A linear Markov model has been developed to simulated and predict the short-term climate change in the Antarctic, with particular emphasis on sea ice variability. Seven atmospheric variables along with sea ice were chosen to define the state of the Antarctic climate, and the multivariate empirical orthogonal functions of these variables were used as the building blocks of the model. The predictive skill of the model was evaluated in a cross-validated fashion, and a series of sensitivity experiments was carried out. In both hindcast and forecast experiments, the model showed considerable skill in predicting the anomalous Antarctic sea ice concentration up to 1 yr in advance, especially in austral winter and in the Antarctic dipole regions. The success of the model is attributed to the domination of the Antarctic climate variability by a few distinctive modes in the coupled air‐sea‐ice system and to the model's ability to detect these modes. This model is presently being used for the experimental seasonal forecasting of Antarctic sea ice, and a current prediction example is presented.


A potato cysteine protease (cyp) cDNA expressed at an early stage of an incompatible interaction with Phytophthora infestans was isolated. Both the nucleotide and deduced amino acid sequences are highly homologous to those of a tomato cysteine protease, CYP1. Striking protein similarity to all known cathepsins in animals, particularly cathepsin K, was also observed. However, unlike cathepsins, a granulin binding domain is located near the carboxyl terminus of the putative CYP protein. In animals, granulins bind to receptors in the plasma membrane and signal cell growth and division. A ribonuclease protection assay demonstrated that the cyp gene is tightly regulated and is induced 15 h post inoculation with P. infestans in potato leaves either with high field resistance or in which a resistance (R) gene is activated. We conclude that a common signaling pathway is activated in each form of resistance.


The main purpose of the study is to determine the Effectiveness of Model-Observe-Reflect-Explain (MORE) Thinking Frame on the performance of students in high school chemistry. Specifically, it seeks to answer the following questions: 1) What is the achievement of the students in Chemistry before and after they were taught selected topics using MORE Thinking Frame in the laboratory? 2) Is there a significant difference in the achievement of students in Chemistry before and after they were taught selected topics using MORE Thinking Frame in the laboratory? 3)What is the performance of the students in the laboratory when they are subjected to MORE Thinking Frame?4) Is there a difference in the model of the students before and after the use of MORE Thinking Frame? The study was conducted at the General Emilio Aguinaldo National High School in Palico IV, Imus City Cavite, during the second grading period of the school year . The samples of the study involved 55 third year students. The study tested for four weeks. This study utilized the single group pretest post test pre experimental design. Quantitative as well as qualitative data analyses were employed. The 40 item chemistry achievement test, chemistry activities with Model-Observe-Reflect-Explain Thinking Frame activity sheets, and perception survey questionnaires were used as instruments of the study. The result of the Diagnostic test was used as the basis for ranking the students to form formal groups. The t-test was used to determine the significant difference between the means of the students' pretest and post test scores in Chemistry. The results of the t-test at 0.05 level of significance revealed that there is a significant difference between the pre and post test scores in Chemistry using Model-Observe-Reflect-Explain Thinking Frame. The results revealed that the performance of the students in Chemistry before and after the utilization of Model-ObserveReflect-Explain Thinking Frame differ significantly with a mean difference of 13.62. A significant difference was obtained showing that the mean score of the post test of 30.82 is significantly higher than the mean of the pretest of 17.20. After the exposure to Model-Observe-Reflect-Explain Thinking Frame, perception survey questionnaire was used to assess students' level of acceptance of MORE Thinking Frame. Based on the overall mean rating on the perception questionnaire the respondents favored the use of Model-Observe-Reflect-Explain Thinking Frame.


High-resolution connectomics data allows for the identification of dysfunctional mitochondria which are linked to a variety of diseases such as autism or bipolar. However, manual analysis is not feasible since datasets can be petabytes in size. We present a fully automatic mitochondria detector based on a modified U-Net architecture that yields high accuracy and fast processing times. We evaluate our method on multiple real-world connectomics datasets, including an improved version of the EPFL mitochondria benchmark. Our results show an Jaccard index of up to 0.90 with inference times lower than 16ms for a 512x512px image tile. This speed is faster than the acquisition speed of modern electron microscopes, enabling mitochondria detection in real-time. Our detector ranks first for real-time detection when compared to previous works and data, results, and code are openly available.


There is increasing interest in quantum dot (QD) structures for a plethora of applications, including optoelectronic devices, quantum computing and energy harvesting. While strain driven surface diffusion via stranski-krastanow (SK) method has been commonly used to fabricate these structures, a more recent technique, droplet epitaxy (DE) does not require mismatch strain and is therefore much more flexible in the combination of materials utilized for the formation of QDs. As reported in this work, a hybrid approach that combines DE and SK techniques for realizing lateral ordering of QDs was explored. First, the droplet formation of various materials was discussed and two different growths approaches, simultaneous and sequential, were investigated. With an in depth understanding of droplet formation, insitu templates were developed via the droplet homo-epitaxy. Ga droplets were manipulated with varied growth conditions such as surface temperature, As flux and growth interruption (GI) time for fabrication of three types of templates: 1) nanoholes, 2) shallow-elongated GaAs nanomounds and 3) tall-rounded GaAs nanomounds. With the help of these templates, various laterally-ordered QDs such as QD pairs (QDPs), QD clusters (QDCs) and QD molecules (QDMs) were fabricated. The GaAs QDPs were spontaneously formed on an AlGaAs surface due to anisotropy of surface diffusion at high temperatures and the overall structure of the QDPs were revealed by cross-section transmission electron microscopy (XTEM). XTEM revealed that the QDPs were immersed under the plane of the AlGaAs due to redistribution of the underlying AlGaAs layers. The overall shape and configuration of the QDPs can be attributed to the corrugated sidewalls that resulted from the redistribution of materials and the substrate etching caused by the "nanodrill" effect at high temperatures. The nanodrill effect was investigated on an AlAs/GaAs superlattice (SL) and the resulting nanohole formation as well as the hole refill process was explored via XTEM. On the other hand, investigations of the annealing effect of crystallized GaAs at both high and low temperatures showed a clear distinction in the type of resulting GaAs nanomound template and subsequent QD alignment. The elongated-shallow template was a direct consequence of Ga atoms' diffusion leading to a misoriented GaAs surface, which QDs favored energetically. The tall-rounded templates resulted at low temperatures because the rate at which diffusion slowed down. This template type led to the formation of QDMs. The results showed a strong correlation between the configurations and the size of the droplets. The bigger droplets resulted in hexa-QDMs and the smaller droplets resulted in quad-QDMs. The proposed evolution of QDMs was based on the transfer of materials, adatom diffusion and resulting diffused shape of the droplets. Configuration control for achieving quad-QDMs resulted in two different types of structures: 1) quad-QDMs elongated along the [011] and 2) quantum rod pairs (QRPs) due to high anisotropy of surface diffusion along the [01-1]. This thesis is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council Thesis Director: _____________________________________ Gregory J. Salamo


Beginning with the origin of the four color problem in 1852, the field of graph colorings has developed into one of the most popular areas of graph theory. Introducing graph theory with a coloring theme, Chromatic Graph Theory explores connections between major topics in graph theory and graph colorings as well as emerging topics. This self-contained book first presents various fundamentals of graph theory that lie outside of graph colorings, including basic terminology and results, trees and connectivity, Eulerian and Hamiltonian graphs, matchings and factorizations, and graph embeddings. The remainder of the text deals exclusively with graph colorings. It covers vertex colorings and bounds for the chromatic number, vertex colorings of graphs embedded on surfaces, and a variety of restricted vertex colorings. The authors also describe edge colorings, monochromatic and rainbow edge colorings, complete vertex colorings, several distinguishing vertex and edge colorings, and many distance-related vertex colorings. With historical, applied, and algorithmic discussions, this text offers a solid introduction to one of the most popular areas of graph theory.


Background: Targeted therapies for non-small lung cancer (NSCLC) have vastly improved survival and other outcomes for patients whose tumors have genetic mutations such as ALK, BRAF, EGFR, and ROS1. Identification of genetic mutations often indicates a mutation-specific course of therapy; however, the relationship between genetic mutation status, patient treatment preferences, and other determinants of patient value in NSCLC cancer care is not well understood. Methods: Qualitative study utilizing focus groups and in-depth interviews were conducted with metastatic NSCLC patients who had received systemic therapy. Interviews explored how patients valued and prioritized factors and attributes associated with NSCLC therapy. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and coded for key themes using MAXQDA qualitative data analysis software (VERBI, GmbH). Thematic analysis identified determinants of value that patients with genetic mutations considered most important in decision-making. Results: Of 19 total participants with metastatic NSCLC (mean [SD] age, 55.8 [12.6] years; 79% female), 15 (79%) reported a known genetic mutation. Most participants valued oncogene testing and indicated that they had developed a distinct identity based on their specific mutation. Further, participants in our study with identified mutations reported facing distinctly different decisions than those without known mutations. Participants also highlighted unmet needs for diagnosis, treatment, and support tailored to their patient subgroup, including a critical need for better provider training and awareness of genetic testing and mutation-specific treatment options. Across patient subgroups, mutation-specific social media and support networks were highly valued for the care and treatment information they provide, especially among those with rare mutations, limited treatment options, or less-experienced providers. Conclusions: Our study suggests important differences among NSCLC patients based on identified genetic mutations. As treatment for NSCLC evolves, so do the needs and preferences of patients, especially those with driver mutations. Our findings highlight the need for a better understanding of how mutation status may impact patient goals and preferences in order to provide the highest value care to each patient.


