The need for improvement in the development of research careers and researchers' training in transferable skills was highlighted in two particular recommendations (numbers 4.2 and 5.3) in the 2002 report 'SET for success: the report of Sir Gareth Roberts' Review - the supply of people with science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills' (Roberts, 2002). As a consequence of that review, Research Councils UK (RCUK)1 have invested about £120 million, usually referred to as 'Roberts' Money', in research organisations to address this concern in all research disciplines. The last 'Roberts' Money' payment will be for the period up to March 2011; it was therefore proposed to assess the progress made with taking forward these specific recommendations. An independent panel was formed by RCUK to undertake this review in 2010. The terms of reference for the panel are in Annex A. In summary, the panel was asked to review progress made and to advise RCUK and the higher education (HE) sector about future requirements for the development and training of researchers. In the course of their review, the panel considered a wide range of existing reports, interviewed key stakeholders in the HE sector and elsewhere, as well as drawing on their own knowledge and expertise. This report presents the findings of the panel's review.


Which personality traits are associated with physical attractiveness? Recent findings suggest that people high in some dark personality traits, such as narcissism and psychopathy, can be physically attractive. But what makes them attractive? Studies have confounded the more enduring qualities that impact attractiveness (i.e., unadorned attractiveness) and the effects of easily manipulated qualities such as clothing (i.e., effective adornment). In this multimethod study, we disentangle these components of attractiveness, collect self-reports and peer reports of eight major personality traits, and reveal the personality profile of people who adorn themselves effectively. Consistent with findings that dark personalities actively create positive first impressions, we found that the composite of the Dark Triad—Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy—correlates with effective adornment. This effect was also evident for psychopathy measured alone. This study provides the first experimental evidence that dark personalities construct appearances that act as social lures—possibly facilitating their cunning social strategies.


Social networks have many counter-intuitive properties, including the "friendship paradox" that states, on average, your friends have more friends than you do. Recently, a variety of other paradoxes were demonstrated in online social networks. This paper explores the origins of these network paradoxes. Specifically, we ask whether they arise from mathematical properties of the networks or whether they have a behavioral origin. We show that sampling from heavy-tailed distributions always gives rise to a paradox in the mean, but not the median. We propose a strong form of network paradoxes, based on utilizing the median, and validate it empirically using data from two online social networks. Specifically, we show that for any user the majority of user's friends and followers have more friends, followers, etc. than the user, and that this cannot be explained by statistical properties of sampling. Next, we explore the behavioral origins of the paradoxes by using the shuffle test to remove correlations between node degrees and attributes. We find that paradoxes for the mean persist in the shuffled network, but not for the median. We demonstrate that strong paradoxes arise due to the assortativity of user attributes, including degree, and correlation between degree and attribute.


In this paper I use primary and secondary sources to quantify the role of tenant labour on settler farms in colonial Africa, using Southern Rhodesia as a case in point. My findings show that the rise of wage labour did not mark the end of labour tenancy, as has been assumed in previous literature. On the contrary, the two forms of labour co-existed. The results find support in the theoretical literature on agrarian labour contracts as well as from studies on farm labour on large farms in pre-industrial Europe and America. This literature has been surprisingly neglected in studies of rural labour relations in colonial Africa. Based on my estimates I revise the fundamental question of the role of access to and control of indigenous labour in the growth of European settler agriculture in Africa. In contrast to previous research, I argue that the rise of wage labour was a response to settler farmers' limited capacity to control tenant labour rather than a sign of the superiority of agrarian capitalist relations of production.


I study firms' behaviour in markets where firms' long-run capacity decisions, made in the presence of uncertain demand, constrains short-run competition. In Chapter 2, I analyse firms' investment and pricing incentives in a differentiated products framework with uncertain demand. Firms choose production capacities before observing demand and choose prices after demand is realised. Unlike previous models, when firms are identical, symmetric pure-strategy equilibria exist, even in the presence of very low capacity costs. Furthermore, industry capacity in these symmetric equilibria is strictly greater than the equivalent Cournot equilibrium industry capacity for low costs, and equal to the Cournot industry capacity for higher costs. Subsidies on capacity costs have a greater positive impact on equilibrium capacity than an equivalent subsidy on production costs. In Chapter 3, I use this model to analyse how the market changes when firms practice `withholding'. This is when firms withdraw capacity from the market in the short-run, after demand is realised, in the hope of making greater profits. I show that withholding is an optimal strategy for firms in these markets, and that compared to the no-withholding case, equilibrium output is lower in low demand states and higher in high demand states. Equilibrium capacity strictly increases. I discuss why it is hard to find real world examples of withholding in action, despite the increased profits. Chapter 4 looks at the specific case of the electricity industry. Electricity markets are a good example where capacity constraints and random demand affect competitive outcomes. However, trade in electricity is subject to additional constraints caused by the transmission of electricity through a network. Network constraints are well understood to cause considerable non-convexities in firms' optimisation problems; thus theoretical models have limited use in analysing the behaviour of electricity generating firms. An alternative approach, economic experiments, has become an important tool to study these markets, but questions remain on whether subjects can really imitate large firms in the presence of such complexity. This chapter provides evidence in the affirmative, specifically showing that experimental subjects can understand loop flows in the presence of Kirchoff's Laws, a key physical constraint, and how this affects firms' pricing decisions. The results suggest that electricity market experiments could be scaled up successfully to more realistic networks.


Metastatic melanoma is an aggressive cancer with very low response rate against conventional chemotherapeutic agents such as dacarbazine (DTIC). Inhibitor of Rb–Raf-1 interaction RRD-251 was tested against the melanoma cell lines SK-MEL-28, SK-MEL-5, and SK-MEL-2. RRD-251 was found to be a potent inhibitor of melanoma cell proliferation, irrespective of V600E B-Raf mutation status of the cell lines. In a SK-MEL-28 xenograft experiment, RRD-251 exerted a significant suppression of tumor growth compared with vehicle (P = 0.003). Similar to in vitro effects, tumors from RRD-251–treated animals showed decreased Rb–Raf-1 interaction in vivo. Growth suppressive effects of RRD-251 were associated with induction of apoptosis as well as a G1 arrest, with an accompanying decrease in S-phase cells. RRD-251 inhibited Rb phosphorylation and downregulated E2F1 protein levels in these cells. Real-time PCR analysis showed that RRD-251 caused downregulation of cell-cycle regulatory genes thymidylate synthase (TS) and cdc6 as well as the antiapoptotic gene Mcl-1. Combinatorial treatment of RRD-251 and DTIC resulted in a significantly higher apoptosis in DTIC resistant cell lines SK-MEL-28 and SK-MEL-5, as revealed by increased caspase-3 activity and PARP cleavage. Because aberrant Rb/E2F pathway is associated with melanoma progression and resistance to apoptosis, these results suggest that the Rb–Raf-1 inhibitor could be an effective agent for melanoma treatment, either alone or in combination with DTIC. Mol Cancer Ther; 9(12); 3330–41. ©2010 AACR.


