroth dilution techniques against different microbial isolates. The mass spectra of the identified compounds in the extract at different retention time showed the presence of ethyl iso-allocholate, (3β,5Z,7E)-9,10-Secocholesta-5,7,10(10)-triene-3,24,25-triol, 2,6-Dimethoxyamphetamine, 4-Hexenoic acid, 4-methyl-6-(fluorodimethylsilyl)-6-trimethysily-, 2-methoxy-4-(methoxymethyl)-Phenol, 2-methoxy-1,4-Benzenediol, 2,4-Dimethoxyphenol, Indole, Paromomycin, Hydroquinone and Tetrahydro-N-[(tetrahydro-2-furanyl)methyl-2-Furanmethanamine amongst other bioactive compounds of therapeutic potentials. This extract showed antimicrobial activities. At the lowest concentration of 25 mg/ml, 100 µl of the extract produced inhibition zones ranging between 14 and 18 ± 1.0 mm and inhibition zones ranging between 18 and 28 ± 1.0 mm in all the isolates at the highest concentration of 100 mg/ml. While the bacterial MICs ranged between 1.25 and 5 mg/ml and the MBCs ranged between 2.5 and 10 mg/ml, the fungal MICs ranged between 0.098 and 12.5 mg/ml while the MFCs ranged between 0.781 and <25 mg/ml. With exception of MICindex of Klebsiella pneumoniae ATCC 10031 which was equal to 4, the MICindex of other isolates ranged between 1 and 2. Klesbiella pneumoniae ATCC 10031 and Proteus vulgaris CSIR 0030 had the highest MICs of 1.25 mg/ml, followed by B. cereus ATCC 10702, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538, Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 19582, Enterococcus faecalis ATCC 29212 and Bacillus subtilis KZN with MICs of 2.5 mg/ml while Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Enterococcus cloacae ATCC 13047, Enterococcus faecalis KZN, Shigella sonnei ATCC 29930, Klebsiella pneumoniae KpFa, Staphylococcus aureus SaFa, Escherichia coli EcFa and Pseudomonas aeruginosa PmFa had the least MICs of 5.0 mg/ml. Enterococcus faecalis KZN, Bacillus subtilis KZN and Proteus vulgaris CSIR 0030 had the highest MBCs of 2.5 mg/ml. Although Candida albicans had MICs ranging between 0.098 mg/ml and Candida tropicalis had the least MICs of 12.5 mg/ml, the MFCs were 0.781 mg/ml and 25 mg/ml. This study shows that the pharmacological effects of Trilepisium madagascriense depends on bioactive compounds identified while this plant is a source for isolating novel drugs having significant therapeutic potentials.


This paper considers how e-participation can strengthen confidence in democratic institutions and players in Lithuania, and concentrates on the overall development of electronic democracy and electronic participation (e-participation) tools used by the Lithuanian members of Parliament (MPs) and political parties. Firstly, a brief overview of the previous studies about e-participation initiatives of the politicians' worldwide is provided. Secondly, follows the description of the methodology. Thirdly, the authors discuss democracy development trends in the information society and then present main findings of the survey completed in August 2007 – January 2009 on the websites of the Lithuanian MPs and political parties. Finally, the conclusions of Lithuanian case study and the recommendations to Lithuanian representative power are given.


We theoretically study the coupling of a semiconductor quantum dot (QD) to two metal nanoparticles (MNPs) based on cavity quantum electrodynamics and canonical transformation. It is shown that a Fano correlation effect shown in the energy absorption spectrum of this hybrid molecule appears, which stems from two correlated Fano interference processes because the two MNPs share a common segment of optical pathway involving QD as a result of the plasmon–exciton–plasmon interaction. The results also demonstrate that it is feasible to change the energy absorption of one MNP by adjusting the position of the other MNP, which may be potentially applied in plasmonic light trapping of MNPs in photovoltaic devices. Our work will open an avenue to deal with the coupling of QDs to a few MNPs in the quantum regime.