A Gray code of length $n$ is a circular list of all $2^n$ bitstrings or binary codewords of length $n$ such that successive codewords differ in only one bit position. The frequencies of the positions where these differences occur are called transition counts. An exponentially balanced Gray code is a Gray code the transition counts of which are all the same power of two, or are two successive powers of two. A proof for the existence of exponentially balanced Gray codes is derived. The proof is much simpler than an earlier proof presented by van Zanten and Suparta (Discrete Analysis and Operation Research, 11 (2004) 81-98 (Russian Journal)).


Tyler's M-estimator is a well known procedure for robust and heavy-tailed covariance estimation. Tyler himself suggested an iterative fixed-point algorithm for computing his estimator however, it requires super-linear (in the size of the data) runtime per iteration, which maybe prohibitive in large scale. In this work we propose, to the best of our knowledge, the first Frank-Wolfe-based algorithms for computing Tyler's estimator. One variant uses standard Frank-Wolfe steps, the second also considers \textit{away-steps} (AFW), and the third is a \textit{geodesic} version of AFW (GAFW). AFW provably requires, up to a log factor, only linear time per iteration, while GAFW runs in linear time (up to a log factor) in a large $n$ (number of data-points) regime. All three variants are shown to provably converge to the optimal solution with sublinear rate, under standard assumptions, despite the fact that the underlying optimization problem is not convex nor smooth. Under an additional fairly mild assumption, that holds with probability 1 when the (normalized) data-points are i.i.d. samples from a continuous distribution supported on the entire unit sphere, AFW and GAFW are proved to converge with linear rates. Importantly, all three variants are parameter-free and use adaptive step-sizes.


Anxiety is a natural reaction to stress. However when anxiety becomes excessive it can develop into a debilitating disorder. Interventions are needed to ameliorate and prevent the development of anxiety related health disorders. Casual video games (CVGs) are fun easy to play spontaneous and extremely popular. In this randomized controlled study the efficacy of CVGs in reducing symptoms of anxiety in a depressed population was tested by comparing individuals in the experimental group who were prescribed a CVG to utilize over a one month period with a no-treatment control group. The methodology included participants in the experimental group playing a CVG three times a week for 30 minutes each session over a one-month period. The State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) was used to measure participants' state and trait anxiety pre-post intervention. Results from both state and trait measures demonstrated that the intervention was effective in reducing state and trait anxiety symptom severity scores for the experimental group when compared to the control group. These findings demonstrate the use of prescriptive interventions that utilize CVGs as a way to treat anxiety as well as implications that include the potential expansion of applications of CVGs as an adjunct to medicine and other medical therapies being utilized alone.


A popular concept of plate tectonics is that the most important density anomalies are in oceanic plates, which descend from rise to trench while subducting slabs act as velocity regulators and the drag on the base of the lithosphere is resistive. This hypothesis has been shown to be consistent with velocities of rigid plates and to approximately predict stress directions in a global elastic shell. Here I test whether the hypothesis leads to correct plate velocities and stress directions in models of laterally heterogeneous plates of nonlinear rheology separated by faults with low friction. All models have bottom boundary conditions based on simple shear in an olivine asthenosphere extending to the transition zone, where various patterns of lower mantle flow are assumed. These models show that topography alone is not sufficient to drive plate motion at actual rates over a static or sluggish transition zone. If the forward component of velocity of each subducting slab is also imposed, then velocities are improved, but errors in stress direction become unacceptable. Better models are found by assuming that at least some parts of the transition zone have velocities greater than surface velocities, leading to active or forward basal drag. In the most plausible model, this forward drag acts only on continents, while oceanic lithosphere experiences negligible basal shear tractions. Probably the dense descending slabs of oceanic lithosphere not only pull the oceanic plates, but also stir the more viscous lower mantle, and this in turn helps to drive the slower drift of continents.


The international competition for quality innovation of the year has been organized for the eighth time by The Finnish Quality Association together with Tekes - the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation - and Deloitte Finland. In addition to Finland, also Latvia, Sweden, Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Israel and Kazakhstan participated in the competition. The prize ceremony was held in Budapest on January 19th, 2015. Winners of the competition were carefully selected based on criteria that evaluated their novelty, usefulness, learning, successfulness and effectiveness, as well as how customer-orientated and society-driven they are. For the best innovations, also expert opinions were requested. The final decision was made by an authoritative jury, whose chairperson is Hannele Pohjola, the long-time innovation leader for the Confederation of Finnish Industries. Medixine won the international series for responsible innovations with its integrated home monitoring solution based on its Medixine Clinic product. Medixine Ltd is one of the pioneers in e-health and e-care solutions in Europe. Medixine solutions are marketed in Scandinavia, the UK, USA and Australia. Medixine Clinic enables chronic disease patients to share their home measurement results with their health care providers. In the prize winning solution a call center has also been integrated to the service. The call center assists and supports the patient and, when needed, informs the patient's care unit about need for care. "With this new comprehensive concept, we can help health care providers to adopt new and effective technical solutions earlier and faster. Screening suitable patients for a home measurement service, educating and providing support, installing and testing equipment can be difficult for health care providers that typically don't have resources for this", says Tapio Jokinen from Medixine Ltd. "Medixine and its partners offer a comprehensive service that is easy to take into use." First customers for the new service were found in England where the integrated service is used as part of a home hospital. Many patients can be discharged from the hospital earlier thanks to effective home monitoring. First results of the service have already been published: with 300 patients, 2.000 hospital bed-days were saved and the patient satisfaction rate was 99 %.


Nanostructured bupivacaine-selective molecularly imprinted 3-aminophenylboronic acid-p-phenylenediamine co-polymer (MIP) films have been prepared on gold-coated quartz (Au/quartz) resonators by electrochemical synthesis under cyclic voltammetric conditions in a liquid crystalline (LC) medium (triton X-100/water). Films prepared in water and in the absence of template were used for control studies. Infrared spectroscopic studies demonstrated comparable chemical compositions for LC and control polymer films. SEM studies revealed that the topologies of the molecularly imprinted polymer films prepared in the LC medium (LC-MIP) exhibit discernible 40 nm thick nano-fiber structures, quite unlike the polymers prepared in the absence of the LC-phase. The sensitivity of the LC-MIP in a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensor platform was 67.6 ± 4.9 Hz/mM under flow injection analysis (FIA) conditions, which was ≈250% higher than for the sensor prepared using the aqueous medium. Detection was possible at 100 nM (30 ng/mL), and discrimination of bupivacaine from closely related structural analogs was readily achieved as reflected in the corresponding stability constants of the MIP-analyte complexes. The facile fabrication and significant enhancement in sensor sensitivity together highlight the potential of this LC-based imprinting strategy for fabrication of polymeric materials with hierarchical architectures, in particular for use in surface-dependent application areas, e.g., biomaterials or sensing.


Since their introduction in 1978, regression quantiles have played an increasingly important role in regression analysis. In particular, they form the basis for quantile regression, a statistical technique intended to draw inferences about conditional quantile functions. Although it is well known that regression quantiles have limiting normal distributions, not much is known about their behaviour in finite and small samples. In the present paper we study this problem and, in particular, apply the saddlepoint method to obtain improved small sample approximations. These approximations are considered in a numerical study where they are found to perform quite well even in fairly small samples.


Contemporaries and economic historians have noted several features of medieval and early modern European monetary systems that are hard to analyze using models of centralized exchange. For example, contemporaries complained of recurrent shortages of small change and argued that an abundance/dearth of money had real effects on exchange, especially for the poor. To confront these facts, we build a random-matching monetary model with two indivisible coins with different intrinsic values. The model shows that small change shortages can exist, in the sense that adding small coins to an economy with only large coins is welfare-improving. This effect is amplified by increases in trading opportunities. Further, changes in the quantity of monetary metals affect the real economy and the amount of exchange as well as the optimal denomination size. Finally, the model shows that replacing full-bodied small coins with tokens is not necessarily welfare-improving.


OBJECTIVE
To report two cases of renal hemorrhage after extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) and their therapeutic management.

METHODS
Description of the clinical cases, together with the diagnosis and therapeutic management of these complications.

RESULTS
We present two cases of patients with renal hemorrhage after ESWL, which were performed without immediate complications. One of the cases, after detecting an important laceration of the renal parenchyma, needed two embolization sessions for its short-term resolution; however, the patient finally passed away due to the complications derived from hemorrhage. The other case was solved through conservative management.

CONCLUSIONS
Even though hemorrhage is an infrequent complication after ESWL, it should be suspected when the patient presents compatible clinical symptoms, since even though most cases are resolved in a conservative manner, on some occasions specific treatments for the hemorrhage are necessary. Old age and the presence of vascular comorbidities seem to be related to a higher risk of hemorrhage after ESWL.


Low-skilled labor makes a significant part of the construction sector, performing daily production tasks that do not require specific technical knowledge or confirmed skills. Today, construction market demands increasing skill levels. Many jobs that were once considered to be undertaken by low or un-skilled labor, now demand some kind of formal skills. The jobs that require low skilled labor are continually decreasing due to technological advancement and globalization. Jobs that previously required little or no training now require skilful people to perform the tasks appropriately. The study aims at ameliorating employability of less skilled manpower by finding ways to instruct them for performing constructions tasks. A review of exiting task instruction methodologies in construction and the underlying gaps within them warrants an appropriate way to train and instruct low skilled workers for the tasks in construction. The idea is to ensure the required quality of construction with technological and didactic aids seeming particularly purposeful to prepare potential workers for the tasks in construction without exposing them to existing communication barriers. A BIM based technology is considered promising along with the integration of visual directives/animations to elaborate the construction tasks scheduled to be carried on site.