In July 2009, Canada reintroduced the temporary visa requirement for nationals of the Czech Republic. Canadian authorities argued that it was necessary to limit the surge in asylum applications by Czech nationals of Roma origin who had been registered over the previous years. This is the first time that a country whose own nationals enjoy visa-free travel to the European Union has reintroduced visas for the nationals of an EU member state. This working paper assesses the implications of this measure for the EU's common visa policy in light of the principle of reciprocity, which lies at its core. It looks in particular at the way in which the EU has reacted to and is currently dealing with this measure in order to see whether the instruments at the EU's disposal to handle such situations have proven to be effective, and whether the necessary solidarity among the member states that should underpin the common visa policy can be said to exist. This paper assesses the Czech Republic-Canada visa affair also from the angle of the fundamental rights situation of Roma as a minority in Europe and the EU's asylum system. In particular, it argues that the prohibition for EU nationals in need of international protection to seek it in any member state, contained in the EU's asylum legislation, may be one of the driving forces behind the exodus of Czech Roma to Canada.This work was prepared as part of a project on Migration and Asylum in Europe and EU-Canada Relations, funded by the European Commission, Directorate-General for External Relations, Relations with the US and Canada. The project aims at providing a better understanding of the conceptual, political, sociological and legal elements and dilemmas characterising the development of common European public responses to these issues, and their implications for the relationship between liberty and security in EU-Canada relations.


Determining what makes an Information System (IS) successful is an ongoing concern for both researchers and practitioners alike. Arriving at an answer to this problem is compounded by the subjective nature of success and therefore trying to make judgements of what is and is not a success is problematic. Despite these difficulties system use has become more accepted as a measure of system success. Following this logic if a system is accepted it will have a higher likelihood of being used and therefore impact positively on success. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is one of the more widely accepted theoretical frameworks that has been used to measure system acceptance. This paper combines the TAM, as the theoretical framework, with case study research to provide a more holistic account of why a specific IS, an online assignment submission system, has become successful. Initial findings suggest that the TAM measures of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are effective predictors of systems success.


This brief examines redefining health through energy solutions. In the Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR) household air pollution from the incomplete combustion of solid fuels is the top health risk, costing some 3.5 percent of GDP in lost productivity. To increase access to modern cooking and heating solutions in East Asia, the World Bank introduced a Clean Stove Initiative in 2012. Pilot projects were begun in China, Indonesia, and Mongolia, as well as Lao PDR. One of the first challenges was the need to bring all relevant ministries and stakeholders on board to help recognize the urgency of the problem and the magnitude of suffering that was occurring as a result of household air pollution. The other was to link the health situation with the need for a clean energy solution.


There exists now a voluminous literature that characterises "student learning." Of particular importance to this article are the attempts to categorise and classify underlying conceptions of student learning. Conceptions of student learning have been divided into five hierarchical categories: learning as the quantitative increase in knowledge, learning as memorisation, learning as acquisition of facts and procedures that can be retained and/or utilized in practice, learning as the abstraction of meaning, and learning as an interpretative process aimed at the understanding of reality |28~. Beaty, Dall'Alba and Marton |2~ have subsequently identified the same five conceptions and added a sixth: "changing as a person." These conceptions of learning are important because of the evidence that they have a strong influence upon the study approach students use for particular study tasks |for example, 34~. The terms "surface" and "deep" are now commonly used to describe student approaches to learning after the pioneering work of Marton and Saljo |23~. With the surface approach the student concentrates upon the surface features of a text or study task, resulting in a tendency toward a reproductive orientation to study tasks: the student attempts to memorise material thought likely to be relevant to examination questions. A deep approach, on the other hand, is evidenced when students concentrate upon the underlying meaning of readings or projects, usually because of an intrinsic interest in the material. We might want to speculate whether there is a similar relationship between conceptions or orientations to teaching and the way courses are taught, for this relationship might, in turn, affect the quality of student learning. There has been less research, however, into corresponding classifications for teaching. Because it is now widely agreed that teaching does have a profound effect on student learning, such work could be quite useful. There is now a substantial body of evidence on the effect of teaching method, learning tasks, assessment demands, and workload on student approaches to learning. Observations that students make heavy use of reproductive approaches have been found to coincide with factors such as: high workloads |6, 7~; surface-level assessment demands |9, 33~; low levels of intrinsic interest in the course |10~; and lack of freedom in the learning environment |27~. In this article we discuss data from a questionnaire we developed, which identifies two orientations to lecturers' teaching at institutions of higher education: "knowledge transmission" and "learning facilitation." The learning facilitation orientation is made up of five subscales with labels: problem solving, more interactive teaching, facilitative teaching, pastoral interest, and motivator of students. The knowledge transmission orientation has four subscales: training for specific jobs, use of media, imparting information, and knowledge of subject. We go on to relate data from this questionnaire to results of longitudinal surveys on the quality of student learning using the Biggs |3~ Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ). This instrument incorporates scales that examine the extent to which deep and surface approaches to study are employed. We believe that our study does establish a relationship between lecturers' orientations to teaching and the quality of student learning. Pratt |26~ has recently reported a phenomenographic study of the conceptions of teaching of adult educators. He suggests five classifications for conceptions of teaching: delivering content, modelling ways of being, cultivating the intellect, facilitating personal agency, and seeking a better society. Our orientations are rather broader than Pratt's conceptions but there is a correspondence between our "knowledge transmission" orientation and Pratt's "delivering content" conception. Our learning facilitation orientation seems to encompass both the "cultivating the intellect" and the "facilitating personal agency" conceptions. …


Although the animal may be, as Nietzsche argued, ahistorical, living completely in the present, it nonetheless plays a crucial role in human history. The fascination with animals that leads not only to a desire to observe and even live alongside them, but to capture or kill them, is found in all civilizations. The essays collected in "Beastly Natures" show how animals have been brought into human culture, literally helping to build our societies (as domesticated animals have done) or contributing, often in problematic ways, to our concept of the wild. The book begins with a group of essays that approach the historical relevance of human-animal relations seen from the perspectives of various disciplines and suggest ways in which animals might be brought into formal studies of history. Differences in species and location can greatly affect the shape of human-animal interaction, and so the essays that follow address a wide spectrum of topics, including the demanding fate of the working horse, the complex image of the American alligator (at turns a dangerous predator and a tourist attraction), the zoo gardens of Victorian England, the iconography of the rhinoceros and the preference it reveals in society for myth over science, relations between humans and wolves in Europe, and what we can learn from society's enthusiasm for "political" animals, such as the pets of the American presidents and the Soviet Union's "space dogs." Taken together, these essays suggest new ways of looking not only at animals but at human history. ContributorsMark V. Barrow Jr., Virginia Tech * Peter Edwards, Roehampton University * Kelly Enright, Rutgers University * Oliver Hochadel, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona * Uwe Lubken, Rachel Carson Center, Munich * Garry Marvin, Roehampton University * Clay McShane, Northeastern University * Amy Nelson, Virginia Tech * Susan Pearson, Northwestern University * Helena Pycior, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee * Harriet Ritvo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology * Nigel Rothfels, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee * Joel A. Tarr, Carnegie Mellon University * Mary Weismantel, Northwestern University"