Abstract Global risks of zoonotic disease are high on policy agendas. Increasingly, Africa is seen as a 'hotspot', with likely disease spillovers from animals to humans. This paper explores the social dynamics of disease exposure, demonstrating how risks are not generalised, but are related to occupation, gender, class and other dimensions of social difference. Through case studies of Lassa Fever in Sierra Leone, Henipah virus in Ghana, Rift Valley Fever in Kenya and Trypanosomiasis in Zimbabwe, the paper proposes a social difference space–time framework to assist the understanding of and response to zoonotic diseases within a 'One Health' approach.


We have performed oscillatory shear experiments on a bidisperse granular mixture in combination with refractive index matched scanning in order to resolve particle motion in three-dimensions during size-segregation. We find that small particles segregate faster in regions where the large particle concentration is high and large particles segregate slower in regions where the small particle concentration high. This dependency of particle segregation speed on local relative volume fraction results from a fundamental asymmetry in the underlying dynamics of the two species. We observe that this asymmetry affects the segregation behavior of the mixture at both the bulk and particle scale. For example, mixtures containing relatively more small particles take longer to segregate; and during segregation small particles are quicker to reach the bottom of the flow compared to larges particles reaching the top. The predictions of a theoretical model incorporating this asymmetric dependence on volume fraction show a significant improvement compared to the standard model with a symmetric dependence. Besides having repercussions for the understanding of size segregation on a fundamental level, this discovery expands the connections to processes such as traffic flow, sedimentation and particle diffusion, which exhibit similar asymmetric behavior.


First published in 1961, Raul Hilberg's comprehensive account of how Germany annihilated the Jewish community of Europe spurred discussion, galvanised further research, and shaped the entire field of Holocaust studies. This revised and expanded edition of Hilberg's classic work extends the scope of his study and includes 80,000 words of new material, particularly from recently opened archives in eastern Europe, added over a lifetime of research. It is the definitive work of a scholar who has devoted more than 50 years to exploring and analysing the realities of the Holocaust. Spanning the 12-year period of anti-Jewish actions from 1933 to 1945, Hilberg's study encompasses Germany and all the territories under German rule or influence. Its principal focus is on the large number of perpetrators - civil servants, military personnel, Nazi party functionaries, SS men, and representatives of private enterprises - in the machinery of death.


Using a 1 --> 2 transition as an analytically tractable model, we discuss in detail magneto-optical resonances of both electromagnetically induced absorption (EIA) and electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) types in the Hanle configuration. The analysis is made for an arbitrary rate of depolarizing collisions in the excited state and an arbitrary elliptical field polarization. The obtained results clearly show that the main reason for the EIA subnatural resonance is the spontaneous transfer of anisotropy from the excited level to the ground level. In the EIA case we predict the negative structures in the absorption resonance at large field detuning. The role of the finite atom-light interaction time is briefly discussed. In addition we study nontrivial peculiarities of the resonance line shape related to the velocity spread in a gas.


The problem of evil is that morally gratuitous suffering and destruction is evidence against a benevolent and potent god. Often cases of this evil are restricted to human suffering, but if the moral universe is expanded in the fashion associated with environmental ethics, the scope of morally significant suffering and destruction grows. Consequently, the wider the scope of the moral universe, the problem of evil becomes harder for theists to solve.


This paper explores the dynamics of power and resistance surrounding the independent online media network $2 (TWiB). Created by Elon James White, $2 is comprised of six podcasts covering a diverse range of topics, an active blog, and a fully functioning social networking site. White and his co-hosts L. Joy Williams and Aaron Rand Freeman, collectively nicknamed Team Blackness, have gained visibility in the progressive media world and have cultivated a substantial online audience. Despite this, $2 has had difficulty connecting with other media outlets or finding sponsors to support their work. I argue that this is because $2 's programming embraces a diverse, heterogeneous, and internally contradictory understanding of "Blackness" that makes it largely incompatible with existing media production and consumption paradigms even in online and independent media spaces.


