Biofuels are fuels produced from biomass, mostly in liquid form, within a time frame sufficiently short to consider that their feedstock (biomass) can be renewed, contrarily to fossil fuels. This paper reviews the current and future biofuel technologies, and their development impacts (including on the climate) within given policy and economic frameworks. Current technologies make it possible to provide first generation biodiesel, ethanol or biogas to the transport sector to be blended with fossil fuels. Still under-development 2nd generation biofuels from lignocellulose should be available on the market by 2020. Research is active on the improvement of their conversion efficiency. A ten-fold increase compared with current cost-effective capacities would make them highly competitive. Within bioenergy policies, emphasis has been put on biofuels for transportation as this sector is fast-growing and represents a major source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Compared with fossil fuels, biofuel combustion can emit less greenhouse gases throughout their life cycle, considering that part of the emitted CO2 returns to the atmosphere where it was fixed from by photosynthesis in the first place. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is commonly used to assess the potential environmental impacts of biofuel chains, notably the impact on global warming. This tool, whose holistic nature is fundamental to avoid pollution trade-offs, is a standardised methodology that should make comparisons between biofuel and fossil fuel chains objective and thorough. However, it is a complex and time-consuming process, which requires lots of data, and whose methodology is still lacking harmonisation. Hence the life-cycle performances of biofuel chains vary widely in the literature. Furthermore, LCA is a site- and time-independent tool that cannot take into account the spatial and temporal dimensions of emissions, and can hardly serve as a decision-making tool either at local or regional levels. Focusing on greenhouse gases, emission factors used in LCAs give a rough estimate of the potential average emissions on a national level. However, they do not take into account the types of crop, soil or management practices, for instance. Modelling the impact of local factors on the determinism of greenhouse gas emissions can provide better estimates for LCA on the local level, which would be the relevant scale and degree of reliability for decision-making purposes. Nevertheless, a deeper understanding of the processes involved, most notably N2O emissions, is still needed to definitely improve the accuracy of LCA. Perennial crops are a promising option for biofuels, due to their rapid and efficient use of nitrogen, and their limited farming operations. However, the main overall limiting factor to biofuel development will ultimately be land availability. Given the available land areas, population growth rate and consumption behaviours, it would be possible to reach by 2030 a global 10% biofuel share in the transport sector, contributing to lower global greenhouse gas emissions by up to 1 GtCO2 eq · year−1 (IEA, 2006), provided that harmonised policies ensure that sustainability criteria for the production systems are respected worldwide. Furthermore, policies should also be more integrative across sectors, so that changes in energy efficiency, the automotive sector and global consumption patterns converge towards drastic reduction of the pressure on resources. Indeed, neither biofuels nor other energy source or carriers are likely to mitigate the impacts of anthropogenic pressure on resources in a range that would compensate for this pressure growth. Hence, the first step is to reduce this pressure by starting from the variable that drives it up, i.e. anthropic consumptions.


This provocative and entertaining book examines how certain artists, from Salvador Dali to Damien Hirst, have wholeheartedly embraced both the cult of celebrity and the commercial cut and thrust of the art market. It poses the question: which came first, the global media or this new breed of artist? Would a figure like Andy Warhol have risen to a pre-eminent position in daily life in the latter half of the 20th century without a celebrity-hungry media reporting on his actions? The book examines those who have engaged directly with trading their own wares, including Keith Haring selling his pictures in his Pop Shop, Takashi Murakami licensing his designs to big business, and Hirst auctioning his own works at Sotheby's. They are joined by those who have taken an active role in manufacturing their own public personae, including Gilbert & George, Martin Kippenberger and Tracey Emin. Jeff Koons' celebration in painting and sculpture of his marriage and sexual union with porn star and latter-day politician Illona Staller (aka La Cicciolina) is just one example of an artist crossing the usually accepted boundaries between the public and the personal, revelling in and manipulating the response of the media to their own actions. Other artists examined in the book have adopted different strategies, including working under assumed identities, appropriating the visual culture of ethnic groups to which they don't belong or adopting the identities of prostitutes, stalkers or avid fans. All play their part in this fascinating and extensively illustrated book that accompanies a major exhibition at Tate Modern.


Abstract In this introductory paper we describe the 10 papers that compose this Special Feature Theoretical and analytical advances in mammalian isotope ecology. This Special Feature contains 6 review-style papers, written by some of the leaders in the field. These are followed by 4 data-driven articles. The review-style papers were presented at a symposium we organized during the 90th annual meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists. The symposium was dedicated to Donald M. Schell (1940–2009), who pioneered research in isotopic ecology.


J. L. Black. Vladimir Putin and the New World Order: Looking East, Looking West? Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004. xiv, 366 pp. Appendix. Bibliography. Index.What or who determines Russia's foreign policy? Is NATO a genuine, or merely a symbolic, threat to Russia? Does Russia really count in world affairs today? Why does Russia not just mind its own business instead of trying to play the great power that it no longer clearly is? Such questions arise only implicitly out of the book under review, and that may be its sole redeeming feature-providing grist for the mill wherever Russian foreign policy is being discussed.Based on a graduate course taught at Carleton University by historian Larry Black, and a continuation of his earlier study of NATO expansion (Russia Faces NATO Expansion: Bearing Gifts or Bearing Arms?[Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 200O]), this book is a meticulously detailed chronology of what took place in Russia's international relations between January 2000 and May 2002. It offers a Russian perspective on all of the country's foreign policy dealings during that period gleaned from a close reading of the Russian press, augmented by official statements and press releases. Unlike unnamed other narratives it promises "a comprehensive analysis" (p. 3), but fails to deliver, unless analysis is counted in terms of verbiage. Adopting as he does a Russian prism on events. Black succeeds repeatedly in tweaking the beak of the Great American Eagle, yet is less successful in explaining much about the Russian policy itself.The book is divided into two parts, the first of which deals mainly with the ups and downs of Russia-United States relations, referring to the two-and-a-half years under review as a period of experimentation. The second part treats Russia's relations with other specific parts of the world: the Caucasus; Ukraine and Belarus; the CIS; India and China; and the Middle East and "Rogue States" (Libya, North Korea, and Iran and Iraq). Every chapter is a carefully documented recitation of the actions of key decision makers (President Vladimir Putin and his ministers and generals) and of the statements of these key individuals as well as countless Russian journalists, commentators, and policy wonks. While the thoroughness and detail of just what was said by whom at what time and on what occasion may have some value for the historical record, the author provides no guidance or interpretation to sort out whose opinions really counted. …


Early efforts to confront transnational terrorism through national extradition laws created a risk of impunity for egregious offenders, which eventually stimulated greater transnational criminal cooperation and prompted an attempt by the international community to standardize rules in this area. This article considers how the international community has pursued transnational criminal cooperation against terrorism through a variety of legal means: numerous 'sectoral' treaties; efforts to draft a comprehensive international treaty; regional conventions; UN Security Council measures; war crimes liabilities; and debate about an emerging international customary law crime. However, the definition and repression of terrorism involves difficult social and political judgments about who is entitled to use violence, against whom, and for what purposes. Depending on the scope of the international definition of terrorism and any exceptions to it, the criminalization of terrorism risks empowering the state – including autocratic ones – at the expense of other (legitimate) political claims to violence.


Reading for pleasure, a term more commonly used in England than elsewhere, is essentially volitional, choice-led reading of any kind of text. Often described as 'free voluntary' or 'independent reading' in the US (Krashen, 2004) and as 'recreational reading' in Canada (Ross, McKechnie and Rothbauer, 2006), such reading is undertaken for the personal satisfaction of the reader in their own time. Recently the OECD have come to widen their conception of reading literacy that they use in the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests. They state:

Changes in our concept of reading since 2000 have led to an expanded definition of reading literacy, which recognises motivational and behavioural characteristics of reading alongside cognitive characteristics. (OECD, 2016)

This re-conceptualisation serves as a reminder that teachers need to recognise more than the often narrow, assessed notions of decoding and comprehension so prevalent in national tests and policies, and also work to support young people's emerging identities as readers, their reading behaviours, preferences and practices and their desire and capacity to discuss texts they choose to read.

Yet many schools, overburdened and overwhelmed by detailed curricula and focused assessment regimes fail to find the time support reading for pleasure, so balancing the will and the skill becomes a serious challenge. Senior management, often pressed to ensure standards are raised, tend to prioritise activities that promise to deliver short-term gains and side-line reading for pleasure, despite unequivocal evidence of the long-term benefits of reading in childhood. Schools can even get sucked into 'performing' reading for pleasure, without reviewing and then developing enriched practice.

This represents real cause for concern throughout the primary and secondary years, especially in the light of international evidence that reveals that the frequency with which young people, and particularly boys, engage in volitional reading markedly decreases as they move through the years of schooling (Mullis et al. 2012; OECD, 2010). Furthermore, in England in the recent Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) (McGrane, et al., 2017), the 10 year old children's attitudes to reading in England were comparatively low compared to their skills and in English speaking countries England had the lowest ranking for enjoyment and the lowest for pupil engagement in reading except Australia (McGrane, et al., 2017).

This chapter, examining the tensions and challenges which exist for teachers seeking to redress the balance argues that in order to build readers for life, not simply readers for the system, opportunities need to be seized to create interactive and reciprocal reading communities. Initially the benefits of reading for pleasure are discussed, then the evidence with regard to children's dis/engagement as readers presented, before the nature of reading communities and the challenges and possibilities offered by their construction are explored.