This Article seeks to resurrect a lost thread in our civil rights tradi-tion: the idea that workers have a positive right to free labor. A positive right to free labor includes the right to work for a living wage free of undue coercion and free from discrimination based on immutable characteristics. Not merely the negative guarantee against the state's infringement on in-dividual equality and liberty, a positive right to free labor is immediately enforceable against state and private parties. A positive right to free labor is rooted in the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohib-its slavery and involuntary servitude and provides a substantive guarantee of equality and liberty to all people. It is enforced primarily not by courts but by political actors. This Article explores the roots of the Thirteenth Amendment and the confluence of antislavery and pro-workers' rights ac-tivism in antebellum America to understand the meaning of that Amend-ment's abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude. The nineteenth cen-tury was a transformative century in both the conditions and the law of labor, and the shift from a paradigm of unfree to free labor was central to the Reconstruction Era effort. As part of that effort, the Thirteenth Amend-ment played a pivotal role in transforming the law of labor. A positive right to free labor was revived during the New Deal Era, when the defini-tion of civil rights in our country was in flux. A positive right to free labor starts with this transformative promise of the Thirteenth Amendment and seeks to envision what our civil rights law would be like if workers were its primary subject.


Frederick Douglass and George Fitzhugh disagreed on virtually every major issue of the day. On slavery, women's rights, and the preservation of the Union their opinions were diametrically opposed. Where Douglass thundered against the evils of slavery, Fitzhugh counted its many alleged blessings in ways that would make modern readers cringe. What then could the leading abolitionist of the day and the most prominent southern proslavery intellectual possibly have in common? According to David F. Ericson, the answer is as surprising as it is simple; liberalism. In The Debate Over Slavery David F. Ericson makes the controversial argument that despite their many ostensible differences, most Northern abolitionists and Southern defenders of slavery shared many common commitments: to liberal principles; to the nation; to the nation's special mission in history; and to secular progress. He analyzes, side-by-side, pro and antislavery thinkers such as Lydia Marie Child, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, Thomas R. Dew, and James Fitzhugh to demonstrate the links between their very different ideas and to show how, operating from liberal principles, they came to such radically different conclusions. His raises disturbing questions about liberalism that historians, philosophers, and political scientists cannot afford to ignore.


The performance of relatively complex photonic integrated circuits (PICs) is now reaching such high levels that the long sought goal of realizing low-cost, -size, -weight, and -power chips to replace hybrid solutions seems to have been achieved for some applications. This tutorial traces some of the evolution of this technology that has led to an array of high-functionality InP-based PICs useful in optical sensing and communication applications. Examples of recent high-performance PICs that have arisen out of these developments are presented. Fundamental to much of this work was the development of integration strategies to compatibly combine a variety of components in a relatively simple fabrication process. For the UCSB work, this was initially based upon the creation of a single-chip widely tunable semiconductor laser that required the integration of gain, reflector, phase-tuning and absorber sections. As it provided most of the elements needed for many more complex PICs, their creation followed somewhat naturally by adding more of these same elements outside of the laser cavity using the same processing steps. Of course, additional elements were needed for some of the PICs to be discussed, but in most cases, these have been added without adding significant processing complexity. Generally, the integration philosophy has been to avoid patterned epitaxial growths, to use post-growth processing, such as quantum-well intermixing to provide multiple bandgaps, rather than multiple epitaxial regrowths, and to focus on processes that could be performed with vendor growth and implant facilities so that only basic clean room processing facilities are required.


The Pharmacy Education Action Plan of the World Health Organization (WHO) United National Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) is oriented towards identifying locally determined needs and pharmaceutical services and using those to facilitate comprehensive education development and achievement of competencies, which in turn are required to meet the local services.1,2

The world's current population is around 6 billion inhabitants; there are 191 countries and more than 6000 languages, and likely millions of different cultures depending on how the term culture is defined. Over the past decade, cultural competency, the ongoing and interactive process based on the respect for others' beliefs and traditions,3 has crept into the professional literature with more than 10 articles in this Journal alone. From this, we know that culture plays a role in health and health care, and therefore, in health professions education, but we do not know how culture influences the ability to define practice competency from a global perspective.

Competence is very much a contemporary currency in the health care professions. It carries with it traditional meanings that can be hard to escape from, especially when we start to talk about new models of professional development and new ways in which to regulate professional performance. Competences are the functional part or the "what" that is attached to competence. Competencies refer to the qualities of capability or the "how" of competence. Looking holistically, all these concepts directly contribute to the development of effective and sustained performance within an individual.4

To achieve a high quality global infrastructure for pharmacy, the educational system should be mapped to the required competencies of pharmacists to provide the relevant pharmaceutical services for meeting the health needs in any given country context. While no one national model may be appropriate for all systems, there are significant global health and labor and market drivers which suggest that a competency-based approach is sensible and sustainable for workforce development.5

But the same reasons that a competency framework is needed are also the ones that can seem to stand in the way of achieving it. So before a competency framework is introduced, it is necessary to ask: What are the cultural implications influencing the understanding of pharmacist competency? What are the challenges and barriers to acceptance of a global competency framework? What are pharmacists' personal attitudes towards competency?

To address these questions, pharmacists representing the WHO UNESCO FIP Pharmacy Education Taskforce3,4 led a workshop at the International Social Pharmacy Workshop (2008, New Zealand). During the session, participants discussed 3 different case scenarios created to explore the possibility of achieving an international understanding about competency in the pharmacy profession.

The dominant influencing forces raised by the participants were those concerning the daily work of the pharmacist in different countries: legal, clinical and, in some cases, business-driven factors. The critical element, however, is the type of patient care provided by pharmacists and the perspectives of the public and policymakers towards them.

As for challenges to acceptance of a global competency framework, the barriers identified included economic, educational, and linguistic; highlighting variability in pharmaceutical service provision and functional challenges such as how one framework with applicability to different settings could be developed. It was acknowledged that culture can influence expectations of pharmaceutical services by the public and regulatory bodies and that religion, traditions, history, experiences and perceptions of medicines are challenges to a unified understanding of competency in pharmacy. Despite this, the participants agreed that a pharmacist is still considered a medicines expert, regardless of the country in which he or she practices.

At the meeting, most participants recognized the need for a global competency framework, though questions still remained on how this could be achieved. One suggestion was to review existing frameworks/standards or models (internal and external to pharmacy) and develop a broad, simple framework with functional areas that could be adapted to local situations. This work is ongoing.

At the country-level, the competence of pharmacists across different practice settings is of increasing interest. Practitioners need to be competent and able to perform at their best. Seeking a broad global common framework adaptable to national needs is a way forward. Cultural barriers can be acknowledged, making it possible to obtain a consensus on the basis that practitioners should always have the best interests of their patients at heart.

