The accumulations of excess lipids within liver and serum are defined as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and hyperlipemia respectively. Both of them are components of metabolic syndrome that greatly threaten human health. Here, a recombinant fusion protein (SAK-HV) effectively treated NAFLD and hyperlipemia in high-fat-fed ApoE-/- mice, quails and rats within just 14 days. Its triglyceride and cholesterol-lowering effects were significantly better than that of atorvastatin during the observation period. We explored the lipid-lowering mechanism of SAK-HV by the hepatic transcriptome analysis and serials of experiments both in vivo and in vitro. Unexpectedly, SAK-HV triggered a moderate energy and material-consuming liver proliferation to dramatically decrease the lipids from both serum and liver. We provided the first evidence that PGC-1α mediated the hepatic synthesis of female hormones during liver proliferation, and proposed the complement system-induced PGC-1α-estrogen axis via the novel STAT3-C/EBPβ-PGC-1α pathway in liver as a new energy model for liver proliferation. In this model, PGC-1α ignited and fueled hepatocyte activation as an "igniter"; PGC-1α-induced estrogen augmented the energy supply of PGC-1α as an "ignition amplifier", then triggered the hepatocyte state transition from activation to proliferation as a "starter", causing triglyceride and cholesterol-lowering effects via PPARα-mediated fatty acid oxidation and LDLr-mediated cholesterol uptake, respectively. Collectively, the SAK-HV-triggered distinctive lipid-lowering strategy based on the new energy model of liver proliferation has potential as a novel short-period biotherapy against NAFLD and hyperlipemia.


We agree with recent scholarship that calls for more extensive efforts to bridge the divergent approaches to framing studies. However, several terminological and methodological barriers exist to finding common ground between social scientific and rhetorical frame scholarship. In response, we argue for a greater sense of methodological pluralism in frame studies. To make our argument, we outline the position of rhetoric in contemporary framing scholarship, propose points of contact that can serve as a reinforcing element with social scientific research, and include a brief case study to show how rhetorical framing can employ and build upon the advances of empirical studies in an analysis of competing frames used by President George W. Bush on the issue of immigration.


BACKGROUND
The incidence and prevalence of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) have increased greatly in Canada over the last 2 decades. Because of the high cost of therapy, predicting numbers of patients who will require dialysis and transplantation is necessary for nephrologists and health care planners.

METHODS
The authors projected ESRD incidence rates and therapy-specific prevalence by province to the year 2005 using 1981-1996 data obtained from the Canadian Organ Replacement Register. The model incorporated Poisson regression to project incidence rates, and a Markov model for patient follow-up.

RESULTS
Continued large increases in ESRD incidence and prevalence were projected, particularly among people with diabetes mellitus. As of Dec. 31, 1996, there were 17,807 patients receiving renal replacement therapy in Canada. This number was projected to climb to 32,952 by the end of 2005, for a relative increase of 85% and a mean annual increase of 5.8%. The increased prevalence was projected to be greatest for peritoneal dialysis (6.0% annually), followed by hemodialysis (5.9%) and functioning kidney transplant (5.7%). The projected annual increases in prevalence by province ranged from 4.4%, in Saskatchewan, to 7.5%, in Alberta.

INTERPRETATION
The projected increases are plausible when one considers that the incidence of ESRD per million population in the United States and other countries far exceeds that in Canada. The authors predict a continued and increasing short-fall in resources to accommodate the expected increased in ESRD prevalence.


In this article the possible repercussions of the new bilateral trade agreement between Morocco and the European Union concerning the fruit and vegetable sector have been examined. Through appropriate mathematical indices, such as the "revealed comparative advantage" (RCA) approach pioneered by Balassa, the competitive position of Morocco over its trading partners in the EU and especially over the Mediterranean Member States has been evaluated. The aim is to discover fea- tures of trade of Morocco and the EU in the fruit and vegetable sector, and changes during the period 2000 - 2010. In particular, the effects of the new bilateral trade agreement on EU countries such as Italy, Spain and France, i.e., the traditional producers of these goods, have been examined. RCA of Morocco over the EU and RCA of the EU over Morocco have been calculated by conducting research using UN Comtrade sources. Moreover, through the "revealed trade advantage" (RTA) introduced by Vollrath, the global competitiveness of the fruit and vegetables sector in both Morocco and the EU have been evaluated.Finally, the degree of intra-industry trade between Morocco and the major European producers of fruit and vegetables has been calculated. The results highlight the strong dominance of Morocco, and point to the possibility that the new bilateral trade agreement may cause an increase in economic instability in many European areas struggling against Moroccan competition in certain agricultural sectors. In countering this situation, questions concerning agrifood safety, agri-environmental protection and other aspects could become relevant in the near future. The importance of these questions is that they may point to the comparatively low levels of restrictions often faced by the Moroccan producers as the real cause of their actual competitive advantage in some strategic European agri-food sectors. Despite the limitations of RCA indices obtained in this study, they are expected to offer further insight into the competitiveness of the Moroccan fruit and vegetables sector and its implications for trade with the EU in the near future.


We propose an interactive GAN-based sketch-to-image translation method that helps novice users easily create images of simple objects. The user starts with a sparse sketch and a desired object category, and the network then recommends its plausible completion(s) and shows a corresponding synthesized image. This enables a feedback loop, where the user can edit the sketch based on the network's recommendations, while the network is able to better synthesize the image that the user might have in mind. In order to use a single model for a wide array of object classes, we introduce a gating-based approach for class conditioning, which allows us to generate distinct classes without feature mixing, from a single generator network.


We build a model that, according to the empirical evidence, gives rise to oscillations in wealth within a dynasty while keeping intergenerational persistence in education attainment. We propose a mechanism based on the interaction between wealth and effort as suggested by the Carnegie conjecture, according to which wealthier individuals devote less effort in their job occupations than poorer. Oscillations in wealth arise from changes in the occupation chosen by different generations of the same dynasty as a response to both inherited wealth and college premium. Our mechanism generates a rich social stratification with several classes in the long run due to the combination of different levels of education and occupation types. Furthermore, we generate a large mobility in wealth among classes even in the long run. Our model highlights the role played by the minimum cost on education investment, the borrowing constraints, and the complementarity between education and occupational effort.


This paper studies the problem of H ∞ fuzzy tracking control design for nonlinear active fault tolerant control systems based on the Takagi and Sugeno fuzzy model. Two random processes with Markovian transition characteristics are introduced to model the system component fault process and the fault detection and isolation decision process used to reconfigure the control law, respectively. The random behavior of the FDI process is conditioned on the fault process state. The parallel distributed compensation scheme is employed for the control design. As a result, a closed-loop fuzzy system with two Markovian jump parameters is obtained. Based on a stochastic Lyapunov function, a sufficient condition for stochastic stability of the closed-loop fuzzy system with a guaranteed H ∞ model reference tracking performance is first derived. A linear matrix inequality approach to the control design is then developed to reduce the effect of the external disturbance and reference input on tracking error as small as possible. Finally, a simulation example is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed design method.


One of the goals of studying molecule-surface interactions is to understand the details of the chemical reactivity at surfaces. The exchange of energy between a gas and a solid is a complex sequence of events even when focused on a model system like a diatomic molecule scattering from a monocrystalline metal surface. Due to the number of energy channels of the molecule (translational, rotational and vibrational energy) and the surface (phonons, electrons) involved, a detailed knowledge about the role of each of these degrees of freedom in the collision is necessary for the modeling of such processes. Over the last decades, the importance of electronically nonadiabatic interactions in molecule-surface interactions, where the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation is not valid anymore, has become clear. New theoretical models going beyond this approximation are needed to adequately describe such processes. Equally important is the acquisition of experimental data of model systems as a standard for comparison that can challenge the validity of such models. Although many ideas and concepts could be learned during the investigation of flat single crystals, "real" catalysts used in industrial processes are substances complex in structure and chemical composition. The introduction of model systems with a higher degree of complexity like bimetallic layers in the field of surface science bridges the gap between the ideal behavior of models and the diversity of "real world" catalysts.
The present work investigates the role of the surface in molecule-surface scattering processes. In contrast to prior studies employing a single material surface, layers of Ag/Au(111) with defined thickness are chosen as a target. Beam scattering methods, combined with laser-based detection techniques, are used to investigate the molecules NO and CO with many similar properties but different strength of nonadiabatic coupling.
We examined translational energy exchange of vibrationally excited NO(v = 2) and CO(v = 2) from ultrathin metallic films of Ag/Au(111) as a function of film thickness at an incidence translational energy of 0.6 eV. For NO, arrival time distributions were measured for vibrationally elastic (v = 2 → 2 and v = 0 → 0) and inelastic scattering (v = 2 → 1) for Ag film thicknesses up to 33 ML. For CO, vibrationally elastic (v = 2 → 2) and inelastic (v = 2 → 1) scattering channels were examined in a similar manner. For both molecules and for all investigated vibrational states, we observe a gradual decrease of the mean final translational energy for 0 - 3 ML Ag/Au films before reaching constant behavior for higher thicknesses (3-30 ML). The results are consistent with experimental data for pure Au and Ag crystal surfaces, and can be explained as head-on elastic collisions between NO molecules and surface elements with effective masses of 200amu (1.0 mAu) and 130 amu (1.2 mAg). Due to the substantial change of translational inelasticity up to a film thickness of 3 ML, we propose that subsurface layers take part in the scattering process. The thickness dependence of the final translations energy suggests that this kind of inelasticity is purely dominated by mechanical properties of a surface.
Furthermore, we measured the thickness-dependent relaxation probabilities of NO(v = 2) and CO(v = 2) scattered off Ag/Au(111). Both molecules show a significantly different trend. For NO(v = 2), which is characterized as a molecule with strong nonadiabatic coupling strength, relaxation is gradually increasing between 0-3 ML Ag/Au until reaching a constant value, dominated by multiquantum relaxation into the vibrational ground state. A linear correlation between the survival probability of NO(v = 2) and the work function strongly suggests that this property determines the amount of vibrational energy loss during the collision event. The data is discussed in the context of previous relaxation experiments exhibiting a trend when plotting the relaxation probability against the difference of the vertical electron binding energy (VEBE) of a vibrationally excited molecule and the work function of a bulk surface. For CO(v = 2) which is understood as a molecule with only weak nonadiabatic coupling, scattering from Au(111) and films above 3 ML Ag/Au(111) exhibits similar low relaxation probabilities. However, for a thickness of 1 ML Ag/Au, a maximum of vibrational relaxation into the ground state is observed. The equal amount of energy loss when scattered from Au(111) and Ag(111)-like surfaces shows that in the case of CO, the surface work function does not substantially influence vibrational relaxation, probably due to the low electron affinity of CO (-1.5 eV) in comparison to NO (0.026 eV). The peaking of CO(v = 2) relaxation at 1 ML Ag/Au cannot be assigned to a single surface property with a maximum/minimum emerging for this film thickness. Moreover, the dependence of vibrational relaxation does not follow the trend of the previously suggested model on the basis of VEBE and surface work function. It is therefore interpreted as a special effect characteristic for a bimetallic layer system as observed previously for many metal-metal bilayer systems. Possible effects that explain the high relaxation probability are discussed.