Nexans, ICMAB-CSIC, Tecnalia and UAB have collaborated on the ENDESA Supercable, a 30 m long, medium-voltage superconducting ac power cable. The cable was developed and manufactured within the framework of the ENDESA Novare program. With a rated current of 3200 A, a 3-phase system based on this cable is able to transmit 138 MVA at its envisioned operating voltage of 25 kV. While the cable was designed for 25 kV, the terminations avail able for cable testing were rated for the 20-kV class. Consequently the high voltage tests were carried out at the levels appropriate for 20 kV cable systems. The cable has successfully passed all high voltage and load cycle tests. The load cycles consisted of ten 24-hour cycles during which, with a voltage of 2 - UO applied for the full duration of the 10 test cycles, the rated current of 3200 A was applied for 8 hours. The ac losses of the cable were also measured. The successful prototype testing of the cable confirmed the de sign, manufacturing, and performance of this high transmission capacity cable: To our knowledge, it is the highest ampacity power cable so far that has passed the rigorous load cycle test protocol of a similarly rated conventional cable.


Semantic similarity of text plays an important role in many NLP tasks. It requires using both local information like lexical semantics and structural information like syntactic structures. Recent progress in word representation provides good resources for lexical semantics, and advances in natural language analysis tools make it possible to efficiently generate syntactic and semantic annotations. However, how to combine them to capture the semantics of text is still an open question. Here, we propose a new alignment-based approach to learn semantic similarity. It uses a hybrid representation, attributed relational graphs, to encode lexical, syntactic and semantic information. Alignment of two such graphs combines local and structural information to support similarity estimation. To improve alignment, we introduced structural constraints inspired by a cognitive theory of similarity and analogy. Usually only similarity labels are given in training data and the true alignments are unknown, so we address the learning problem using two approaches: alignment as feature extraction and alignment as latent variable. Our approach is evaluated on the paraphrase identification task and achieved results competitive with the state-of-the-art.


Cellulose surfaces are activated for wet adhesion, bioconjugation and other applications by the introduction of a "primer" layer consisting of a covalently bonded polyelectrolyte complex based on laccase and polyvinylamine with pendent TEMPO groups, PVAmT. The laccase, in conjunction with dissolved oxygen, activates the TEMPO moieties on PVAmT, facilitating the oxidation of primary hydroxyl groups on the cellulose surface. The resulting cellulosic aldehydes are free to couple covalently with amine groups on the PVAmT. The generally accepted mechanism of TEMPO oxidation is that the primary oxidant converts TEMPO into a reactive oxoammonium ion that shuttles an electron to primary alcohols. Since the translational mobility of TEMPO will be limited when grafted to a polymer and present as a polyelectrolyte complex with laccase, it is proposed that the activated oxoammonium ions jump along the PVAmT chain, from TEMPO to neighbouring TEMPO. Wet adhesion of laminated regenerated cellulose sheets was used as the primary assay indicating the presence of covalent bonding.


Abstract. Airborne laser scanning (ALS) is a widely used technique for the sampling of the earth's surface. Nowadays a wide range of ALS sensor systems with different technical specifications can be found. One parameter is the laser wavelength which leads to a sensitivity for the wavelength dependent backscatter characteristic of sensed surfaces. Current ALS sensors usually record next to the geometric information additional information on the recorded signal strength of each echo. In order to utilize this information for the study of the backscatter characteristic of the sensed surface, radiometric calibration is essential. This paper focuses on the radiometric calibration of multi-wavelength ALS data and is based on previous work on the topic of radiometric calibration of monochromatic (single-wavelength) ALS data. After a short introduction the theory and whole workflow for calibrating ALS data radiometrically based on in-situ reference surfaces is presented. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that this approach for the monochromatic calibration can be used for each channel of multi-wavelength ALS data. The resulting active multi-channel radiometric image does not have any shadows and from a geometric viewpoint the position of the objects on top of the terrain surface is not altered (the result is a multi-channel true orthophoto). Within this paper the approach is demonstrated by three different single-wavelength ALS data acquisition campaigns (532nm, 1064nm and 1550nm) covering the area of the city Horn (Austria). The results and practical issues are discussed.


Ever since its discovery by traders and seamen in the Early Modern age, the world of Orient has been an important source of cultural inspiration for Western civilization. Geographically so near, culturally so different, the countries of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa have influenced both the Oriental vogue of the baroque period and also the popular Oriental genre in the fine arts. At the same time, the mysterious aura of the Orient has repeatedly served as a romantically idealized counterpoint and escape route for European fantasies and longings. From the early turquets to the glory of the 19th century to the Tunisian images of August Macke and Paul Klee, this elaborately appointed volume presents the history of Oriental images in painting and follows the traces of a phenomenon that remains fascinating even today.


English Corpus Linguistics is a step-by-step guide to creating and analyzing linguistic corpora. It begins with a discussion of the role that corpus linguistics plays in linguistic theory, demonstrating that corpora have proven to be very useful resources for linguists who believe that their theories and descriptions of English should be based on real rather than contrived data. Charles F. Meyer goes on to describe how to plan the creation of a corpus, how to collect and computerize data for inclusion in a corpus, how to annotate the data that are collected, and how to conduct a corpus analysis of a completed corpus. The book concludes with an overview of the challenges that corpus linguists face to make both the creation and analysis of corpora much easier undertakings than they currently are. Clearly organized and accessibly written, this book will appeal to students of linguistics and English language.


This paper estimates potential exposures, netting benefits and settlement gains by merging retail and wholesale payments into batches and conducting multiple intraday settlements in this hypothetical model of a single "calibrated payments system." The results demonstrate that credit risk exposures faced by participants in the system are largely dependent on their relative activity in the retail and wholesale payments systems. Participants experience lower exposures in the calibrated system owing to increased netting and significant gains through higher payment values and volumes. This result is reinforced when analyzing participant exposures in periods of stress, particularly during the Great Recession. Relative activity is also indicative of the variations in exposures across participants when implementing multiple batch sizes, especially because increasing batch sizes enhances the value and volume of payments accumulated, thus leading to higher netting and lower exposures. These results and further work may contribute to a better understanding of participant exposures and trade-offs arising from this potential system design.


When we describe non-compact or singular Calabi–Yau manifolds by CFT, continuous as well as discrete representations appear in the theory. These representations mix in an intricate way under the modular transformations. In this article, we propose a method of combining discrete and continuous representations so that the resulting combinations have a simpler modular behavior and can be used as conformal blocks of the theory. We compute elliptic genera of ALE spaces and obtain results which agree with those suggested from the decompactification of K3 surface. Consistency of our approach is assured by some remarkable identity of theta functions whose proof, by D. Zagier, is included in an appendix.


Even today, given the widespread usage and critical importance of the Internet, its basic routing protocols such as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) are poorly understood. This is in part an artifact of the complex interactions that arise from a distributed system that is administered locally to achieve a global task: reachability. In another part it has its origin in the fact that inter-domain routing policies of autonomous systems (ASes) often undergo constant adjustments for reasons of traffic engineering and/or to address specific customer wishes, an error prone approach. In this thesis we address these problems in multiple ways: The problem of policy configurations by developing a system that allows us to manage the overall routing architecture rather than each individual router. With this we raise the abstraction level from individual BGP configuration statements to an AS-wide routing policy. The richness of policy expressions leads to complex interactions and dynamics that can be observed throughout the Internet. We present a methodology that helps operators to detect problematic routing conditions, and we discuss how to identify that AS which is responsible for an instability. While we find that some of todays routing issues are stemming from protocol interactions, others are coming from router software/hardware problems that should have been detected in a test-lab before deployment in the operational network. We describe a BGP workload generator that can help in a wide variety of equipment testing. We illustrate the capabilities of the tool by showing how complex tests can be instantiated, without of losing the test engineer in the intricacies of the test setup.


We exploit two regulatory shocks to examine the informational effects of tightening pre-existing mandatory disclosure rules. Canadian Rule NI 51-101 and the US "Modernization of Oil and Gas Reporting" introduced a quasi-identical tightening of the rules governing oil and gas reserve disclosures in Canada and the US at different times. Both in Canada and the US, we document significant changes in firms' reporting outcomes when the new regulation is introduced. We also find that the reserve disclosures filed under the new regulations are more closely associated with stock price changes and with decreases in bid-ask spreads. Our findings are robust to controlling for other confounding factors such as time trends, other information disclosed simultaneously, financial reporting incentives, mispricing and monitoring efforts.


Ask most people what they think is meant by 'branding' and they would probably define it as advertising, selling, or simply a logo. At a more sophisticated level, a brand might be seen as a message conveyed not just in slogans but in behaviour too. Recently we have seen a rise in so called "authentic" brands, which try to convey a message of tradition, authenticity and heritage; however the slightest probe beneath the surface suggests their publicized values stop at the boardroom and finance office: the labour practices that bring you your jeans, or the tax deals behind your morning coffee. The authenticity is only skin deep – but it is effective. Despite the rise of 'the brand' and the deluge of identities, logos and corporate straplines, in today's globalized consumer landscape, our towns and cities are becoming more homogenous and indistinguishable from others not just in our own countries, but also around the world. Stirling has many of the same shops as Seattle and Shanghai, Lisbon the same cafes as London. In effect, we are living in a monoculture (see, for example, Michaels, 2013).

But within this context there are organisations, from sole traders to start-ups and established businesses, that base their activities on values they will not compromise. Does design play a role in these truly authentic brands? Furthermore, when you can suggest authenticity with a typeface and a wood-panelled shop interior, what hope does such an authentic business brand have against its bigger, richer, and less scrupulous competition?

In light of the above, this chapter discusses three key questions: What is truly authentic branding, and what relationship does it have to design? How can design and marketing teams learn from this approach? The chapter concludes by revealing early attempts to encourage this way of thinking in education in terms of design management students and other future change agents.


