Chile could well have space to increase its growth potential by 2 percentage points of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per year. To do this, it would need to pay more attention to new sources of growth in natural resources, manufacturing, and services. In an increasingly globalized world, first-mover advantages have become more numerous and larger. Chile risks losing out, as a few recent high-profile cases suggest. Chile's total factor productivity growth can be raised by driving within-firm technological change closer to the global best-practice frontier more rapidly, especially in manufacturing. This would encourage the diversification of exports and boost Chile's supply response to global demand changes. Chile confronts obstacles in its processes of innovation, human capital accumulation, and investment. To overcome them, deep institutional changes are needed to develop a national innovation system, stronger and more equitable educational achievement, more flexible labor markets, and focused public investments that crowd in private business. Such an inclusive growth strategy is likely to yield better social outcomes than a strategy that attempts to confront social inequities head-on through more equitable access to public services without paying adequate attention to the demand for labor and generation of income. Chile could also try a new policy towards innovation, but it would need to be bolder in terms of the institutional design to maximize the chances of success.


This article examines the process of creation of new Nordic cuisine (NNC) as a culinary innovation, focusing on the main stages, actors, and mechanisms that shaped the new label and its practices and facilitated its diffusion in the region and internationally. Fast-paced diffusion was possible because NNC was conceived as an identity movement, triggered by active involvement of entrepreneurial leaders from the culinary profession, high-profile political supporters, legitimating scientists, disseminating media, and interpreting audiences. It was facilitated by three mechanisms: First, the use of an "empty" label, without a previous meaning in food, yet with positive connotations in other domains, allowed establishing a positive abstract notion open to interpretations and different practices. Second, the invitation for participation and financial support for innovative initiatives allowed for more actors and institutions to develop practices associated with the NNC label. Third, organized dissemination allowed the excitement and engagement with the new label to spread quickly.


The goal of cancer prevention and control is to reduce cancer risk, morbidity, and mortality through transdisciplinary collaborations across biomedical, behavioral, and social sciences. Risk reduction, early detection, and timely treatment are the rationales behind policy efforts to promote cancer prevention. Economics makes three important contributions to cancer prevention and control research. Firstly, research built upon the human capital model by Grossman and the insurance model by Ehrlich and Becker offers solid theoretical foundations to study human behaviors related to preventive care. Secondly, economic evaluation provides useful analytical tools to assess the "cancer premium" (through the stated preference research approach) and to identify the optimal screening strategy (through cost-effectiveness analysis). Lastly, the rich set of quantitative methods in applied economics contributes to the estimation of the relative contribution of prevention versus treatment in the reduction of cancer mortality and the evaluation of the impact of guidelines to regulate screening practices or policy initiatives to promote cancer screening.


The elastic and thermodynamic properties of TbAl and DyAl under high pressure and temperature are investigated using the density-functional theory (DFT) and the density-functional perturbation theory (DFPT) within the quasi-harmonic approximation (QHA). The calculated lattice and elastic constants at ground state (0 GPa and 0 K) are in agreement with the experimental data and previous theoretical results. Finally, when the pressure is given, all the thermodynamic quantities except for the bulk modulus increase with temperature, but the increase of the thermal expansion coefficient and the heat capacity with temperature becomes smaller. Besides, the effects of pressure on the elastic constants and the thermodynamic quantities are opposite with those of the temperature on them for TbAl and DyAl.


THE PURPOSE OF THIS exploratory study was to understand childcare staff and parents' beliefs about quality care for infants/toddlers (aged birth to three years) in centre-based programs in Singapore. Childcare staff (comprising supervisors and educarers) were interviewed to gather their views about: (1) key dimensions of quality care for infants/toddlers; (2) training programs for infant/toddler care; and (3) knowledge and skills important for the provision of high-quality care and programs. Educarers were also observed to investigate the nature of their interactions with the infants/toddlers and invited to review and reflect on a video clip which depicted a caregiver interacting with a group of infants/toddlers. Additionally, parents were also interviewed for their perceptions on the research topic. The results from this study could be used to review the quality of care for infants/toddlers in centre-based programs and training courses which prepare childcare staff for work with infants/toddlers.


Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), Kennedy Space Center (KSC), and Patrick Air Force Base (PAFB) all reside in the thunderstorm capital of the United States. According to the Florida Climate Center, these installations experience more thunderstorms per year than any other place in the United States. It is the mission of the 45th Weather Squadron to provide timely and accurate warnings of weather conditions such as lightning that pose a risk to assets and personnel CCAFS, KSC and PAFB. To aid 45th Weather Squadron forecasters, a network of 30 Electric Field Mills (EFM) was installed in the area in and around CCAFS, KSC, and PAFB. EFMs record the electrification of the local atmosphere. Several efforts have been made over the years to find an optimal way to utilize the EFM network data to improve lightning prediction. These efforts approached the problem using atmospheric science as well as traditional statistical regression techniques with mixed results. In this paper, hourly statistics were generated from the raw EFMs data set used in Hill [1]. Input variables were generated from surface observations from every station within 50 miles of CCAFS and then combined with the EFM statistics for the same time periods. This combined data set was used to create Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) Neural Networks designed to capture trends within the data for each observation. A variety of different LSTM model structures were created and trained to see which model structure performed best when predicting lightning around CCAFS, KSC, and PAFB. By utilizing design of experiments techniques, optimal parameters for the LSTM model structures are narrowed down providing a solid baseline for future endeavors in predicting lightning.


This paper adopts a qualitative approach to identify and analyse the meaning of followership in the hospitality industry. Interviews, utilising a semi structured questionnaire, will be undertaken to examine how followers in the New Zealand hospitality industry construct their roles as followers. The findings of this paper will contribute to the understanding of followership in the hospitality industry. Indications will be provided to hospitality leaders as well as educators in the field to assist in facilitating their training programs in hospitality management and leadership.


The CalPoly Spacecraft Attitude Dynamics Simulator mimics the rotational dynamics of a spacecraft in orbit and acts as a testbed for spacecraft attitude control system development and demonstration. Prior to this thesis, the simulator platform and several subsystems had been designed and manufactured, but the total simulator system was not yet capable of closed-loop attitude control. Previous attempts to make the system controllable were primarily mired by data transport performance. Rather than exporting data to an external command computer, the strategy implemented in this thesis relies on a compact computer onboard the simulator platform to handle both attitude control processing and data acquisition responsibilities. Software drivers were created to interface the computer's data acquisition boards with Matlab, and a Simulink library was developed to handle hardware interface functions and simplify the composition of attitude control schemes. To improve the usability of the system, a variety of actuator control, hardware testing, and data visualization utilities were also created. A closed-loop attitude control strategy was adapted to facilitate future sensor installations, and was tested in numerical simulation. The control model was then updated to interface with the simulator hardware, and for the first time in the project history, attitude control was performed onboard the CalPoly spacecraft attitude dynamics simulator. The demonstration served to validate the numerical model and to verify the functionality of the entire simulator system. Acknowledgements I would like to thank: The CalPoly Aerospace Faculty for bestowing upon me the skills and knowledge to succeed The Staff of the Naval Postgraduate School's Unmanned Systems Lab for sharing the magic of robotics and My Parents for their unwavering patience, guidance, and support, and for teaching me everything else which truly matters.


In this study an in depth investigation of successful
competitive strategies for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is undertaken. The overall aim of this study is to analyse the strategic orientation of UK Manufacturing SMEs. In the process, it will test Porter's (1980, 1985) theoretical framework of generic strategies and thus evaluate firms' preferred strategic synthesis. It will, therefore, test the efficacy of the value chain and develop any specific pattern that relates to a combination strategy.

The investigation of the above objectives is undertaken utilising a mixed research methodology with the purpose of examining the applicability of existing competitive strategy frameworks (phase 1) and testing a new theoretical framework that incorporates additional dimensions of strategy (phase 2). During phase 1, Porter's framework is employed to investigate SMEs' strategic orientation as a means to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. A semi-structured questionnaire is employed and the analysis is carried out by means of factor and cluster analysis to identify strategic variables currently employed by SMEs. During phase 2, the theoretical framework is operationalised to bridge the gap within the literature and existing empirical research. Its purpose is to identify forms of successful competitive strategies of UK MSMEs as they are formulated and implemented in firms' value chain activities. The data was collected through a number of semi-structured interviews and the analysis was based on data categorisation.

The findings indicate that Porter's (1980) single generic strategies are not the best option for UK MSMEs for gaining competitive advantage and that the


Many scholarly social networking sites targeting an audience of academicians and researchers have appeared on the Internet in recent years. Their vision is to change the way researchers connect, share and collaborate to solve real world problems. Despite the hype, however, their impact on higher education is unclear. Studies exist that address the benefits of these sites, but studies that investigate the implications of how scholarly social networking systems vet information, including data related to user profiles and uploaded content, is nonexistent. This paper chronicles the system management of user information for an inactive user of a scholarly social networking site. The paper shows what can happen to user profile data when a user remains dormant and data correction is reliant upon system users. The quality and accuracy of information provided on a scholarly social networking site are paramount to its success and effectiveness.