This article analyzes recent developments in the statute of limitations case law under New York Civil Practice Law and Rules Article II and two related New York Court of Appeals decisions. Specifically, the article will examine the cases of Bazakos v. Lewis and Gotay v. Breitbart. In Bazakos, the Court of Appeals held that a claim against a doctor for his alleged negligence in performing an independent medical examination was governed by the two-year and six-month medical malpractice statute of limitations. In Gotay, the Court of Appeals held that the continuous representation doctrine did not toll the running of a three-year statute of limitations in a malpractice claim against a lawyer. Both decisions demonstrate the Court of Appeals' adherence to a strict and rigid application of statutory time periods in favor of defendants and against plaintiffs.


he use of control-based methods for resource manage- ment in real-time computing and communication systems has gained a substantial interest recently. Applications ar- eas include performance control of web-servers, dynamic resource management in embedded systems, traffic con- trol in communication networks, transaction management in database servers, error control in software systems, and au- tonomic computing. Within the European EU/IST FP6 Net- work of Exellence ARTIST2 on Embedded System Design a roadmap on Control of Real-Time Computing Systems has recently been completed. The focus of the roadmap is how flexibility, adaptivity, performance and robustness can be achieved in a real-time computing or communication system through the use of control theory. The item that is controlled is in most cases the allocation of computing and communication resources, e.g., the distribution or schedul- ing of CPU time among different competing tasks, jobs, re- quests, or transactions, or the communication resources in a network. Due to this, control of computing systems also goes under the name of feedback scheduling. The roadmap is divided into six research areas: con- trol of server systems, control of CPU resources, control of communication networks, error control of software systems, feedback scheduling of control systems, and control mid- dleware. For each area an overview is given and challenges for future research are stated. The aim of this position paper is to summarize the conclusions concerning these research challenges. (Less)


An increasing number of developers face the difficult task of debugging distributed asynchronous programs. This trend has outpaced the development of adequate debugging tools and currently, the best option for many is an ad hoc patchwork of sequential tools and printf debugging. This paper presents Causeway, a postmortem distributed debugger that demonstrates a novel approach to understanding the behavior of a distributed program. Our message-oriented approach borrows an effective strategy from sequential debugging: To find the source of unintended side-effects, start with the chain of expressed intentions. We show how Causeway's integrated views – describing both distributed and sequential computation – help users navigate causal pathways as they pursue suspicions. We highlight Causeway's innovative features which include adaptive, customizable event abstraction mechanisms and graphical views that follow message flow across process and machine boundaries.


In recent years, the Brazilian electricity sector has been experiencing high levels of non-technical losses, impacting both the electricity tariff paid by the consumer and the financial balance of the distributors. The high levels of NTP have multiple causes, ranging from the management difficulties of the distributors themselves in the fight against losses, even to the regional socioeconomic complexities. Aneel is the entity responsible for regulating the levels of these losses, using an own methodology applied in each rate review cycle. In this context, the present article sought to develop a metric capable of evaluating, measuring and classifying the effectiveness of the regulatory methodologies of NTP treatment, according to the results obtained at the end of each regulatory period. For this evaluation, it was identified the possibility of using Multicriteria Analysis techniques, such as the TODIM method. Because of their ability to handle different perceptions of interest.


Velocity-model building with a good understanding of anisotropy is one of the important elements in a prestack depth migration (PSDM) project. During a recently conducted PSDM project, we observed that (1) the application of negative delta/epsilon is necessary to achieve reasonable depthing and gather flatness, and (2) azimuthal variation in gather flatness exists in the interval where negative delta/epsilon are necessary. A geologic explanation of these interesting observations was necessary to justify the velocity-model-building result. Investigation of stress magnitude/orientation and theoretical anisotropy of unconsolidated sandstone under nonhydrostatic stress revealed that these observations can be explained by stress-induced anisotropy. This concept may be applicable to other fields, and the existence of azimuthal anisotropy and value of anisotropy parameters can be roughly estimated by the method described.


Aluminium doped zinc oxide films were prepared by electrospinning method through deposition of fibers from sol-gel solution on a substrate. Samples were specially annealed after deposition. Several annealing temperatures and heating and cooling rates are examined. Two preparation routes giving both thin fibers with diameter near 40 nm and thick fibers with diameter near 140 nm are elaborated. Samples were characterized by optical spectrophotometry, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. Light transmittance of prepared films is 85-90 % in the visible spectral range. However transmittance of samples annealed in air is slightly higher than for samples annealed in vacuum. This slight decrease in transmittance can be associated with higher content of carbon in the samples annealed in vacuum.


This essay reads William Blake's illuminated work Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion as a key instance of living (or organic) form conceived according to biological principles in the period of Romantic vitalism, 1760––1830. At this time, the Aristotelian theory of epigenesis was revived in the European scientific community as a way to comprehend embryogenesis as a process of self-generation motivated by internal, vital power. This theory, current in the science of generation, conflicted with another theory called "preformation," which was closer to a creationist view of organic life. A careful look at the kind of material organizations made possible by vital power (a concept that went by various names, from vis essentialis to Lebenskraft to Bildungstrieb ) reveals these to be relevant to the aesthetic organization of Jerusalem . Organic form, despite received wisdom, did not always entail closure or the ideology of "reproduction." Instead, modeling the power of regeneration, Blake develops a unique brand of epigenesist poetics.


Ethiopia remains a net importer of soybean partly due to low average yields which may be improved by inoculation with rhizobia and/or plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR). The functional characterisation of 231 rhizobacteria isolated from the rhizosphere of soybean grown in 102 soils collected from different pedo-climatic regions of Ethiopia was carried out. Isolates were initially characterised by Gram staining and then functionally for:  indole-3-acetic acid production; phosphate solubilisation; growth on a nitrogen-free medium; and, resistance to the pathogenic fungus Fusarium oxysporum. A sub-set of 72 of the best performing isolates were tested in vitro for: production of bioprotectants; polysaccharide degradation; and their relative capacity to maintain growth in response to extremes of: temperature; pH; salinity; antibiotics; pesticides; and, heavy metals. Twenty isolates with the best PGPR potential were identified via 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Seventeen isolates were Gram-negative: Pseudomonas (7); Stenotrophomonas (5); Acinetobacter (3); Enterobacter (1); and Achromobacter (1). Gram-positive types were: Bacillus (2); and, Microbacterium (1). Of the six of the most promising PGPR tested on soybean plants, Achromobacter and Acinetobacter significantly enhanced soybean seed germination, seedling growth and plant vigour index compared to non-inoculated plants.

 Key words: Soybean, Ethiopia, plant growth promoting rhizobacteria, plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), seedling vigour.


The study attempted to identify the factors that influence compliance amongst 1039 members and their dependants of a particular medical aid scheme in South Africa who were registered for an asthma disease risk-management (DRM) programme. The sample consisted of 200 systematically selected individuals or their dependants. A quantitative, exploratory, and descriptive study was undertaken. Questionnaires for completion were posted to the individuals or their dependants. The Statistica 7.1 computer program was used to analyse the data.Most asthma patients did not comply with the DRM programme because they lacked knowledge of the programme. Asthma patients' compliance with the DRM programme can be enhanced by the sustained, positive attitudes of their health providers and case managers; better promotion of the programme; and by involving the patients to a greater extent in the long-term management of their disease.Asthma patients require education about healthy lifestyles that would empower them to successfully manage their condition, which would prevent or at least reduce asthma attacks and/or hospital admissions.


During chronic kidney disease, the progressive deterioration of renal function induces several biological/clinical dysfunctions, including enhancement of synthesis of inflammation/oxidative stress mediators. Impaired renal function is an independent cardiovascular risk factor; indeed, cardiovascular complications dominate the landscape of both chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease. The aim of this study is to explore the correlation between the global oxidative balance in hemodialysis patients and both inflammatory markers and cardiovascular events. Using photometric tests, this study explored plasmatic oxidative balance in 97 hemodialysis patients compared to a healthy population. In the hemodialysis patients, we showed that oxidative stress values were significantly lower than in controls while effectiveness in the antioxidant barrier was significantly increased in the hemodialysis group. Furthermore, we highlighted a strong correlation between oxidative index and blood levels of C-reactive protein. When patients were divided into two groups based on previous cardiovascular events, we found that subjects with previous cardiovascular events had higher values of both oxidative stress and antioxidant barrier than patients without cardiovascular events. Our results indicated that in hemodialysis patients, the clinical and prognostic significance of oxidative status is very different from general population. As cardiovascular complications represent a strong negative factor for survival of hemodialysis patients, the research of new cardiovascular risk biomarkers in these patients takes on particular importance in order to translate them into clinical practice/primary care.


This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, nationalism is analysed as a kind of gnostic religion (in the sense given to this term by E. Voegelin). In the mind of their adherents, nations are ultimate realities in which the objective (fatalistic) and the subjective (voluntaristic) side of the historical process coincide. In the second part, it is argued that language, by its dialectical character, appears as the very incarnation of the nationalist ideal. The ensuing paradoxes of nationalist language policy are listed and briefly analysed: the equation of the language of culture with the language of everyday life; the equation of norm with use; the equation of object language with metalanguage; the equation of modernity with authenticity; and the equation of the national with the universal.