Computing devices have a predominant role in our lives, changing most of our daily activities. With the advent of the IoT, more and more embedded devices are expected to be connected, with expected numbers around 20 billion of units for the 2020. Nevertheless, the increase in connectivity does not imply an enhancement of security. Programmable devices, especially connected ones, are at risk of being tampered with: recent history has shown many examples of malicious software attacks compromising their security. Considering that embedded device are required to be cheap in terms of resources - such as chip area, chip complexity, power consumption and performance - they are implemented on low-end microcontrollers, which lack of any memory protection technique, making them unsuitable to implement solutions from the high-end world. Hence, researchers have been recently focusing on strategies to provide them with security guarantees that hold even in case of an attacker with full control on the system, including the Operating System (OS). A promising solution is found in Protected (software) Module Architectures (PMAs): security architectures that can execute protected code in an isolated area of the memory, inaccessible to other software. PMAs can support secure execution of small portion of code, the software modules (SMs), even on devices that are, e.g., malware infected. The target architecture of this thesis is Sancus, an open-source, hardware-only PMA, designed for lightweight embedded devices. The objective of the work is to extend the architecture with Direct Memory Access (DMA) support, a feature that provides peripherals with a secondary channel to access the memory without involving the CPU, and to explore what does it entail from a security prospective. Usually lightweight PMAs do not support DMA, as the benefits coming from its inclusion on the system do not comply with security properties of these architectures: protected memory isolation and confidentiality are no longer guaranteed if a secondary channel, that directly access the memory independently from the CPU, is provided. Main achievements of the thesis are to extend the Sancus 2.0 architecture with DMA support, showing how this affects its security properties and providing a secure way to implement DMA. From the discussion of the upcoming chapters, two solutions stood out: the first one is currently implemented on Sancus, and it consists in entirely excluding DMA from accessing protected memory, preserving SMs security guarantees. The second theoretical solution aims to provide the software modules with DMA functionalities, by allowing some security guarantees for a confined regions inside protected memory. The latter solution is discussed in details and some design options are provided, whereas its implementation is deferred as future work.


The first edition of Search Methodologies: Introductory Tutorials in Optimization and Decision Support Techniques was originally put together to offer a basic introduction to the various search and optimization techniques that students might need to use during their research, and this new edition continues this tradition. Search Methodologies has been expanded and brought completely up to date, including new chapters covering scatter search, GRASP, and very large neighborhood search. The chapter authors are drawn from across Computer Science and Operations Research and include some of the worlds leading authorities in their field. The book provides useful guidelines for implementing the methods and frameworks described and offers valuable tutorials to students and researchers in the field.As I embarked on the pleasant journey of reading through the chapters of this book, I became convinced that this is one of the best sources of introductory material on the search methodologies topic to be found. The books subtitle, Introductory Tutorials in Optimization and Decision Support Techniques, aptly describes its aim, and the editors and contributors to this volume have achieved this aim with remarkable success. The chapters in this book are exemplary in giving useful guidelines for implementing the methods and frameworks described.Fred Glover, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder, USA[The book] aims to present a series of well written tutorials by the leading experts in their fields. Moreover, it does this by covering practically the whole possible range of topics in the discipline. It enables students and practitioners to study and appreciate the beauty and the power of some of the computational search techniques that are able to effectively navigate through search spaces that are sometimes inconceivably large. I am convinced that this second edition will build on the success of the first edition and that it will prove to be just as popular.Jacek Blazewicz, Institute of Computing Science, Poznan University of Technology and Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences


An efficient way to represent the domain knowledge is relational data, where information is recorded in form of relationships between entities. Relational data is becoming ubiquitous over the years for knowledge representation due to the fact that many real-word data is inherently interlinked. Some well-known examples of relational data are: the World Wide Web (WWW), a system of interlinked hypertext documents; the Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud of the Semantic Web, a collection of published data and their interlinks; and finally the Internet of Things (IoT), a network of physical objects with internal states and communications ability. Relational data has been addressed by many different machine learning approaches, the most promising ones are in the area of relational learning, which is the focus of this thesis. While conventional machine learning algorithms consider entities as being independent instances randomly sampled from some statistical distribution and being represented as data points in a vector space, relational learning takes into account the overall network environment when predicting the label of an entity, an attribute value of an entity or the existence of a relationship between entities. An important feature is that relational learning can exploit contextual information that is more distant in the relational network. As the volume and structural complexity of the relational data increase constantly in the era of Big Data, scalability and the modeling power become crucial for relational learning algorithms.

Previous relational learning algorithms either provide an intuitive representation of the model, such as Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) and Markov Logic Networks (MLNs), or assume a set of latent variables to explain the observed data, such as the Infinite Hidden Relational Model (IHRM), the Infinite Relational Model (IRM) and factorization approaches. Models with intuitive representations often involve some form of structure learning which leads to scalability problems due to a typically large search space. Factorizations are among the best-performing approaches for large-scale relational learning since the algebraic computations can easily be parallelized and since they can exploit data sparsity. Previous factorization approaches exploit only patterns in the relational data itself and the focus of the thesis is to investigate how additional prior information (comprehensive information), either in form of unstructured data (e.g., texts) or structured patterns (e.g., in form of rules) can be considered in the factorization approaches. The goal is to enhance the predictive power of factorization approaches by involving prior knowledge for the learning, and on the other hand to reduce the model complexity for efficient learning.

This thesis contains two main contributions:

The first contribution presents a general and novel framework for predicting relationships in multirelational data using a set of matrices describing the various instantiated relations in the network. The instantiated relations, derived or learnt from prior knowledge, are integrated as entities' attributes or entity-pairs' attributes into different adjacency matrices for the learning. All the information available is then combined in an additive way. Efficient learning is achieved using an alternating least squares approach exploiting sparse matrix algebra and low-rank approximation. As an illustration, several algorithms are proposed to include information extraction, deductive reasoning and contextual information in matrix factorizations for the Semantic Web scenario and for recommendation systems. Experiments on various data sets are conducted for each proposed algorithm to show the improvement in predictive power by combining matrix factorizations with prior knowledge in a modular way.

In contrast to a matrix, a 3-way tensor si a more natural representation for the multirelational data where entities are connected by different types of relations. A 3-way tensor is a three dimensional array which represents the multirelational data by using the first two dimensions for entities and using the third dimension for different types of relations. In the thesis, an analysis on the computational complexity of tensor models shows that the decomposition rank is key for the success of an efficient tensor decomposition algorithm, and that the factorization rank can be reduced by including observable patterns. Based on these theoretical considerations, a second contribution of this thesis develops a novel tensor decomposition approach - an Additive Relational Effects (ARE) model - which combines the strengths of factorization approaches and prior knowledge in an additive way to discover different relational effects from the relational data. As a result, ARE consists of a decomposition part which derives the strong relational leaning effects from a highly scalable tensor decomposition approach RESCAL and a Tucker 1 tensor which integrates the prior knowledge as instantiated relations. An efficient least squares approach is proposed to compute the combined model ARE. The additive model contains weights that reflect the degree of reliability of the prior knowledge, as evaluated by the data. Experiments on several benchmark data sets show that the inclusion of prior knowledge can lead to better performing models at a low tensor rank, with significant benefits for run-time and storage requirements. In particular, the results show that ARE outperforms state-of-the-art relational learning algorithms including intuitive models such as MRC, which is an approach based on Markov Logic with structure learning, factorization approaches such as Tucker, CP, Bayesian Clustered Tensor Factorization (BCTF), the Latent Factor Model (LFM), RESCAL, and other latent models such as the IRM. A final experiment on a Cora data set for paper topic classification shows the improvement of ARE over RESCAL in both predictive power and runtime performance, since ARE requires a significantly lower rank.