Arab Spring. Occupy Wall Street. Protests against austerity measures in Europe. Around the world, people are dissatisfied with traditional top-down style governance. The call for change sounds especially loud and clear in the environmental arena where legislative and law enforcement status quo imperils the future of our natural surroundings. This article adds new value to international environmental and democratic discourse by being the first major work to examine the first ten years of case law under the UNECE Aarhus Convention, a groundbreaking multilateral environmental agreement that promotes public participation in government environmental decision-making and enforcement through procedural requirements. The objective of the article is to verify whether such requirements are mere "toothless" procedural devices or if they have the potential for bringing about positive substantive change as well. They do. Via cases concerning the power plant construction inside a national park in Albania to gold mining in Romania, the article analyzes how even newly democratized nations have expressed their willingness to improve national environmental legislation and law enforcement by taking into account the results of public participation. Such bottoms-up style governance also has great potential for change at the international level. What may be seen as a dichotomy between procedure and substance is thus more correctly seen as an effective interface between the two. This first-of-its kind article concludes by proposing how the Convention has room for both thematic and geographical growth as well as how its legal principles can be beneficially emulated in other legal instruments.


In this pathbreaking work of scholarship, Laura Doyle reveals the central, formative role of race in the development of a transnational, English-language literature over three centuries. Identifying a recurring freedom plot organized around an Atlantic Ocean crossing, Doyle shows how this plot structures the texts of both African-Atlantic and Anglo-Atlantic writers and how it takes shape by way of submerged intertextual exchanges between the two traditions. For Anglo-Atlantic writers, Doyle locates the origins of this narrative in the seventeenth century. She argues that members of Parliament, religious refugees, and new Atlantic merchants together generated a racial rhetoric by which the English fashioned themselves as a "native," "freedom-loving," "Anglo-Saxon" people struggling against a tyrannical foreign king. Stories of a near ruinous yet triumphant Atlantic passage to freedom came to provide the narrative expression of this heroic Anglo-Saxon identity—in novels, memoirs, pamphlets, and national histories. At the same time, as Doyle traces through figures such as Friday in Robinson Crusoe , and through gothic and seduction narratives of ruin and captivity, these texts covertly register, distort, or appropriate the black Atlantic experience. African-Atlantic authors seize back the freedom plot, placing their agency at the origin of both their own and whites' survival on the Atlantic. They also shrewdly expose the ways that their narratives have been "framed" by the Anglo-Atlantic tradition, even though their labor has provided the enabling condition for that tradition.

Doyle brings together authors often separated by nation, race, and period, including Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Olaudah Equiano, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Wilson, Pauline Hopkins, George Eliot, and Nella Larsen. In so doing, she reassesses the strategies of early women novelists, reinterprets the significance of rape and incest in the novel, and measures the power of race in the modern English-language imagination.


The objective of this research is the analysis of basic road safety parameters related to elderly people (> 64 years old) by the use of the EU CARE database with disaggregate data on road accidents, as well as of other international data files (Eurostat, IRTAD, etc.). Data for ten years and 19 EU countries on road accidents involving elderly people are correlated with basic safety parameters like the road user type, the road network type, the casualty age and gender as well as the day of the week, the time of the day and the season. This comparative analysis revealed a decrease of more than 30% in elderly fatalities in traffic accidents within the decade 1997 - 2006 and it was also shown that in most European countries the elderly - specifically those between 75 and 84 years old - are at greater risk of being killed in a road accident than the average person. Additionally, more than one third of elderly fatalities were pedestrians and also elderly people are proportionately more likely than middle-aged people to be killed in an accident in an urban road. Contrary to middle-aged people, elderly are mostly killed during the morning, with three-fourths of those during the week days. Specific countries with higher elderly accident fatalities for particular accident types were also identified. The analysis results allow for an overall picture of the safety level of elderly people in Europe, providing thus useful support to all decision makers working for the improvement of safety in the European road network.


Acoustic holography deals with a typical inverse problem, to obtain the unknown from something that is known. From measurements of sound, most often using microphone arrays, reconstructions of the sound field are made in an attempt to find out what causes the sound. The successfulness of such analyses is highly dependent on the quality of the reconstructed images, where factors like noise and spatial resolution are of importance. Also, when using microphones for measurements of the sound it is inevitable that the sound field is disturbed. Such disturbances will always have an impact on the reconstructions, even though in most cases the effects are negligible. In this thesis laser vibrometry for the purpose of sound measurements has been investigated and evaluated. Since it is an optical method it has the great advantage of allowing the sound to be measured without being disturbed. The 1D quantitative data it provides can be used without any preparation for the 2D numerical propagation of sound fields. Further on, the measurement data can also be used in order to obtain a 2D or 3D tomographic reconstruction of the sound field. A multi-wavelength method is also presented, which efficiently suppresses noise and increases the spatial depth resolution in sound field reconstructions. The sound is measured and reconstructed for several frequencies. When adding these reconstructions they will only add up constructively in positions corresponding to a sound source. This way noise in the resulting image is efficiently suppressed and the information of interest enhanced. Besides this "cleaning" of the image a large improvement of the depth-resolution is also achieved. While the in-plane size of the imaged sound source is diffraction-limited, the spatial depth-resolution can be improved by applying a filter based on the standard deviation calculated over the phase for the different reconstructions. Using this filter, sound sources can be imaged with a depth-size as small as only two wavelengths. Another advantage with this multi-wavelength technique is that it is possible to make a selective imaging of sound sources. When the measured sound originates from several different sound sources, a reconstruction can be made where only sound sources of a specific type are imaged. The other sound sources are treated as noise and are efficiently suppressed. This multi-wavelength method for imaging and localization of sound sources has so far proven to be very efficient and to have a low sensitivity to noise in the measurements.


This paper presents the theoretical development and analysis of a novel DLL discriminator robust to multipath errors, called the Combination of Squared Correlators (CSC). The CSC discriminator features a simple implementation based on four (complex) static correlators per channel, without falling into the wide family of patented architectures.

In this paper, the theoretical analysis of the properties of the CSC architecture is developed in a well structured context: (i) definition of the discrimination rule; (ii) theoretical analysis in the absence of noise; (iii) theoretical noise tracking jitter analysis; and, (iv) multipath error envelope analysis. In all cases, the CSC results are compared to those of the Strobe discriminator, which is the natural benchmark.

The promising performance of the CSC discriminator inserted in a complete software receiver is also proved in a heavy multipath scenario, expressly simulated to stress the code tracking loop robustness. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Research Findings: Despite the abundance of research suggesting that preschool classroom quality influences children's social-emotional development, the equally important and related question of how characteristics of children enrolled in a classroom influence classroom quality has rarely been addressed. The current article focuses on this question while also considering teacher stress as a mediator of the relationship between child behavior problems and classroom emotional climate. Data came from 2 low-income samples. Ordinary least squares regression revealed that higher levels of child externalizing behavior problems in the fall predicted higher teacher stress in the spring. Teacher stress was nonlinearly related to classroom emotional climate in the spring: Moderate levels of teacher stress were associated with higher (i.e., more positive) classroom emotional climates, and low and high levels of teacher stress were associated with lower classroom emotional climates. Contrary to expectations, higher levels of child externalizing behavior problems were related to higher classroom emotional climates. There was no evidence that teacher stress mediated this relationship. Practice or Policy: These results are discussed in terms of strategies to reduce the disruptive influence of child behavior problems on the classroom emotional climate as well as strategies to limit high levels of preschool teacher stress.


Dysregulation of the proteolytic processing of amyloid precursor protein by γ-secretase and the ensuing generation of amyloid-β is associated with the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. Thus, the identification of amyloid precursor protein binding proteins involved in regulating processing of amyloid precursor protein by the γ-secretase complex is essential for understanding the mechanisms underlying the molecular pathology of the disease. We identified calreticulin as novel amyloid precursor protein interaction partner that binds to the γ-secretase cleavage site within amyloid precursor protein and showed that this Ca2+- and N-glycan-independent interaction is mediated by amino acids 330–344 in the C-terminal C-domain of calreticulin. Co-immunoprecipitation confirmed that calreticulin is not only associated with amyloid precursor protein but also with the γ-secretase complex members presenilin and nicastrin. Calreticulin was detected at the cell surface by surface biotinylation of cells overexpressing amyloid precursor protein and was co-localized by immunostaining with amyloid precursor protein and presenilin at the cell surface of hippocampal neurons. The P-domain of calreticulin located between the N-terminal N-domain and the C-domain interacts with presenilin, the catalytic subunit of the γ-secretase complex. The P- and C-domains also interact with nicastrin, another functionally important subunit of this complex. Transfection of amyloid precursor protein overexpressing cells with full-length calreticulin leads to a decrease in amyloid-β42 levels in culture supernatants, while transfection with the P-domain increases amyloid-β40 levels. Similarly, application of the recombinant P- or C-domains and of a synthetic calreticulin peptide comprising amino acid 330–344 to amyloid precursor protein overexpressing cells result in elevated amyloid-β40 and amyloid-β42 levels, respectively. These findings indicate that the interaction of calreticulin with amyloid precursor protein and the γ-secretase complex regulates the proteolytic processing of amyloid precursor protein by the γ-secretase complex, pointing to calreticulin as a potential target for therapy in Alzheimer's disease.


Functional area competencies are considered as sources of competitive advantage (Porter, 1994; Heene & Stanches, 1997; Cravens, 1996; Vickery el AI, 1993; Vickery et. Al, 1994), and marketing competency is one of them. Marketing competency construct is defined as the sum of the performed on 31 competitive items, weighted by importance and extent of marketing responsibility (Vickery et al., 1994).This study examines a model of relationships between marketing competency and business performance outcomes such as market share and market share growth. The questioners were sent to marketing managers from manufacture organizations at Jakarta. The instrument from Vickery et al. (1994), was used in this study. Regression was used to analysis this data. The result showed that marketing competency is related to business performance outcomes (in this case: market share and market share growth). So, It suggests that marketing competency is a source competitive advantage.Keywords : Marketing Competency, Business Performance Outcomes (market share and market share growth), competitive Advantage.