The emerging debate about a core set of competencies for practitioners in pharmacy comes at a time when other healthcare professions are in the process of developing or have already developed their own global competency frameworks.6 In some countries, there are even efforts to compare and consolidate frameworks across multiple health professions.7

The pursuit of a global framework is intended to drive a possible harmonization of the pharmacy profession worldwide. Although there are often differences in education systems and teaching methods, we all share the same common goal as practitioners – the improvement of patient health. In order to achieve such a goal we need to be competent in our everyday job, regardless of the practice setting, country, or culture.


FPGA Prototyping Using Verilog Examples will provide you with a hands-on introduction to Verilog synthesis and FPGA programming through a learn by doing approach. By following the clear, easy-to-understand templates for code development and the numerous practical examples, you can quickly develop and simulate a sophisticated digital circuit, realize it on a prototyping device, and verify the operation of its physical implementation. This introductory text that will provide you with a solid foundation, instill confidence with rigorous examples for complex systems and prepare you for future development tasks.


The novel ruthenaphosphaalkenyls [Ru{P═C(H)SiMe2R}Cl(CO)(PPh3)2] (R = p-C6H4CF3, nBu) have been prepared for the first time, and studied alongside precedent analogues (R = Me, Ph, p-tol) for their reactions with HCl. In contrast to chemistry defined for the tert-butyl congener [Ru{P═C(H)tBu}Cl(CO)(PPh3)2], which initially adds a single equivalent of HCl across the Ru–P linkage, all five silyl derivatives undergo spontaneous addition of a second equivalent to afford [Ru{η1-PHCl–CH2SiMe2R}Cl(CO)(PPh3)2], extremely rare examples of coordinated "PHXR" type ligands. Where R = SiMe3, a distorted octahedral geometry with a conformationally restricted "PHXR" ligand is observed crystallographically; this structure is appreciably retained in solution, as determined from multinuclear NMR spectroscopic features, which include a Karplus-like PPPh3–Ru–P–H spin–spin coupling dependence. Computational data suggest a silyl-induced increase in negative charge density at the phosphaalkenic carbon, rather than an intrinsic t...


In coherent homodyne apertureless scanning near-field optical microscopy (ASNOM) the background field cannot be fully suppressed because of the interference between the different collected fields, making the images difficult to interpret. We show that implementing the heterodyne version of ASNOM allows one to overcome this issue. We present a comparison between homodyne and heterodyne ASNOM through near-field analysis of gold nanowells, integrated waveguides, and a single evanescent wave generated by total internal reflection. The heterodyne approach allows for the control of the interferometric effect with the background light. In particular, the undesirable background is shown to be replaced by a controlled reference field. As a result, near-field information undetectable by a homodyne ASNOM is extracted by use of the heterodyne approach. Additionally, it is shown that field amplitude and field phase can be detected separately.


Throughout history, attempts have been made to influence children's social behavior through programs and policies in schools. While well-intentioned, such programs are sometimes introduced and perpetuated without evidence about whether they fulfill their goals and objectives. Council is a program that has been implemented in schools since 1980 to foster tolerance and social connection. The Center for Council Training started more than 50 programs in California, Arizona, Washington, Colorado, New York, and Israel. The Council Practitioners Center started to integrate Council into schools in the Los Angeles School District (LAUSD) and has a goal of expanding Council throughout California and other states. Council is a type of group communication intended to encourage students to share stories that may lead to processing conflict, inspiration, skilled decision making, improvement in academics, and stronger relationships with others. These goals are based on the principles of deep listening and sharing in Council. This qualitative study represents an initial effort to explore the impact of Council on early adolescent children ages 11-13 years old. Nine middle school students were interviewed. Core findings included: (a) Council provides a safe environment in which one is able to share emotional and personal stories that promote healthy relationships, (b) Council is a positive experience for participants promoting an optimistic outlook on life and (c) Council promotes self-identity formation through fostering personal growth and valuing of life. Implications for further research and possible benefits of this study are discussed. The electronic version of this dissertation is available free at Ohiolink ETD Center, www. ohiolink. edu/etd.


Background—Off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery has been demonstrated to reduce morbidity in elective patients. However, high-risk patients might benefit the most from this surgical procedure. Our goal was to investigate the effectiveness of on-pump and off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery on early clinical outcome in a consecutive series of overweight patients. Methods and Results—From April 1996 to April 2001, data on 4321 patients undergoing coronary surgery (mortality 1.4%) were prospectively entered into the Patient Analysis and Tracking System. Data were extracted for all patients with a body mass index ≥25 kg/m2. A risk-adjusted analysis was performed to assess the effect of surgical technique in the whole overweight cohort. 2844 patients were identified (2261 male, median age 63, interquartile range 56 to 68). Patients undergoing on-pump surgery (2170, 76.3%) were less likely than those undergoing off-pump surgery to have hypercholesterolemia or left main stem disease and were, on average, less obese. However, they were more likely to have unstable angina and to have had a previous myocardial infarction, and they had more extensive coronary disease and received more grafts (all P <0.05). Unadjusted analyses, taking account only of consultant team, showed significant benefits of off-pump surgery in terms of hospital deaths, arrhythmias, inotropic use, use of intra-aortic balloon pump, blood loss, transfusion requirement, postoperative hemoglobin, chest infections, neurological complications, intensive care unit and hospital stay (all P <0.05). After adjustment for confounding prognostic factors, the benefits of off-pump surgery were still significant for death in hospital, transfusion requirement, postoperative hemoglobin, neurological complications, intensive care unit and hospital stay (ORs 0.35 to 0.79, P <0.05). Conclusions—These results suggest that off-pump surgery is safe and effective and is associated with a reduced in-hospital mortality and morbidity in overweight patients when compared with conventional coronary surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass and cardioplegic arrest.


What citizens think about Muslim immigrants has important implications for some of the most pressing challenges facing Western democracies. To advance contemporary understanding of what 'Islamophobia' really is – for example, whether it is a dislike based on immigrants' ethnic background, religious identity or specific religious behaviors – this study fielded a representative online survey experiment in the UK in summer 2015. The results suggest that Muslim immigrants are not per se viewed more negatively than Christian immigrants. Instead, the study finds evidence that citizens' uneasiness with Muslim immigration is first and foremost the result of a rejection of fundamentalist forms of religiosity. This suggests that common explanations, which are based on simple dichotomies between liberal supporters and conservative critics of immigration, need to be re-evaluated. While the politically left and culturally liberal have more positive attitudes toward immigrants than right-leaning individuals and conservatives, they are also far more critical of religious groups. The study concludes that a large part of the current political controversy over Muslim immigration is related to this double opposition: it is less about immigrants versus natives or even Muslim versus Christians than about political liberalism versus religious fundamentalism.