Chronic arsenic toxicity occurs primarily through inadvertent ingestion of contaminated water and food or occupational exposure, but it can also occur through medicinal ingestion. This case features a 53-year-old lifetime nonsmoker with chronic asthma treated for 10 years in childhood with Chinese traditional medicine containing arsenic. The patient was diagnosed with Bowen's disease and developed extensive-stage small-cell carcinoma of the lung 10 years and 47 years, respectively, after the onset of arsenic exposure. Although it has a long history as a medicinal agent, arsenic is a carcinogen associated with many malignancies including those of skin and lung. It is more commonly associated with non–small-cell lung cancer, but the temporal association with Bowen's disease in the absence of other chemical or occupational exposure strongly points to a causal role for arsenic in this case of small-cell lung cancer. Individuals with documented arsenic-induced Bowen's disease should be considered for more aggressive screening for long-term complications, especially the development of subsequent malignancies.


This Article examines the extent to which countries can use animal welfare concerns to justify placing restrictions on international trade, under the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO). We argue that non-instrumental moral and religious concerns should be a legitimate source of trade policy. To make this claim, we examine a current WTO dispute between the European Union (EU), Canada, and Norway. The EU has banned seal products from being sold in the EU, because of animal welfare concerns regarding how the animals are hunted and skinned. Canada and Norway have challenged this regulation at the WTO, arguing that animal welfare is not a legitimate rationale for restricting trade under the law of the WTO. First, we show that animal welfare has long been a motivation for legislation, both in Europe and elsewhere. Second, we demonstrate that the EU measure was taken because of the moral belief that animal welfare should be protected, a belief related both to avoidance of actual suffering of animals and about the appropriate human attitude toward their treatment. Third, we argue that the EU measure does not violate any WTO provisions and, even if it did, it could be justified under the General Exceptions clause (Article XX) of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the primary source of WTO law). Finally, we argue that the WTO should not deny countries the ability to regulate for moral reasons. If the WTO were to do this, it would risk imposing a secular, materialist, instrumentally rational worldview on its member states. Instead, the WTO should permit pluralism – competing notions of righteousness. – and allow countries to regulate for moral reasons. The EU's seal products ban should be upheld by the WTO. The WTO legal framework, moreover, must be able to accommodate and accept that animal welfare measures may have at the same time both a utilitarian or instrumental aspect (improving animal welfare outcomes) as well as an expressive aspect, indicating moral opprobrium at the inhumane treatment of animals.


To avoid the extremely high profit levels found in recent experiences with price cap regulation, some regulators have proposed a profit- sharing mechanism that revises prices to the benefit of consumers. This paper investigates the conditions under which a regulator can implement such a profit-sharing scheme, having the option to revoke the contract if the firm's profits are excessive. When this option is included in the regulator's objective function and the cost of exercising it is not too high, a long-term equilibrium arises with a state-contingent sharing rule that guarantees and appropriate level of profits. The model determines both the level of profits that triggers the profit-sharing mechanism and the consequent price adjustment endogenously. There is an endogenous regulatory lag initially characterized by a price cap regulation, followed by a period of profit-sharing regime where the firm is motivated to cut prices to avoid revocation.


With education and social inequalities under scrutiny, this book provides a summary of research into the key issues, as well as practical strategies for educators, including strategies for staff development, working with children and school policy. The facts have changed significantly, and much received wisdom cannot be relied upon: girls' performance is rising faster than boys and surpasses them in almost all respects up to the age of 18; unequal opportunity faced by those of different race is becoming more fractured along class, gender, ethnic and religious lines; class divisions are increased with the reintroduction of selection and has become a matter of concern for government and school policy makers. This title makes good the lack of literature on inequality, and brings teachers, and those training to be teachers, important information.


An approach to providing computatonal support for concurrent design is discussed in the context of an automobile wiring harness design problem. Key issues include the development of an architecture that supports collaboration among specialists. the development of hierarchical representations that capture different characteristics of the design, and decomposition of tasks to achieve a tradeoff between efficiency and robustness of the system. We present an architecture in which the main design tasks are supported by agents-asynchronous and semi autonomous modules that automate routine design tasks and provide specialized interfaces for working on particular aspects of the design, the agent communication and coordination mechanisms permit members of an engineering team to work concurrently, at different levels of detail and on different versions of the design. The design is represented hierarchically, with detailed models maintained by the participating agents. In conjunction with the architecture and design representations, issues pertaining to the exchange of information among different views of the design, management of dependencies and constraints, and propagation of design changes are discussed.


This work is concerned with four molten monohalides with different ionic radii ratios (RbCl, NaI, AgCl, and CuCl) and ideal isotopic systems of these salts with different ionic mass ratios. The velocity autocorrelation functions of the two ionic species in each melt have been studied by both a theoretical approximation and molecular dynamics simulations. It is found that their main features may be qualitatively predicted by considering suitable combinations of the second and fourth frequency moments of their spectra. The analysis of these two parameters allows us to determine how the structure (strongly dependent on the ionic size difference) and the ionic masses contribute to the shape of the velocity autocorrelation functions. The results show that the averaged microscopic motion of the small ions is mainly determined by the first neighboring shell of unlike ions, whereas the nearest shell of like ions also affects the dynamics of the large ions. This effect is more pronounced as the size difference is greater. Furthermore, it is concluded that the size differences encourage the rattling motion of the large ions, whereas the mass difference encourages the backscattering and oscillations of the velocity autocorrelation function of the light ions. A simple rule is derived to determine the interplay between these two effects. Comparison between the mass and nearest distance ratios enables the prediction as to which species will experience a more pronounced backscatteringmotion. The size difference effects prevail in the hydrodynamics regime and the self-diffusion coefficient of the small ions is higher than that of the large ones. The difference between the self-diffusion coefficient increases as the size differences increases.


The latest techniques for averting UC disasterThis book is a must-read for any security professional responsible for VoIP or UC infrastructure. This new edition is a powerful resource that will help you keep your communications systems secure. Dan York, Producer and Co-Host, Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast The original edition, Hacking Exposed: Voice over IP Secrets & Solutions, provided a valuable resource for security professionals. But since then, criminals abusing VoIP and UC have become more sophisticated and prolific, with some high-profile cases ringing up huge losses. This book is a welcome update that covers these new threats with practical examples, showing the exact tools in use by the real attackers. Sandro Gauci, Penetration Tester and Security Researcher, Author of SIPVicious Powerful UC hacking secrets revealed within. An outstanding and informative book. Hacking Exposed: Unified Communications & VoIP Security Secrets & Solutions walks the reader through powerful yet practical offensive security techniques and tools for UC hacking, which then informs defense for threat mitigation. The authors do an excellent job of weaving case studies and real-world attack scenarios with useful references. This book is essential for not only IT managers deploying UC, but also for security practitioners responsible for UC security. Jason Ostrom, UC Security Researcher, Stora SANS Institute, co-author, SEC540 class After reading Hacking Exposed: Unified Communications & VoIP Security Secrets & Solutions, I was saddened to not have had this book published years ago. The amount of time and money I could have saved myself, and my clients, would have been enormous. Being a professional in an ITSP/MSP, I know firsthand the complexities and challenges involved with auditing, assessing, and securing VoIP-based networks. From the carrier level, right down to the managed PBX level, and everything in between, Hacking Exposed: Unified Communications & VoIP Security Secrets & Solutions is a de facto must-have book. For those learning VoIP security to those heavily involved in any VoIP-related capacity, this book is worth its weight in gold. J. Oquendo, Lead Security Engineer, EFensive Security Strategies Hacking Exposed: Unified Communications & VoIP Security Secrets & Solutions, includes more sophisticated attack vectors focused on UC and NGN. The authors describe in depth many new tools and techniques such as TDoS and UC interception. Using these techniques, you will learn how you can identify the security problems of VoIP/UC. This book is a masterpiece. Fatih Ozavci, Senior Security Consultant at Sense of Security, Author of viproy This book provides you with the knowledge you need to understand VoIP threats in reality. No doom and gloom, overhyped, never to happen in the real-world scenarios. You will understand the vulnerabilities, the risks, and how to protect against them. Shane Green, Senior Voice Security Analyst Establish a holistic security stance by learning to view your unified communications infrastructure through the eyes of the nefarious cyber-criminal. Hacking Exposed Unified Communications & VoIP, Second Edition offers thoroughly expanded coverage of todays rampant threats alongside ready-to-deploy countermeasures. Find out how to block TDoS, toll fraud, voice SPAM, voice social engineering and phishing, eavesdropping, and man-in-the-middle exploits. This comprehensive guide features all-new chapters, case studies, and examples. See how hackers target vulnerable UC devices and entire networks Defend against TDoS, toll fraud, and service abuse Block calling number hacks and calling number spoofing Thwart voice social engineering and phishing exploits Employ voice spam mitigation products and filters Fortify Cisco Unified Communications Manager Use encryption to prevent eavesdropping and MITM attacks Avoid injection of malicious audio, video, and media files Use fuzzers to test and buttress your VoIP applications Learn about emerging technologies such as Microsoft Lync, OTT UC, other forms of UC, and cloud and WebRTC


Research has suggested that the use of sustained direct attention can result in a fatiguing effect. Itis believed that this attention fatigue is specific to direct attention, which is an intentionalcognitive process. Direct attention serves to focus a person's cognition on selected informationso that the targeted information may be processed. If common activities fatigue attention then itis possible that these important processes may be less efficient. A common daily experience issocial evaluation. For many people, perhaps most people, social evaluation evokes anxiety. It ispossible that the feeling of anxiety can act as a powerful distractor requiring you to useintentional direct attention. Thus, performing while feeling anxiety may result in attentionfatigue. To test whether anxiety could cause attention fatigue, 54 undergraduates performed amodified TSST task, during which heart rate and the STAI-Y-6 were collected as measures ofstate anxiety and the reversible figure test was used as a measure of attention. Results wereunable to establish a link between attention fatigue and anxiety.