Developing critical thinking practices among young learners through mathematics education is a topic of attention for mathematics education research community. Learners' critical thinking concerning cognitive and social aspects of their mathematics education have been explored in several research studies. However, learners' critical thinking concerning their personal beliefs about their mathematics learning process have not received much consideration. In this paper, learners' practice with thinking critically about and their potential to suggest changes in their mathematics learning process is explored based on their expressed beliefs about learning mathematics. Learners of eighth and ninth grade in two Norwegian schools responded to a questionnaire and were interviewed to gather their opinions concerning their mathematics learning process. Data analysis indicates that learners seldom think critically, and hold inconsistent beliefs about mathematics and its learning process. Moreover, they struggle to observe their own beliefs critically, and hesitate in suggesting alternatives to make learning mathematics meaningful for them. Consequently, learners' critical attitude towards their mathematics learning process and their personal beliefs in order to gain a meta-perspective of their learning contexts does not seem to be evolving effectively. However, if learners are encouraged to think critically about mathematics education, their potential of contributing to improve their mathematics learning process becomes visible. We recommend that young learners get training in and are encouraged to think critically about their mathematics learning process so that they are equipped to make reflected choices related to learning mathematics in their personal lives.


Chevron skepticism is in vogue in legal academia, as Professors Shoba Wadhia and Christopher Walker's recent entry in the genre demonstrates. They place their project within the broader academic trend of arguing for limitations on the application of deference to various administrative decisions, but their aim is ultimately narrower—to show that "this case against Chevron has * * * its greatest force when it comes to immigration."

The Professors are incorrect. Immigration adjudication presents one of the strongest cases for deference to administrative adjudication. This case is founded in the text of the statute itself and its myriad general and specific delegations of authority to the Attorney General, the expertise of the agency which has honed its interpretive enterprise through adjudicating tens of thousands of cases annually, and the ultimate political accountability of the agency head in immigration adjudication. For these reasons, the Supreme Court has applied Chevron deference to immigration adjudications since the very foundation of that framework. Although they advance an interesting contrarian thesis, the Professors ultimately provide no sound basis for retreating from four decades of established jurisprudence.


Abstract This paper discusses and challenges the current opinion that exercise adaptation is generally defined by modality; resistance exercise (RE), or aerobic exercise (AE). In presenting a strong body of recent research which demonstrably challenges these perceptions we suggest alternate hypotheses towards physiological adaptation which is hinged more upon the effort than the exercise modality. Practical implications of this interpretation of exercise adaptation might effect change in exercise adherence since existing barriers to exercise of time, costs, specialized equipment, etc. become nullified. In presenting the evidence herein we suggest that lay persons wishing to attain the health and fitness (including strength and muscle hypertrophy) benefits of exercise can choose from a wide range of potential exercise modalities so long as the effort is high. Future research should consider this hypothesis by directly comparing RE and AE for acute responses and chronic adaptations.


We have obtained Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images of Pluto at 410 nm and 278 nm which resolve numerous distinct albedo provinces on this planet. Our images were obtained using the Faint Object Camera (FOC) of the Hubble Space Telescope between 20 June and 01 July 1994. This dataset is the rst longitudinally-complete, rotationallyresolved direct image dataset on Pluto. We have combined the various images that HST obtained to make maps of the planet. These images reveal that Pluto has (i) a highly variegated surface, (ii) extensive, bright, asymmetric polar regions, (iii) large midlatitude and equatorial spots, and (iv) possible linear features hundreds of kilometers in extent. The dynamic range of albedo features across the planet detected at the FOC's resolution in both the 410 nm and 278 nm bandpasses exceeds 5:1. We also present and discuss the multiplicative product of the HST 410 nm and 278 nm maps, which allows us to infer the location of where the cleanest, and therefore the presumably freshest ice deposits, lie. Toward the end of this report, we make some initial comparisons between the HST-derived maps and previously published Pluto maps derived from the inversion of groundbased lightcurves of Pluto. Although more-sophisticated HST-map inversions are planned, the data products presented here provide important inputs to modellers interested in volatile transport, and comparative studies of Pluto and Triton. 1


Ants (Formicidae: Hymenoptera) are important components of forest ecosystems and can be affected by fuel reduction forest management practices. We assessed the impact of repeated applications of fuel reduction treatments on abundance and diversity of ants within upland mixed‐hardwood forests in the Southern Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina, USA. We established three replicate blocks (~56 ha each) and split each block into four fuel reduction treatments, which included prescribed burning (B), mechanical felling (M), a combination of prescribed burning and mechanical felling (MB), and a control (C; i.e., no treatment). We implemented treatments multiple times (two mechanical thinnings and four prescribed burns) over the course of a 15‐yr period. Due to tree mortality and resultant canopy gaps from high‐severity burns, forest structure was dramatically altered in MB. Over a 3‐yr period (2014–2016), we captured 54,219 ants comprised of 23 genera using pitfall and colored pan traps. Prenolepis imparis was the most common ant species collected, and it was significantly lower in abundance in MB than all other treatments. However, the non‐native species Brachyponera chinensis was more abundant in MB than all other treatments. Thus, some fuel reduction treatments may have consequences for invasive ant colonization in forests. Most ant taxa did not differ in abundance among treatments, suggesting that some fuel reduction practices may affect some, but not all ant species. Our results indicate that some fuel reduction treatments can alter forest ant communities, thus contributing to changing forest ecosystem dynamics. Monitoring of ants and other bioindicators after repeated rounds of fuel reduction treatments could provide useful knowledge that can be used to help balance forest management and biological diversity.


Obesity and type 2 diabetes are becoming worldwide epidemics. In this regard, the literature provides evidence that low-grade inflammation contributes to the onset of the metabolic disorders associated with overweight and obesity (insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases).1 A considerable number of factors have been associated with the development of obesity, including the gut microbiota. The novel concept, that we defined as 'MicrObesity' (Microbes and Obesity), is devoted to delineating the impact of dysbiosis (changes in gut microbiota composition and/or activity) and its implications on host metabolism and energy storage.2 Although the exact composition of the gut microbiota is not known, advances in metagenomic and metabonomic technologies have recently begun to unravel our microbial partners including the symbiotic complexity of the host–gut microbiota interactions, reflected by a specific chemical signature in the different biofluids.3

Over the last years, bariatric surgical approaches (eg, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) surgery) have provided interesting results, not only in achieving and maintaining appropriate weight loss, but most importantly by the resolution of type 2 diabetes independently of weight changes.4 …


The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is a Paris-based intergovernmental organization that was founded with the objective of promoting effective implementation of laws, regulations, and other measures for combating money laundering (ML), financing of terrorism (FT), and similar threats to financial integrity. One of FATF's key outputs is a series of Recommendations that set international standards for combating ML and FT. Donors can use these Recommendations to help developing countries increase their financial integrity and stability, and to prevent risks related to ML and FT in their own operations.


Location based social networking applications enable people to share their location with friends for social purposes by "checking in" to places they visit. Prior research suggests that both privacy and impression management motivate location disclosure concerns. In this interview study of foursquare users, we explore the ways people think about location sharing and its effects on impression management and formation. Results indicate that location-sharing decisions depend on the perceived visibility of the check-in, blur boundaries between public and private venues, and can initiate tensions within the foursquare friend network. We introduce the concept of "check-in transience" to explain factors contributing to impression management and argue that sharing location is often used as a signaling strategy to achieve social objectives.


The evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) has augmented the necessity for Cloud, edge and fog platforms. The chief benefit of cloud-based schemes is they allow data to be collected from numerous services and sites, which is reachable from any place of the world. The organizations will be benefited by merging the cloud platform with the on-site fog networks and edge devices and as result, this will increase the utilization of the IoT devices and end users too. The network traffic will reduce as data will be distributed and this will also improve the operational efficiency. The impact of monitoring in edge and fog computing can play an important role to efficiently utilize the resources available at these layers. This paper discusses various techniques involved for monitoring for edge and fog computing and its advantages. The paper ends with a case study to demonstarte the need of monitoring in fog and edge in the healthcare system.


The Taiwanese legend of Wu Feng who supposedly died in the mid-18th century has passed down since the late Qing dynasty. Wu Feng was considered a righteous martyr-like figure who ultimately sacrificed himself in order to dissuade the Ali Mountain aborigines from their tradition of headhunting. This tale has evolved through different periods in Taiwanese history. The legend starting in the late Qing dynasty through Japanese Colonization, the early R.O.C. in Taiwan, and modern day Taiwan has been manipulated in a number of different ways and has been included as an example for moral education in Taiwan school textbooks until 1987. It seems that these changes or manipulations of the legend are indicative of broader changes occurring in Taiwanese society with a major transformation in race relations manifested in 1988. I will attempt to gain insight into the evolving school textbook version of the Wu Feng myth by studying its representation from the early 1950's until the final version in 1987.