The debate on ecological and climatic benefits of planted forests at the sensitive dry edge of the closed forest belt (i.e. at the 'xeric limits') is still unresolved. Forests sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide, accumulate biomass, control water erosion and dust storms, reduce river sedimentation, and mitigate small floods. However, planting trees in areas previously dominated by grassland or cropland can dramatically alter the energy and water balances at multiple scales. The forest/grassland transition zone is especially vulnerable to projected drastic temperature and precipitation shifts and growing extremes due to its high ecohydrological sensitivity. We investigated some of the relevant aspects of the ecological and climatic role of forests and potential impacts of climate change at the dryland margins of the temperate-continental zone using case studies from China, the United States and SE Europe (Hungary). We found that, contrary to popular expectations, the effects of forest cover on regional climate might be limited and the influence of forestation on water resources might be negative. Planted forests generally reduce stream flow and lower groundwater table level because of higher water use than previous land cover types. Increased evaporation potential due to global warming and/or extreme drought events is likely to reduce areas that are appropriate for tree growth and forest establishment. Ecologically conscious forest management and forestation planning should be adjusted to the local, projected hydrologic and climatic conditions, and should also consider non-forest alternative land uses.


Phase change thermal management devices including heat pipes and ultra-thin vapor chambers can remove and spread the excess heat from microprocessors more efficiently compared with the conventional heat sinks. However, the capillary and CHF limits of the evaporator section remained a challenge for high heat flux (> 100 Wcm−2) large area (> 5 × 5 mm2) applications. In this study, a hybrid microporous structure consists of copper wire meshes (CWMs) as the liquid delivery routing and copper inverse opals (CIOs) film as the boiling/evaporation platform is proposed. The feasibility of the approach and the design optimization were studied with extensive modeling and CFD simulations. For the experiment setup, the heater and the RTD sensors are fabricated over a Silicon chip using the conventional micro fabrication processes and the micro porous copper film is deposited based on template-assisted electrodeposition, resulting in CIOs structure with average 5 μm pore size, 1 μm neck, and 15 μm thickness. A copper wire mesh structure (500 μm thickness, 0.5 porosity, 71 μm wire diameter) with 4 × 4 tile openings (1 × 1 mm2 area per tile) was fixed over the CIOs film with mechanical constraints. A flow loop and vapor chamber are designed and fabricated to perform capillary boiling experiments in a saturated environment (liquid water and vapor at ∼100°C). The hybrid microporous structure was able to remove over 75 W from the 5 × 5 mm2 heater area (over 300 W cm−2 heat flux) with 9°C super heat resulting in thermal resistance of 0.03 cm2°CW−1 at the CHF. The findings of this study are largely beneficial for the design and fabrication of high performance evaporator wicks and next-generation heat routing technologies.


Background Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection, with at least half of sexually active people contracting the virus—a leading etiology for genital warts and anal, cervical, laryngeal, penile, vaginal, and vulvar cancers. Research suggests HPV is higher among U.S. military personnel than in U.S. civilian populations and can result in significant morbidity or complications and limit U.S. military's duties or deployable status. Objectives The aim of the study was to identify determinants of HPV vaccination among U.S. Navy personnel. Methods Participants (N = 233) recruited from both active duty and activated reservists, attached to Commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet (COMNAVSURFPAC), located in Japan and the United States, completed an anonymous online survey between June and October 2015. Bivariate analysis was used to examine relationships between sociodemographic, psychological factors, and HPV vaccination. Logistic regression was utilized to identify factors that increase odds for HPV vaccination. Results HPV vaccination was associated with gender; having deployed in the past 3 years; having heard of HPV, HPV testing, and HPV vaccine; HPV self-rating knowledge; where one heard about the vaccine; belief the chain of command recommends the vaccine; and HPV general knowledge, testing knowledge, and vaccine knowledge (p < .05). The regression model was statistically significant, &khgr;2(19) = 97.216, p < .001; four variables contributed to the model. Discussion Determinants of HPV vaccination were female gender; hearing about HPV vaccine from a healthcare provider, media, or Internet; belief the chain of command recommends the HPV vaccine; and greater HPV vaccine knowledge. Results augment healthcare professionals' and policy makers' existing evidence-based knowledge of the determinants of HPV vaccination to help develop effective HPV immunization policies and programs.


A non-ideal iris image enhancement algorithm based on local standard deviation was put forward. The algorithm can enhance gray and color iris images with poor contrast. Experiments show that the proposed method can increase the correct acceptance rate and reduce the false rejection rate of iris recognition system, so the algorithm can improve the accuracy of iris recognition system.


BACKGROUND Substance use disorders (SUD) represent a national epidemic with increasing rates of SUD-related hospitalizations. However, most hospitals lack expertise or systems to directly address SUD. Healthcare professionals feel underprepared and commonly hold negative views toward patients with SUD. Little is known about how hospital interventions may affect providers' attitudes and experiences toward patients with SUD. OBJECTIVE To explore interprofessional hospital providers' perspectives on how integrating SUD treatment and care systems affect providers' attitudes, beliefs, and experiences. DESIGN In-depth semistructured interviews and focus groups. The study was part of a formative evaluation of the Improving Addiction Care Team (IMPACT), an interprofessional hospital-based addiction medicine service with rapid-access pathways to posthospital SUD treatment. SETTING Single urban academic hospital in Portland, Oregon. PARTICIPANTS Multidisciplinary hospital providers. MEASUREMENTS We conducted a thematic analysis using an inductive approach at a semantic level. RESULTS Before IMPACT, participants felt that hospitalization did not address addiction, leading to untreated withdrawal, patients leaving against medical advice, chaotic care, and staff "moral distress." Participants felt that IMPACT "completely reframes" addiction as a treatable chronic disease, improving patient engagement and communication, and humanizing care. Participants valued post-hospital SUD treatment pathways and felt having systems to address SUD reduced burnout and provided relief. Providers noted that IMPACT had limited ability to address poverty or engage highly ambivalent patients. CONCLUSIONS Providers' distress of caring for patients with SUD is not inevitable. Hospital-based SUD interventions can reframe providers' views of addiction and may have significant implications for clinical care and providers' well-being.


How does our motor system solve the problem of anticipatory control in spite of a wide spectrum of response dynamics from different musculo-skeletal systems, transport delays as well as response latencies throughout the central nervous system? To a great extent, our highly-skilled motor responses are a result of a reactive feedback system, originating in the brain-stem and spinal cord, combined with a feed-forward anticipatory system, that is adaptively fine-tuned by sensory experience and originates in the cerebellum. Based on that interaction we design the counterfactual predictive control (CFPC) architecture, an anticipatory adaptive motor control scheme, in which a feed-forward module, based on the cerebellum, steers an error feedback controller with counterfactual error signals. Those are signals that trigger reactions as actual errors would, but that do not code for any current of forthcoming errors. In order to determine the optimal learning strategy, we derive a novel learning rule for the feed-forward module that involves an eligibility trace and operates at the synaptic level. In particular, our eligibility trace provides a mechanism beyond co-incidence detection in that it convolves a history of prior synaptic inputs with error signals. In the context of cerebellar physiology, this solution implies that Purkinje cell synapses should generate eligibility traces using a forward model of the system being controlled. From an engineering perspective, CFPC provides a general-purpose anticipatory control architecture equipped with a learning rule that exploits the full dynamics of the closed-loop system.


Above all, Pierre Bourdieu's work has argued that there is a homology of social classes on the one hand and cultural consumption on the other. In contrast, theories of individualization posit that social class plays only a minor role in shaping lifestyle in contemporary societies. In this paper, using extensive survey data, we examine how much contemporary highbrow lifestyles are structured by class membership, the extent to which highbrow consumption varies according to the level of modernization of a society and whether the explanatory power of class status in relation to highbrow consumption decreases in more modernized countries. The findings show that highbrow lifestyles are strongly influenced by social class, and that highbrow consumption is more common in more modernized societies. Moreover, the findings confirm the suspicion that the formative power of social class on lifestyle decreases in highly modernized societies, albeit without disappearing completely.


In the eutrophic Lake Kasumigaura in Japan, a trend of dissolved Si (DSi) concentration was detected over the last three decades, probably caused by the DSi release enhanced by an increase in sediment resuspension for the same period (Arai et al. , Limnol ., 13 , 81–95, 2012). The present study described the long-term trends of the magnitude and seasonality of diatom blooms in the lake during 1981–2010 using the database and assessed the influencing factors for the trends by the numerical simulation of DSi and diatoms. The box model was developed based on the lake budgets (inflow, outflow, release and sedimentation) and the simple diatom growth model depending on DSi, temperature and light condition. As results, database analysis detected a long-term trend of increasing diatom abundance and a shift of blooming season from spring and autumn to the winter–spring period. Si could be regarded as a main nutrient factor limiting diatom growth by analyzing N:P:Si ratios. Our model simulation relatively well-reproduced the increasing trend and the shift of seasonality of DSi and diatoms, even though peaks of diatom blooms were underestimated in some years. Among input variables, the concentration of resuspended sediments radically increased. The model simulation with the input variables or parameters changed suggested as follows: (1) the recent DSi release from resuspended sediments enhanced diatom abundance and (2) the degradation of light condition caused by resuspension affected the shift of blooming season. These findings implicate the significance of the interactions between sediments and water to phytoplankton blooms.