In this study I examine the variability in calling activity of Sciarasaga quadrata over both the short (4 d) and long term (life span), and the temporal pattern to host searching by its most significant natural enemy, the ormiine fly Homotrixa alleni. Indeed, few male S. quadrata survive the entire calling season as this acoustically orienting parasitoid fly continually 'culls' calling males out of the population. I found that male S. quadrata commence calling over 1 h before sunset, cease around midnight and call, on average, for over 3 h within this period (range 0-1 1 h 09 min). There was significant concordance and repeatability in calling activity over both the short and long term, enabling me to conclude that relative differences in calling activity among males persist throughout a male's life span. There was a distinct peak to host searching by gravid female flies, with 82 % of all flies collected at acoustic traps between sunset and midnight. A positive association between call duration (time spent calling) and fly attraction was evident from multiple collections of flies at single traps. Counter to expectation, there was no significant decline in average call duration across successive collections of males, indicating that long-call-duration males were not being selectively culled by flies from the calling population. Males at the end of the calling season, when their remaining reproductive potential is low, allocate the majority of their calling time between sunset and midnight despite the high risk of fly attack. The distribution of call durations within the population was not skewed, which if heritable, indicates a lack of history of directional selection acting on call duration. Limited evidence suggests that encounters with females are rare in S. quadrata so that males may be selected, irrespective of natural selection pressure, to call for long periods of time to optimize their chance of attracting mates. The above findings are further discussed in relation to parasitoid foraging and acoustic reproductive strategies.


Transgender Law Center changes law, policy, and attitudes so that all people can live safely, authentically, and free from discrimination regardless of their gender identity or expression. TLC is the largest national trans-led organization advocating self-determination for all people. Grounded in legal expertise and committed to racial justice, TLC employs a variety of community-driven strategies to keep transgender and gender nonconforming people alive, thriving, and fighting for liberation. Table of


Case: Giant cell tumor (GCT) of bone was first described almost 200 years ago, but the optimal treatment continues to evolve. We present a patient with a pelvic GCT who was treated with embolization, 20 months of denosumab therapy, and resection. Histologically, the tumor consisted of degenerated GCT, bone, and fibrous tissue. After 7 months, the patient was found to have osteosarcoma at the site of the initial lesion as well as pulmonary metastases. Conclusion: The apparent malignant transformation of a GCT of bone treated initially with denosumab indicates that close follow-up is warranted.


Whole-rock geochemical and Sm/Nd isotope data are presented for a representative suite of crustal rocks from the Pindos Ophiolite in order to resolve the origin of the geochemical signature of the boninites. Comparison is made with Triassic MORB from the Avdella mélange and with other ophiolitic rocks of northwestern Greece. Hydrothermal alteration results in large scatter in Sr and K and some variability in Ba, Th and U. The Pindos boninites contain high Zr and Hf with respect to REE, characteristic of many boninites. Pb, La/Sm and Nb decrease with decreasing TiO2 from MORB to IAT, but then increase in the boninites. Nd isotopic values expressed as εNd decrease systematically with decreasing TiO2, from 7–8 in IAT to 0.6–3.0 in boninites. As mantle wedge harzburgite became increasingly depleted, another magma source contributed significant amounts of Pb, REE and probably Nb. The Pb and other large-ion lithophile elements may have been transported in aqueous solutions from the subducting slab, but the REE and Nb imply an ocean-island basalt (OIB)-type source within the mantle wedge. This OIB source is a consequence of mantle plume activity during late Triassic rifting.


A study was initiated in May 2011, under the direction of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) Deepwater Benthic Communities Technical Working Group (NRDA Deep Benthic TWG), to assess potential impacts of the DWH oil spill on sediments and resident benthic fauna in deepwater (> 200 meters) areas of the Gulf. Key objectives of the study were to complete the analysis of samples from 65 priority stations sampled in September-October 2010 on two DWH Response cruises (Gyre and Ocean Veritas) and from 38 long-term monitoring sites (including a subset of 35 of the original 65) sampled on a follow-up NRDA cruise in May-June 2011. The present progress report provides a brief summary of results from the initial processing of samples from fall 2010 priority sites (plus three additional historical sites). Data on key macrofaunal, meiofaunal, and abiotic environmental variables are presented for each of these samples and additional maps are included to depict spatial patterns in these variables throughout the study region. The near-field zone within about 3 km of the wellhead, where many of the stations showed evidence of impaired benthic condition (e.g. low taxa richness, high nematode/harpacticoid-copepod ratios), also is an area that contained some of the highest concentrations of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH), total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (total PAHs), and barium in sediments (as possible indicators of DWH discharges). There were similar co-occurrences at other sites outside this zone, especially to the southwest of the wellhead out to about 15 km. However, there also were exceptions to this pattern, for example at several farther-field sites in deeper-slope and canyon locations where there was low benthic species richness but no evidence of exposure to DWH discharges. Such cases are consistent with historical patterns of benthic distributions in relation to natural controlling factors such as depth, position within canyons, and availability of organic matter derived from surface-water primary production.


Much has been written lately about the "death" of malls and large-scale shopping centers. The data show, however, that the great numbers of these malls and centers are not going extinct but rather are undergoing an evolution from the fortress-type, retail-focused mall of the 1970s to a twenty-first century model better attuned to current tastes of citizens and consumers. There are indeed significant challenges, including purchasing trends, troubled brick and mortar retail, increased online sales, and living choices. But despite some shock-value headlines, the data show that the number of malls and large centers continue to increase. Moreover, owners are reconceptualizing the mall and large centers to better position them for economic challenges. New manifestations include the mall as an "experience" beyond retail, lifestyle centers, and mixed-use, town center types of shopping centers. Coupled with some indicators that the move to cities has reversed and the unknown future of internet commerce, it appears that while the mall is evolving and must do so, quality properties are far from dead.
This article traces the rise of, current challenges to, and responses for the mall and large-scale shopping centers. It argues that these entities have been a central locus for community interactions and that their twenty-first century iterations may make them even more important. Malls and large-scale shopping centers have become central points at the expense of downtown shopping districts, where true public space was available for free speech and expression necessary for democratic government. This article shows that in drawing people away from the traditional downtowns, malls have consumed this key civic capital without compensating the municipality. In essence, this is no different than a developer utilizing community infrastructure such as local roads without providing compensation and creating externalities for the town to pay for. Thus, malls and large centers have an obligation to provide space for free public expression and speech in their developments.
First Amendment arguments for such space have been soundly rejected in the past. This article suggests new approaches to establish free expression in spaces in malls to address current needs and the likely increased civic centrality of some of "new" malls and shopping centers over this century. It suggests exactions, incentive zoning, and community benefits agreements as strong alternatives, and examines the advantages and disadvantages of each to the public, government, and mall developers/owners. Some of these solutions are mandatory — imposed by government on the developer — while others are more consensual. In addition to developing the legal methods for establishing civic free space, the article makes an additional contribution. By establishing the legal rules of the game, municipalities and developers will be able to negotiate consensual agreements that provide for public expression space but also protect the owner's business goals; such agreements that align the parties' interests may ultimately be the best solution.


Objectives This study aimed to determine the ability to successfully contact past paediatric patients and their families to request participation in research, to assess familial views on the use of previously collected archival clinical samples for research purposes, and to highlight the ethical and practical issues in obtaining this type of retrospective consent. Methods To assess familial views on the use of such samples for research, we contacted a cohort of families with children previously diagnosed with a brain tumour to ask for consent to an epigenetic/genetic study. Examining participants' responses allowed us to gauge their opinions on the use of such tissue for research, and whether they would like to receive genetic information uncovered during research. Results We were able to successfully contact 107 out of 178 families and found a significant positive correlation between year of diagnosis and ability to make contact. Of those families contactable that returned a consent form (75/107), 74 agreed to the use of their/their child's archival tissue in future research, and 70 of 74 requested notification should a gene change of potential clinical relevance be found. There were no differences in opinion between parents of living or deceased children or the patients themselves. Conclusions This study highlights the importance of time since diagnosis on the ability to make contact with previous patients and their families. When contactable, our data highlight the altruistic views of families towards the use of archival clinical samples for research purposes, irrespective of the outcome of their child's illness.