The Constitution of Kenya provides that the sovereign power of the people shall be vested in the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, reflecting the democratic ideal that if power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it is prone to misuse. This provision aims to safeguard against arbitrary and capricious governance and the abuse of power. In the new constitutional order, there has been instances of tensions between the judiciary and the other arms of government. Unfortunate incidents of members of the Legislature referring to court orders as stupid and idiotic with blatant disregard for court orders have been witnessed. In a government whose legitimacy is vindicated by a court, it is ironical to observe a selective attitude towards respecting subsequent court orders. This paper aims to consider the disregard of court orders against the backdrop of the separation of powers and other relevant principles of constitutionalism.


Covariate shift is an unconventional learning scenario in which training and testing data have different distributions. A general principle to solve the problem is to make the training data distribution similar to that of the test domain, such that classifiers computed on the former generalize well to the latter. Current approaches typically target on sample distributions in the input space, however, for kernel-based learning methods, the algorithm performance depends directly on the geometry of the kernel-induced feature space. Motivated by this, we propose to match data distributions in the Hilbert space, which, given a pre-defined empirical kernel map, can be formulated as aligning kernel matrices across domains. In particular, to evaluate similarity of kernel matrices defined on arbitrarily different samples, the novel concept of surrogate kernel is introduced based on the Mercer's theorem. Our approach caters the model adaptation specifically to kernel-based learning mechanism, and demonstrates promising results on several real-world applications.


Single-constrained QoS (Quality of Service) routing protocols have inherent shortcomings when they are applied to ad hoc networks. Only considering a single constraint parameter can't always cope with the problems aroused by the uncertainty of ad hoc networks well. This paper proposes a multiconstrained QoS routing protocol based on fuzzy logic. The protocol is service-aware. It considers the QoS requirements asked by different kinds of services and takes different network state parameters as the constraint conditions. New route informing mechanism is proposed to support route update; speed of packets sending is adjusted in terms of the output of fuzzy system; and routing algorithm for real time traffic is optimized to assure that data are always transmitted through the route with the lowest delay. The simulation results show that the improved protocol has better features on delay, delay variation, packet loss rate and throughput compared to single-constrained QoS routing protocol.


The paper examines the link between ideology in law and social ontology. Whereas academic enquiries have thus far mainly concentrated on the link between law  per se  and social reality, the question of the relationship of the ideology of law and social ontology is by and large an academic  terra incognita .  The paper proceeds by examining a number of matters in furtherance of its analytical goals.  Accordingly, there are three (3) lines of enquiry in the paper's analysis: first, the author proceeds with the question as to whether ideology ought to inform legal doctrine in the first place.  Should law be free from ideology?  Can law be wholly free from ideology?  Do the positivist credentials of much of modern law, e.g. in the context of liberal political theory, create a  de facto  ideology for our law?  Is it not true that the very notion of constitutionalism also creates a  sui generis  ideology for our law?  Is law just another way of transforming predominant ideology and collective practices into norms?  Effectively, can there be law which is wholly disconnected from leading or predominant economic theory?  In other words, are jurists expected to show compliance with economic theory  inter alia or should law be more of a Kelsenian island of epistemic purity, devoid of ideology, sociology and the like?  Secondly, more importantly,  if law ought to be characterised by a certain limited degree of ideology, should that ideology be driven by the social?  Thus, if law should not be free from ideology, should the ideology, which characterises it, at any rate and at any point, reflect the ontologically social? If so, is that reflection just another way of promoting democracy?  Naturally, whilst democracy is an ideal, it often becomes burdensome as to what the precise definition of democracy is or ought to be.  So too, it becomes necessary to ensure that democracy, in its practical manifestation, does not hinder the application of law as a means which enables.  For instance, the constitutional crises between 2012-2015, in significant parts of Europe, alert us to the fact that the socially ontological might not always lead to ideal results e.g. when it comes to respecting the established notion of the Rule of Law in the European legal sphere or, more widely, in Western legal space.  Thirdly, what ought to be the social ontology's input in the ideology of law?  Whereas recognition is given to the democratic credentials of modern social ontology in many jurisdictions these days, it goes without saying that democracy ought not to deteriorate into populist understandings of the social.  This being the case, it is also understood that there can be no one meaning or interpretation of social ontology throughout systems and regions or, indeed, any universal understandings thereof.  What might be an ideal for the social ontology of the French Republic might not necessarily be an ideal for the social ontology of the State of Texas. Thus, the meaning of 'ideal' is rather relative in social ontological terms and cannot be and should not be the same from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.  Nonetheless, this differentiation of the social ontology between different jurisdictional spaces is one which does not automatically provide moral legitimacy to electorates and legislatures around the world, when it comes to them infiltrating domestic law with their own social ideology, especially when such ideology is devoid of value and essence.  Thus, the ontologically social is not a synonym to the ontologically abusive, in case social ideology informs the law. Keywords: ideology, law, social ontology


.—Studies of song and its function in suboscine passerines are rare. We examined spatial and temporal variation in song structure in a wild population of Olive-sided Flycatchers ( Contopus cooperi ) and tested among hypotheses explaining this variation. Repeatable variation in song type was observed both within and among individuals. More than 10 % of territorial males expressed atypical song types, i.e., permutations of sequential missing and repeated elements of the typical adult song. Atypical songs were predominantly expressed by unpaired males indepen- dent of habitat type. A small fraction of males sang atypical song through the middle of the breeding season, but all males sang only stereotypical adult song by the end of the season. These results suggest the expression of atypical songs reflect protracted vocal development rather than evolution of new song types, geographic variation in song structure, or an extensive song repertoire in Olive-sided Flycatchers.


It is of paramount importance to track the cognitive activity or cognitve attenion of the service personnel in a Prognostics and Health Monitoring (PHM) service related training or operation environment. The electroencephalography (EEG) data is one of the good candidates for cognitive activity recognition of the user. Analyzing electroencephalography (EEG) data in an unconstrained (natural) environment for understanding cognitive state and classifying human activity is a challenging task due to multiple reasons such as low signal-to-noise ratio, transient nature, lack of baseline availability and uncontrolled mixing of various tasks. This paper proposes a framework based on an emerging tool named deep learning that monitors human activity by fusing multiple EEG sensors and also selects a smaller sensor suite for a lean data collection system. Real-time classification of human activity from spatially non collocated multi-probe EEG is executed by applying deep learning techniques without performing any significant amount of data preprocessing and manual feature engineering. Two types of deep neural networks, deep belief network (DBN) and deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) are used at the core of the proposed framework, which automatically learns necessary features from EEG for a given classification task. Validation on extensive amount of data, which was collected from several subjects while they were performing multiple tasks (listening and watching) in PHM service training session, is presented and significant parallels are drawn from existing domain knowledge on EEG data understanding. Comparison with machine learning benchmark techniques shows that deep learning based tools are better at understanding EEG data for task classification. It is observed via sensor selection that a significantly smaller EEG sensor suite can perform at a comparable accuracy as the original sensor suite.


Aim: Mental Retardation (MR) is a spectrum of disorders characterized by deficits in intellectual and adaptive functioning which could result from several different etiological factors. Studies have shown that people with MR develop mental illness at rates similar to or higher than general population. We have not found any previous study carried out on adults with MR in Turkey. The aim of this study to determine the prevalence of mental disorders in Turkish population and to investigate associated factors. Methods: Participants aged 18 years and above and with a confirmed diagnosis of were recruited from care homes, rehabilitation centers and from people attending to outpatients for the first time for psychiatric assessment. A structured purpose designed socio-demographic form was used. Each participant underwent face to face assessment by a psychiatrist and their previous reports were also seen where available. Collateral history was provided by their families or caregivers who had known the person for at least 6 months. Diagnoses were established according to the DSM-5 criteria. Point prevalence of disorders were calculated and associated factors were investigated. Results: 63.5% of the participants met the criteria for one psychiatric disorder, whilst 21% received more than one diagnoses. The most common disorders were as follows: conduct disorder (34%), autism spectrum disorders (13.9%), anxiety-related disorders (13.9%) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (10.6%). Living in a care home and being young seemed to be associated with ill mental health. Conclusion: Our study demonstrates high psychiatric comorbidity in adults with MR. Young age and being in a care home seemed to be the only risk factors in our sample. These results highlight a need for increased awareness of mental health professionals and service providers about mental health of adults with MR for early diagnosis and interventions.


A literature review was conducted in order to identify unique weaknesses in the physiology or metabolism of pigs that could be targeted with specific chemicals (i.e. an 'Achilles' heel' search). A promising weakness identified was the species' susceptibility to methaemoglobin-forming compounds, most likely related to their uniquely low levels of methaemoglobin reductase. Further examination revealed that sodium nitrite is a cost-effective, readily available methaemoglobin-forming compound that is highly toxic to domestic pigs, which has caused numerous accidental poisonings. Pen trials on pigs showed that sodium nitrite delivered by gavage (>90 mg kg-1) and freely consumed in bait (>400 mg kg-1) caused rapid and lethal rises in methaemoglobin. Sodium nitrite appeared to be more humane than currently used toxins, with deaths following bait consumption being considerably quicker and with fewer symptoms (within 80 min of clinical signs beginning; clinical signs including infrequent vomiting, lethargy, ataxia and dyspnoea). The review also identified a second deficiency in the metabolism of pigs, namely high sensitivity to selective inhibition of cytochrome P450 liver enzymes. This leads to potentially lethal interactions between various drugs, such as two antibiotics, monensin and tiamulin. A pen trial confirmed that the antibiotic combination in a single gavage dose was reliably and rapidly lethal to pigs. However, its utility as a pig toxin is low, because it was unpalatable to pigs when delivered in bait and appeared to cause pain and suffering (leading to the early termination of pen trials). The findings presented here demonstrate the potential of sodium nitrite as an additional feral pig toxin.