Extending recent research on parental gender preferences in the Nordic countries, this study uses unique register data from Finland and Sweden (1971-1999) that provide us with the opportunity to compare childbearing dynamics and possible underlying sex preferences among natives and national minorities, namely Finnish-born immigrants in Sweden and members of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. Moreover, our Swedish data allow us to investigate regional and educational differences in child-sex specific fertility behavior of two-child mothers in 1981-1999. For Finland, we observe a continuous boy preference among the national majority and the Swedish-speaking minority as reflected in higher third-birth rates of mothers of two girls than of mothers of two boys. Evidence of similar preferences is found for Finnish-born migrants in Sweden, where the native-born population appears to have developed a girl preference, though. In all cases, we also observe clear indications of a preference for having at least one child of each sex. Generally speaking, our findings support an interpretation of parental gender preferences as a longstanding cultural phenomenon, related to country of childhood socialization rather than language group. Our analysis of regional and educational differentials in Sweden reveals no evidence which supports diffusion theories of persistence and change in parents' sex preferences for children.


Based on the findings of a questionnaire, this paper examines how the first name Réka is judged among those bearing the name and what ideas motivated their parents to choose this name for them. The name became a part of the Hungarian name stock approximately 60 years ago as a revived historical name and in 2005 it was the second most often chosen female name. The most important conclusions drawn from the corpus of answers of 303 informants: 90% of those bearing the name Réka are satisfied with their parents' name choice. Parents confessed to choosing this name either because it is a Hungarian name or because they liked it. 50% of the informants living in Transylvania (Romania) also mentioned that their parents' choice had also been motivated by the fact that this name can not be translated into Romanian, so it can appear in personal documents in Hungarian. About 50% of the interviewees would gladly give this name to their daughters, either to pass on the name or to induce identity formation. According to the data observed, the first parents who gave this name to their daughters had a university or college degree.


Ethical issues surrounding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in law often share a common theme. As AI becomes increasingly integrated within the legal system, how can society ensure that core legal values are preserved?

Among the most important of these legal values are: equal treatment under the law; public, unbiased, and independent adjudication of legal disputes; justification and explanation for legal outcomes; outcomes based upon law, principle, and facts rather than social status or power; outcomes premised upon reasonable, and socially justifiable grounds; the ability to appeal decisions and seek independent review; procedural fairness and due process; fairness in design and application of the law; public promulgation of laws; transparency in legal substance and process; adequate access to justice for all; integrity and honesty in creation and application of law; and judicial, legislative, and administrative efficiency.

The use of AI in law may diminish or enhance how these values are actually expressed within the legal system or alter their balance relative to one another. This chapter surveys some of the most important ethical topics involving the use of AI within the legal system itself (but not its use within society more broadly) and examines how central legal values might unintentionally (or intentionally) change with increased use of AI in law.


Considerable progress has been made recently in understanding the genetic, immunologic, and virologic factors in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected individuals who either rapidly progress or do not progress to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). In addition, detection of HIV-specific immune responses in HIV-negative individuals who have been exposed to the virus multiple times suggests that natural immune responses to HIV may be protective in rare individuals. Understanding the correlates of protective immunity to HIV infection is critical to efforts to develop preventive HIV vaccines as well as to determine the feasibility of treating HIV infection by boosting immunity to HIV.


The early experiments on radical polymerization, which were to lead to a study of nitroxide trapping of the initiation step and the interest in defect groups, particularly the macromonomers formed by termination by disproportionation, are discussed. Results from the nitroxide trapping clearly show that the initiation step ranges from simple clean addition to the head of the monomer, to complex addition/abstraction reactions. Careful selection of the monomer/initiation system is emphasized with particular reference to two common monomers, styrene and methyl methacrylate, and two initiating radicals, t-butoxy and benzoyloxy. The discovery of nitroxide mediated polymerization (NMP) from observations made during the nitroxide trapping work is reported and the ability to have a living radical system demonstrated with numerous examples. Similarly, the study of the copolymerization of macromonomers, formed by disproportionation of the propagating chains, is discussed with the discovery of β-scission and an early form of addition–fragmentation reported. The evolution of reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) to a highly versatile and commercially attractive radical system is reported and the detailed chemistry behind the discovery of this living radical system discussed. Both NMP and RAFT enable the synthesis of structures not previously possible by radical polymerization and in some cases not possible by any other process.


Up until now, several studies have shown that a speech interface system giving verbal suggestions with beeping sounds that decrease in pitch conveyed a low system confidence level to users intuitively, and these beeping sounds were named "artificial subtle expressions" (ASEs). However, all participants in these studies were only Japanese, so if the participants' mother tongue has different sensitivity to variations in pitch compared with Japanese, the interpretations of the ASEs might be different. We then investigated whether the ASEs are interpreted in the same way as with Japanese regardless of the users' mother tongues; specifically we focused on three language categories in traditional phonological typology. We conducted a web-based experiment to investigate whether the ways speakers of German, Portuguese (stress accent language), Mandarin Chinese (tone language) and Japanese (pitch accent language) interpret the ASEs are different or not. The results of this experiment showed that the ways of interpreting did not differ, so this suggests that these ways are language-independent.


The ongoing disintegration of large ice shelf parts in Antarctica raise the need for a better understanding of the physical processes that trigger critical crack growth in ice shelves. Finite elements in combination with configurational forces facilitate the analysis of single surface fractures in ice under various boundary conditions and material parameters. The principles of linear elastic fracture mechanics are applied to show the strong influence of different depth dependent functions for the density and the Young's modulus on the stress intensity factor K I at the crack tip. Ice, for this purpose, is treated as an elastically compressible solid and the consequences of this choice in comparison to the predominant incompressible approaches are discussed. The computed stress intensity factors K I for dry and water filled cracks are compared to critical values K Ic from measurements that can be found in literature.


The novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is extremely contagious and currently incurable. Hence, much of the efforts to contain the pandemic have focused on social distancing, prohibiting gatherings and even curfews. The Coronavirus poses a new dual challenge for legislatures. First, the Coronavirus, and the measures taken to contain its spread, make it difficult and even dangerous for parliaments to operate, given that legislatures are by their very nature large multi-member bodies whose operation requires assembling a large group of people together to deliberate and vote. Second, the Coronavirus pandemic creates a sense of emergency that empowers the executive branch and emboldens it to assert greater authority at the expenses of the legislature.

Despite these challenges, the continued operation of legislatures throughout the Coronavirus crisis, and particularly the maintenance of legislative oversight of the executive, has never been more vital. Legislatures have a crucial role in checking the executive and ensuring that countries will not lose their constitutional and democratic values in the process of managing the Coronavirus crisis.

This report begins by explicating the novel dual challenge the Coronavirus pandemic poses for legislatures. It than focuses on elaborating on the unique challenge currently faced by the Israeli Parliament. It explains how the unique combination between the Coronavirus pandemic and the complex political situation in Israel, has made the issue of parliamentary operation during the Coronavirus pandemic particularly acute and urgent.