SIMPLE SEQUNCE REPEAT DEVELOPMENT, POLYMORPHISM AND GENETIC MAPPING IN QUINOA (CHENOPODIUM QUINOA WILLD.) David E. Jarvis Department of Plant and Animal Sciences Master of Science Quinoa is an important, highly nutritional grain crop in the Andean region of South America. DNA markers and linkage maps are important tools for the improvement of underdeveloped crops such as quinoa. The objectives of this study were to (i) develop a new set of SSR markers to augment the number of SSR markers available in quinoa, and (ii) construct a new genetic linkage map of quinoa based on SSRs using multiple recombinant-inbred line (RIL) populations. Here we report the development of 216 new polymorphic SSR markers from libraries enriched for GA, CAA, and AAT repeats, as well as 6 SSR markers developed from BAC-end sequences (BES-SSRs). Heterozygosity (H) values of the SSR markers ranged from 0.12 to 0.90, with an average value of 0.56. These new SSR and BES-SSR markers were analyzed on two RIL mapping populations (designated Population 1 and Population 40), each obtained by crossing Altiplano and coastal ecotypes of quinoa. Additional markers, including AFLPs, two 11S seed storage protein loci, a SNP, and the nucleolar organizing region (NOR), were also analyzed on one or both populations. Linkage maps were constructed for both populations. The Population 1 map contains 275 markers, including 200 SSR and 70 AFLP markers, as well as five additional markers. The map consists of 41 linkage groups (LGs) covering 913 cM. The Population 40 map contains 68 markers, including 62 SSR and six BES-SSR markers, and consists of 20 LGs covering 353 cM. Thirty-nine anchor markers common between both maps were used to combine 15 Population 1 LGs with 13 Population 40 LGs. The resulting integrated map consists of 13 LGs containing 140 SSR, 48 AFLP, four BES-SSR, one SNP, and one NOR marker spanning a total of 606 cM. A high level of segregation distortion was observed in both populations, indicating possible chromosomal regions associated with gametophytic factors or QTLs conferring a selective advantage under the particular growing conditions. As these maps are based primarily on easily-transferable SSR markers, they are particularly suitable for applications in the underdeveloped Andean regions where quinoa is grown.


How tourism transformed the context of foreign policy. Accounts of U.S. empire building in Latin America typically portray politically and economically powerful North Americans descending on their southerly neighbors to engage in lopsided negotiations. Dennis Merrill's comparative history of U.S. tourism in Latin America in the twentieth century demonstrates that empire is a more textured, variable, and interactive system of inequality and resistance than commonly assumed. In his examination of interwar Mexico, early Cold War Cuba, and Puerto Rico during the Alliance for Progress, Merrill demonstrates how tourists and the international travel industry facilitated the expansion of U.S. consumer and cultural power in Latin America. He also shows the many ways in which local service workers, labor unions, business interests, and host governments vied to manage the Yankee invasion. While national leaders negotiated treaties and military occupations, visitors and hosts navigated interracial encounters in bars and brothels, confronted clashing notions of gender and sexuality at beachside resorts, and negotiated national identities. Highlighting the everyday realities of U.S. empire in ways often overlooked, Merrill's analysis provides historical context for understanding the contemporary debate over the costs and benefits of globalization.


The mother tongue of the Roman Empire and the lingua franca of the West for centuries after Rome's fall, Latin survives today primarily in classrooms and texts. Yet this "dead language" is unique in the influence it has exerted across centuries and continents. Jurgen Leonhardt has written a full history of Latin from antiquity to the present, uncovering how this once parochial dialect developed into a vehicle of global communication that remained vital long after its spoken form was supplanted by modern languages.Latin originated in the Italian region of Latium, around Rome, and became widespread as that city's imperial might grew. By the first century BCE, Latin was already transitioning from a living vernacular, as writers and grammarians like Cicero and Varro fixed Latin's status as a "classical" language with a codified rhetoric and rules. As Romance languages spun off from their Latin origins following the empire's collapse--shedding cases and genders along the way--the ancient language retained its currency as a world language in ways that anticipated English and Spanish, but it ceased to evolve.Leonhardt charts the vicissitudes of Latin in the post-Roman world: its ninth-century revival under Charlemagne and its flourishing among Renaissance writers who, more than their medieval predecessors, were interested in questions of literary style and expression. Ultimately, the rise of historicism in the eighteenth century turned Latin from a practical tongue to an academic subject. Nevertheless, of all the traces left by the Romans, their language remains the most ubiquitous artifact of a once peerless empire."


Review of a Remediation Program in an Associate Degree Nursing Program by Christopher Young MS, University of Oklahoma, 2009 BS, Southwestern Oklahoma State University 2005 Project Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of EdD Higher Education Leadership and Management Walden University December 2019 Abstract New nurse graduates must pass the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) in order to achieve nursing licensure. In Northern New Mexico associate degree nursing program with a large disadvantaged student population, the average pass rate for the licensure exam often falls below the state board of nursing mandated 80% pass rate. This study's purpose was to evaluate the effect of an NCLEX remediation program on students' ability to pass the NCLEX, using Knowles adult learning theory to guide this work. The research questions investigated the relation between the remedial instruction and the 2 dependent variables KAPLAN predictor scores and NCLEX pass rates. I used a quantitative non-experimental ex post facto design to contrast 2 purposively sampled student cohorts, the cohort from 2017 that did not participate in the remediation program (N = 14) and the cohort from 2018 that participated in the remediation program (N = 27). A t test for independent samples showed that the KAPLAN exam mean scores were significantly higher (t = 4.81, p < 0.001) for the 2018 cohort (M = 66.49, SD = 8.08) than for the 2017 cohort (M = 55.78, SD = 5.94). The Chi-square test showed that the NCLEX pass rates were independent of the remedial instruction (χ = 0.58 , p = 0.45 and χ 2 = 0.17, p = 0.68 after the Yates correction). Based on the findings and guided by theory, a policy recommendation was formulated for the nursing department's management. The inconclusive results will generate social change by challenging nursing program leaders to discuss why the pass rates did not increase while the Kaplan predictor scores did. Based on this discussion and further research, the remediation program could be improved.New nurse graduates must pass the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) in order to achieve nursing licensure. In Northern New Mexico associate degree nursing program with a large disadvantaged student population, the average pass rate for the licensure exam often falls below the state board of nursing mandated 80% pass rate. This study's purpose was to evaluate the effect of an NCLEX remediation program on students' ability to pass the NCLEX, using Knowles adult learning theory to guide this work. The research questions investigated the relation between the remedial instruction and the 2 dependent variables KAPLAN predictor scores and NCLEX pass rates. I used a quantitative non-experimental ex post facto design to contrast 2 purposively sampled student cohorts, the cohort from 2017 that did not participate in the remediation program (N = 14) and the cohort from 2018 that participated in the remediation program (N = 27). A t test for independent samples showed that the KAPLAN exam mean scores were significantly higher (t = 4.81, p < 0.001) for the 2018 cohort (M = 66.49, SD = 8.08) than for the 2017 cohort (M = 55.78, SD = 5.94). The Chi-square test showed that the NCLEX pass rates were independent of the remedial instruction (χ = 0.58 , p = 0.45 and χ 2 = 0.17, p = 0.68 after the Yates correction). Based on the findings and guided by theory, a policy recommendation was formulated for the nursing department's management. The inconclusive results will generate social change by challenging nursing program leaders to discuss why the pass rates did not increase while the Kaplan predictor scores did. Based on this discussion and further research, the remediation program could be improved. Review of a Remediation Program in an Associate Degree Nursing Program by Christopher Young MS, University of Oklahoma, 2009 BS, Southwestern Oklahoma State University 2005 Project Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of EdD Higher Education Leadership and Management Walden University December 2019


The German response to the Fukushima nuclear power plant incident was possibly the most significant change of policy towards nuclear power outside Japan, leading to a sudden and very significant shift in the underlying power generation structure in Germany. This provides a very useful natural experiment on the impact of increasing proportions of renewable compared to conventional fuel inputs into power production, helping us to see how changed proportions in future as a result of policy moves in favour of renewables are likely to impact. We find through quasi-experimental exploration of a modified demand-supply framework that despite the swift, unpredicted change, the main impact was a significant increase in prices, partly caused by more frequent situations with unilateral market power. The price impact was also most significant in off-peak hours, leading to changed investment incentives. There were no appreciable quantity effects on the market, such as power outages, contrary to some views that the impacts would be significant. Furthermore, we find the sudden and unilateral phase-out decision by the German government has significantly affected electricity prices and thus competitiveness in neighbouring countries.


Heat source addition to the axisymmetric supersonic inlet may improve the performance parameters, which will increase the inlet efficiency. In this investigation the heat has been added to the flow field at some distance ahead of an axisymmetric inlet by adding an imaginary thermal source upstream of cowl lip. The effect of heat addition on the drag coefficient, mass flow rate and the overall efficiency of the inlet have been investigated. The results show that heat addition causes flow separation, hence to prevent this phenomena, roughness has been added on the spike surface. However, heat addition reduces the drag coefficient and the inlet mass flow rate considerably. Furthermore, the effects of position, size, and shape on the inlet performance were studied. It is found that the thermal source deflects the flow streamlines. By improper location of the thermal source, the optimum condition has been obtained. For the optimum condition, the drag coefficient is considerably reduced and the inlet mass flow rate and its efficiency have been increased slightly. The optimum shape of the heat source is obtained too. Keywords—Drag coefficient, heat source, performance parameters, supersonic inlet.