Cases involving both unrepresented and represented parties present immense challenges to the legal system. The problems facing judges with self-representation generally are compounded where these "mixed" cases are involved. Where all parties are unrepresented, judges have the option of resorting to more relaxed procedures without appearing to favor one party over the other, since both sides are equally impacted by the procedures. Where only one party is unrepresented, judges face what seems to be an insoluble dilemma. If judges handle the cases in the same manner they would if both sides have counsel, the unrepresented litigant is at a distinct disadvantage. This is particularly true where the lawyer for the opposing party deliberately tries to take advantage of the unrepresented litigant's unfamiliarity with the substantive law and procedures. Where judges attempt to avoid a miscarriage of justice and enable the unrepresented litigant to have her case heard, the efforts may be perceived by the represented party and his lawyer as actions favoring one side to the litigation.Judges handling family law cases confront this dilemma on a daily basis. Most family law cases involve at least one party without counsel, and often two. The presence of counsel not only creates challenges for the judges in terms of how to handle their role, but it dramatically impacts the outcome of cases. Studies consistently show that representation is an important variable affecting case outcomes, including in the area of family law. Where a represented party faces an unrepresented party, the likelihood of a result of sole custody increases, in comparison to cases where both parties are represented or neither party is represented. Represented parties seeking alimony or child support are more likely to obtain financial awards, while litigants seeking restraining orders are more likely to obtain them with representation. Many family law cases settle, raising challenges for judges faced with the product of unmonitored, hallway negotiations potentially rife with ethical violations committed by overreaching lawyers in their interactions with unrepresented, adverse parties.The increasing focus on the dilemmas facing not only judges, but court-connected mediators, clerks and other court personnel in cases involving unrepresented litigants occurs against the backdrop of unmet legal needs. Legal needs studies consistently show that 70 to 90 percent of the legal needs of the poor go unaddressed. Many unmet legal needs involve housing, family and consumer issues. Legal services offices only represent a fraction of eligible clients seeking assistance. The recent economic downturn has exacerbated the problem, by increasing the numbers of those in need of legal assistance, while decimating the budgets of legal services providers, forcing the programs to downsize. With unrepresented litigants flooding the courts, the past fifteen years have seen an increase in initiatives to respond to the flood of unrepresented litigants, the increased use of state Access to Justice Commissions, and a revitalized movement seeking to establish an expanded civil right to counsel. This article explores the most troublesome scenario for family court judges, the scenario in which cases pit unrepresented parties against represented ones. Part I discusses the governing law, involving the Canons of Judicial Conduct, cases discussing the judicial rode, and cases involving discipline and reappointment. Part II turns to the growing body of materials designed to provide guidance for the judges, including articles, protocols, guidelines and benchguides. Part III broadens the frame, to underscore the point that judges do not act in a vacuum. While solutions to the dilemmas facing judges involve increased focus on the techniques that judges can use effectively to manage their cases, the solutions also involve initiatives to insure that the litigants appearing before the judges are better able to handle their cases and an expansion of the availability of counsel. The article therefore closes by articulating a comprehensive approach to providing meaningful access to justice.


Aim: To measure the level of variation across the NSW Police Force's Local Area Commands (LACs) in the proportion of young persons diverted from court, before and after adjusting for factors police may consider when deciding how to proceed against a young person. Method: Between July 2010 and June 2011, for each LAC in NSW, the number of cases involving young persons that police dealt with by caution or conference referral was calculated as a proportion of all cases proceeded against by caution, conference or court. Factors associated with whether or not a case was diverted from court were examined using multilevel logistic regression. Results: Excluding ineligible cases, the rate of diversion per LAC ranged between 31 and 95 per cent, with 85 per cent of LACs diverting at least 70 per cent of their eligible cases. Additionally, both before and after taking into account factors that police may consider when deciding whether or not to divert, the amount of variation in police use of diversionary options attributable to LAC was small (less than 5%). Conclusion: Variation across LACs in the police use of diversionary options was small.


Vertical seismic profiles obtained of Ardley coal zone strata near Red Deer, Alberta demonstrate the effectiveness of multicomponent seismic applications in coalbed methane development. Zero-offset surveys show that a broad-band mini-P vibratory source is ideal for imaging the coal zone, providing a measure of vertical continuity of the coal zone as well as delineating intra-coal events. The extraction of Vp/Vs from P-wave and S-wave seismic data yields a high Vp/Vs value in the near surface (~5), decreasing to approximately 2.5 at 300 m depth. Reflectivity values extracted from walkaway surveys demonstrate that convertedwave data better resolve the upper coal contact than compressional-wave data, as they are less affected by tuning. Numerical modelling demonstrates "proof of concept" that time-lapse seismic imaging will be able to monitor changes in the reservoir resulting from dewatering, allowing producers to optimize enhanced coalbed methane production throughout reservoir life.


ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 6 Number 12 (2017) pp. 3056-3068 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com Fatty acid composition of groundnut oil is an important trait from the point of human nutrition and oil stability during storage. Breeding groundnut for enhanced oil quality includes the development of cultivars with high oleic and low linoleic acid. In India, availability of breeding lines to improve groundnut oil quality is limited. Induction of genetic variability for fatty acid composition is desired and is a prerequisite in groundnut for its genetic improvement. The present work was undertaken to induce genetic variability for fatty acid profile using chemical (ethyl methanesulfonate) and physical (gamma rays) mutagens in two groundnut cultivars viz., GPBD-4 and TPG41. In the M5 generation among the eight fatty acids studied, a greater magnitude of induced variation was observed for palmitic acid, oleic acid, linoleic acid and oleic/linoleic acid ratio (O/L). The induced variability was skewed towards high levels of oleic acid and low level of linoleic acid in GPBD-4. The EMS (0.5%) mutagen treatment in GPBD-4 resulted in higher magnitude of variability for oleic acid (39.0175.16), linoleic acid (9.01-37.82) and O/L (1.03-8.34). However in TPG-41 the induced variability was skewed towards higher linoleic acid and low oleic acid with the mutagen treatment 200 Gy exhibiting greater range values for oleic acid (37.4064.55), linoleic acid (16.53-38.33) and O/L (0.95-3.91). Further marker-assisted selection would be particularly valuable for use in improvement of the fatty acid profile of groundnut. Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) techniques were investigated for the development of molecular markers for genes controlling oleic and/or linolenic acid. A total number of 22 distinct mutants identified for fatty acid composition were assessed for molecular diversity using RAPD assay along with their respective parents revealed limited polymorphism. The RAPD marker OPAT 02 accounted for highest per cent polymorphism (80). High O/L types identified from mutant populations of both the genotypes were grouped into the same cluster suggesting close molecular relationship between them. Mutant GE-273 characterized by low O/L ratio (1.16) compared to parent, GPBD-4 (1.76) produced a very distinct band profile for most of the primers screened indicating lager extent of alteration in its DNA sequence. Further molecular studies on characterization coupled with sequence information for the genes involved in the fatty acid biosynthetic pathway might lead to the development of molecular markers that would help to increase the efficiency and accuracy of breeding for oil quality. K e y w o r d s Groundnut, Fatty acids, Mutants, RAPD, Polymorphism, Molecular markers. Accepted: 23 October 2017


Blatant tenant hostility towards landlords, widespread neglect and wholesale abandonment of properties, and a critical shortage of housing accommodations for low- and moderate-income tenants for all symptoms, in Professor Rose's view, of the current legal relationship between landlords and tenants--an unworkable anachronism dangerously maladjusted to social, economic, and political realities. This book describes in detail the patterns by which myriad inequities have been woven into the law, and suggests some remedies. It provides, in plain language, a comprehensive and up-to-date manual of the rights and liabilities of landlords and tenants. A basic reference work for anyone concerned with landlord-tenant relations.


In this paper, we investigate the issue of per-station fairness in TCP over IEEE 802.11-compliant wireless local area networks (WLANs), especially in Wi-Fi hot spot. It is asserted that the hot spot suffers from the unfairness among stations in exploiting the wireless medium. The source of this unfairness is analyzed from two aspects, TCP-induced asymmetry and MAC-induced asymmetry; the former causes TCP congestion control with a cumulative acknowledgment mechanism to prefer the sending stations to receiving stations, while the later exacerbates the unfairness problem in the hot spots. We investigate the interaction between TCP congestion control and MAC contention control, and propose a cross-layer feedback approach to assure per-station fairness and to ensure high channel utilization. In this approach, we introduce the notion of channel access cost to quantify the system-wide traffic load and per-station channel usage. The access cost is estimated at the MAC in an access point and conveyed to the TCP sender. Then, the TCP sender adjusts its sending rate based on the access cost, so as to assure per-station fairness. The simulation results indicate that the proposed approach can provide both per-station fairness and high channel utilization, irrespective of network configurations.


Abstract This paper examines empirically two distinguishing aspects of the world's wine regions: their degree of specialization in certain varieties, as measured by a varietal intensity index; and their similarity with the varietal mix of other regions, as measured by a varietal-based regional similarity index. Twelve of the most important wine-producing countries, that together account for all but one-eighth of the world's winegrapes, are included in the analysis. The data refer to circa 2000 (or 1999 for EU member countries, since that is their most recent census data). These indexes provide a baseline against which to compare more recent and future vintages. They will be especially useful as producers and regulators respond at varying speeds to the impacts of climate changes, in addition to market developments, on the optimal location of production of different varieties around the world. (JEL Classifications: D24, L66, Q13, Q15)


The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of different relatedness supportive settings on the motivation, engagement and effort of a-motivated students in secondary physical education. 147 a-motivated students from 5 schools were taught in a setting that was either high or low in support for their need of relatedness. Data were collected using a pretest and posttest design to examine a-motivated student's level of motivation, engagement and effort. Repeated measures ANOVA's with follow-up comparisons were utilized to analyze the data. Results indicated that students engaged in the high supportive setting significantly increased their levels of motivation, engagement and effort compared with students in the low support group. Findings from this study provide the first empirical evidence that supporting relatedness can positively influence the affective aspects of students with low motivation.