Against this background, this report examines whether and how parliaments in other democracies are operating during this crucial period of the evolving Coronavirus pandemic. Drawing on a combination of two main types of sources – a network of expert academics and a network of parliamentary research centers – it presents a novel and timely comparative overview about current parliamentary activity during the Coronavirus pandemic. The report covers 26 democratic parliaments from Europe, North America, Asia, Israel and Australia. It finds that most parliaments continue to operate during the Coronavirus crisis (including in countries in which the pandemic is quite substantial and in countries where legislators themselves were among those diagnosed with the Coronavirus). It also finds that even though some parliaments continue with business as usual, many parliaments are beginning to modify their operation, and generally show an ability to adapt to meet the Coronavirus challenge.


Carragenan is sea weed latex that is extracted by water or
alkali solution of a certain species from Rhodophyceae (red
algae). Carragenan is grouped become three that is kappa,
iota and lambda carragenan. Carragenan functions as
stabilizator (balance regulator), thickener, gelling agents, emulsifier, etc. This function is mainly applied in food industry, medicines, cosmetics, textile, paints, toothpaste, other industries, and on food products made of milk. Ice cream has high melting process, thus it is less preferred by consumer because it will molten soon in room temperature.
By the adding carragenan, it is expected to control the
melting process, stabilize the emulsion, lengthen the
storage period, and prevent ice crystal formation. The
purpose of this research is to know the type and the
appropriate concentration level of carragenan on ice cream
quality.
Treatment on this research used Random Device of Group
(RDG) using 2 factors. Factor 1 is the type of carragenan
(Kappa and Iota) and factor 2 is the carragenan
concentration (0%; 0,01%; 0,02%; 0,03%; and 0,04%)
(b/v). So, the writer obtained 10 combinations three-time
treatment. The research result showed that interaction of types and carragenan concentrationoccured toward on overrun, total solidity, total of sugar, and viscosity. Type of carragenan affects on melting process of ice cream; concentration level of carragenan has effect on fat content, melting process, and texture of ice cream. The best treatment is obtained by adding kappa carragenan under concentration of 0,03% with the characteristics of produced ice cream is 50,69% total of sugar; 6,56% fat content; 45,14% total solidity; 29,33 minutes/gram melting process; 1.47 dPas viscosity; and 41,33% overrun.


Abstract. A 7.38 m long sediment core was collected from the eastern section of the Rhone prodelta (NW Mediterranean) at 67 m water depth. A multi-proxy study (including sedimentary facies, benthic foraminifera, ostracods, and clay mineralogy) provides a multi-decadal to century-scale record of climate and sea-level changes during the Holocene. The early Holocene is marked by alternative silt and clay layers interpreted as distal tempestites deposited in a context of rising sea level. This interval contains shallow infra-littoral benthic meiofauna (e.g., Pontocythere elongata, Elphidium spp., Quinqueloculina lata) and formed between ca. 20 and 50 m water depth. The middle Holocene (ca. 8.3 to 4.5 ka cal. BP) is characterized, at the core site, by a period of sediment starvation (accumulation rate of ca. 0.01 cm yr−1) resulting from the maximum landward shift of the shoreline and the Rhone outlet(s). From a sequence stratigraphic point of view, this condensed section, about 35 cm thick, can be identified on seismic profiles as a maximum flooding surface that marks the transition between delta retrogradation and delta progradation. The transition between the early Holocene deposits and the middle Holocene condensed section is marked by a gradual change in all proxy records. Following the stabilization of sea level at a global scale, the late Holocene is marked by the establishment of prodeltaic conditions at the core site, as shown by the lithofacies and by the presence of benthic meiofauna typical of the modern Rhone prodelta (e.g., Valvulineria bradyana, Cassidulina carinata, Bulimina marginata). Several periods of increased fluvial discharge are also emphasized by the presence of species commonly found in brackish and shallow-water environments (e.g., Leptocythere spp.). Some of these periods correspond to the multi-decadal to centennial late Holocene humid periods recognized in Europe (i.e., the 2.8 ka event and the Little Ice Age). Two other periods of increased runoffs at ca. 1.3 and 1.1 ka cal. BP are recognized, which are likely to reflect periods of regional climate deterioration that are observed in the Rhone watershed. Conversely, the Migration Period Cooling (ca. 1.4 ka cal. BP) and the Medieval Climate Anomaly (ca. AD 950–1250) correspond locally to periods of increased dryness.


This review considers the effect of anthropogenic sound on beaked whales2. Two major conclusions are presented: (1) gas-bubble disease, induced in supersaturated tissue by a behavioural response to acoustic exposure, is a plausible pathologic mechanism for the morbidity and mortality seen in cetaceans associated with sonar exposure and merits further investigation; and (2) current monitoring and mitigation methods for beaked whales are ineffective for detecting these animals and protecting them from adverse sound exposure. In addition, four major research priorities, needed to address information gaps on the impacts of sound on beaked whales, are identified: (1) controlled exposure experiments to assess beaked whale responses to known sound stimuli; (2) investigation of physiology, anatomy, pathobiology and behaviour of beaked whales; (3) assessment of baseline diving behaviour and physiology of beaked whales; and (4) a retrospective review of beaked whale strandings.


Ketamine is frequently used in both human and veterinary anaesthesia. Beside its anaesthetic and analgesic effects, ketamine has been demonstrated to possess anti-inflammatory properties in rodents and humans. To date, no data are available on the anti-inflammatory effects of ketamine in horses. This thesis summarises experimental work conducted into the anti-inflammatory effects of ketamine in different in vitro and in vivo equine models. In an equine bone-marrow-derived macrophage cell line (e-CAS cells), ketamine significantly suppressed lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha and interleukin (IL)-6 concentrations in a concentration-dependent manner (0-36 microM). Characterisation of the molecular mechanism underlying this cytokine-modulating activity revealed that ketamine inhibited LPS-induced cytokine production by directly inhibiting the nuclear transcription factor nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kappa B). Next to cytokines, NF-kappa B is known to be involved in the transcription of enzymes such as cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), which account for many of the clinical symptoms associated with inflammatory responses. Although ketamine significantly inhibited LPS-induced NF-kappa B expression, no effect on COX-2 and iNOS expression could be demonstrated. Inhibiton experiments showed that this lack of effect is most likely contributed to the fact that LPS-induced COX-2 and iNOS expression are mainly regulated by another signal transduction pathway, the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway, which itself is not affected by ketamine. In contrast to these results, ketamine significantly reduced the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in e-CAS cells following co-stimulation with LPS and phorbol myristate acetate (PMA). The finding that ketamine reduced cytokine production and ROS formation in LPS-treated e-CAS cells indicates that ketamine has cytokine-modulating effects in vivo. Considering the concentration-dependency and the finding that elevated plasma cytokine levels have been detected in horses for several hours after onset of inflammation, it was hypothesised that ketamine may need to be administered for a prolonged period of time and at relatively high dose rates to be clinically effective in modulating inflammatory mediators. A pharmacodynamic study showed that a ketamine CRI of 1.5 mg/kg/h can safely be administered to conscious healthy horses for at least 6 h. To evaluate the cytokine-modulating effects of this ketamine CRI in vivo, a tissue chamber model was used. In LPS-inoculated tissue chambers in Shetland ponies, ketamine did not exhibit cytokine-modulating or antioxidative properties, which can be explained by the rapid biotransformation and elimination of ketamine as well as the limited affinity to proteins, thus preventing adequate accumulation of ketamine in the inflamed tissue chambers. However, the observed anti-inflammatory properties of ketamine in vitro still justify further research into the anti-inflammatory effects of ketamine in horses suffering from inflammatory disorders.