We estimate the aggregate productivity gains from reducing barriers to internal labor migration in Indonesia, accounting for worker selection and spatial differences in human capital. We distinguish between movement costs, which mean workers will move only if they expect higher wages, and amenity differences, which mean some locations must pay more to attract workers. We find modest but important aggregate impacts. We estimate a 22 percent increase in labor productivity from removing all barriers. Reducing migration costs to the US level, a high-mobility benchmark, leads to a 7.1 percent productivity boost. These figures hide substantial heterogeneity. The origin population that benefits most sees a 104 percent increase in average earnings from a complete barrier removal, or a 25 percent gain from moving to the US benchmark.


Henry Corbin's call for "un dialogue dans la metahistoire" is the kind of seductive invitation for the construction of a philosophia perennis which, in the hands of the literary critic examining philosophical tracts, may lead to disastrous reductionism. Of course, I agree that comparative studies of any kind must seek to explore certain perennial suppositions, either in the belief-systems themselves or in the methodology applied to study them. Where I demur is when the claim is made that the correspondence between systems also explains, inevitably, praxis or application, in other words when it is stated that, say, because there is a Vedantic monism, all other systems of "monism" (Neoplatonism, Ibn 'Arabi 19s pantheism, Chuang Tzu's tso wang) have, in terms of cultural response, the same meaning. There is clearly a case to be made for a dialogue as Corbin suggests but the case must also be based on a cautious examination of the systems being compared. And "system", like other related terms, is a dangerous word here for it hides the quite divergent sub-systems which may exist under the one presumably "systematic" umbrella. One of these metahistorical dialogues took place between Sufism and various Tantric systems in Medieval India. Their symbiosis and expression in three Indian literary 'texts' written by people who may be loosely called 'Indian Sufis' are the concerns of this paper. Before examining the literary 18texts 19 themselves, a somewhat diachronic study of the interactions must be attempted.


Gauge functions significantly generalize the notion of a norm, and gauge optimization, as defined by [R. M. Freund, Math. Programming, 38 (1987), pp. 47--67], seeks the element of a convex set that is minimal with respect to a gauge function. This conceptually simple problem can be used to model a remarkable array of useful problems, including a special case of conic optimization, and related problems that arise in machine learning and signal processing. The gauge structure of these problems allows for a special kind of duality framework. This paper explores the duality framework proposed by Freund, and proposes a particular form of the problem that exposes some useful properties of the gauge optimization framework (such as the variational properties of its value function), and yet maintains most of the generality of the abstract form of gauge optimization.


Anti-NMDA receptor and anti-AMPA receptor (NMDAR and AMPAR) encephalitides are debilitating but reversible autoimmune diseases of glutamatergic synapses of the central nervous system. Consistent with disruption of the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system, symptoms of these newly characterized diseases are severe and include psychosis, memory loss, confusion, seizures, and autonomic instability. Previous work has shown that patients produce antibodies that can be detected in serum and cerebrospinal fluid that bind to NMDARs or AMPARs, causing their internalization and depletion from neuronal membranes and synapses. The goal of my thesis was to determine the mechanisms of patient antibody-mediated pathology and the compensatory responses of neurons upon antibody exposure. I used dissociated hippocampal neurons and organotypic hippocampal slice cultures for molecular (immunostaining, Western blotting, and quantitative PCR) and electrophysiological (whole-cell and extracellular recordings) studies. I found that antibodies from patients with anti-NMDAR or anti-AMPAR encephalitis caused internalization of their respective receptors. This internalization was stimulated by receptor cross-linking by patient immunoglobulins. Antibody-bound, internalized receptors trafficked through both recycling and lysosomal intracellular compartments. The loss of receptors was specific, time-dependent, reversible upon antibody removal, and did not result in neuronal death or structural dismantling of excitatory synapses. No acute effects on receptor function were detected. In response to the decreased glutamate signaling, neurons engage homeostatic plasticity mechanisms to maintain action potential firing rate, including down-regulating inhibitory synapses and increasing intrinsic excitability. Additionally, treatment with anti-AMPAR antibodies altered patterns of spontaneous action potential firing. Finally, a hippocampal slice culture model of antiNMDAR antibody exposure was developed and validated for use in future studies. My work demonstrates that the hypoglutamatergic state created by anti-glutamate receptor antibodies leads to both direct and compensatory cellular and synaptic changes. Homeostatic plasticity of inhibition and intrinsic excitability opposes the declining excitatory synaptic transmission, but without the preservation of action potential firing pattern. Together, the direct and compensatory plasticity caused by patient antibodies may change the activity and thus the function of key brain circuits, contributing to patients' cognitive and behavioral symptoms. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Neuroscience This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1376 First Advisor Rita J. Balice-Gordon


Exploration in environments with sparse rewards has been a persistent problem in reinforcement learning (RL). Many tasks are natural to specify with a sparse reward, and manually shaping a reward function can result in suboptimal performance. However, finding a non-zero reward is exponentially more difficult with increasing task horizon or action dimensionality. This puts many real-world tasks out of practical reach of RL methods. In this work, we use demonstrations to overcome the exploration problem and successfully learn to perform long-horizon, multi-step robotics tasks with continuous control such as stacking blocks with a robot arm. Our method, which builds on top of Deep Deterministic Policy Gradients and Hindsight Experience Replay, provides an order of magnitude of speedup over RL on simulated robotics tasks. It is simple to implement and makes only the additional assumption that we can collect a small set of demonstrations. Furthermore, our method is able to solve tasks not solvable by either RL or behavior cloning alone, and often ends up outperforming the demonstrator policy.


The distinguished authors whose essays appear in this volume (marking the seventieth birthday of Ronald Clements,who until his retirement, was the Samuel Davidson Professor of Old Testament Studies, King's College London) include John Barton, Walter Brueggemann, Brevard Childs, John Rogerson, Rolf Rendtorff, Hugh Williamson, the late Norman Whybray, Graeme Auld, Richard Coggins. The theme of the volume reflects Clements's recent interest in 'wisdom' as an interpretative framework, and the essays address the role of theology and hermeneutics in biblical exegesis, through an examination of methods and approaches as well as by application to specific Old Testament writings. While the volume ranges through issues of canon, biblical theology and literary criticism, with several essays on the prophetic books, it maintains a clear focus on the numerous issues and challenges facing the contemporary interpreter of the scriptures.


ICE-GB is a 1 million-word corpus of contemporary British English. It is fully parsed, and contains over 83,000 syntactic trees. Together with the dedicated retrieval software, ICECUP, ICE-GB is an unprecedented resource for the study of English syntax.

Exploring Natural Language is a comprehensive guide to both corpus and software. It contains a full reference for ICE-GB. The chapters on ICECUP provide complete instructions on the use of the many features of the software, including concordancing, lexical and grammatical searches, sociolinguistic queries, random sampling, and searching for syntactic structures using ICECUP's Fuzzy Tree Fragment models. Special attention is given to the principles of experimental design in a parsed corpus.

Six case studies provide step-by-step illustrations of how the corpus and software can be used to explore real linguistic issues, from simple lexical studies to more complex syntactic topics, such as noun phrase structure, verb transitivity, and voice.


Abstract In the 1950s, the United States experienced a domestic religious revival that offered postwar Americans a framework to interpret the world and its unsettling international political problems. Moreover, the religious message of the cold war that saw the God-fearing West against atheistic communists encouraged an unprecedented ecumenism in American history. Jews, formerly objects of indifference if not disdain and hatred in the United States, were swept up in the ecumenical tide of "Judeo-Christian" values and identity and, essentially, "Christianized" in popular and political culture. Not surprisingly, these cultural trends affected images of the recently formed State of Israel. In the popular and political imagination, Israel was formed by the "Chosen People" and populated by prophets, warriors, and simple folk like those in Bible stories. The popular celebration of Israel also romanticized its people at the expense of their Arab (mainly Muslim) neighbors. Battling foes outside of the Judeo-Christian family, Israelis seemed just like Americans. Americans treated the political problems of the Middle East differently than those in other parts of the world because of the religious significance of the "Holy Land." A man such as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who combined views of hard-nosed "realpolitik" with religious piety, acknowledged the special status of the Middle East by virtue of the religions based there. Judaism, part of the "Judeo-Christian civilization," benefitted from this religious consciousness, while Islam remained a religion and a culture apart. This article examines how the American image of Jews, Israelis, and Middle Eastern politics was re-framed in the early 1950s to reflect popular ideas of religious identity. These images were found in fiction, the press, and the speeches and writings of social critics and policymakers. The article explores the role of the 1950s religious revival in the identification of Americans with Jews and Israelis and discusses the rise of the popular understanding that "Judeo-Christian" values shaped American culture and politics.


Nutritional support after pylorus-preserving pancreaticoduodenectomy (PpPD) is still controversial. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of enteral nutrition (EN) via the double elementary diet (W-ED) tube after PpPD. One hundred two patients who received EN by the W-ED tube were compared with 52 patients who received total parental nutrition (TPN) previously. Clinicopatho-logical and postoperative features were analyzed among the two groups. Patients with EN by the W-ED tube after PpPD had a lower incidence of postoperative pancreatic fistula than those with TPN. The total protein and albumin levels on discharge in the EN group were significantly higher than those in the TPN group. In the case without complication, decreasing rate of the third lumbar vertebra skeletal muscle area was significantly lower in the EN group. In the cases of soft pancreas, drainage volume by the W-ED tube until four postoperative day was significantly larger in the case without postoperative pancreatic fistula. The W-ED tube offers the advantages of reducing gastrointestinal pressure and enabling reduction of complications after PpPD surgery.