Background: Scrub typhus is one of the causes of acute abdomen in surgical emergency. Objectives: The objective was to study the clinical profile and outcome among patients of scrub typhus presenting as acute abdomen. Materials and Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted for 15 months in eight patients who presented as acute abdominal pain with scrub typhus in a tertiary hospital. Clinical analysis, routine investigations, and rapid IgM-based immunochromatographic assay for scrub typhus are performed in every patient. Results: A total of eight females, aged ≥20 years were included in the study. Six of the patients presented with acute abdomen, two of them had features of generalized peritonitis, two had a history of loose stools, another two had a history of constipation, and one of them presented with history of bleeding per rectum. As systemic presentation, all eight patients had fever, six of the patients had nausea and vomiting, four had tachypnea, four had presented in shock, two of the patient presented with an eschar, and four had a history of headache. All patients were treated conservatively. One patient died due to multiorgan dysfunction syndrome and severe thrombocytopenia. Conclusion: Scrub typhus can rarely present as acute abdomen. High index of suspicion is required in cases of acute abdomen not responding to standard treatment.


Placing the Asian economies onto a sustainable development pathway requires an unprecedented shift in investment away from greenhouse gas, fossil fuel, and natural resource intensive industries towards more resource efficient technologies and business models. The financial sector will have to play a central role in this 'green transformation'. This study discusses the need for greening the financial system and the role of financial governance. It reviews the state of green lending and investment in Asia and provides an overview of green financial governance initiatives across Asia. It also identifies market innovations to increase green finance in Asia, barriers to green investments, and financial policy and highlights priority areas for policy makers.


Zymoseptoria tritici is the causative agent of Septoria tritici blotch (STB), which costs billions of dollars annually to major wheat-producing countries in terms of both fungicide use and crop loss. Agricultural pathogenic fungi have acquired resistance to most commercially available fungicide classes, and the rate of discovery and development of new fungicides has stalled, demanding new approaches and insights. Here we investigate a potential mechanism of targeting an important wheat pathogen Z. tritici via inhibition of N-myristoyltransferase (NMT). We characterize Z. tritici NMT biochemically for the first time, profile the in vivo Z. tritici myristoylated proteome and identify and validate the first Z. tritici NMT inhibitors. Proteomic investigation of the downstream effects of NMT inhibition identified an unusual and novel mechanism of defense against chemical toxicity in Z. tritici through the application of comparative bioinformatics to deconvolute function from the previously largely unannotated Z. tritici proteome. Research into novel fungicidal modes-of-action is essential to satisfy an urgent unmet need for novel fungicide targets, and we anticipate that this study will serve as a useful proteomics and bioinformatics resource for researchers studying Z. tritici.


Abstract Screening for critical congenital heart disease (CCHD) at 24 to 48 hours after birth or before discharge in newborn nurseries using pulse oximetry is effective and is mandated by most states. However, there is no established protocol for screening in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), a setting where neonates are continuously monitored by pulse oximetry, hypoxemia from noncardiac causes is common, and echocardiograms are frequently obtained. CCHDs with hypoxemia are suspected on admission and investigated with an echocardiogram before a formal screen in the NICU. The most common CCHD lesions missed in a NICU setting are secondary targets of the screen, such as aortic arch anomalies (coarctation or interrupted aortic arch). The sensitivity of the current pulse oximeter–based CCHD screen to diagnose aortic arch anomalies is low. Given that infants are monitored with continuous pulse oximetry and frequent examinations, novel revisions to the current screening methods are necessary to detect asymptomatic NICU infants with aortic arch anomalies before discharge. Exclusions (whom to screen), technique (how to screen), and timing (when to screen) for primary and secondary targets of CCHD in the NICU are not known and require further research.


Twelve new complexes of the 2- methoxybenzohydroxamate with aryltellurium(IV) and diaryltellurium(IV) of type RTeCl2(L), RTeCl(L)2, R2TeCl(L) and R2Te(L)2; (where R = p-methoxyphenyl, p-hydroxyphenyl, 3-methyl-4- hydroxyphenyl and L = 2-methoxybenzo- hydroxamate) have been synthesized by reactions of potassium 2- methoxybenzohydroxamate with corresponding aryltellurium(IV) chlorides . They have been characterized by elemental analyses, molar conductance, infrared and proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The spectral studies predict the uninegative bidentate [O, O'] nature of the ligand to give penta- and hexa- coordinated tellurium (IV) complexes. The complexes also have been screened for their antimicrobial activity against various bacteria and fungi organisms and it has been observed that some of these possess substantial antimicrobial activity.


Omphalocele, a type of anterior abdominal wall defect, is a rare congenital deformity that is infrequently reported, which leads to the emergence of interventions that could be carried out for a better holistic management, for the baby, mother, and the family. We report a case of single dead fetus of 24 weeks gestational age delivered by a 25-year-old primigravida. On examination, it was observed and diagnosed that the baby presented with extrusion of multiple abdominal organs through a midline breach in the continuity of anterior abdominal wall suggesting it to be a case of omphalocele. It had other associated congenital deformities. Of all the investigations, ultrasonographic assessment of fetal structure and well-being is most reliable along with other investigations like genetic screening. The lack in the proper antenatal examination and infrequent routine checkups leads to a large proportion of undiagnosed cases. Proper diagnostic measures and awareness will bring a marked reduction in perinatal morbidity and mortality and avoidance of stigma faced by the patients.


This paper aims to reassess one piece of evidence for the performance of music and poetry in classical Sparta: an elegy by the Chian poet Ion (fr. 27 West). It is argued here that this poem evokes the atmosphere of a Spartan festival and, specifically, a symposium held as part of that festival. Ion was present in Sparta not merely as a friend of prominent Athenians, as is often claimed, but as a professional travelling poet. This suggests that Sparta remained an important centre for μουσική in the classical period and, moreover, was part of a broader Panhellenic network of festivals and contests.


A simple, rapid and selective method involving reverse phase liquid chromatography is developed for the concurrent determination of Tramadol HCl and Chlorzoxazone in tablet formulation. The chromatographic parameters involved using a Promosil C18 column with dimensions 4.6*250 mm, 5 μ and Acetonitrile and 0.1% Trifluroacetic acid in water in the ratio 60:40 (v/v) as the mobile phase. The flow rate set was of 1.0 mL/min and detected at 275 nm using UV detector. The linearity of Tramadol HCl and Chlorzoxazone were in the range of 25.00 μg/mL-45.00 μg/mL and 125.00 μg/mL-225.00 μg/mL respectively. Standard addition method was used to calculate percentage recovery. The average amount of recovery was found to be 98.8% and 99.7% for Tramadol HCl and Chlorzoxazone respectively. The method was found to be accurate and precise for determining both the drugs simultaneously.


In a number of recent papers, Martin Feldstein has hypothesized that expected inflation may increase the real value of assets such as farm real estate. In this paper, simple models of the value of U.S. farm real estate were developed to test this hypothesis. Both adaptive expectations and "rational" interest rate-based expectations of future inflation were considered. Adaptive expectations measures for expected inflation generally suggested a negative impact of inflation on real estate value. The interest rate-based expectation measures had a positive coefficient in all cases but only in one case out of six was this coefficient significant.


Little academic research has been conducted in the area of open innovation as a strategy used by SMEs in their innovation process. In addition, small companies are subjected to liabilities to smallness and newness, for which open innovation could be the solution. This thesis focuses on two small Swedish high– tech companies. On the one hand we concentrate our studies on a software consultancy company providing programming services, on the other hand, the thesis also look on a small nano–technology company creating their product around material science innovation. The purpose of this study is to investigate what strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats these specific high-tech companies perceive in using open innovation in their business model. For accomplishing the investigations we have conducted two case studies. Through a review of relevant literature, a theoretical framework was first constructed, up on which we based the formulation of open-ended questions, to serve as a foundation for further data gathering. For the first case study, data was collected by interviewing the case firm's CEO and for the second case study we used the participant observation method. The collected data was analysed and discussed in comparison to the literature. Additionally, the findings of each case were schematically evaluated by performing a SWOT analysis on open innovation, as observed by each of our two case firms and related to literature findings. Conclusions. We conclude that small firms are hampered in their innovation and commercialisation process is limitations related to smallness and newness. It was identified that, although limited by financial and structural constrains, small companies are able to use a considerable amount of open innovation aspects in their business model. These being especially those that are less resource demanding, such as employee involvement and co-creation with the customer or with other sources to innovation, like universities. It was also recognized that, while being open when capitalizing on certain aspects of open innovation to boost their innovation and commercialization process, the case firms also recognize the importance for especially small firms to protect the core technology knowledge from being leaked externally, as this is the vital component of their existence.


Phytoplasma disease outbreaks were common and widespread in grain legume crops including mung bean (Vigna radiata), soybean (Glycine max) and peanut (Arachis hypogaea) in late 2016 and early 2017. Mung bean crops were affected in all major production areas spanning a distance of over 1,200 km from north to south with numerous crops having greater than 40% disease incidence near Dalby.

Several soybean crops from Cecil Plains were also affected by phytoplasma in late autumn 2016. Almost 100% of plants were affected in some paddocks and virtually no yield.