The creation and consumption of content, especially visual content, is ingrained into our modern world. This book contains a collection of texts centered on the evaluation of image retrieval systems. To enable reproducible evaluation we must create standardized benchmarks and evaluation methodologies. The individual chapters in this book highlight major issues and challenges in evaluating image retrieval systems and describe various initiatives that provide researchers with the necessary evaluation resources. In particular they describe activities within ImageCLEF, an initiative to evaluate cross-language image retrieval systems which has been running as part of the Cross Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF) since 2003. To this end, the editors collected contributions from a range of people: those involved directly with ImageCLEF, such as the organizers of specific image retrieval or annotation tasks; participants who have developed techniques to tackle the challenges set forth by the organizers; and people from industry and academia involved with image retrieval and evaluation generally. Mostly written for researchers in academia and industry, the book stresses the importance of combing textual and visual information a multimodal approach for effective retrieval. It provides the reader with clear ideas about information retrieval and its evaluation in contexts and domains such as healthcare, robot vision, press photography, and the Web.


Errors made by students in skills such as speaking and writing have been treated as important information to help teachers direct the foci of their teaching. Teachers need to pay attention to the most serious errors before addressing other errors. Hence, this research was aimed at finding the most serious errors produced by students at one of the junior high schools in Indonesia, i.e. State Junior High School No 7 in Banda Aceh. The errors were categorized into surface strategy taxonomy and linguistic category taxonomy errors. The data were collected from recount texts produced by 19 students who were known to make errors in writing. The data was analyzed by calculating the percentage of errors based on the total cumulative errors for surface strategy taxonomy, but based on the number of attempts in the same grammatical elements for linguistic category taxonomy. The results of data analysis showed that the dominant errors for surface strategy taxonomy were selection (72%) followed by omission (14.4%), and addition (10.6%). In the linguistic category taxonomy, the most dominant types were word forms (48.4%), followed by articles (35%), nonfinite verbs (34.9%), verb tenses (34.3%), plurals (33.3%), and prepositions (30%). It is suggested that teachers pay more serious attention to the most serious problems because solving these problems will hasten the students' progress in learning.


Objectives
Preterm infants (PTI) are at risk for many complications including growth retardation, and co-morbidities, such as necrotizing enterocolitis. Microbiome composition is influenced by diet and other environmental factors or medical treatments. The use of mother's own milk (MOM) or donor human milk (DHM) is recommended over preterm formula (PF). However, when there is insufficient human milk (HM), PF is used. The objective of this study was to evaluate how each type of feed (MOM, DHM and PF) affects PTI gut microbiota composition during the infant's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) stay.

Methods
This cohort study followed PTI from birth until discharge from the NICU. Medical records, weekly weight and daily feed volume were recorded. Stool samples (n = 551) were collected from the infant's diaper. Total DNA was extracted to assess microbiome composition, V3-V4 regions of 16S rRNA gene were amplified and sequenced using Illumina HiSeq and data were analyzed in Qiime2.

Results
PTI (n = 97; 63% female) were enrolled with mean gestational age (GA) of 29 ± 2.45 weeks, birth weight of 1.27 ± 0.43 kg, and 78% delivered by C-section. Infants were discharged at 37 ± 2.06 weeks corrected GA (cGA) weighing 2.69 ± 0.57 kg. At birth, PTI from black mothers (27%) had higher (P < 0.05) microbiota diversity (observed OTUs) than other ethnicities. No differences in microbiota were found for sex or mode of delivery in the first 14d postpartum. PF was not fed prior to 34 weeks cGA. Over time, microbiota beta diversity differentiated by cGA and type of feeding. In HM-fed PTI, when > 50% MOM was consumed, the abundance of Clostridium, Enterococcus, and Staphylococcus was higher (P < 0.05) than DHM. When > 50% DHM was fed, Bifidobacteium, Paeniclostridium, Staphylococcus and Veillonela increased (P < 0.05) compared to > 50% MOM. In PTI fed both HM and PF, in those consuming > 33% PF, the abundance of Clostridium difficile was higher and Staphylococcuslower than either MOM or DHM (P < 0.05).

Conclusions
The development of fecal microbiota of PTI was modulated by cGA, such that abundance and diversity increased over time. The fecal microbiota was differently modified by consumption of human milk, either MOM or DHM, versus PF. Ongoing studies are investigating the effect of milk fortifiers and other NICU environmental factors on the gut microbiota.

Funding Sources
Supported by a seed grant from Carle Foundation Hospital and University of Illinois and a CONACyT Graduate Fellowship.