This document was prepared by Ines Bustillo, Helvia Velloso and Francois Y. Vezina, consultants of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC, Washington Office. Prepared as a support to the document Shaping the Future of Social Protection: Access, Financing and Solidarity" presented in the XXXI ECLAC Session Period carried out in Montevideo, Uruguay during March, 20 to 24, 2006. The views expressed in this document, which has been reproduced without formal editing, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Organization. Introduction The Canadian retirement income system (RIS) is generally considered a success story. Since 1971, senior citizens have experienced a significant improvement in their relative incomes, and an impressive number of seniors has moved out of poverty. The system provides most elderly Canadians at the low-to-middle income level with the means to largely preserve their living standards in retirement. At the same time, middle -to-high income households have an incentive to save for retirement because public pension benefits remain relatively modest. The reforms that have been implemented since the late 1990s have rendered the system viable in the long-run. They include a gradual increase in contributions (to a "steady-state" level) and in the amount of earnings subject to premium payments, changes in the administration and calculation of benefits, and the creation of an investment board to invest funds not immediately needed for benefits. However, the retirement of the baby boom generation, starting at the end of this decade, raises new challenges. The old-age dependency ratio is expected to rise sharply (Chart 1), and the RIS will have to cope with these new demographic trends. Although the adjustments to the RIS and the economic recovery of the late 1990s restored the financial health of the RIS, there is still scope for additional reforms in preparation for the retirement of the baby boom generation."


We present the results of SCUBA-2 observations at 450 μm and 850 μm of the field lensed by the massive cluster A370. With a total survey area >100 arcmin2 and 1σ sensitivities of 3.92 and 0.82 mJy beam−1 at 450 and 850 μm, respectively, we find a secure sample of 20 sources at 450 μm and 26 sources at 850 μm with a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) > 4. Using the latest lensing model of A370 and Monte Carlo simulations, we derive the number counts at both wavelengths. The 450 μm number counts probe a factor of four deeper than the counts recently obtained from the Herschel Space Telescope at similar wavelengths, and we estimate that ∼47%–61% of the 450 μm extragalactic background light resolved into individual sources with 450 μm fluxes greater than 4.5 mJy. The faint 450 μm sources in the 4σ sample have positional accuracies of 3 arcsec, while brighter sources (S/N >6σ) are good to 1.4 arcsec. Using a deep radio map (1σ ∼ 6 μJy) we find that the percentage of submillimeter sources having secure radio counterparts is 85% for 450 μm sources with intrinsic fluxes >6 mJy and 67% for 850 μm sources with intrinsic fluxes >4 mJy. We also find that 67% of the >4σ 450 μm sources are detected at 850 μm, while the recovery rate at 450 μm of >4σ 850 μm sources is 54%. Combined with the source redshifts estimated using millimetric flux ratios, the recovered rate is consistent with the scenario where both 450 μm and 20 cm emission preferentially select lower redshift dusty sources, while 850 μm emission traces a higher fraction of dusty sources at higher redshifts. We identify potential counterparts in various wavelengths from X-ray to mid-infrared and measure the multiwavelength photometry, which we then use to analyze the characteristics of the sources. We find three X-ray counterparts to our robust submillimeter sample (S/N > 5), giving an active galactic nucleus fraction for our 450 (850) μm sample of 3/8 (3/9) or 38% (33%). We also find a correlation between the Ks band and the 850 μm/20 cm flux ratio.


The #1 Guide to Excellence in Technical Communication Fully Updated for Embedded Assistance, Mobile, Search, Multimedia, and More Direct from IBMs own content design experts, this guide shows you how to design product interfaces and technical information that always place users front and center. This edition has been fully revised to help you consistently deliver the right content at the right time. Youll master todays best practices to apply nine essential characteristics of high-quality technical information: accuracy, clarity, completeness, concreteness, organization, retrievability, style, task orientation, and visual effectiveness. Coverage Includes Advocating for users throughout the entire product development process Delivering information in an ordered manner by following progressive disclosure techniques Optimizing content so that users can find it from anywhere Streamlining information for mobile delivery Helping users right where they are Whether youre a writer, editor, information architect, user experience professional, or reviewer, this book shows you how to create great technical information, from the product design to the user interface, topics, and other media. Thoroughly revised and updated Extensive new coverage of self-documenting interfaces and embedded assistance Updated practical guidelines and checklists Hundreds of new examples


Phishing scam emails are emails that pretend to be something they are not in order to get the recipient of the email to undertake some action they normally would not. While technical protections against phishing reduce the number of phishing emails received, they are not perfect and phishing remains one of the largest sources of security risk in technology and communication systems. To better understand the cognitive process that end users can use to identify phishing messages, I interviewed 21 IT experts about instances where they successfully identified emails as phishing in their own inboxes. IT experts naturally follow a three-stage process for identifying phishing emails. In the first stage, the email recipient tries to make sense of the email, and understand how it relates to other things in their life. As they do this, they notice discrepancies: little things that are "off'' about the email. As the recipient notices more discrepancies, they feel a need for an alternative explanation for the email. At some point, some feature of the email --- usually, the presence of a link requesting an action --- triggers them to recognize that phishing is a possible alternative explanation. At this point, they become suspicious (stage two) and investigate the email by looking for technical details that can conclusively identify the email as phishing. Once they find such information, then they move to stage three and deal with the email by deleting it or reporting it. I discuss ways this process can fail, and implications for improving training of end users about phishing.


Human generation try to fit into a 4 dimensional survival concepts comprising the Environment, Geography, Economic and Social dimensions, over centuries and their pedigree too progressed under these guidelines. Because of the divergent level of survival targets in the economic and social strata by each human being, wealth accumulation flows unequally among the people. Industrial revolution mechanised the human work, with cost reduction and quality/volume optimization and planted Capitalism in the world, creating a wedge in the wealth accumulation process. This inducted a class war between the owners of wealth versus the workers, who are hired and fired by them. Competition made the capitalist to realise the importance of labour and diluted their concept as "Socialism". The disproportionate wealth accumulation among people seeded the concept of communism in the world. Communism originated by Marx in Germany, spread to Russia and was promoted by Lenin. Both assumed that the large volume of people in the world belong to the low wealth possessing worker class, will revolt towards equal wealth share, and Communism shall dominate the whole world soon. But both Marx and Lenin were "Social revolutionists" and lacked "futuristic management thoughts" on how the shared wealth will be recycled to grow more, and result in prosperity among the equally shared population ? With this limited thought, the USSR (1922) and the East Germany (GDR-1961) and were created, with the entire wealth of the nation pooled on the apex "State", representing the entire population. The state became a monopoly and all the people were simple labourers, without any self possessions. The state utilised the labour like a commodity, without any motivation to use their original ideas and any incentive to improve the productive contribution spirit. As a result, the GDR collapsed in 1989 and the USSR dwindled in 1991, bringing an end to the 69 year old Communist concept. Also both started promoting the diametrically opposite Capitalist approach and established cooperation with the (imperialist) USA. Communism could have survived and continued as a guide for wealth and prosperity for all the nations and their people in the world, if the domestic population was considered as "superior" to the "state". The national wealth owned by the "State" should have been invested in sectorial projects and entrusted to optimum group of people to work, manage and encouraged to meet a targeted quality volume. State should have met all needs of these groups of people. A reasonable share of the net gains should have been distributed in equal proportion to all the people involved, as an incentive. Below targets and loss should have been questioned and corrective action should have been taken. In addition, the productivity and management decision should have been oriented towards 'socio-economic Development units". The domestic investment should be made from domestic savings and domestic technology should be manned by the domestic labour.


Three species of ostracods (Candona neglecta, Paracyprideis fennica and Hetero-cyprideis sorbyana) are common in the Baltic proper and often contribute more to the total meiobenthic biomass than any other taxon. An earlier experiment has shown that C. neglecta assimilates more labelled diatoms (Skeletonema costatum) than any other meiobenthic species, and 10 and 100 times more than the other 2 ostracod species, respectively. The uptake of phytodetritus by the 3 ostracod species was investigated in 2 separate experiments with special reference to (1) effects of the presence of amphipods and (2) variable density of ostracods. The amphipods had negative effects on the uptake rate of phytodetritus by ostracods. Mechanical disturbance, which may have caused burial of the phytodetritus, is one plausible explanation. There was no evidence of competition for phytodetritus among the ostracod species, i.e. the absence/presence of C. neglecta did not affect the uptake of phytodetritus by P. fennica and H. sorbyana. A density-dependent uptake of phytodetritus was, however, observed in C. neglecta, where the uptake of phytodetritus was stimulated at an intermediate density [KEYWORDS: C-14 radio-labelled phytodetritus, ostracoda, amphipoda, meiofauna, disturbance, competition]


Dayak onion (Eleutherine palmifolia (L.) Merr) is hereditary used by the Indonesian Kalimantan Dayak community as a medicinal plant with antimicrobial activity. The active ingredient of Dayak onions can inhibit the growth of bacteria such as Escherichia coli. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Dayak extract (Eleutherine palmifollia (L) Merr) in inhibiting the growth of Escherichia coli in vitro. This research method is experimental. Posttest Only Control Group Design research design. Research Results Show that Dayak onion extract can inhibit Escherichia coli with concentrations of 10% (6 mm), 20% (8 mm), and 30% (11 mm), 40% (13 mm), 50% (16 mm), 60 % (18 mm) and 70% (20 mm), 80% (20 mm), 90% (24 mm) and 100% (30 mm). The conclusion of the study of Dayak extract has a different effect on the growth of Escherichia coli with a significance value of 0,000


Widespread soft-sediment deformation (SSD) in upper-bathyal continental-margin sediments has been explained by compaction-related dewatering and related physical processes that can destabilize margin sediments. We present the hypothesis that SSD in such facies resulted in part from instability of gas hydrates (clathrates), leading to overpressurization in sediments and resulting fluid flow and brecciation. Clathrate-related deformation must be widespread in upper-bathyal continental-margin methanogenic sequences at depths where clathrates are destabilized by changes in bottom-water temperatures and sea level. A close association exists between an array of SSD features with clathrate-hosting sediments in ocean drill cores. Similar features are conspicuous in the partly laminated, upper Neogene upper bathyal sediments of the Sisquoc Formation in southern California, suggesting that clathrates may have been responsible for abundant and well-developed SSD in these units. The lithology, methane-producing organic content, and depositional environment of the Sisquoc Formation are similar to those features in modern clathrate-hosting settings. These characteristics, in conjunction with the upper bathyal paleobathymetry of the unit, the geothermal gradient of the region, and δ 13 C values of benthic foraminifera and dolomite concretions suggest the occurrence of clathrates in the shallow subsurface of these sediments. We suggest that the analyzed parts of the Sisquoc Formation represent an exhumed zone of SSD resulting from clathrate instability in the shallow subsurface of the continental margin. Sedimentary rocks exhibiting an association of SSD features that resulted from clathrate formation and dissociation are named clathrites.