During the 2016/17 summer, some vegetable and pawpaw crops also had damaging outbreaks of disease. Several tomato crops in south-east Queensland had incidences of "big-bud" disease in excess of 50%. Capsicum and eggplant crops also had phytoplasma at higher than normal levels. In coastal Queensland, pawpaw (Carica papaya) crops had about 30% of plants affected by yellow crinkle disease but up to 80% in some younger plants.

The P1/P7 region of the 16S gene was amplified from several different crop types. Resulting sequences had close to 100% nucleotide identity to pigeon pea little leaf phytoplasma, Candidatus Phytoplasma aurantifolia (16Sr-II group), which has been previously reported in Australia from pigeon pea (Canjanus cajan) and stylosanthes.

A known leaf hopper vector of phytoplasma, Orosius orientalis, was collected from some affected mung bean crops but it is not certain it was associated with these disease outbreaks.

To our knowledge, this is the most significant, widespread outbreak of phytoplasma in broad acre crops to occur in this region of Australia. It is unclear what the underlying reasons are for this sudden increase in disease incidence. We are continuing further studies to determine: the diversity of phytoplasma across crop and weed hosts and geographical range, which insect species are vectors, and possible management options.


Introduction: Septic osteomyelitis commonly occurs hematogenously in either end of tubular bones in children. As involvement of patella among non-tubular bones is extremely rare, adequate diagnosis could be challenging. Although most of pediatric osteomyelitis can be treated with antibiotic therapy alone, the necessity of surgical treatment in patellar osteomyelitis is not known. We hereby reported a 9-year-old girl with septic osteomyelitis of the patella caused by methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus.
Case Report: Four days prior to admission, she had left knee pain after her gymnastic class. Two days after, she received acupuncture, but the pain did not resolve. As she developed high fever, she was referred to our hospital for further management. Physical examination revealed knee tenderness in front and absence of patellar floating. Initially, septic arthritis was suspected and joint fluid was aspirated. It was negative for gram staining with mildly elevated leukocytosis. Next day, magnetic resonance imaging revealed patellar osteomyelitis with periosteal abscess extending to patellar tendon. Blood culture and aspirated pus grew methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcal aureus. Because of persistent bacteremia, she underwent debridement and drainage. After removing the bursa and curettage of necrotic tissue of patella, a cavity defect remained from under the periosteum to the patellar tendon, where the abscess was drained. Soon after surgery, bacteremia was resolved. She was treated with cefazolin followed by cephalexin for 6 weeks as acute bacterial osteomyelitis.
Conclusion: Development of vascular system in patella progresses between 5 and 12 years of age and regresses afterwards. During this period, patellar osteomyelitis should be considered in differential diagnosis. Careful physical examination and imaging study are helpful in distinguishing patellar osteomyelitis from other common pediatric diseases of knee. While the majority of childhood septic osteomyelitis can be treated with antibiotics medically, our case and cases in literature suggested that patellar osteomyelitis often required surgical intervention.


We determined the proximate chemical composition as well as the construction costs of leaves of 27 species, grown at ambient and at a twice-ambient partial pressure of atmospheric CO2. These species comprised wild and agricultural herbaceous plants as well as tree seedlings. Both average responses across species and the range in response were considered. Expressed on a total dry weight basis, the main change in chemical composition due to CO2 was the accumulation of total non-structural carbohydrates (TNC). To a lesser extent, decreases were found for organic N compounds and minerals. Hardly any change was observed for total structural carbohydrates (cellulose plus hemicellulose), lignin and lipids. When expressed on a TNC-free basis, decreases in organic N compounds and minerals were still present. On this basis, there was also an increase in the concentration of soluble phenolics. In terms of glucose required for biosynthesis, the increase in costs for one chemical compound - TNC was balanced by a decrease in the costs for organic N compounds. Therefore, the construction costs, the total amount of glucose required to produce 1 g of leaf, were rather similar for the two CO2 treatments; on average a small decrease of 3% was found. This decrease was attributable to a decrease of up to 30% in the growth respiration coefficient, the total CO2 respired [mainly for NAD(P)H and ATP] in the process of constructing 1 g of biomass. The main reasons for this reduction were the decrease in organic N compounds and the increase in TNC.


Ebstein's anomaly is a congenital heart disease that results from failure of delamina- tion of the tricuspid valve with resulting apical displacement of the septal and posterior leaflets of the tricuspid valve. Age at presentation can vary greatly but neonatal presenta - tion is associated with extraordinary high mortality rates. Comprehensive multispecialty care is required starting at the time of fetal diagnosis. Fetal echocardiography is vital in monitoring progression of the disease in utero. Fetal echocardiogram can evaluate for complications such as arrhythmias, pericardial effusion, or fetal hydrops. Post-natal evaluation should include evaluation of functional pulmonary atresia or circular shunt. Despite advances in surgical technique for Ebstein's anomaly, mortality for it remains high with early surgical intervention. Aggressive medical management should be used to support patients with Ebstein's anomaly during the neonatal period. Surgical procedures for neonatal Ebstein's vary widely from systemic to pulmonary shunts with or without tricuspid valve closure to tricuspid valve repair.


Purpose: Studies in oncology have implicated multiple molecular mechanisms as contributors to intrinsic and acquired tumor resistance to antifolate therapy. Here we show the utility of an 19F-labeled methotrexate (FMTX) with 19F magnetic resonance to differentiate between sensitive and resistant tumors in vivo and thus predict therapeutic response. Experimental Design: Human sarcoma xenografts in nude mice were used in this study. The sarcoma cell lines chosen for this study (HT-1080, HS-16, and M-805) are well characterized in terms of their methotrexate sensitivity and molecular mechanisms of resistance. The pharmacokinetics of tumor uptake/washout of FMTX were monitored via in vivo 19F magnetic resonance spectroscopy (pulse/acquire with surface coil localization) following an i.v. bolus injection. Response post-therapy, following leucovorin rescue, was monitored via tumor growth. Results: The three tumor models show differences in both the peak concentrations of tumor FMTX and the dynamics of uptake/retention. These differences are most pronounced for time points late in the magnetic resonance observation period (225-279 minutes post-injection). A statistically significant linear correlation between tumor tissue concentrations of FMTX at these late time points and therapeutic response in the days/weeks post-treatment is shown (R = 0.81, F = 9.27, P < 0.001). Interestingly, a 400 mg/kg i.v. bolus injection of FMTX is a more potent cytotoxic agent in vivo against methotrexate-sensitive tumors than is the parent compound (P = 0.011). Conclusions: In principle, the assay method described herein could be implemented in the clinic as a diagnostic tool to make decisions regarding therapeutic protocol for the treatment of osteosarcoma on a case-by-case basis.


In the midst of concerns about diminishing political support for human rights, individuals and groups across the globe continue to invoke them in their diverse struggles against oppression and injustice. Yet both those concerned with the future of human rights and those who champion rights activism as essential to resistance, assume that human rights – as law, discourse and practices of rights claiming – can ameliorate rightlessness. In questioning this assumption, this article seeks also to reconceptualise rightlessness by engaging with contemporary discussions of disposability and social abandonment in an attempt to be attentive to forms of rightlessness co-emergent with the operations of global capital. Developing a heuristic analytics of rightlessness, it evaluates the relatively recent attempts to mobilise human rights as a frame for analysis and action in the campaigns for justice following the 3 December 1984 gas leak from Union Carbide Corporation's (UCC) pesticide manufacturing plant in Bhopal, India. Informed by the complex effects of human rights in the amelioration of rightlessness, the article calls for reconstituting human rights as an optics of rightlessness.


Microfinance institutions typically offer group loan and individual loan products that have standardized repayment structures. These reduce transaction costs, simplify product complexity and ensures repayment discipline amongst borrowers. The repayment schedules of these loan products are characterized by early commencement of the instalments, wherein the first instalment can be anytime between one week to one month after the disbursement of loan. While a fixed and predefined repayment schedule helps the process of collection for the lending institutions and the mental accounting for borrowers, it also poses a problem when there are volatilities in the value and timings of the cash flow in the household due to seasonal activities, business cycle stages, health shocks and other factors. To put a layer of rigidity on an otherwise volatile cash flow can aggravate the liquidity position of the household. The fixed repayment schedule can affect investment choices and discourage projects that take longer to realize returns. This note discusses the scope of flexible loan contracts and presents several options on how flexibility can be introduced into these loan contracts, with some evidence from the literature.


At the same time the affirmative action cases of Gratz and Grutter were winding their way to the Supreme Court, an internal grievance alleging discrimination and the failure to consider the value of diversity in the tenure process was being considered inside the University of Michigan Law School. This article explores the interconnected histories of Gratz, Grutter and the grievance, examining the internal difficulties and contradictions universities face in living up to their public commitments to fight discrimination and cultivate meaningful forms of diversity. The year following the Supreme Court decision, the University celebrated its accomplishments in 'Defending Diversity: Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan', co-authored by Patricia Gurin, the University's lead expert witness on the effects of diversity in higher education and Jeffrey S. Lehman, Dean of the Law School through most of the litigation. In the internal grievance, Jeff Lehman advocated an interpretation of the Law School Grievance Policy that prohibited the grievance of any matter relating to tenure, including the crassest forms of discrimination or the failure of the faculty to consider the virtues of diversity. The Grievance Review Board, chaired by Patricia Gurin, adopted Dean Lehman's position and categorically barred all grievances. Ironically, the hearing took place the very same day the University filed its response to plaintiff's petition for writ of certiorari, where the University actively maintained that diversity in higher education constituted a compelling state interest. Meaningful progress on civil rights requires deep institutional change. It is often difficult to get even good people to do the right thing. The interconnected stories of Gratz, Grutter and the grievance – the same institution, with the same actors, at the same time the cases were being litigated – illustrate broader lessons about the challenges often preventing universities from making progressive change.