Alien hand syndrome (AHS) is rare, but important due to its disabling impact on everyday life. The determining characteristic of AHS is intermanual conflict, a type of inhibitory motor behaviour that occurs against willed action. Its components have previously been described as single case reports, but not as a systematic study. This review includes eight chronic cases, all of which are due to infarcts of the anterior cerebral artery. Clinical investigation included testing of motor behaviour related to everyday activities, such as tying shoelaces, lighting a candle and other bimanual tasks. Video-analysis showed that conflicting behaviour occurs in two distinct forms. One consists of interfering, rudimentary, hesitant and repetitive movements of the (alien) hand, often initiated by movements of the other hand. In some instances, disturbance of ongoing action is seen as spacious, ballistic-like extensions of the whole arm. This was most prevalent in three of the eight cases. In one patient, it was also seen as conflict with both feet (eg, when putting on slippers) or as a conflict of intentions (eg, when planning to enter a room). The other form consisted of massive groping and grasping behaviour as the most dominant features, such as a "tug of war between hands", and was seen in five patients. Avoidance behaviour included sitting on the affected arm, holding it under the table or keeping objects out of reach. Enforcement of such strategies was used for rehabilitation and—although beneficial in the training sessions—carried over very little to everyday life. All cases had two distinct brain lesions, one in the genu or anterior rostrum of the corpus callosum and one in the contralateral frontomedial cortical and subcortical region. Chronic AHS is the only clinical syndrome that shows complex inhibitory motor behaviour in a more or less pure form because it has become detached from the control of motor planning and execution. It can best be understood as sequences of complex inhibitory motor programmes that have become isolated from normal motor planning, which usually suppresses them via the contralateral cortico-subcortical prefrontal circuits and the corpus callosum. Thus, the mirror world of complex motor inhibition becomes clinically visible in such patients.


Bankruptcy Code section 502(b)(6) sets the maximum allowable amount of a real property lessor's claim for damages arising for breach of lease in a tenant's bankruptcy case. To the extent a lessor's damages claim under nonbankruptcy law exceeds the maximum amount, it is disallowed. The implicit premise for such disallowance is that real property lessors' damages claims are less worthy of respect in bankruptcy than other claims for damages against the debtor. Real property leases are legally distinct from leases of personal property or other contractual relationships that allocate property rights. But, it does not obviously follow from the distinction that a damages claim for breach of a real property lease is inferior to other claims. This article considers section 502(b)(6) in light of the political, economic, and legal forces that shaped it. It explores the history of real property lessors' claims for damages in bankruptcy cases from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. It then considers the stated justifications for disallowance of lessors' claims under section 502(b)(6) and concludes they are unconvincing. Disallowance of part of lessors' damages claims under section 502(b)(6) reflects and perpetuates irrational bias against such claims. Moreover, such disallowance contradicts both contractual theory and modern bankruptcy policy.


Computer games have recently shown promise as a diagnostic and treatment tool for psychiatric rehabilitation. This paper examines the positive impact of affect detection and advanced game technology on the treatment of mental diagnoses such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). For that purpose, we couple game design and game technology with stress detection for the automatic profiling and the personalized treatment of PTSD via game-based exposure therapy and stress inoculation training. The PTSD treatment game we designed forces the player to go through various stressful experiences while a stress detection mechanism profiles the severity and type of PTSD via skin conductance responses to those in-game stress elicitors. The initial study and analysis of 14 PTSD-diagnosed veteran soldiers presented in this paper reveals clear correspondence between diagnostic standard measures of PTSD severity and skin conductance responses. Significant correlations between physiological responses and subjective evaluations of the stressfulness of experiences, represented as pair wise preferences, are also found. We conclude that this supports the use of the simulation as a relevant treatment tool for stress inoculation training. This points to future avenues of research toward discerning between degrees and types of PTSD using game-based diagnostic and treatment tools.


Characteristics of strained-germanium (Ge) p- and n-channel field effect transistors directly on Si (1 1 1) substrates have been investigated. A strained-Ge layer with a thickness of ∼4 nm has been grown on the relaxed Si/Si (1 1 1) substrate by ultra-high-vacuum chemical vapour deposition. To improve the oxide/strained-Ge interface, a thin Si-cap layer with a thickness of 3 nm has been grown on the strained-Ge layer. After the device process, 1 nm thickness of Si-cap layer remains on the strained-Ge layer. Thicknesses of all epitaxial layers have been measured by transmission electron microscopy. Raman spectroscopy measurement on the Si-cap/strained-Ge layer shows that the strained-Ge layer has a compressive strain of ∼1.25%. A hole confinement shoulder on the capacitance–voltage curve at the accumulation region has been observed due to carrier confinement at the Si-cap/strained-Ge hetero-interface. A metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) structure on the strained-Ge layer shows a moderate interface trap charge density of ∼2.8 × 1011 cm−2 eV−1. Strained-Ge p- and n-channel field effect transistors show low off-state leakage currents of ∼3.8 × 10−13 A µm−1 and ∼6.5 × 10−13 A µm−1, respectively. Drive currents of strained-Ge p- and n-channel field effect transistors are enhanced by ∼100% and ∼40%, respectively, as compared with bulk Si (1 1 1) transistors. Peak hole and electron mobility of strained-Ge (1 1 1) field effect transistors at the low effective field are found to be ∼110% and ∼30% enhancement, respectively, as compared with bulk Si (1 1 1) transistors, due to high hole and electron mobility enhancement factor as well as strain-induced lower conduction mass in the strained-Ge channel.


When emerging market firms disclose relationship-based transactions, they face a trade-off in which greater transparency may help lower their cost of capital at the cost of revealing proprietary information. We find that firms overcome this challenge by relying on analysts within their private networks (i.e., connected analysts) who, through repeated interaction with the firm, can better verify relationship-based transactions. Using Chinese firms, we show that firms with more connected analysts have more accurate consensus forecasts and lower forecast dispersion. When a connected analyst departs and stops covering a firm, the accuracy and informativeness of the unconnected analysts' forecasts decrease, suggesting that information spills over from the connected analyst to analysts outside the network. We find a potential mechanism for this information spillover: communication through common institutional clients, which suggests that embedded financial analysts—those sharing close connections with firms and analysts—serve as a channel for disseminating proprietary, hard-to-verify information.
 JEL Classifications: G14; G15; M40; N25.
 Data Availability: Data are available from sources identified in the text.