The subliminal psychodynamic activation (SPA) method, which was developed to test psychodynamic theories, remains highly controversial due, in part, to the counterintuitive nature of its results. Numerous concerns over experimental methodology also make it difficult to evaluate whether the method succeeds in fulfilling the original purpose. The studies reported herein were undertaken to address this issue. In three experiments with nonclinical subjects, Silverman's (1983) hypothesis that the stimulation of unconscious fantasies of oneness with mother is capable of engendering salutary behavioral effects was examined. In Experiment 1, 50 men and 50 women were tachistoscopically shown, for four ms, one of five stimuli: MOMMY AND I ARE ONE, DADDY AND I ARE ONE, MYMMO NAD I REA ENO, and two other messages to test subsidiary hypotheses. Men were expected to show a significant decrease in anxiety, as assessed by heart rate, to the MOMMY stimulus, and women to either to the MOMMY or DADDY stimulus, or to both. The subliminal stimuli did not produce differential effects on anxiety, thus failing to lend support to the experimental hypotheses. However, a significant correlation was observed for women between responsiveness to the MOMMY phrase and scores on measures of self-perception. Experiment 2 followed a similar design to that of Experiment 1 except that all stimuli were presented at each participant's individually determined subjective threshold. No support for the main hypotheses was found, and the previously observed association between responsivity to the MOMMY message and self-perception was absent. In Experiment 3, stimuli were presented both at subliminal and supraliminal levels, and a new dependent variable of fine motor performance was added which has been employed successfully by researchers before. The MOMMY message failed to influence heart rate and fine motor performance significantly compared to a control message, and neither significantly compared to a control message, and neither self-perception nor degree of attachment with mother was related to message effects. It is suggested that the SPA method may not be efficacious for investigating psychodynamic propositions, at least with nonclinical populations. In the light of current results, future empirical study of psychoanalysis is considered without relying on SPA as an investigative tool.


Diazotrophic cyanobacteria play an important role in biogeochemical cycles of carbon and nitrogen and, hence, in oceanic productivity in the tropical and subtropical regions of the ocean. Although many studies have examined the impact of iron (Fe) limitation on particulate primary production and dinitrogen (N2) fixation in the colonial cyanobacterium Trichodesmium, none have looked at the impact of Fe limitation on the percentage extracellular release (PER) and secondary production (SP) in Fe-limited cultures of this cyanobacterium. Here, we present the results of a series of culture experiments during which we examined the impact of 3 concentrations of dissolved iron (DFe) on total primary production (TPP = dissolved + particulate primary production, i.e. DPP + PPP), PER and on SP. Under severe Fe limitation (5 nM DFe), biomass, growth rates, TPP and N2 fixation were strongly reduced, while PER increased relative to the rates ob served at the highest Fe concentration. Moreover, reducing Fe concentration induced an increase in the percentage of photosynthetically fixed C used for algal growth, while the percentage of C used to support algal respiration decreased. Reduced Fe concentrations also induced a decrease in SP and in the SP:DPP ratio, indicating that the efficiency of transfer of fixed carbon from autotrophic to heterotrophic processes is reduced. This suggests that Fe, either directly through influencing cellular processes or indirectly through influencing organic matter structure or nitrogen availability, is controlling SP and, thus, microbial carbon utilization. These results suggest that the amount of carbon entering into the microbial loop may be reduced under Fe limitation, thus leading to an accumulation of dissolved organic carbon with potentially important impacts on microbial carbon cycling and, ultimately, on the biological carbon pump.


This report analyzes the potential for electricity conservation in seven residential end uses - refrigerating, freezing, water heating, lighting, central air conditioning, cooking, and clothes drying. The analysis is based on the Pacific Gas and Electric Company service territory. It explores the costs and savings of a range of new, energy-efficient technologies including some in the prototype stage, such as heat pump and microwave clothes dryers, bi-radiant ovens, evacuated panel refrigerator insulation, and low temperature dishwashers. The authors develop three alternative scenarios of energy demand through 2005, documenting the potential for up to 56% reduction in peak power demand and 44% reduction in electricity consumption.


During the years 1919–1923, the Australia-Philippines boxing circuit was highly profitable and created a transnational community of fans. Allowed into Australia as exceptions to the White Australia Policy, Filipino boxers were matched against white fighters and drew large crowds both despite and because of racial stereotyping. Using evidence drawn primarily from Australian sports papers, this article argues that boxing was a realm—at home and abroad—in which Filipino fighters challenged a racial hierarchy that deemed them primitive, unskilled, and inferior. Successful Filipino boxers thus became symbols of hope to their people. The ring was also a place in which Filipino and Australian boxers deemed too small or "pretty" to be significant men challenged narrow definitions of masculinity through their fighting prowess. While boxing provided an arena to fight and transcend social hierarchies, boxers from both countries were subject to the control and demands of the men who made profits from their fights.


This paper explores the challenges and use of a postgraduate consultancy module in teaching operations management. The consultancy module extends the traditional learning boundaries between students and lecturers to a tripartite grouping of students, university and industry. The interaction within this group may be influenced by students' skills and their level of understanding and the needs of the particular industry. The consultancy module and the students' solutions are thus influenced by cooperation and teamwork and the autonomy, skills and training of the students as part of the application of operations management theory. The paper also presents an evaluation of the perceived gap between teaching operations management theory in higher education and its application in practice (in industry). It is argued that providing an operations consultancy module as a strategic teaching tool encourages postgraduate students, lecturers and industry to build a bridge between the relatively distinct worlds of academia and industry. The research is intended to help operations management educators to identify and deal with the challenges of setting up a consultancy module in higher education.


Abstract Relative abundance data are of primary importance in paleoecology, but it is not always obvious how they should be interpreted. Because relative abundance is expressed as a proportion of the total sample, change in the abundance of one group necessarily changes the relative abundance of all groups in the sample. There are two possible interpretations for a trend in the relative abundance of a taxon: an "active" scenario in which the trend reflects change in the population density of the group itself, or a "passive" scenario in which the change is driven by population changes in other taxa. To discriminate between these scenarios it is necessary to collect absolute abundance data (abundance expressed as a function of sample area or volume). We examine both absolute and relative abundance trends through a major paleoecological transition: the shift from trilobite-dominated to brachiopod-dominated paleocommunities in shallow marine carbonates spanning the Lower/Middle Ordovician boundary in western Utah and eastern Nevada. We sampled 61 carbonate mudstone and wackestone beds from the upper Ibex Series (Lower Ordovician) and lower Whiterock Series (Middle Ordovician) at three sections that span the boundary. All samples come from the shallow subtidal Bathyurid trilobite biofacies. Samples were broken into small pieces, and all skeletal fragments >2 mm were identified to the finest possible taxonomic level. Consistent with previous work on this interval, the relative abundance of trilobites declines sharply across the boundary, while the relative abundance of brachiopods increases. Absolute abundance data indicate that the decline in trilobite abundance is genuine and not an artifact of normalization. The trend is not easily explained by sampling bias, facies distribution, taphonomic regime, or sedimentation style. The dramatic shift in abundance contrasts with relatively minor changes in relative genus richness across the boundary. This is partly ascribable to differences in the relative abundance structure of trilobite faunas. Though comparable numbers of trilobite and brachiopod genera occur above and below the boundary, the trilobite fauna from the upper Ibex Series has lower evenness then the lower Whiterock Series fauna. Hence sampled trilobite richness is high in the lower Whiterock despite the small number of specimens. This highlights the importance of collecting abundance data. Although these data suggest that in at least some cases richness and abundance patterns are not closely coupled, more robust richness data are necessary to confirm this conclusion.


ABSTRACT. The 11th in the series of International Workshops on Opportunistic Protists (IWOP‐11) was held in August 2010 on the Big Island of Hawaii. These meetings are devoted to agents of infections that cause serious problems in AIDS patients and other individuals with defective immune systems. International Workshops on Opportunistic Protists serves as a forum for exchange of current research information on Pneumocystis, Cryptosporidium and the Microsporidia, Toxoplasma, free‐living amoebae, kinetoplastid flagellates and other pathogens that are particularly pathogenic in immunodeficient hosts. Studies on interactions between host and pathogen, especially host responses, were highlighted in this year's symposium. The lack of in vitro cultivation methods for luxuriant growth of Pneumocystis, Cryptosporidium and the Enterocytozoon bieneusi remains a major hindrance to understanding the basic biology of these organisms and precludes genetic manipulations. However, slow but steady progress is being achieved by hard work including data mining of some completed or partially completed genome sequencing of several IWOP organisms. Of great concern is evidence for dramatic decline in research funding for these pathogens and the lack of appreciation by the larger scientific community concerning the state of art and challenges faced by researchers working on these organisms that can provide critical insight into emerging and reemerging pathogens.


The electrochemical corrosion characteristics of AZ31 and AZ61 magnesium alloys were analyzed in terms of potentiodynamic tests and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The influence of the solution composition and material surface finish was examined also through the analysis of corrosion products created on the samples' surface after electrochemical measurements in terms of scanning electron microscopy using energy-dispersive spectroscopy. Obtained data revealed the differences in the response of the magnesium alloys to enriched Hank's Balanced Salt Solution—HBSS+ (with Mg2+ and Ca2+ ions) and Hank's Balanced Salt Solution—HBSS (without Mg2+ and Ca2+ ions). Both examined alloys exhibited better corrosion resistance from the thermodynamic and kinetic point of view in the enriched HBSS+. AZ61 magnesium alloy reached higher values of polarization resistance than AZ31 magnesium alloy in both the used corrosion solutions. Phosphate-based corrosion products were characteristic for the AZ31 and AZ61 alloys tested in the HBSS (without Mg2+ and Ca2+ ions). The combination of phosphate-based corrosion products and clusters of MgO and Mg(OH)2 was typical for the surface of samples tested in the enriched HBSS+ (with Mg2+ and Ca2+ ions). Pitting corrosion attack was observed only in the case of enriched HBSS+.