This paper gains a better understanding of how gameplay activities facilitate the creative learning process, reviews learning objects as game elements that influence creativity and learning outcomes, and focuses on learning activity in terms of a series of actions, namely goals, action and interaction, and interpretation. The series should be an element of object learning through game elements, that are adapted from a collection of content items, practice items, and assessment within game tasks. The findings illustrate the relationship between the series of actions within classroom activities, show the significant impact of learning outcomes and the series of actions' learning, and facilitate creative learning processes. The paper proposes a method for understanding the relationships between the learning processes that players undertake during gameplay, and the components of the game that allow these processes to occur. This method was synthesized from the focus group by considering the relationships of their learning outcomes and creative processes within game activities. Previous research studied the creative potential in puzzle game play in the process. The pilot participants in the study adapted the process that was observed during the game "Online Gunz 2: The Second Duel", and were recorded their learning outcomes. The anticipated outcomes represented how video games foster learning processes and creative processes. The results illustrate a significant conceptual method as interrelationships between meaningful learning and creative potential within a game-based activities.


the Abstract A cantilever-type vibration energy harvester (VEH) made of polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) was fabricated and characterized. PVDF is one of the polymer piezoelectric materials, which is more flexible than ceramic-based piezoelectric materials such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT). The fabrication process of VEH is as follows: a PVDF film was coated on a phosphor bronze plate by bar-coating method, followed by polarization by corona discharge method. Aluminum top electrode was deposited on the PVDF film by sputtering. One end of the plate was clamped by a fixture to form a cantilever, the length of which is 25 mm. Output power P at the resonance frequency (=55 Hz) was measured as a function of load resistance R with the acceleration set at 17 m/s 2 . Maximum output reached 4.3 μW at R = 2.1 MΩ. This result is not inferior compared with other reported VEHs using ceramic piezoelectric material. Spray coating was carried out to form PVDF film on a 3D surface. This method is suitable for fabricating a uniform thin film on a three-dimensional (3D) surface, even if it is complicatedly curved. In this study, PVDF film was formed on a 3D helical compressing spring, and the deposition on it was suc cessfully achieved.


A mere look at electoral results on both the national and European level of many European countries shows that populist and right-wing parties' support has been growing extensively. The French Front National (FN), which has made significant strides since Marine Le Pen took over the party's leadership, is often seen as on the forefront of this movement, and is deemed to be a core part of the contemporary European extreme right. Although their individual agendas and rhetoric differ from that of the FN, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the German Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) are often placed in the same party family. Disregarding this hotly debated terminology, however, this paper seeks to identify specific differences and overlaps among the three parties. Examining specific agenda points, most prominently their anti-immigration rhetoric and stance toward the EU, the party programs are used as a starting point to assess to what extent the three parties can justifiably be classified as part of an anti-globalization movement. Prior to examining the parties' positions concerning specific issues, an influx in immigration, increased integration into the European Union, resulting in a transfer of some national powers to the supranational level, as well as growing xenophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-Americanism have sometimes been identified as consequences of globalization; negative attitudes toward this development, increased nationalism, and policy proposals designed to halt these effects were deemed as highly indicative of a radical rejection of globalization. Following a comparative analysis of the three parties' positions, the discussion shows that the French "Front National" fulfills the given criteria to a much greater extent than the other two, and its ethnic-based, Francocentric rhetoric is much more extreme than that of its counterparts. Nevertheless, a future radicalization in the UK and Germany is conceivable, particularly since Islamophobia is especially pronounced in the three countries under investigation, and as refugee crises in the Mediterranean Sea are leading to an increased foreign presence in said countries, perhaps sparking similar ethnic intolerance as is propagated by the FN.


Although transmissible cancers have, so far, only been documented in three independent animal groups, they not only impact animals that have high economic, environmental and social significance, but they are also one of the most virulent parasitic life forms. Currently known transmissible cancers traverse terrestrial and marine environments, and are predicted to be more widely distributed across animal groups; thus, the implementation of effective collaborative scientific networks is important for combating existing and emerging forms. Here, we quantify how collaborative effort on the three known transmissible cancers has advanced through the formation of collaborative networks among institutions and disciplines. These three cancers occur in bivalves (invertebrates—disseminated neoplasia; DN), Tasmanian devils (vertebrate—marsupial; devil facial tumour disease; DFTD) and dogs (vertebrate—eutherian mammal; canine transmissible venereal tumour; CTVT). Research on CTVT and DN has been conducted since 1876 and 1969, respectively, whereas systematic research on DFTD only started in 2006. Yet, collaborative effort on all three diseases is global, encompassing six major Scopus subject areas. Collaborations steadily increased between 1963 and 2006 for CTVT and DN, with similar acceleration for all three cancers since 2006. Network analyses demonstrated that scientists are organizing themselves into efficient collaborative networks; however, these networks appear to be far stronger for DFTD and DN, possibly due to the recent detection of new strains adding impetus to research and associated publications (enhancing citation trajectories). In particular, global and multidisciplinary collaborations formed almost immediately after DFTD research was initiated, leading to similar research effort and relatively greater research outputs compared to the other two diseases. Therefore, in the event of outbreaks of new lineages of existing transmissible cancers, or the discovery of new transmissible cancers in the future, the rapid formation of international collaborations spanning relevant disciplines is vital for the efficient management of these diseases.


Mediation developed in response to labor unrest in the early twentieth century and social unrest mid-century. Courts began using it in the 1970s to manage crowded dockets. Court and community-based programs evolved and expanded during the 1980s and 1990s. They offered mediation as an alternative to the courts that allowed party self-determination, creative solutions and a quicker response. Research into the mediation process raised questions about the extent to which the reality of mediation matched the claims its proponents made. It revealed that mediators focused on solving problems and getting agreements often did so at the expense of party self-determination. In response to this critique, new models of mediation developed that focused on interaction instead of transaction. One such model, transformative mediation, brings rhetoric and reality together. It understands conflict as a crisis in human interaction and focuses not on conflict resolution but on conflict transformation. It trains mediators to support party decision-making and inter-party perspective-taking. The mediation field will do best in the future by accepting its diversity and supporting the different models of mediation that have evolved.


Concerns a fuzzy logic-based system which has been purposely designed to achieve real-time traffic control in high-speed networks using the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technique. One of the most critical functions is "policing", which has the task of ensuring that each user source complies with the traffic parameters negotiated in the call setup to avoid network congestion. This function is difficult to implement on account of certain conflicting requirements such as selectivity and responsiveness. This is confirmed by the severe limits affecting the most popular mechanisms proposed so far, based on conventional logic. The capacity to formalize approximate reasoning processes offered by fuzzy logic is exploited to derive rules of behavior for a policer starting from the know-how of an expert. We address two key issues related to the implementation of the fuzzy policer. The first focuses on the possibility of hardware implementation of the mechanism using VLSI technology; we present the design of a VLSI fuzzy processor which exhibits a level of performance of over 3 MFLIPS. The second issue concerns the suitability of applying the fuzzy policer to the policing of several classes of sources to reach high levels of cost effectiveness and scalability.


Breakdowns in group processes cause most governing bodies to act at a "distressingly small fraction" of their leadership potential (Carver, 1990, xviii). This article focuses on how city councils can learn to manage their group decision making, expand their leadership potential, and exercise their authority to govern more competently. City councils are institutional actors in the democratic political system. They govern cities by making policy. Policies are their authoritative (group) decisions. Councils have the authority to give or withhold action necessary to address a perceived problem (Banfield, 1961). To make policy, council members test trends, chart new directions, provide a positive vision of the future, and inspire people to produce useful organizational adaptations (Kotter, 1990). In their policy decisions, city councils allocate values, specifying what their city stands for, what outcomes flow from their collective actions, and how accountability is ensured (Easton, 1965; Carver, 1990). Councils asserting their authority help cities respond in a timely way to changes in the environment. Through their institutional agenda, councils "mobilize bias," defining some policy issues as more important than others (Schattschnelder, 1960, 71-72). Through their police power, local governments can coerce people to comply with their decisions. Councils also assert their authority to "correct" the problems that constituents have with administrative actions that operationalize their policies (Svara, 1990). The democratic political system, unfortunately, traps city councils in this policy-making process without a mechanism for socializing their members to participate in governance coalitions.(1) Leaders participate in coalitions only if they have been (1) taught to believe it matters, (2) taught the relevant skills, (3) indoctrinated with aspirations that stimulate power-sharing in the making of authoritative decisions, and (4) taught to see themselves as members of the political community (Lindblom, 1980, 99; Lasswell, 1967). In practice, democratic leaders have shown "debilitating fears" that predispose them to avoid playing their authority roles (Lasswell, 1967, 96). These predispositions constrain decision makers from freely and fully evaluating their policy options. The consequence is that councils neglect their obligations as governing bodies because they avoid making policy decisions. This decision-making inertia of city councils is a significant public problem (Dewey, 1954, 208; Lasswell, 1967; Carver, 1990). This article presents governance education as a way to help the 39,000 city councils operating in the democratic political system to govern better. As an education in support of democracy, governance education is, first of all, pragmatic (Dewey, 1916; 1954). It connects what city councils learn with what they do as governing bodies. Its curriculum addresses the things that are controversial, "quotidian," and "socially most fundamental" (Dewey 1954, 180; 1916, 191). Second, in a safe format for face-to-face discourse, governance education provides on-the-job learning. Council officials use situations drawn from their political context as their educational subjects. Through an experiential method, city councils learn to reinterpret the meaning of actual events and their most troubling political controversies (Dewey, 1963). Councils use their new knowledge to stimulate their decision making. Governance education is a special case of adult education. City councils are aggregations of adult learners. Adult learners expect education to help them solve practical problems, using an instructional methodology tailored to fit their life experiences (Dewey, 1966; Lewin, 1951; Knowles, 1990). To help city councils overcome their decision-making paralysis, governance education employs "double-loop learning" (Argyris and Schon, 1974). This learning dynamic enables city councils to craft action strategies after developing a group environment that supports the forming of policy coalitions. …