Asymmetric cryptography based on groups is mainly concerned with the role of noncommutative groups. The origin of group based cryptography goes back in the 1980s. Since then, numerous cryptographic proposals based on noncommutative groups have been evolved. In this thesis, we consider several noncommutative settings in different cryptographic context. This study adds to the cryptographic literature by demonstrating new asymmetric cryptographic schemes. On the one hand, two new public key exchange protocols and two asymmetric cryptosystems are constructed. On the other hand, different primitives like suggestion of platform, size of different parameters, security and efficiency aspects regarding these proposals, are also elaborated.


We investigate the transient recombination and transfer properties of nonequilibrium carriers in an In0.16Ga0.84As∕GaAs quantum well (QW) with an additional lateral confinement implemented by a patterned stressor layer. The structure thus contains QW- and quantum-wire-like areas. At low excitation densities, photoluminescence (PL) transients from both areas are well described by a rate equation model for a three-level system with a saturable interlevel carrier transfer representing the lateral drift of carriers from the QW regions into the wires. Small-signal carrier lifetimes for QW, wires, and transfer time from QW to wire are 180, 190, and 28 ps, respectively. For high excitation densities the time constants of the observed transients increase, in agreement with the model. In addition, QW and wire PL lines merge indicating a smoothening of the potential difference, i.e., the effective carrier confinement caused by the stressor structure becomes weaker with increasing excitation.


Motivation The NCBI's Sequence Read Archive (SRA) promises great biological insight if one could analyze the data in the aggregate; however, the data remain largely underutilized, in part, due to the poor structure of the metadata associated with each sample. The rules governing submissions to the SRA do not dictate a standardized set of terms that should be used to describe the biological samples from which the sequencing data are derived. As a result, the metadata include many synonyms, spelling variants, and references to outside sources of information. Furthermore, manual annotation of the data remains intractable due to the large number of samples in the archive. For these reasons, it has been difficult to perform large-scale analyses that study the relationships between biomolecular processes and phenotype across diverse diseases, tissues, and cell types present in the SRA. Results We present MetaSRA, a database of normalized SRA sample-specific metadata following a schema inspired by the metadata organization of the ENCODE project. This schema involves mapping samples to terms in biomedical ontologies, labeling each sample with a sample-type category, and extracting real-valued properties. We automated these tasks via a novel computational pipeline. Availability The MetaSRA database is available at http://deweylab.biostat.wisc.edu/metasra. Software implementing our computational pipeline is available at https://github.com/deweylab/metasra-pipeline. Contact firstname.lastname@example.com


Polarization rotation of field-induced phase transformations was observed by means of a polarizing microscope on a (001)-cut single crystal $\mathrm{Pb}({\mathrm{Mg}}_{1/3}{\mathrm{Nb}}_{2/3}{)}_{0.76}{\mathrm{Ti}}_{0.24}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ (PMNT24%) at room temperature with an electric field applied along the [001] direction. A hysteresis loop was also measured for comparison. As the electric field increases, polarizations of rhombohedral $R$ domains rotate toward the [001] tetragonal ${T}_{001}$ phase through ${M}_{A}$-type monoclinic distortions, i.e., $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{R}{M}_{A}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{T}_{001}.$ The crystal cannot entirely reach the ${T}_{001}$ phase as the field approaches 44 kV/cm. In addition, spotlike domains that perhaps correspond to ${M}_{B}$-type monoclinic or triclinic phases were also observed. This field-induced phase transformation is strongly irreversible.


Nimodipine and its solvent containing ethanol were tested in a randomized in vivo study by local administration to the outer vessel wall surface of pial arteries and veins in 15 anesthetized cats. Reactions were studied through a cranial window. Diameter variations of 90 arterial and 78 venous vessel segments were continuously analyzed using a multichannel videoangiometer. The solvent alone caused minor though statistically significant (p less than 0.001) 7.6% dilatation, 8% in small and 7% in large arteries, which returned to their resting state after stopping treatment. 2.4 X 10(-5) M nimodipine plus solvent induced a 21% pial arterial dilatation (p less than 0.001), 26% in small and 17% in large arteries; dilatation induced by nimodipine plus solvent was significantly greater than dilatation by the solvent alone (p less than 0.001). After ceasing topical administration, arteries remained dilated by some 5%. Pial veins exhibited only minor reaction, i.e. a 6% (statistical n.s.) dilatation of large veins during nimodipine, and an 8% dilatation of small veins 20 minutes after stopping nimodipine. During solvent-administration rCBF, as estimated with the hydrogen clearance technique, remained unchanged. It is concluded that the dilatatory effect of the investigated compound on pial arteries is predominantly due to nimodipine.


A gender difference in color preference has been repeatedly reported among English speakers, with a secondary preference among females for pink-purple colors, modulating a primary preference from both sexes for "cool" over "warm" hues. However, this group difference leaves much individual variation in preference patterns unaccounted-for. Here we examine personality traits and gender schemata as possible determinants. Preference choices across sixteen hue samples were elicited from 120 young British psychology students, who also rated themselves on the International Personality Item Pool and Bem Sex Role Inventory questionnaires. Principal Component Analysis reduced their individual preference variations to four prototypical patterns. Some associations emerged between preference and personality; these may be culturally determined. Links with gender schemata were less substantial.


Studies of the effects of unions on collegiate faculty salaries are inconclusive. Some estimate a significant union premium, but such estimates suffer from endogeneity between unions and wages, non-random measurement error, and failure to adjust for local cost-of-living differences. By using data from the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF, 1988–2004) as well as other sources to identify institution-specific factors omitted from previous studies, the authors estimate significantly smaller union premia than those found by other researchers.


The study illustrated in these pages was developed in the Structural Dynamics and Aeroelasticity Department of the Military Aircraft division of Airbus Defence and Space in Getafe, Madrid (Spain). That department is a multidisciplinary one involving several categories. Some of its competences are the analysis of impacts, acoustics and vibrations for the aircraft and all their systems. Also, the dynamic response of the aircraft to different events is part of the tasks for that department. It is in that field where this project is located. Wake vortex encounters are a dynamic phenomenon similar to other excitations faced by aircraft in its usual operation. That excitation will induce dynamic loads in the aircraft structures as it passes through the wake. Obtaining and analyzing those loads are the main aims of this study. First, it is important to introduce the concept of aircraft wake. In order to achieve the goals of the study, it is necessary to start with the basics of the problem. This is the acknowledgement of the physics of aircraft wakes and how they are generated. Then, how those wakes act as an excitation for other aircraft as they perturb the velocity field of the air. Once the aircraft wakes are introduced, the next step consists of explaining the corresponding aircraft that will face those encounters. In this case, the particular aircraft is an Airbus A400M because that was the one used by Airbus Defence and Space in the campaign of the wake vortex encounters. The following considerations involve the procedures of the Structural Dynamics department in the computation of the numerical simulation for that kind of event. Therefore, it is necessary to know what the tools available for the resolution of this problem are and which aspects face each one. Furthermore, the software and models used in this study have been validated with flight tests and they are an excellent representation of the aircraft and problem considered. After the presentation of the problem, the aircraft considered and tools used, the wake model is the next aspect of study. This is one of the widest fields of aircraft wakes. Having a good wake model is necessary for the accuracy of the results and the main tasks are focused on the wake aging model. That is how the wake evolves and changes as times goes by. With all that, the last aspect of this study is the computation of the dynamic loads induced in wake vortex encounters. As it is an event that is not considered in aircraft regulations, it was difficult to define a particular scenario that is representative of the problem. For that reason, a stochastic analysis of the problem has been chosen to obtain the aircraft loads generated in this kind of event. This analysis consists of scattering the input variables affecting the problem and executing a high number of simulations. In that way, it is possible to derive a statistical behavior of the load response and establish a probability of occurrence for the results obtained. Finally, comparing those results with the reference loads of the aircraft, it is feasible to predict whether wake vortex encounters could be a significant event for the aircraft structure during its operational life.


We discuss a method of learning by practice based on the idea of determining classes of problems that can be solved in simplified ways. A description of a class is obtained by processes that hypothesize descriptions, generate and classify problem variations, and test the hypotheses against them. The approach has been implemented in a system that learns by practice in a domain of elementary physics. The system has two main components, a Problem Solver and a Learning Agent. The Problem Solver handles the problems in the domain and the Learning Agent does the actual learning. To perform its tasks the Learning Agent utilizes algorithms, heuristics, and domain knowledge, and for this reason it can be regarded as an expert system whose expertise resides in being able to learn by experimentation and generalization.