Some applications of thermoacoustics will require high power density to reduce the cost and size of the hardware needed for a given total power. Such high power density can be reached by using high acoustic amplitudes, but this leads to significant differences between the actual operation and predictions based on the acoustic approximation. To date, all such differences have resulted in reduced efficiency. Experimental results for several thermoacoustic engines operated with acoustic pressure amplitudes near 10% of mean pressure will be presented. Causes of deviation from acoustic‐approximation predictions, including entrance effects, turbulence, and harmonic content, will be discussed. Experimental and theoretical approaches to understanding these deviations will be proposed.


Cupido comyntas (Godart), the eastern tailed-blue, is a legume-feeding caterpillar native to North America. One of its three subspecies, Cupido comyntas comyntas (Godart), is distributed over the eastern half of the United States and southeastern Canada. This subspecies was recorded for the first time feeding on cultivated soybean. Caterpillars fed upon soybean at various developmental stages, ranging from seedlings to podded plants, in several fields within a 5-km radius in Brookings County, South Dakota, from July 1 – 25, 2013. Feeding was confined to leaves, and no pod damage was observed. The caterpillars occurred at relatively low densities that were unlikely to have affected yield of soybean crops. An early maturity soybean line, H007Y12, had a lower incidence of C. comyntas comyntas caterpillars than a relatively later maturity line, H19Y11. Butterflies of C. comyntas comyntas were observed feeding from soybean flowers on multiple dates in July and early August. As the geographic distribution of C. comyntas comyntas considerably overlaps the area where soybean is grown, entomologists should watch for and document any additional infestation of soybean by these caterpillars.


The interplay between quantum Hall states and Cooper pairs is usually hindered by the suppression of the superconducting state due to the strong magnetic fields needed to observe the quantum Hall effect. From this point of view graphene is special since it allows the creation of strong pseudo-magnetic fields due to strain. We show that in a Josephson junction made of strained graphene, Cooper pairs will diffuse into the strained region. The pair correlation function will be sub-lattice polarized due to the polarization of the local density of states in the zero pseudo-Landau level. We uncover two regimes; 1) one in which the cyclotron radius is larger than the junction length in which case the supercurrent will be enhanced, and 2) the long junction regime where the supercurrent is strongly suppressed because the junction becomes an insulator. In the latter case quantized Hall states form and Andreev scattering at the normal/superconducting interface will induce edge states. Our numerical calculation has become possible due to an extension of the Chebyshev Bogoliubov-de Gennes method to computations on video cards (GPUs).


Since 9/11 and 7/7 the focus on Muslims as a subject of political, media and academic debate
has intensified. Muslim women, who are critical to these various debates, are often
essentialised and typified as casualties of Islam, and their voices are effectively silenced. This
study, which 'gives voice' to the experiences of Muslim women, examines the ways in which
Muslim women negotiate their religious identities and commitments in twenty-first century
Britain through their engagement with artistic projects. Through a combination of semistructured
interviews with twenty-six women and participant observation in a Muslim women's
arts organisation and nasheed group, it addresses three research questions each of which
tries to cast sociological light on the intersection between artistic practice and identification
with Islam. Firstly, it asks to what extent Durkheim's notion of religion as la vie serieuse helps
to describe the beliefs, identities and practices of Muslim women. Secondly, it considers the
extent to which, and manner in which, Muslim women's artistic participation expresses selfidentification
with religion and culture. Finally, it examines the implications of artistic
participation for other areas of Muslim women's lives.
In responding to these questions, I draw upon literature on religion and identity, religious
commitment, Islam and gender, and Islam and the arts. My analysis focuses on how religion
and everyday life are entwined in the experiences of Muslim women and how these
experiences problematise the idea of strict boundaries between the 'sacred' and 'profane'. It
highlights variety in the commitment and practice of Muslim women and how individualisation
and choice are very much part of the variation in their religious lives. I consider how my
participants negotiate their gendered, religious and cultural identities through artistic
participation and show that Muslim women engage in performances, not only in their roles as
artists, but also as they navigate the expectations or (cultural) scripts handed to them by their
families and religious communities. I also highlight how re-presenting and representing
Muslim women and Islam can be an important act for those engaging in artistic practices and
how this activity demonstrates active agency in a public sphere that often excludes them.


An octadentate ligand L has been prepared which contains a sequence of bidentate (pyrazolyl-pyridine), terdentate [bis(pyrazolyl)pyridine] and bidentate (pyrazolyl-pyridine) binding sites separated by p-xylyl spacers. This forms a range of double helical complexes in which the two ligands define 4-, 6-, and 4-coordinate binding sites, and there is substantial π-stacking between overlapping parallel areas of the ligands. In [Cu3L2][PF6]4 the sequence of oxidation states for the copper ions is +1, +2, +1 with the Cu(I) ions being four-coordinate at the terminal sites and Cu(II) being in the central six-coordinate site. In [Cu3(OAc)2L2][PF6]4 all copper centres are in oxidation state +2, with the terminal ions having an additional monodentate acetate ligand giving them a five-coordinate geometry. The 4 + 6 + 4 arrangement of coordination numbers means that reaction of L with a mixture of Fe(II) and Ag(I) results in high yield formation of [Ag2FeL2][BF4]4 in which Ag(I) ions occupy the terminal 4-coordinate sites and Fe(II) occupies the central pseudo-octahedral site. Reaction of L with Ag(I) produced a mixture of [Ag3L2][BF4]3
 (major product) and [Ag4L2][BF4]4
 (minor product). In [Ag3L2][BF4]3 the central Ag(I) ion is, unusually, in a pseudo-octahedral coordination environment from the two meridional, terdentate bis(pyrazolyl)pyridine donors. In [Ag4L2][BF4]4 in contrast the central 6-coordinate cavity is occupied by two Ag(I) ions separated by 2.85 A. The terdentate chelating bis(pyrazolyl)pyridine units at the centre of the helicate are now substantially twisted such that each donates a bidentate pyrazolyl-pyridine to one Ag(I) centre and a monodentate pyrazole unit to the other. In solution, 1H NMR and mass spectroscopic evidence indicates that the fourth Ag(I) ion is lost and [Ag3L2][BF4]3 forms, unless a large excess of Ag(I) is present in which case traces of [Ag4L2][BF4]4 can be detected by mass spectrometry.


This paper presents new methods for use of dense motion fields for motion compensation of interlaced video. The motion is estimated using previously decoded field-images. An initial motion compensated prediction is produced using the assumption that the motion is predictable in time. The motion estimation algorithm is phase-based and uses two or three field-images to achieve motion estimates with sub-pixel accuracy. To handle non-constant motion and the specific characteristics of the field-image to be coded, the initially predicted image is refined using forward motion compensation, based on block-matching. Tests show that this approach achieves higher PSNR than forward block-based motion estimation, when coding the residual with the same coder. The subjective performance is also better.


A typical method for measuring the radial thermal conductivity of cylindrical objects is the pipe method. This method introduces a heating wire in combination with standard thermocouples and optical Fiber Bragg grating temperature sensors into the core of a cell. This experimental method can lead to high uncertainties due to the slightly varying setup for each measurement and the non-homogenous structure of the cell. Due to the lack of equipment on the market, researchers have to resort to such experimental methods. To verify the measurement uncertainties and to show the possible range of results, an additional method is introduced. In this second method the cell is disassembled, and the thermal conductivity of each cell component is calculated based on measurements with the laser flash method and differential scanning calorimetry. Those results are used to numerically calculate thermal conductivity and to parameterize a finite element model. With this model, the uncertainties and problems inherent in the pipe method for cylindrical cells were shown. The surprising result was that uncertainties of up to 25% arise, just from incorrect assumption about the sensor position. Furthermore, the change in radial thermal conductivity at different states of charge (SOC) was measured with fully functional cells using the pipe method.


Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is the most common infectious disease related cause of death worldwide despite the use of effective antimicrobials. Much of the morbidity and mortality seen in CAP patients at high risk of death has been attributed to exaggerated host responses that result in bystander tissue damage and organ failure. Therefore there is great need to further understand the effect of hyperinflammatory phenotypes on CAP outcomes and develop adjuvant therapy that can attenuate excessive inflammatory responses without compromising host defense. Furthermore, there is growing concern regarding the development of antimicrobial resistance and recent research aims to modulate immune mechanisms that boost pathogen killing and clearance. In this review we summarize the growing body of evidence for the use of adjuvant immunomodulators in the treatment of CAP and highlight emerging immunomodulators that have been tested in pre-clinical studies, which need to be evaluated and developed for clinical trials. In summary, current evidence supports the use of macrolide combination antibiotic therapy and unless contraindicated continuation of pre-admission statin and antiplatelet therapy. Corticosteroids are beneficial in the context of septic shock and critical illness related adrenal insufficiency and may be of benefit to individuals with severe CAP and a hyperinflammatory phenotype given the potential for improving patient-centered and economic outcomes with negligible adverse effects. Despite much promise in pre-clinical work, many clinical trials of drugs targeting the coagulation pathways have unfortunately failed to demonstrate clinical benefits in humans. Results of trials evaluating aspirin, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) and thrombomodulin are awaited and may yet influence practice, whilst further identification of inflammatory phenotypes will in the future allow personalized approaches and identify subgroups of patients that may respond to adjuvants that have previously not demonstrated favorable outcomes when used in heterogeneous cohorts.