Silencing of transposable elements by ARGONAUTE 9 is necessary to specify a single female gamete in Arabidopsis. Many flowering plants form a single female gamete (egg), which is formed from the megaspore by meiosis from a somatic cell called the megaspore mother cell (MMC). Olmedo-Monfil et al. found that Arabidopsis deficient for ARGONAUTE 9 (AGO9), which is a member of a family of RNA-cleaving proteins involved in gene silencing by small RNAs, formed more than one MMC and had multiple enlarged subepidermal cells in the developing ovule. However, only one of the MMCs subsequently underwent meiosis. The enlarged epidermal cells expressed a marker that is normally only present in the megaspore in wild-type plants, suggesting that in the absence of functional AGO9, somatic cells can develop gamete-like characteristics without undergoing meiosis. Genes encoding two proteins involved in the generation of trans-acting silencing RNAs (ta-siRNAs), which can move out of the cell in which they are produced to silence gene expression in other cells, also showed a phenotype like that of the ago9 mutants. The authors immunoprecipitated AGO9 from the female reproductive organs of wild-type plants and found more than 2000 sRNAs, most of which were 24 nucleotides long and derived from retrotransposons, a type of transposable element (TE). By crossing plants expressing tagged specific TEs with plants heterozygous for ago9, the authors showed that AGO9 was necessary for TE inactivation in the egg and supporting cells. Thus, female gametogenesis appears to involve an RNA silencing pathway that targets TEs and is dependent on AGO9. V. Olmedo-Monfil, N. Durán-Figueroa, M. Arteaga-Vázquez, E. Demesa-Arévalo, D. Autran, D. Grimanelli, R. K. Slotkin, R. A. Martienssen, J.-P. Vielle-Calzada, Control of female gamete formation by a small RNA pathway in Arabidopsis. Nature 464, 628–632 (2010). [PubMed]


In recent years a large amount of research has focused on developing both invasive and non-invasive methods of assessing atherosclerosis. In this regard, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is safe, non-invasive, requires no ionising radiation, and is capable of giving high-resolution images of atherosclerotic plaque. As a result, MRI has been extensively applied to imaging of the vascular system - in particular, the carotid arteries - where it has been shown to have the ability to not only accurately quantify the extent of atherosclerotic plaque disease, but also to identify several compositional features suggestive of plaque vulnerability. Imaging of the relatively small coronary arteries has, until now, been limited by the problems of cardiac and respiratory motion, however, more recently, technological advancements have allowed more detailed plaque information to be acquired. This article will review the origins of MRI imaging of atherosclerotic disease, its current status, and its potential future applications.


Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by amyloid-beta (Aβ)-containing plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and neuron and synapse loss. Tangle formation has been reproduced in P301L tau transgenic pR5 mice, whereas APPswPS2N141I double-transgenic APP152 mice develop Aβ plaques. Cross-breeding generates triple transgenic (tripleAD) mice that combine both pathologies in one model. To determine functional consequences of the combined Aβ and tau pathologies, we performed a proteomic analysis followed by functional validation. Specifically, we obtained vesicular preparations from tripleAD mice, the parental strains, and nontransgenic mice, followed by the quantitative mass-tag labeling proteomic technique iTRAQ and mass spectrometry. Within 1,275 quantified proteins, we found a massive deregulation of 24 proteins, of which one-third were mitochondrial proteins mainly related to complexes I and IV of the oxidative phosphorylation system (OXPHOS). Notably, deregulation of complex I was tau dependent, whereas deregulation of complex IV was Aβ dependent, both at the protein and activity levels. Synergistic effects of Aβ and tau were evident in 8-month-old tripleAD mice as only they showed a reduction of the mitochondrial membrane potential at this early age. At the age of 12 months, the strongest defects on OXPHOS, synthesis of ATP, and reactive oxygen species were exhibited in the tripleAD mice, again emphasizing synergistic, age-associated effects of Aβ and tau in perishing mitochondria. Our study establishes a molecular link between Aβ and tau protein in AD pathology in vivo, illustrating the potential of quantitative proteomics.


How do firms behave? Why are firms different? What are the functions of the headquarters unit in a multibusiness firm? What determines success or failure in international competition? In Fundamental Issues in Strategy, twenty-two prominent scholars collectively address these four fundamental questions to examine strategic management's intellectual roots and to strengthen the field's theoretical foundations. They take a comprehensive look at the "intellectual backbone" of the field of strategy, raising important issues that demand further research. The result is a compelling reexamination of strategic management that urges scholars to refocus their efforts now - and sets a research agenda for the coming decade. The editors, Richard P. Rumelt, Dan E. Schendel, and David J. Teece, organized this project specifically to encourage focus on fundamental questions of strategy; call for a significant increase in the sophistication, rigor, and scholarly quality of strategy research; demonstrate a fruitful interaction between strategy researchers and discipline-based scholars; and show the tremendous potential of the intersection of basic disciplines and strategy for gaining new insights and improving management practice and organizational performance. Indeed, by focusing on fundamental questions, the contributors reveal that disciplines like economics, organizational sociology, and political science as well as research on strategic management can - and should - shed new light on this important field. Fundamental Issues in Strategy is the product of a conference jointly sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation through its consortium "Competitiveness and Cooperation, " The John M. OlinFoundation, UCLA Center for International Business Education and Research, and the Strategic Management Society. It frames a complete and original statement about the future of strategic management - and establishes a foundation for future growth and development in the field of strategy.


Knowledge Discovery Systems can be used to generate classification rules describing data from databases. Typically, only a small fraction of the rules generated may actually be of interest. Measures of rule interestingness allow us to filter out less interesting rules.

Classification rules may be discriminant (e → h) or characteristic (h → e), where e is evidence, and h is an hypothesis. For discriminant rules, e distinguishes h from ⇁h. For characteristic rules, e summarizes one or more properties common to all instances of h. Both rule types can contribute insight into the data under analysis.

In this paper, we first expand on the rule interestingness measure principles proposed by Piatetsky-Shapiro (1991) and by Major and Mangano (1993) by adding a principle which, unlike the others, considers the difference between discriminant and characteristic rules.

We establish experimentally that the three popular interestingness measures for discriminant rules found in the literature do not fully serve their purpose when applied to characteristic rules. To our knowledge, no interestingness measures for characteristic rules have been published. We propose IC++, an interestingness measure for characteristic rules based on necessity and sufficiency (Duda, Gaschnig, & Hart 1981). IC++ obeys each of the rule interestingness principles, unlike the other measures studied. If a given characteristic rule is found to be uninteresting by IC++, three additional measures, which we present, can be used to derive other useful information regarding h and e.


CONTEXT
The erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs) erythropoietin and darbepoetin are licensed to treat chemotherapy-associated anemia in patients with nonmyeloid malignancies. Although systematic overviews of trials have identified venous thromboembolism (VTE) risks, none have identified mortality risks with ESAs.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate VTE and mortality rates associated with ESA administration for the treatment of anemia among patients with cancer.

DATA SOURCES
A published overview from the Cochrane Collaboration (search dates: January 1, 1985-April 1, 2005) and MEDLINE and EMBASE databases (key words: clinical trial, erythropoietin, darbepoetin, and oncology), the public Web site of the US Food and Drug Administration and ESA manufacturers, and safety advisories (search dates: April 1, 2005-January 17, 2008).

STUDY SELECTION
Phase 3 trials comparing ESAs with placebo or standard of care for the treatment of anemia among patients with cancer.

DATA EXTRACTION
Mortality rates, VTE rates, and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were extracted by 3 reviewers from 51 clinical trials with 13 611 patients that included survival information and 38 clinical trials with 8172 patients that included information on VTE.

DATA SYNTHESIS
Patients with cancer who received ESAs had increased VTE risks (334 VTE events among 4610 patients treated with ESA vs 173 VTE events among 3562 control patients; 7.5% vs 4.9%; relative risk, 1.57; 95% CI, 1.31-1.87) and increased mortality risks (hazard ratio, 1.10; 95% CI, 1.01-1.20).

CONCLUSIONS
Erythropoiesis-stimulating agent administration to patients with cancer is associated with increased risks of VTE and mortality. Our findings, in conjunction with basic science studies on erythropoietin and erythropoietin receptors in solid cancers, raise concern about the safety of ESA administration to patients with cancer.