Technology, knowledge and innovation play a crucial role in explaining the competitive potential of firms and countries in today's globalised world. With lowered barriers to international activities, firms develop technological competencies abroad, either internally or through inter-firm collaboration. The role of location, particularly in Asia, is emphasised, notably through cross-border and cross-region initiatives in the innovation process, and with countries establishing themselves as core centres for the development of technological excellence.


ABSTRACT Background: The diagnosis of complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) has been suggested for inclusion in the 11th version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), with support for its construct validity coming from studies employing Latent Class Analysis (LCA) and Latent Profile Analysis (LPA). Objective: The current study aimed to critically evaluate the application of the techniques LCA and LPA as applied in previous studies to substantiate the construct validity of CPTSD. Method: Both LCA and LPA were applied systematically in one sample (n = 245), replicating the setup of previous studies as closely as possible. The interpretation of classes was augmented with the use of graphical visualization. Results: The LCA and LPA analyses indicated divergent results in the same dataset. LCA and LPA partially supported the existence of classes of patients endorsing different PTSD and CPTSD symptom patterns. However, further inspection of the results with scatterplots did not support a clear distinction between PTSD and CPTSD, but rather suggested that there is much greater variability in clinical presentations amongst adult PTSD patients than can be fully accounted for by either PTSD or CPTSD. Discussion: We argue that LCA and LPA may not be sufficient methods to decide on the construct validity of CPTSD, as different subgroups of patients are identified, depending on the statistical exact method used and the interpretation of the fit of different models. Additional methods, including graphical inspection should be employed in future studies. HIGHLIGHTS • The necessity of Complex PTSD (CPTSD) as a separate diagnosis is under debate. • We evaluated the contribution of latent modelling techniques to this debate.• Results indicated that these techniques are insufficient for settling this debate.


The absolute sputtering yields of D+, He+ and Li+ on deuterium saturated solid lithium have been measured and modelled at 45° incidence in the energy range 100-1000 eV. The Ion-surface InterAction Experiment (IIAX) was used to measure the absolute sputtering yield of lithium in the solid phase from bombardment with a Colutron ion source. The lithium sample was treated with a deuterium plasma from a hollow cathode source. Measurements also include bombardment of non-deuterium-saturated lithium surfaces. The results lead to the conclusion that the chemical state of the deuterium treated lithium surface plays a major role in the decrease of the lithium sputtering yield. Specifically, preferential sputtering of implanted deuterium atoms over lithium atoms in deuterium treated samples results in a decrease of at least 60% of the lithium sputtering yield, in the case of He+ bombardment. These results also demonstrate that lithium self-sputtering is well below unity and that the fraction of sputtered species in an ionic state ranges from 55 to 65% for incident particle energies between 100 and 1000 eV. Furthermore, correlation of Monte Carlo VFTRIM-3D simulations and IIAX experimental data demonstrate that the surface composition has a one to one ratio between deuterium and lithium components.


Mesh editing under constraints is a challenging task with numerous applications in geometric modeling, industrial design, and architectural form finding. Recent methods support constraint‐based exploration of meshes with fixed connectivity, but commonly lack local control. Because constraints are often globally coupled, a local modification by the user can have global effects on the surface, making iterative design exploration and refinement difficult. Simply fixing a local region of interest a priori is problematic, as it is not clear in advance which parts of the mesh need to be modified to obtain an aesthetically pleasing solution that satisfies all constraints. We propose a novel framework for exploring local modifications of constrained meshes. Our solution consists of three steps. First, a user specifies target positions for one or more vertices. Our algorithm computes a sparse set of displacement vectors that satisfies the constraints and yields a smooth deformation. Then we build a linear subspace to allow realtime exploration of local variations that satisfy the constraints approximately. Finally, after interactive exploration, the result is optimized to fully satisfy the set of constraints. We evaluate our framework on meshes where each face is constrained to be planar.


Purpose: Noise-induced health effects exacerbate by many other risk factors. This systematic review aims at shedding light on the combined effects of co-exposure to occupational noise and other factors. Material and Methods: A literature search in Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Science Direct, and Google Scholar, with appropriate keywords on combined effects of occupational noise, and co-exposure to noise and other factors, revealed 7928 articles which were screened by two researchers. A total of 775 articles were reviewed in full text. We found 149 articles that were relevant and had sufficient quality for analysis. Results: We identified 16 risk factors that exacerbate occupational noise-induced health effects. These factors were classified into four groups: chemical (carbon monoxide (CO), solvents, heavy metals, and other chemicals), physical (lighting, heat, vibration, and cold), personal (age, gender, genetics, smoking, medication, contextual diseases) and occupational (workload and shift work). Hearing loss, hypertension, reduced performance, and cardiovascular strains, are the most important risk factors combined effects due to concurrent exposure to noise and other risk factors. Conclusion: Evidences of combined effects of solvents, vibration, heavy metals, CO, smoking, chemicals, aging, heat, and shiftwork were respectively stronger than for other factors. Most of the studies have investigated only the combined effects of risk factors on hearing, and the evidence for non-auditory effects is still limited, and more studies are warranted. Therefore, in the Hearing Conservation Programs, besides noise, aggravating factors of noise effects should also be taken into account.


Information Technology (IT) professionals are racing to keep up with cyber-security threats in the workplace. But, as any cyber-security expert will tell you, security technology is only as good as the people who use it. And, people are a mystery to most cyber-security professionals making them the weak link for security interventions in organizations. To broadly impact current cyber-security awareness, interventions and education, it is crucial to understand how security is understood and applied by the users of technology. Thus, it is no surprise that more and more cyber-security studies are focusing on the individual employee to understand computer-user risk mediation. However, users and their actions do not exist in a vacuum, and their perceptions and subsequent behaviors regarding security risk are shaped by a vast array of beliefs, social relations and workplace practices. This paper reports on a fresh theoretical approach to cyber-security as a group phenomenon that is well suited to ethnography. Results to date have demonstrated that communication between IT security professionals and users is not effective. Rather, this ethnographic study found that communication is breaking down between user communities and IT security departments because of mismatched understandings of the other. Each of the groups studied maintain myths and misconceptions about cyber-security that must be addressed and dispelled within their respective communities to secure the link between people and their technology.


Two series of experiments were performed to determine the flow characteristics and to quantify the heat transfer components from a propane diffusion flame impinging onto a ceiling. A 0.3 m square sand burner with propane as the fuel type provided a steady-state fire. In the first series of experiments, measurements of gas temperature and velocity were made at 76 mm vertical intervals above the burner up to the ceiling. Fire heat release rates (HRRs) of 50 kW and 90 kW with free flame length to ceiling height ratios, Lf/H, of 2, 1.5, 1, 0.8, 0.85 were used to determine their effects on the measured parameters. Gas temperatures within the continuous flaming region were relatively constant, and measured to be independent of ceiling height and HRR, while velocities increased with elevation and were independent of ceiling height yet weakly dependent on HRR. Within the intermittent region, gas temperature was weakly affected by the presence of the ceiling at various heights, while the effect on velocity was more pronounced. HRR had an effect on both temperature and velocity within the intermittent region of the fire plume. Comparisons with existing fire plume correlations showed that the unbounded correlations can be used to provide a good approximation of the gas temperature for the ceiling bounded case; while the correlations for the velocity can only be used for elevations up to approximately 60% of the ceiling height. Elevations above this cutoff were significantly affected by the presence of the ceiling. The second series of experiments investigated HRRs of 50 kW and 90 kW with free flame length to ceiling height ratios, Lf/H, of 2, 1.5, and 1. Heat flux and gas temperature at the stagnation point of the ceiling were measured using hybrid heat flux gauges and an aspirated Type K thermocouple. Four methods of calculating the convective heat transfer coefficient, h, were developed and adapted; two reference methods and two slope methods. The components of heat transfer at the impingement point were separated using these calculated h values. The reference method 2, and both slope methods only required the use of the non-cooled hybrid gauge measurements and were in overall good agreement with one another. The reference method 1 differed significantly, being up to 15.8 times lower than the others. The trends in the two groups were contradictory, with the h calculated using the reference method 1 increasing with ceiling height while the others showed no strong trend with ceiling height. The disagreements between the methods greatly affected the components of heat transfer, particularly at the lowest ceiling heights. Convection calculated using the h from reference method 1 contributed only 2-5% of the total exposure heat flux at the lowest ceiling heights, whereas with the other methods convection contributed 20-50% of the total exposure heat flux. The limitations of each method are discussed. Further investigation is required for all methods to determine their applicability within the flaming region of a fire.


Sharp price fluctuations and increasing environmental and distributional concerns, among other issues, have led to a renewed academic interest in energy demand. In this paper we estimate, for the first time in Spain, an energy demand system with household microdata. In doing so, we tackle several econometric and data problems that are generally recognized to bias parameter estimates. This is obviously relevant, as obtaining correct price and income responses is essential if they may be used for assessing the economic consequences of hypothetical or real changes. With this objective, we combine data sources for a long time period and choose a demand system with flexible income and price responses. We also estimate the model in different sub-samples to capture varying responses to energy price changes by households living in rural, intermediate and urban areas. This constitutes a first attempt in the literature and it proved to be a very successful choice.