Traces of activity left by social media users can shed light on individual behavior, social relationships, and community efficacy. Tools and processes to analyze social traces are essential for enabling practitioners to study and nurture meaningful and sustainable social interaction. Yet such tools and processes remain in their infancy. We conducted a study of 15 graduate students who were learning to apply Social Network Analysis (SNA) to data from online communities. Based on close observations of their emergent practices, we derived the Network Analysis and Visualization (NAV) process model and identified stages where intervention from peers, experts, and an SNA tool were most useful. We show how the NAV model informs the design of SNA tools and services, education practices, and support for social media practitioners. Author


The study of the visual and motor behaviour in a simulated situation of return to service in tennis and wheelchair tennis was carried out, where participants responded to the serves in both real-life (3D) and video-based settings (2D). Automated systems to acquire data were employed, trying to simulate the attentional demands of the game in the video-based situation. Three groups were analysed in the study: a novice wheelchair tennis players, experienced wheelers, and a group of non-disabled tennis players. They observed two series (2D and 3D) of 24 top-spin services, performed by two wheelchair tennis players and other two players in a biped position. Participants showed a higher number of visual fixations in the video-based situation, as well as a higher number and time of visual fixation on locations of the upper body. On the other hand, in the real-life setting, they showed a higher number and time of visual fixation on the ball. According to the results, it seems that a lesser familiarization with the video-based situation could modify the visual search strategy, especially in the pursuit of the trajectory of the ball. KEY WORDS: Dimensionality, Visual behaviour, Reaction response, Wheelchair tennis, Tennis, Return to service


Infection by the hepatitis delta virus (HDV), a satellite of the hepatitis B virus (HBV), increases viral liver disease severity. Its diagnosis is thus vital for HBV‐infected patients. HDV‐RNA load (HDVL) should be assessed and monitored in plasma using real‐time reverse‐transcriptase polymerase chain reaction assays. Taking advantage of the recently‐developed World Health Organization (WHO) HDV international standard (WHO‐HDV‐IS), the first international external quality control for HDVL quantification was performed. Two panels of samples were sent to 28 laboratories in 17 countries worldwide. Panel A comprised 20 clinical samples of various genotypes (1, 2, and 5‐8) and viral loads, including two negative controls. Panel B, composed of dilutions of the WHO‐HDV‐IS, allowed the conversion of results from copies/mL into IU/mL for HDVL standardization and interlaboratory comparisons. Comprehensive analysis revealed a very high heterogeneity of assay characteristics, including their technical steps and technologies. Thirteen labs (46.3%) properly quantified all 18 positive samples; 16 (57.1%) failed to detect one to up to 10 samples, and several others underestimated (>3 log IU/mL) HDVL of African genotype strains (1 and 5‐8). Discrepancies were mainly attributed to either primers or probe mismatches related to the high genetic variability of HDV and, possibly, to the complex secondary structure of the target genomic RNA. The labs were grouped in four clusters by the statistical analysis of their performances. The best clusters comprised the 17 labs that obtained the expected HDVL values, including five that otherwise failed to quantify one or two samples. Conclusion: The results of this international quality‐control study underline the urgent need to improve methods used to monitor HDV viremia and will be instrumental in achieving that goal. (Hepatology 2016;64:1483‐1494)


We examine the link between corporate governance, companies' disclosure practices and their equity market transparency in a study of more than 5,000 listed companies in 23 countries covering the period 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2008. Our results confirm the belief that better-governed firms make more frequent disclosures to the market. We also find greater disclosure in common law relative to code law countries. However firms with better governance in both code and common law countries make more frequent disclosures. We measure market transparency by the timeliness of prices. In contrast to single country studies, results show, for the 23 countries collectively, better corporate governance is associated with less timely share prices. This would suggest that a firm substitutes better corporate governance for transparency. We are thus led to the conclusion that even if information is disclosed more frequently by better-governed firms, it does not necessarily follow that information is reflected in share prices on a timelier basis.


Speech recognition has been a very active area of research over the past twenty years. Despite an evident progress, it is generally agreed by the practitioners of the field that performance of the current speech recognition systems is rather suboptimal and new approaches are needed. The motivation behind the undertaken research is an observation that the notion of representation of objects and concepts that once was considered to be central in the early days of pattern recognition, has been largely marginalised by the advent of statistical approaches. As a consequence of a predominantly statistical approach to speech recognition problem, due to the numeric, feature vector-based, nature of representation, the classes inductively discovered from real data using decision-theoretic techniques have little meaning outside the statistical framework. This is because decision surfaces or probability distributions are difficult to analyse linguistically. Because of the later limitation it is doubtful that the gap between speech recognition and linguistic research can be bridged by the numeric representations. This thesis investigates an alternative, structural, approach to spoken language representation and categorisation. The approach pursued in this thesis is based on a consistent program, known as the Evolving Transformation System (ETS), motivated by the development and clarification of the concept of structural representation in pattern recognition and artificial intelligence from both theoretical and applied points of view. This thesis consists of two parts. In the first part of this thesis, a similarity-based approach to structural representation of speech is presented. First, a linguistically well-motivated structural representation of phones based on distinctive phonological features recovered from speech is proposed. The representation consists of string templates representing phones together with a similarity measure. The set of phonological templates together with a similarity measure defines a symbolic metric space. Representation and ETS-inspired categorisation in the symbolic metric spaces corresponding to the phonological structural representation are then investigated by constructing appropriate symbolic space classifiers and evaluating them on a standard corpus of read speech. In addition, similarity-based isometric transition from phonological symbolic metric spaces to the corresponding non-Euclidean vector spaces is investigated. Second part of this thesis deals with the formal approach to structural representation of spoken language. Unlike the approach adopted in the first part of this thesis, the representation developed in the second part is based on the mathematical language of the ETS formalism. This formalism has been specifically developed for structural modelling of dynamic processes. In particular, it allows the representation of both objects and classes in a uniform event-based hierarchical framework. In this thesis, the latter property of the formalism allows the adoption of a more physiologically-concrete


Gaussian affinities are commonly used in graph-based methods such as spectral clustering or nonlinear embedding. Hinton and Roweis (2003) introduced a way to set the scale individually for each point so that it has a distribution over neighbors with a desired perplexity, or effective number of neighbors. This gives very good affinities that adapt locally to the data but are harder to compute. We study the mathematical properties of these "entropic affinities" and show that they implicitly define a continuously differentiable function in the input space and give bounds for it. We then devise a fast algorithm to compute the widths and affinities, based on robustified, quickly convergent root-finding methods combined with a tree-or density-based initialization scheme that exploits the slowly-varying behavior of this function. This algorithm is nearly optimal and much more accurate and fast than the existing bisection-based approach, particularly with large datasets, as we show with image and text data.


This article describes methods that can be used for EFL classes to teach reading strategies.  The objectives of the article are to help students understand the text structure of a particular genre, find the main idea in the text, learn new vocabulary and learn effective reading strategies to develop their reading comprehension.  In classroom interaction, a shift between teacher and learner focus is made to provide the teacher's support and guidance at earlier stages and gradually withdraw the teacher's focus to assist students in becoming more independent learners.  As some students may be shy when speaking and afraid of making mistakes in front of the class or peers, whole class, groups, and pair discussion are implemented at the earlier stages to minimize their anxiety. On completion of the program, the students are expected to be able to read and understand newspaper articles, on topics familiar to them, without depending on dictionaries.  These activities help the students to reflect on written texts critically and to progress from an intermediate to an advanced level of proficiency.


The application of global gene expression profiling allows to obtain detailed molecular fingerprints of underlying gene expression in any cell of interest. In this work gene expression profiles were generated from a comprehensive cohort of leukemia patients and healthy donors referred to and diagnosed in the Laboratory for Leukemia Diagnostics, Munich, Germany, which is a nation-wide reference center for the diagnosis of hematologic malignancies. Thoroughly characterized clinical samples were analyzed by high-density microarrays interrogating the expression status of more than 33,000 transcripts.
In one specific aspect of this work the potential application of gene expression signatures for the prediction and classification of specific leukemia subtypes was assessed. Today the diagnosis and subclassification of leukemias is based on a controlled application of various techniques including cytomorphology, cytogenetics, fluorescence in situ hybridization, multiparameter flow cytometry, and PCR-based methods. The diagnostic procedure is performed according to a specific algorithm, but is time-consuming, cost-intensive, and requires expert knowledge. Based on a very low number of candidate genes it is demonstrated in this work that prognostically relevant acute leukemia subtypes can be classified using microarray technology. Moreover, in an expanded analysis including 937 patient samples representing 12 distinct clinically relevant acute and chronic leukemia subtypes and healthy, non-leukemia bone marrow specimens a diagnostic prediction accuracy of ~95% was achieved. Thus, given these results it can be postulated that the occurring patterns in gene expression would be so robust that they would allow to predict the leukemia subtype using global gene expression profiling technology. This finding is further substantiated through the demonstration that reported differentially expressed genes from the literature, namely pediatric gene expression signatures representing various acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) subtypes, can be used to independently predict the corresponding adult ALL subtypes. Furthermore, it could be demonstrated that microarrays both confirm and reproduce data from standard diagnostic procedures, but also provide very robust results. Parameters such as partial RNA degradation, shipment time of the samples, varying periods of storage of the samples, or target preparations at different time points from either bone marrow or peripheral blood specimens by different operators did not dramatically influence the diagnostic gene expression signatures.
In another major aspect of this work gene expression signatures were examined in detail to obtain new insights into the underlying biology of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) and t(11q23)/MLL leukemias. In APL, microarrays led to a deeper understanding of morphological and clinical characteristics. Firstly, genes which have a functional relevance in blood coagulation were found to be differentially expressed when APL was compared to other acute myeloid leukemia (AML) subtypes. Secondly, a supervised pairwise comparison between the two different APL phenotypes, M3 and its variant M3v, for the first time revealed differentially expressed genes encoding for biological functions and pathways such as granulation and maturation. With
respect to 11q23 leukemias it could be demonstrated that leukemias with rearrangements of the MLL gene are characterized by a common specific gene expression signature. Additionally, in unsupervised and supervised data analysis algorithms ALL and AML cases with t(11q23)/MLL segregated according to the lineage, i.e., myeloid or lymphoid, respectively. This segregation could be explained by a highly differing transcriptional program. Through the use of biological network analyses essential regulators of early B cell development, PAX5 and EBF, were shown to be associated with a clear B-lineage commitment in lymphoblastic t(11q23)/MLL leukemias. Also, the influence of the different MLL translocation partners on the transcriptional program was directly assessed. But interestingly, gene expression profiles did not reveal a clear distinct pattern associated with one of the analyzed partner genes. Taken together, the identified molecular expression pattern of MLL fusion gene samples and biological networks revealed new insights into the aberrant transcriptional program in t(11q23)/MLL leukemias. In addition, a series of analyses was targeted to obtain new insights into the underlying biology in heterogeneous B-lineage leukemias not positive for BCR/ABL or MLL gene rearrangements. It could be demonstrated that the genetically more heterogeneous precursor B-ALL samples intercalate with BCR/ABL-positive cases, but their profiles were clearly distinct from T-ALL and t(11q23)/MLL cases.
In conclusion, various unsupervised and supervised data analysis strategies demonstrated that defined leukemia subtypes can be characterized on the basis of distinct gene expression signatures. Specific gene expression patterns reproduced the taxonomy of this hematologic malignancy, provided new insights into different disease subtypes, and identified critical pathway components that might be considered for future therapeutic intervention. Based on these results it is now further possible to develop a one-step diagnostic approach for the diagnosis of leukemias using a customized microarray.