This thesis deals with flow measuring techniques applied to steady and pulsating gas flows relevant to gas exchange systems for internal combustion engines. Gas flows in such environments are complex, i.e. they are inhomogeneous, three-dimensional, unsteady, non-isothermal and exhibit significant density changes. While a variety of flow metering devices are available and have been devised for such flow conditions, the performance of these flow metersis to a large extent undocumented when a strongly pulsatile motion is superposed on the already complex flow field. Nonetheless, gas flow meters are commonly applied in such environments, e.g. in the measurement of the air flow to the engine or the amount of exhaust gas recirculation. The aim of the present thesis is therefore to understand and assess, and if possible to improve the performance of various flow meters under highly pulsatile conditions as well as demonstrating the use of a new type of flow meter for measurements of the pulsating mass flow upstream and downstream the turbine of a turbocharger. The thesis can be subdivided into three parts. The first one assesses the flow quality of a newly developed flow rig, designed for measurements of steady and pulsating air flow at flow rates and pulse frequencies typically found in the gas exchange system of cars and smaller trucks. Flow rates and pulsation frequencies achieved and measured range up to about 200 g/s and 80 Hz, respectively. The time-resolved mass flux and stagnation temperature under both steady and pulsating conditions were characterized by means of a combined hot/cold-wire probe which is part of a newly developed automated measurement module. This rig and measurement module were used to create a unique data base with well-defined boundary conditions to be used for the validation of numerical simulations, but in particular, to assess the performance of various flow meters. In the second part a novel vortex flow meter that can measure the timedependent flow rate using wavelet analysis has been invented, verified and extensively tested under various industrially relevant conditions. The newly developed technique was used to provide unique turbine maps under pulsatile conditions through time-resolved and simultaneous measurements of mass flow, temperature and pressure upstream and downstream the turbine. Results confirm that the quasi-steady assumption is invalid for the turbine considered as a whole. In the third and last part of the thesis, two basic fundamental questions that arose during the course of hot/cold-wire measurements in the aforementioned high speed flows have been addressed, namely to assess which temperature a cold-wire measures or to which a hot-wire is exposed to in high speed flows as well as whether the hot-wire measures the product of velocity and density or total density. Hot/cold-wire measurements in a nozzle have been performed to test various hypothesis and results show that the recovery temperature as well as the product of velocity and stagnation density are measured.


Abstract. JULES-crop is a parametrisation of crops in the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES). We investigate the sources of the interannual variability in the modelled maize yield, using global runs driven by reanalysis data, with a view to understanding the impact of various approximations in the driving data and initialisation. The standard forcing data set for JULES consists of a combination of meteorological variables describing precipitation, radiation, temperature, pressure, specific humidity and wind, at subdaily time resolution. We find that the main characteristics of the modelled yield can be reproduced with a subset of these variables and using daily forcing, with internal disaggregation to the model time step. This has implications in particular for the use of the model with seasonal forcing data, which may not have been provided at subdaily resolution for all required driving variables. We also investigate the effect on annual yield of initialising the model with climatology on the sowing date. This approximation has the potential to considerably simplify the use of the model with seasonal forecasts, since obtaining observations or reanalysis output for all the initialisation variables required by JULES for the start date of the seasonal forecast would present significant practical challenges.


Looking at the conception and reception of the recent Serov exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery, this article explores how the show both expresses a desire to popularize a patriotic mode of cultural consumption and reveals present-day socio-cultural anxieties that the economic sanctions have triggered. Exploring the relevance of Serov's aesthetics as well as the polyphony of the public perspectives on the show, I contend that the success of the exhibit is rooted in the palimpsestic nature of the event. The metaphor of the palimpsest allows for the description of multiple layers of cultural memory mobilized by the show: the nostalgia about Russia's pre-revolutionary past, the Soviet endorsement of the queue, the pride in the national endurance during World War II. As I argue, the inadvertent popularity of the Serov exhibit demonstrates that ideology is most successful at triggering patriotic consumption in the post-Soviet space when it activates a palimpsest – a production that evokes different, at times contradicting, strata of cultural meaning.


In the past few years, the World Wide Web (WWW) grows explosively and has become the most useful and powerful information retrieval and accessing system in the Internet. However, the language barrier becomes the major problem to search and retrieve WWW documents in different languages. This paper deals with how to incorporate the capability of language translation into WWW. Several design issues are discussed, including which material is translated, what roles the HTML tags play in translation, the tradeoff between the speed performance and the translation performance, and what form the translated result is presented in. We propose a meta-server architecture to communicate with clients and servers. An online and real-time English-to-Chinese machine translation system is developed. It is acted as a proxy system and an MT service system for retrieving WWW documents. The MT meta-server can not only be used as an assistant tool to access and retrieve information by the end-users in the client, but also can be treated as a Chinese document generating system to produce the Chinese or the bilingual English-Chinese versions of documents dynamically.


The Tri-Club Regatta was a youth regatta, begun in 1976, with venues at the Houston Yacht Club, Texas Corinthian Yacht Club and Lakewood Yacht Club. A Ragnot is the nickname collectively given to the youth sailors at HYC by those who founded the group back in 1958. Ragnots are ages 9 through 18 years old or those who have completed 3rd grade but not the 12th grade. Mini-Ragnots are ages 6 through 8 years old or those who have completed Kindergarten but not 3rd grade. The Ragnot program offers events throughout the year, including poolside parties, kayaking excursions, field trips, cookouts, after-school and weekend sailing practice as well as a full summer program. The summer program kicks off with an overnight camp at HYC that offers sailing instruction on Optimists and Lasers during the day and lots of fun activities and camaraderie in the evenings. In addition, the summer program offers an eight-week schedule of beginning, emerging and racing instruction on Optimists and Lasers. The program also includes a three-week Mini-Ragnot course and a four-week J22 course. More non-sailing activities are scheduled most Saturdays during the summer. (source: http://www.houstonyachtclub.com/Ragnots.html)


Choices and decisions in business and in economics as well as in life are not made in an ethical vacuum. There are few economic choices that are ethically neutral. By their very nature, choices/decisions involve the worldview of the chooser/decision-maker, and this can cause two individuals possessing an equal knowledge of the same educational tools to make widely different choices when faced with the same alternatives. Consequently, the teaching of microeconomics principles will always be lacking without the infusion of an ethical/philosophical system which gets at how to properly use these principles and tools. This paper will propose that microeconomic principles and tools are best applied using a biblical model and that decision-makers with non-Christian worldviews often make choices based on biblical principles because the latter work best even in a fallen world (II Timothy 3:16). The difference here is in motivation; the Christian's motivation is to serve Jesus Christ. On the other hand, Christians do not always follow biblical principles because ideal behavior is sometimes compromised due to expediency, greed, or other wrong motives.


The restructuring of regional electricity markets in the U.S. has been accompanied by numerous problems, including generation capacity shortages, transmission congestion, wholesale price volatility, and reduced system reliability. These problems have created significant new opportunities for technologies and business approaches that allow load serving entities and other aggregators, to control and manage the load patterns of their wholesale or retail end-users. These technologies and business approaches for manipulating end-user load shapes are known as Load Management or, more recently, Demand Responsive programs. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is conducting case studies on innovative demand responsive programs and presents preliminary results for five case studies in this paper. These case studies illustrate the diversity of market participants and range of technologies and business approaches and focus on key program elements such as target markets, market segmentation and participation results; pricing scheme; dispatch and coordination; measurement, verification, and settlement; and operational results where available.


Falls are the leading injury-related cause of death and of medical care use among Californians ages 65 and over. In 2012, there were 1,819 deaths due to falls among older Californians. More than 72,000 hospitalizations were caused by fall injuries among older adults during that year, along with more than 185,000 emergency department (ED) visits. The medical costs alone of falls in the state have been estimated to be over $2 billion annually. Those who have fallen more than once are at the highest risk of injury and further falls. Data from the 2011-2012 California Health Interview Survey show that 12.6 percent of older Californians, or 556,000 individuals, had fallen more than once during the past year. Very few of those experiencing multiple falls discussed how to reduce their risk with a health professional. This policy brief details the characteristics of older Californians who have repeated falls, their health care use, and the actions they can take to reduce the risk of future falls. It also provides policy suggestions for reducing the risk of falls among older Californians and decreasing the costs to the medical care system.


Six buffer coherency policies for a multisystem transaction processing environment are compared. These policies differ in their basic approaches on how and when the invalidated pages are identified or if the updated pages are propagated to the buffers of the remote nodes. They can be classified as detection, notification (of invalid pages), and (update) propagation oriented approaches. The policies trade off CPU overhead of coherency messages with buffer hit probability in different ways, resulting in a tradeoff of response time and maximum throughput. The main contribution is to develop analytical models to predict buffer hit probabilities under various buffer coherency policies assuming the LRU replacement policy and the independent reference model (IRM). The buffer models are validated using simulation models and show excellent agreement. Integrated analytic models capturing buffer hit probability and CPU overhead are developed to predict the overall response times under these coherency policies. The difference in buffer hit probabilities amongst various policies are found to be very sensitive to the skewness of the data access. >


The public transport network of a region inhabited by more than 4 million people is run by a complex interplay of public and private actors. Large amounts of data are generated by travellers, buying and using various forms of tickets and passes. Analysing the data is of paramount importance for the governance and sustainability of the system. This manuscript reports the early results of the privacy analysis which is being undertaken as part of the analysis of the clearing process in the Emilia-Romagna region, in Italy, which will compute the compensations for tickets bought from one operator and used with another. In the manuscript it is shown by means of examples that the clearing data may be used to violate various privacy aspects regarding users, as well as (technically equivalent) trade secrets regarding operators. The ensuing discussion has a twofold goal. First, it shows that after researching possible existing solutions, both by reviewing the literature on general privacy-preserving techniques, and by analysing similar scenarios that are being discussed in various cities across the world, the former are found exhibiting structural effectiveness deficiencies, while the latter are found of limited applicability, typically involving less demanding requirements. Second, it traces a research path towards a more effective approach to privacy-preserving data management in the specific context of public transport, both by refinement of current sanitization techniques and by application of the privacy by design approach.