Cloud computing has recently emerged as an important service to manage applications efficiently over the Internet. Various cloud providers offer pay per use cloud services that requires Quality of Service (QoS) management to efficiently monitor and measure the delivered services through Internet of Things (IoT) and thus needs to follow Service Level Agreements (SLAs). However, providing dedicated cloud services that ensure user's dynamic QoS requirements by avoiding SLA violations is a big challenge in cloud computing. As dynamism, heterogeneity and complexity of cloud environment is increasing rapidly, it makes cloud systems insecure and unmanageable. To overcome these problems, cloud systems require self-management of services. Therefore, there is a need to develop a resource management technique that automatically manages QoS requirements of cloud users thus helping the cloud providers in achieving the SLAs and avoiding SLA violations. In this paper, we present SLA-aware autonomic resource management technique called STAR which mainly focuses on reducing SLA violation rate for the efficient delivery of cloud services. The performance of the proposed technique has been evaluated through cloud environment. The experimental results demonstrate that STAR is efficient in reducing SLA violation rate and in optimizing other QoS parameters which effect efficient cloud service delivery.


Objective Elevated energy loss in the total cavopulmonary connection (TCPC) is hypothesised to have a detrimental effect on clinical outcomes in single-ventricle physiology, which may be magnified with exercise. This study investigates the relationship between TCPC haemodynamic energy dissipation and exercise performance in single-ventricle patients. Methods Thirty consecutive Fontan patients with TCPC and standard metabolic exercise testing were included. Specific anatomies and flow rates at rest and exercise were obtained from cardiac MR (CMR) and phase-encoded velocity mapping. Exercise CMR images were acquired immediately following supine lower limb exercise using a CMR-compatible cycle ergometer. Computational fluid dynamics simulations were performed to determine power loss of the TCPC anatomies using in vivo anatomies and measured flows. Results A significant negative linear correlation was observed between indexed power loss at exercise and (a) minute oxygen consumption (r=−0.60, p<0.0005) and (b) work (r=−0.62, p<0.0005) at anaerobic threshold. As cardiac output increased during exercise, indexed power loss increased in an exponential fashion (y=0.9671x3.0263, p<0.0001). Conclusions This is the first study to demonstrate the relationship between power loss and exercise performance with the TCPC being one of the few modifiable factors to allow for improved quality of life. These results suggest that aerobic exercise tolerance in Fontan patients may, in part, be a consequence of TCPC power loss.


The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of various levels of essential oils on feed digestibility, gas production and rumen fermentation. Two batch cultures were designed for screening various doses of each essential oil (EO). Treatments were control (CON), cinnamon oil (CIN), clove oil (CLO), garlic oil (GAR), ginger oil (GIN), and lemongrass oil (LEM). Dosages were 0, 200, 400, 800, and 1600 mg/kg DM in experiment I (1 st batch) and 50, 100, 150, and 200 mg/kg DM in experiment II (2 nd batch). Digestibility of DM (DMD), neutral detergent fiber and acid detergent fiber was measured at 24 h and 48 h post incubation, while gas production (GP) was read at 3, 6, 12, 24, 36, and 48 h post incubation. Experimental diet used was a dairy type ration consisting of 50% forage (35% grass hay and 15% alfalfa hay) and 50% concentrate (20% barley grain, 10% corn DDGS, 10% wheat DDGS, 5% canola meal, and 5% vitamin and mineral supplements). All essential oils could improve DM disappearance with consistent results in both experiment I and experiment II. Meanwhile, the essential oils had no effect on NDF and ADF digestibility. Total VFA concentration and individual VFA proportion in experiment I were not affected by the essential oils. However, 200 mg/kg DM of each EO increased total VFA concentration without any effect on individual VFA proportion in experiment II. Ammonia N concentration was reduced by the essential oils in both experiments I and II, confirming the effect of essential oils on deamination. However, the effect of EOs on methane production was apparently negligible. These results suggest that the EOs used in the present study could be potentially developed as rumen modifiers to improve feed digestibility in the rumen.


Risks in IS/IT projects are considered to have decisive effects on the success of these projects. Several researchers have identified and categorised risks in IS/IT projects into six major risk dimensions. This paper assesses the validity of these risk dimensions in light of the current IS/IT developments. An additional risk dimension related to outsourcing and new technologies is investigated. The data was gathered via an online survey tool, which provided 113 valid responses. The validity and the reliability of the risk dimensions were tested using statistical methods. The results revealed that the risk factors within the seven risk dimensions are still valid and reliable. Despite the fact, that all risk dimensions are important, this paper identifies the most significant three risk dimensions using the factor analysis. These three risk dimensions are Management, External Influences and New Technology. Notwithstanding the IS/IT developments in the recent years, it appears that the so far identified risks in IS/IT projects have not been mitigated yet. The proposed simplified set of risk dimensions might be used as a guide to identify the key risk factors in IS/IT projects.


We launch EVA, a vision-centric foundation model to Explore the limits of Visual representation at scAle using only publicly accessible data. EVA is a vanilla ViT pre-trained to reconstruct the masked out image-text aligned vision features conditioned on visible image patches. Via this pretext task, we can efficiently scale up EVA to one billion parameters, and sets new records on a broad range of representative vision downstream tasks, such as image recognition, video action recognition, object detection, instance segmentation and semantic segmentation without heavy supervised training. Moreover, we observe quantitative changes in scaling EVA result in qualitative changes in transfer learning performance that are not present in other models. For instance, EVA takes a great leap in the challenging large vocabulary instance segmentation task: our model achieves almost the same state-of-the-art performance on LVIS dataset with over a thousand categories and COCO dataset with only eighty categories. Beyond a pure vision encoder, EVA can also serve as a vision-centric, multi-modal pivot to connect images and text. We find initializing the vision tower of a giant CLIP from EVA can greatly stabilize the training and outperform the training from scratch counterpart with much fewer samples and less compute, providing a new direction for scaling up and accelerating the costly training of multi-modal foundation models.


During the 1947 Partition of India, an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 women were abducted by members of other religious communities – to be raped and murdered, sold into prostitution, or forced into marriage. In response to this crisis, the governments of India and Pakistan initiated a bilateral recovery programme whose objective it was to return 'abducted persons' to their natal or conjugal families. Over the last decade or so, however, criticism of this programme has become increasingly vociferous. For some writers, it merely replicated the 'violence [of] rape, forcible abduction and marriage'; for others it was 'propelled by the same sort of misogyny that had taken the shape of rape and torture at the hands of the enemy'. My intention in this essay is not to dispute the fact that the recovery programme involved an intolerable degree of coercion and abuse. Rather, I shall be exploring the way in which three South Asian writers (Bapsi Sidhwa, Amrita Pritam and Saadat Hasan Manto) have chosen to represent state intervention during 1947 – stressing the state's operational diversity at such times, and clearly distinguishing between the act of abduction and that of recovery. The state is not, after all, a unitary structure that can be categorically one thing or another; it would be more accurately described as a product of the various forces operating within, and converging upon, a society at any given juncture. And so, as Timothy Mitchell suggests, one should be suspicious of any analysis that attributes to the state absolute 'coherence, unity [or] autonomy'. In what follows, the narratives I shall be discussing tend to confirm this fundamental heterogeneity. Moreover, a picture emerges of a state whose diversity guarantees that it is never entirely bereft of humanitarian or emancipatory potential – retaining the capacity, despite everything, to intervene positively in the lives of its citizens.


Arogyapacha, the local name of Trichopus zeylanicus, is a rare, indigenous medicinal plant of India. This plant is famous for its traditional use as an instant energy stimulant. So far, no genomic resource is available for this important plant and hence its metabolic pathways are poorly understood. Here, we report on a high-quality draft assembly of approximately 713.4 Mb genome of T. zeylanicus, first draft genome from the genus Trichopus. The assembly was generated in a hybrid approach using Illumina short-reads and Pacbio longer-reads. The total assembly comprised of 22601 scaffolds with an N50 value of 433.3 Kb. We predicted 34452 protein coding genes in T. zeylanicus genome and found that a significant portion of these predicted genes were associated with various secondary metabolite biosynthetic pathways. Comparative genome analysis revealed extensive gene collinearity between T. zeylanicus and its closely related plant species. The present genome and annotation data provide an essential resource to speed-up the research on secondary metabolism, breeding and molecular evolution of T. zeylanicus.


Rotaviruses are a ubiquitous group of viruses responsible for causing acute gastroenteritis in the young of humans and animals.

This thesis concerns the production characterization and use of monoclonal antibodies to tissue culture adapted calf rotavirus (UK-Compton strain).

Monoclonal antibodies were produced, which as a result of immunoprecipitation and Transblotting experiments were determined to be directed towards VP6, the subgroup protein of calf rotavirus.

Varying the immunogen and fusion protocol proved insufficient since only antibodies directed at this extremely immunogenic protein were produced. As a result of competitive binding assays, this subgroup protein was determined to consist of at least eight different epitopes. Two of these epitopes belonged to a group-specific, non-neutralizing region, whilst four epitopes belonged to a group-specific, neutralizing region. The remaining two epitopes belonged to a type-specific, neutralizing region. None of the antibodies had greater than 75% neutralization.

An ELISA was developed to use four of these monoclonal antibodies to detect and subgroup rotavirus antigens using human faecal samples collected from children in Lima, Peru between the period 1983-84, during clinical trials of the RIT 4237 rotavirus vaccine. Out of a total of 61 samples, 62% were typed as belonging to subgroup 1. This was similar to a figure obtained for subgrouping human samples in the Midlands during the same period. This reflected a change in subgroup antigenicity. During 1978-82 strains belonging to subgroup 2 had been the most prevalent. The ELISA technique developed proved to be quick, cheap, efficient and reliable, thus enabling a large number of samples to be screened simultaneously.