In the context of a two-stage treatment (family therapy during childhood, individual therapy during adolescence), this article will examine the case of Julien, the only sibling in his family to have been contaminated in utero by his mother's HIV. The author will try to pinpoint the genesis of the thwarted hate, as well the process by which the transmission was melancholized, bearing witness to the destructiveness occupies the place of hatred.


Fibonacci and Lucas cubes are induced subgraphs of hypercubes obtained by excluding certain binary strings from the vertex set. They appear as models for interconnection networks, as well as in chemistry. We derive a characterization of Lucas cubes that is based on a peripheral expansion of a unique convex subgraph of an appropriate Fibonacci cube. This serves as the foundation for a recognition algorithm of Lucas cubes that runs in linear time.


Prospect theory is an empirical model of choice that stands as the leading alternative to rationality for explaining decisions under conditions of risk. While many still defend the assumption of rationality as an appropriate starting point for the construction of international relations theory - deterrence theory especially - there is growing support for models of international politics grounded in the actual capacities of real-world decisionmakers. This article accepts that standard depictions of deterrence incentives capture much of the essential character of deterrent relationships. However, it substitutes cognitive assumptions in place of traditional rational choice. Using prospect theory, the article reconsiders three typical deterrence games. The new model of military deterrence put forth unearths a set of conditions that are required for successful deterrence and uncovers a set of causes for deterrence failures that run counter to conventional understanding.


Hypersafety properties of arity n are program properties that relate n traces of a program (or, more generally, traces of n programs). Classic examples include determinism, idempotence, and associativity. A number of relational program logics have been introduced to target this class of properties. Their aim is to construct simpler proofs by capitalizing on structural similarities between the n related programs. We propose an unexplored, complementary proof principle that establishes hyper-triples (i.e. hypersafety judgments) as a unifying compositional building block for proofs, and we use it to develop a Logic for Hyper-triple Composition (LHC), which supports forms of proof compositionality that were not achievable in previous logics. We prove LHC sound and apply it to a number of challenging examples.


Summary The paper is primarily concerned with the bearing capacity and settlement characteristics. Mining subsidence is not considered. The location of 'exposed' Upper Carboniferous rocks is briefly outlined in relation to urban and industrial areas, and depths to rockhead are discussed. The characteristic cyclic pattern of deposition of the Coal Measure rocks is described, and descriptions of the principal rock types, and some overlying soils are given. In the Coal Measure rocks the upper surface is usually weathered. Over mudstones there is typically 10 ft or so of material weathered to a clay, followed by less weathered rock. Over sandstones the fully weathered zone is thinner and usually consists of clayey sand containing weathered sandstone fragments. Depth of weathering may be locally increased near faults and where dips are steep. Exploration is often by soft ground boring methods in the overlying soils followed by diamond drilling in rock. NX-size core barrels are the minimum size which can be expected to give 100 per cent core recovery, and on important jobs it is recommended that a larger size should be used. Drill core required for laboratory testing must be protected against drying-out and against frost action. The value of trial pits is emphasized. Some laboratory test values of compression strength and deformation modulus are given in the paper and the limitations of laboratory testing are discussed. Standard Penetration Tests have been used in the Coal Measure shales and mudstones to give a rough guide to rock strength. A tentative correlation between S.P.T. values and rock description is given. Other in situ testing techniques are the Menard Pressuremeter Test, the Plate Loading Test and loading tests on piles. For plate loading tests in pits and at the base of piles it is essential that the material below test level is undisturbed. Seepage forces from ground water must be avoided since they can cause rapid deterioration. The usual pile loading test involves load application at the head of the pile, but valuable information can be obtained from tests in which end bearing resistance is measured separately from side shear within the 'rock socket'. Data is given for three sites where plate loading tests were carried out, together with laboratory testing. From this data and from laboratory test data presented elsewhere in the paper, characteristic values of compression strength and deformation modulus have been chosen. It has been customary to assign allowable bearing capacities to Upper Carboniferous rocks on the basis of visual inspection; typical values are quoted. For a calculation of allowable bearing pressure recent practice is to use the results of in situ loading tests. Unfortunately there do not appear to be any published data concerning the behaviour of full-scale foundations. It is suggested that for the Upper Carboniferous rocks, bored cast–in situ piles are generally preferable to driven piles. Ranges of working loads, and corresponding penetrations, are discussed and comments are made on pile spacings. Pile loading test data presented for three sites appear to support these empirical criteria. A more rational estimation of pile bearing capacity would involve considerations of end bearing capacity and of side shear within the rock socket. This is difficult since side shear between concrete and rock depends not only on rock strength and deformation characteristics, but also on the response of the rock to the pile boring processes. Further development must depend on correlation of performance data with careful and detailed description of the rocks involved.


By incorporating saturation-induced gain modulation of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), we have demonstrated a high-speed photo-assisted electrical gating with considerably enhanced switching characteristics in a two-terminal device fabricated by using vanadium dioxide thin film. The gating operation was performed by illuminating the output light of the EDFA, whose transient gain was modulated by adjusting the chopping frequency of the input light down to 1 kHz, onto the device. In the proposed gating scheme, gated signals with a temporal duration of approximately 40 micros were successively generated at a repetition rate of 1 kHz.


Importance Tobacco use disorder is associated with dysregulated neurocognitive function in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG)—one node in a corticothalamic inhibitory control (IC) network. Objective To examine associations between IC neural circuitry structure and function and lapse/relapse vulnerability in 2 independent studies of adult smokers. Design, Setting, and Participants In study 1, treatment-seeking smokers (n = 81) completed an IC task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before making a quit attempt and then were followed up for 10 weeks after their quit date. In study 2, a separate group of smokers (n = 26) performed the same IC task during fMRI, followed by completing a laboratory-based smoking relapse analog task. Study 1 was performed at Duke University Medical Center between 2008 and 2012; study 2 was conducted at the Medical University of South Carolina between 2013 and 2016. Main Outcomes and Measures Associations between corticothalamic-mediated IC, gray-matter volume, and smoking lapse/relapse. Results Of the 81 study participants in study 1 (cessation study), 45 were women (56%), with mean (SD) age, 38.4 (10.2) years. In study 1, smoking relapse was associated with less gray-matter volume (F1,74 = 28.32; familywise error P threshold = 0.03), greater IC task-related blood oxygenation level–dependent (BOLD) response in the right IFG (F1,78 = 14.87) and thalamus (F1,78 = 14.97) (P < .05), and weaker corticothalamic task-based functional connectivity (tbFC) (F1,77 = 5.87; P = .02). Of the 26 participants in study 2 (laboratory study), 15 were women (58%), with mean (SD) age, 34.9 (10.3). Similar to study 1, in study 2, greater IC-BOLD response in the right IFG (t23 = −2.49; &bgr; = −0.47; P = .02), and weaker corticothalamic tbFC (t22 = 5.62; &bgr; = 0.79; P < .001) were associated with smoking sooner during the smoking relapse-analog task. In both studies, corticothalamic tbFC mediated the association between IC performance and smoking outcomes. Conclusions and Relevance In these 2 studies, baseline differences in corticothalamic circuitry function were associated with mediated IC and smoking relapse vulnerability. These findings warrant further examination of interventions for augmenting corticothalamic neurotransmission and enhancing IC during the course of tobacco use disorder treatment.