Workplace travel planning began in the UK in the early 1990s. With over ten years of experience in travel plans in the UK, this thesis demonstrates how they have developed, matured and the extent to which they have become embedded into the organisations working practices as a business management tool.

This work is distinct from previous research, as it concentrates on the business perspective of travel plans, through a series of in depth interviews within organisations. These interviews were analysed using innovation and business models, such as elements of Rogersi?½ (2003) Diffusion of Innovations and Mintzberg's (1983) Structure in Fives, Designing Effective Organisations, to explore the impact of the characteristics and structure of an organisation on the embedding of a travel plan.

This thesis identified factors that have helped to organisationally embed travel plans. A key finding was to show that the motivations for a travel plan change as it matures, from those of external regulation through the planning process, to internal goals such as corporate responsibility and the environment, business growth and human resources issues. This research has shown the importance of linking travel plans to these organisational goals in the embedding process. However, successful embedding is not easy. A travel plan can either remain siloed within an estates function or become so widely dispersed that the benefits are poorly visible. In either case the travel plan runs the risk of being marginalised or lost. The research has also shown that this process of embedding is reliant on the adaptation of the travel plan to match the culture and working practices within an organisation, and that this process of adaptation can be dependent on the position of the travel planner within a strategic area of the organisation.

It is concluded that travel planning policy is too focussed on the early stages of adoption and not enough on growing and maturing travel plans, with the result that they are too narrow, and unlikely to yield the business benefits that will secure their long term future.


Examining the influences leading to the introduction of amphetamine controls in Britain, this article focuses upon the consequences of the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964, and subsequent legislation. These laws had a major impact upon earlier Mod and later Northern Soul Scene subcultures in Britain, because both held amphetamine use as a central component of their recreational activities. The paper aims to provide greater understanding of the way criminalisation of amphetamines impacted on a user subculture that developed prior to criminalisation. While the 1964 Act effectively restricted supplies of amphetamines from the grey market, its failure to reduce demand created the market conditions for illicitly manufactured amphetamines. The changed legal setting also provided subcultural justification for the burglary of retail pharmacies which began soon after criminalisation. The response of the authorities to increased burglary of pharmacies had a particularly damaging impact on the amphetamine user culture of the post-mod Northern Soul Scene in the mid-1970s. The introduction of tighter storage regulations, stipulating the need to store Class B drugs in a secure metal cabinet with the opiates, led to a new cultural exchange between the amphetamine using chemist burglars and opiate user groups that involved the sale of the unwanted class A drugs, including exchanging opiates for amphetamine powder. The resulting spread of intravenous drug use on the Northern Scene, introduced a number of negative health impacts including the spread of hepatitis and drug related deaths.


We present StochSS: Stochastic Simulation as a Service, an integrated development environment for modeling and simulation of both deterministic and discrete stochastic biochemical systems in up to three dimensions. An easy to use graphical user interface enables researchers to quickly develop and simulate a biological model on a desktop or laptop, which can then be expanded to incorporate increasing levels of complexity. StochSS features state-of-the-art simulation engines. As the demand for computational power increases, StochSS can seamlessly scale computing resources in the cloud. In addition, StochSS can be deployed as a multi-user software environment where collaborators share computational resources and exchange models via a public model repository. We demonstrate the capabilities and ease of use of StochSS with an example of model development and simulation at increasing levels of complexity.


Organic Intermetallic Derivatives of TinSome reactions of trialkyltin alkali metal derivatives were studied with the view to their use as synthetic reagents for the; introduction of the trialkyltin radical into other molecules and ultimately for syntheses of compounds in which tin would be covalently bonded to a metal from another chemical group.The reactions studied in ether-like solvents indicated that reaction between trialkyltin lithium compounds and organo-metallic halides led either to occurrence of metal-halogen exchange reactions or dissociation of the trialkyltin lithium. In the former case the symmetrical organo-dielement compounds were formed, e.g. hexamethylditin, cacodyl; and in the latter case, the alkyl lithium, produced by dissociation, reacted with the organo-metallic halide resulting in replacement of the halogen with an alkyl group. When, however, reaction between a trialkyltin lithium and an alkyl halide was carried out the expected reaction occurred, since, in this case, the reaction between the halide and any alkyl lithium produced by dissociation would be relatively slow, thus enhancing the chance of reaction between the alkyl halide and the trialkyltin group.Reactions carried out with elements from Group VI,sulphur and selenium, led to formation of the desired compounds methyltrimethyltin sulphide and methyltrimethyltin selenide. The latter compound contained a tin-selenium bond which does not appear to have been reported previously. In these reactions the trialkyltin radical was present in cationic form (as the bromide) and the Group VI elements in anionic form, so that metal-halogen exchange reactions would be most unlikely to occur.As the reactions with tin in cationic form had been successful a reaction between dimethylarsenic sodium and trimethyltin bromide was studied in liquid ammonia. However, results from this reaction again indicated that formation of the symmetrical di-element compounds occurred rather than combination of the trialkyltin radical with the dimethylarsenic group.As the reactions studied with trialkyltin alkali metal derivatives in ether-like solvents had shown that they behaved in a complex manner with a variety of reagents attention was directed to the rather limited use of liquid ammonia as a solvent for effecting reactions of the type discussed. In this solvent most organo-metallic halides are rapidly ammonolysed, tin and gallium however being exceptions, the reaction between trimethyltin sodium and dimethylgallium chloride mon-ammine was investigated. Therewas no indication that a tin-gallium bond was formed, tin being recovered as hexamethylditin and gallium as dimethylgallium amide.Part IICopperacetylide ComplexesSome new co-ordination complexes of copperacetylides and of silveracetylides, which appear hitherto unknown, were prepared and some of their properties investigated.In the series nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic it was found that the order of stability of the coordination complexes was N ((P) As, those of phosphorus being by far the most stable. An important difference between the alkyl- and aryl- copperacetylide triethyl- phosphine complexes was observed in their behaviour in solution, in which the former dissociated(R-C≡CCuP(C2H5)3 R-C≡CCu + (C2H5)5P). Suchdissociation was also exhibited by the phenylsilver-acetylide-triethylarsine and -iso-propylamine complexes. The alkylcopperacetylide complexes oxidised rapidly in air, whereas the corresponding arylcopperacetylide compounds were much more stable. There was no indication that co-ordination of the metal acetylides occurred with sulphur co-ordinating reagents.Molecular weight determinations, where possible, showed that the co-ordination complexes were generally highly associated, the alkyls more so than the aryls, but the silver compounds less so than the corresponding copper co-ordination complexes. In the case of t-butylcopperacetylide, whichis soluble in organic solvents, molecular weight determinations confirmed earlier results, and showed that the copperacetylide was also highly associated.The relative stability of the copper- and silver acetylides and their co-ordination compounds has been discussed and attributed to co-ordination of the metal with an acetylene group from another molecule, in accordance with the conclusions of earlier work on t-butylcopperacetylide. .Any formation of a complex R-C≡C.ML (M=Gu or Ag, L = ligand) must be the result of successful competition between the M-acetylene co-ordination, which leads to the polymerization of R-C≡CM itself, and the co-ordination -M-L. Sincethe acetylides are, in general, only depolymerised by those ligands known to be the strongest donors to copper and silver (namely aliphatic tertiary phosphines), and since the resulting compounds R-C≡CM-L are themselves associated in solution, presumably by metal-acetylene group interaction, the last must be supposed to be very strong..


Biofilm-forming bacteria are highly resistant to antibiotics, host immune defenses, and other external conditions. The formation of biofilms plays a key role in colonization and infection. To explore the mechanism of biofilm formation, mutant strains of Proteus vulgaris XC 2 were generated by Tn5 random transposon insertion. Only one biofilm defective bacterial species was identified from among 500 mutants. Inactivation of the glpC gene coding an anaerobic glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase subunit C was identified by sequence analysis of the biofilm defective strain. Differences were detected in the growth phenotypes of the wild-type and mutant strains under pH, antibiotic, and organic solvent stress conditions. Furthermore, we observed an increase in the phagocytosis of the biofilm defective strain by the mouse macrophage RAW264.7 cell line compared to the wild-type strain. This study shows that the glpC gene plays an important role in biofilm formation, in addition to imparting pH, organic solvent, and antibiotic tolerance, and defense against phagocytosis to Proteus sp. The results further clarified the mechanism of biofilm formation at the genomic level, and indicated the importance of the glpC gene in this process. This data may provide innovative therapeutic measures against P. vulgaris infections; furthermore, as an important crocodile pathogen, this study also has important significance in the protection of Chinese alligators.