Three separate and parallel North American Carduelis evolutionary radiations have been identified. North American siskin radiation (starting about 2.7 million years ago) comprises siskin, Antillean siskin, black-capped siskin, pine siskin and pine siskin perplexus. C. spinus could have passed to America through the Beringia or Greenland coast and, during Pliocene Epoch, reached the Antilles and evolved into Antillean siskin (C. dominicensis), endemic to Hispaniola Island. It is ancestor of pine siskin. Pine Siskin, also a sister taxon of C. spinus, thrives in North America from Alaska to Guatemala since about 0.2 MYA. It lives below the Mexican Isthmus in the highlands from northern Chiapas (Mexico) to western Guatemala. Black-capped siskin (C. atri- ceps) is a sister species of C. spinus, with which it shares habitat and territory. C. pinus green-backed morphs may have been mis- taken by C. atriceps which is a grey-backed finch. Mesoamerican goldfinch radiation (starting about 5 million years ago) includes C. tristis (American goldfinch), C. psaltria (lesser goldfinch) and C. lawrencei (Lawrence's goldfinch). They all thrive in west- ern United States and Mexico, down to northern South America. C. psaltria is a North American bird that colonized South American habitats to North Peru and evolved into darker head and back while going southwards. South American siskin radiation started about 3.5 million years ago; parental C. notata thrives in Mexican mountains and successfully colonized South America, giv- ing rise to this radiation. South American Carduelis radiation occurred only when mesothermal plants from the Rocky Mountains invaded the Andean spine after emergence of the Panama Isthmus.


When arcing powder samples in graphite cupped electrodes using the do arc the charge is sometimes ejected from the cup due to the sudden evolution of vapor produced by the rapid heating The practice of venting the packed electrode by pricking into the charge with a pin is not particularly effective in preventing ejection. A more effective method which overcomes the difficulty is to vont the cup at the bottom before filling. This is carried out by drilling two small holes through the cup wall, the holes being diametrically opposed and just above the floor of the cup.


Primary central nervous system lymphomas (PCNSL) are aggressive extranodal malignancies confined to the central nervous system (CNS), mostly of diffuse large B cell histotype. Despite improved understanding of the malignant B cells, little is known on the tumor microenvironment and on the response of the adaptive immunity against PCNSL. The majority of B-cell lymphomas, including PCNSL originate from germinal center (GC) B cells. The GC is the main source of memory B cells and plasma cell generation, which produce high affinity antibodies and are necessary to protect us against invading microorganisms. However, the beneficial role of GC B cells in immunity is counterbalanced by their detrimental role in lymphomagenesis. Germinal center B cells express a distinct set of chemokine receptors, which regulate their migration and positioning during and after germinal center reaction. Similar to centrocytes and centroblasts, malignant B cells derived from germinal centers can retain a particular set of chemokine receptors, which allows them to respond to their cognate ligands expressed in the microenvironment. Therefore investigation of lymphocyte chemoattractants in secondary lymphoid organs as well as in extranodal lymphomas does not only improve our understanding of B cell trafficking within secondary lymphoid organs, but also helps us understanding tumor cell distribution and dissemination of malignant B cells as well as tumor infiltrating lymphocytes. Gene expression analysis has previously shown, that malignant B cells in PCNSL resemble late germinal center B cells and express classical B cell chemokine receptors. This work focuses on the chemokine microenvironment and the potential role of bystander cells in PCNSL and their effects on malignant B cells as well as tumor infiltrating lymphocytes. The project includes four major sections: 1. Analysis of the expression of B cell attracting chemokines under normal and inflammatory conditions in human secondary lymphoid organs. 2. Analysis of T and B cell attracting chemokines in extranodal CNS lymphomas, 3. Analysis of type, density and localization of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes in PCNSL, 4. Analysis of the effect of coexpressed chemokines in PCNSL on the migratory responses of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and malignant B cells. We show by immunhistochemistry and in-situ hybridization, that there is a specific expression pattern of homeostatically expressed chemokines CXCL12, CXCL13 and CCL21 in normal, non-inflamed human secondary lymphoid organs. Under inflammatory conditions, the expression pattern of macrophage- derived CXCL12 and follicular dendritic cell- derived CXCL13 within the germinal center changes significantly. Within the germinal center, macrophage-derived CXCL12 and follicular dendritic cell-derived CXCL13 build a meshwork in which germinal center B cells reside. While CXCL13 shows a clear gradient between the dark and the light zone of the germinal center in human secondary lymphoid tissue, we could not detect a clear gradient for CXCL12 between the two zones. Analysis of CXCL12 and CXCL13 in primary central nervous system lymphoma showed an expression pattern similar to the one in germinal centers of secondary lymphoid organs. In addition, we identified a fraction of CXCL13-expressing lymphocytes in PCNSL. CXCL13-expression is a hallmark of germinal center T cells known as follicular T helper cells (TFH), which provide help to germinal center B cells. Yet, the majority of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes in PCNSL are CD8+ T cells, which show Granzyme B activity and vigorous proliferation. Tumor infiltrating CD8+ T cells show a higher frequency in the perivascular areas of small and intermediate vessels in PCNSL. They accumulate in areas with high expression of the inflammatory chemokine CXCL9. Perivascular CXCL9 is upregulated by perivascular macrophages and pericytes under inflammatory conditions in the CNS, indicating an important role for pericytes and perivascular macrophages in the recruitment of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes. Moreover, CXCL9 and CXCL12 are coexpressed on the tumor vasculature within PCNSL and can form heterocomplexes. Our in-vitro experiments show, that in the presence of CXCL9, CXCL12-induced migration is enhanced not only on CXCR4+/CXCR3+/CD8+ T cells but also on CXCR4+/CXCR3- malignant B cells. Our findings indicate, that malignant B cells in PCNSL may encounter a germinal-center like chemokine environment, which traps malignant B cells within the CNS. In addition, our results reveal the presence of a strong chemoattractant stimulus in the perivascular microenvironment, which might serve as regulator for the recruitment of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes and for the angiocentric positioning of malignant B cells in the perivascular cuff.


Recently, platform ecosystem has received attention as a key business concept. Sustainable growth of platform ecosystems is enabled by platform users supplying and/or demanding content from each other: e.g. Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. The importance and value of user data in platform ecosystems is accentuated since platform owners use and sell the data for their business. Serious concern is increasing about data misuse or abuse, privacy issues and revenue sharing between the different stakeholders. Traditional data governance focuses on generic goals and a universal approach to manage the data of an enterprise. It entails limited support for the complicated situation and relationship of a platform ecosystem where multiple participating parties contribute, use data and share profits. This article identifies data governance factors for platform ecosystems through literature review. The study then surveys the data governance state of practice of four platform ecosystems: Facebook, YouTube, EBay and Uber. Finally, 19 governance models in industry and academia are compared against our identified data governance factors for platform ecosystems to reveal the gaps and limitations.


Selection is a fundamental task in interactive applications, typically performed by clicking or lassoing items of interest. However, users may require more nuanced forms of selection. Selecting regions or attributes may be more important than selecting individual items. Selections may be over dynamic items and selections might be more easily created by relaxing simpler selections (e.g., "select all items like this one"). Creating such selections requires that interfaces model the declarative structure of the selection, not just individually selected items. We present direct manipulation techniques that couple declarative selection queries with a query relaxation engine that enables users to interactively generalize their selections. We apply our selection techniques in both information visualization and graphics editing applications, enabling generalized selection over both static and dynamic interface objects. A controlled study finds that users create more accurate selection queries when using our generalization techniques.


Title of dissertation: DOES DISCUSSION MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN VOCABULARY LEARNING FROM EXPOSITORY TEXT READ ALOUDS? Sarah Beall Zelinke, Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Mariam Jean Dreher Department of Curriculum & Instruction University of Maryland, College Park This study investigated the effects of discussion on vocabulary learning from expository text read alouds. This study used a pre-/post within-subjects design to investigate whether discussion contributed to improved vocabulary knowledge from expository text read alouds and whether the placement of discussion makes a difference in vocabulary learning. Fifty-five second-grade students participated in a total of six read aloud sessions. There were two sessions for each of three expository texts. Intact classrooms were randomly assigned to condition by book. All participants experienced each of three discussion conditions, which varied by book. For the Discussion During (DD) condition, students experienced discussion of target vocabulary words during the read aloud sessions. For the Discussion After (DA) condition, students experienced discussion of target vocabulary words after the read aloud sessions. For the No Discussion (ND) condition, students listened to an expository text read aloud without discussing the text at all. An expressive vocabulary measure was used to examine growth in vocabulary knowledge. For each book, no difference was found for the ND condition. However, statistically significant treatment effects, with large effect sizes, were found for both the DA and DD conditions, indicating that discussion contributed to greater growth in vocabulary knowledge than no discussion. Post-hoc tests revealed that for one book, the DA condition led to significantly greater vocabulary growth than the DD condition. However, for the other two books there was no difference between the DD and DA conditions. These findings indicate that discussion of vocabulary words is an important factor in vocabulary learning. DOES DISCUSSION MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN VOCABULARY LEARNING FROM EXPOSITORY TEXT READ ALOUDS? By Sarah Beall Zelinke Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2011 Advisory Committee: Professor Mariam Jean Dreher (Chair) Senior Lecturer Rose Marie Codling Professor Sylvia Rosenfield Associate Professor Wayne Slater Associate Professor Jennifer Turner © Copyright by Sarah Beall Zelinke 2011


The hierarchical classification of life has been claimed as compelling evidence for universal common ancestry. However, research has uncovered much data which is not congruent with the hierarchical pattern. Nevertheless, biological data resembles a nested hierarchy sufficiently well to require an explanation. While many defenders of intelligent design dispute common descent, no alternative account of the approximate nested hierarchy pattern has been widely adopted. We present the dependency graph hypothesis as an alternative explanation, based on the technique used by software developers to reuse code among different software projects. This hypothesis postulates that different biological species share modules related by a dependency graph. We evaluate several predictions made by this model about both biological and synthetic data, finding them to be fulfilled.