The results of the study on formation and morphology of ovules' structures in Hemerocallis ×hybrida Hort. ex Bergmans (Hemerocallidaceae) are represented. It has been determined that ovules are anatropous, of medionucellate type. The sequences of initiation and development of inner and outer integuments, as well as morphological features of nucellus and ovule organization (presence of postamento-podium; coalescence of inner integument and nucellus; lysis of nucellar epidermis; well developed vascular bundle attaining the outer integument; hypostasa which is poor morphologically expressed; raphe; differentiated cells of the outer epidermis of inner integument) have been described. The inner integument is of dermal origin, and outer integument is both of dermal and subdermal origin. Embryo sac in H. ×hybrida develops from a chalazal megaspore according to Polygonum-type. Antipods are binuclear. The two polar nuclei and antipods' nuclei fuse before fertilization. Degeneration of sporogenous cells and embryo sacs, anomalies of their structures differentiation lead to the ovules sterility. Sterile ovules in the cultivar 'Pandora's Box' are about 90%. The ovules with morphologically normal embryo sac prevail in the cultivar 'Wally Nance'.


As a fellow in Hospice and Palliative Medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, I commonly encounter patients who are facing the quandary of choosing between disease-directed and symptom-directed care pathways.  Exclusive commitment to either leads to outcomes that are often unfulfilling and at times cruel. I wrote this story as way of communicating the concept of a third pathway, one that can often bring meaning, balance and hope to the journey of terminal illness. Although the concept of the third pathway is somewhat ideal, it is the very essence of what palliative care providers strive for in the guidance of our patients. The story also reflects on other themes that are common to our practice: the shock that comes when serious illness becomes reality, the hard acceptance of medical technology's limitations, the sense of isolation a patient feels from those who are still well, the regret of past mistakes, the recasting of one's personhood and the reassigning of goals when time becomes short. Finally, the story offers an evolving depiction of medical providers as seen through the eyes of an ailing patient.


The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of men at the entry-level of the student affairs profession. Using the concepts found in the existing literature related to gender identity as a framework, the research was focused upon the meanings constructed by entry-level men within the field of student affairs and how those meanings are similar to or different from the societal definitions of masculinity. The study consisted of 22 entry-level men currently working in the field of student affairs. Participants took part either in individual interviews (n=18) or a focus group (n=4) and discussed their experiences being a man in the student affairs workplace. Careful attention was paid to the perceived identity of entry-level men in student affairs in an effort to uncover any relationships between this identity and their experiences in the field. In addition, particular consideration was placed upon the ways in which these entry-level men in student affairs defined their roles and the ways in which they negotiated their identity. Results indicated these entry-level men in student affairs identified with three distinct roles: Traditional Man, Leader/Mentor, and World Changer. In addition, according to participants, relationships and environmental factors have an impact on the experiences of this population. The level of support that an entry-level man receives, particularly from male mentors, has a large impact on his experience and potentially on his decision to remain in the field. Findings revealed that these men make meaning based upon their day-to-day activities, the contextual environment, and from traditional societal norms. Addition findings include strategies used by this population to negotiate their identity within student affairs.


RATIONALE
It is hypothesized that the metabolic syndrome explains the association between body mass index (BMI) and asthma in adults.

OBJECTIVES
Our objective was to longitudinally compare the relative strengths of the associations of the metabolic syndrome and BMI with incident asthma in adults.

METHODS
We included 4,619 eligible participants in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) cohort followed over 25 years. Incident asthma was defined by a new self-reported provider asthma diagnosis plus either the presence of asthma symptoms and/or use of asthma medications. Cox proportional hazard analyses were performed.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
Six hundred two subjects (417 women and 185 men) developed incident asthma over 25 years of follow-up. Metabolic syndrome predicted incident asthma among women but not men (unadjusted hazard ratios, 1.50 and 0.98; P = 0.01 and 0.93, respectively). BMI had a similar predictive association among women but not men (unadjusted hazard ratios, 1.19 and 1.04 per 5 units of BMI; P < 0.001 and 0.60, respectively). The association of metabolic syndrome with incident asthma in women was no longer statistically significant after adjustment for BMI (P = 0.44). In contrast, the association of BMI with incident asthma in women remained statistically significant after adjusting for the metabolic syndrome (P = 0.01). In a stepwise model, BMI was a stronger predictor than the metabolic syndrome (P = 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS
BMI is a stronger predictor of incident asthma among women than the metabolic syndrome. Other obesity-associated factors that are not a part of the metabolic syndrome may play a role in the BMI-asthma association in women.


This thesis aims to widen a Methodology, based on the principles and techniques of Lean Thinking, which allows Companies to improve their Product Development processes into a methodology that also improves the service development process. It tries to give an answer to the Companies need to review and optimize their Product-Service development processes affected by constantly changing markets and increasingly complex customers.
The Methodology proposal is a result of the work of previous colleagues that was originated from the Lean Thinking techniques and their application in Product Development field. Afterwards, it has been adapted and tested by carrying on some "on the field" experiences with business subjects who have provided key knowledge to its refinement.
The Methodology seeks at continuous improvement of the Product-Service Development processes which are consonant with the context in which Companies operate. This means that when a corrective action is carried out it cannot be exclude from future analysis because maybe in those future analysis the change is a waste. This also fits with the Lean perspective that put the constant research for perfection as one of its pillar. For the same reason it is a recursive Methodology compound by five steps, that go from the systematic identification of waste in PSD process, to their removal, until the introduction of targeted corrective actions. Those steps are:
1. Waste Identification & Evaluation. The starting point to develop this phase is an existing list of waste likely to be found in NPSD processes and a Priority Index (PI) to evaluate them. This phase is the one widened so as to include and include the service into the product development analysis.
2. Waste Prioritization. On the basis of the PI, in this phase wastes are put in a priority order and the first to be removed are chosen. Beside this, in association to them also potential detection ways and corrective actions are defined.
3. Sub process identification. It consists in the determination of the sub process affected by the main wastes and so to be improved.
4. Sub process analysis. This phase deals with the sub process analysis to find the critical and eliminate them. Also in this phase several alternative methods have been proposed, with a deepening on Value Stream Analysis and Map.
5. Corrective Actions. In this phase, the correctives actions to be implemented are chosen according to the effort required and the effect that they produce, PICK matrix as a tool is suggested.
2
To test the previous steps listed and also to acquire some feedback about the rightness of the methodology, two cases were conducted. On the one hand, the 5 steps were applied in the car sharing company Car2go which is a very clear example of a product-service. On the other hand, the Politecnico di Milano involvement in Manutelligence consortium gave the opportunity to be in touch with Fundacio CIM (based in Barcelona) which manages several Ateneus of Digital Fabrication. These ADFs are places where everyone can go with an idea and transform it into a prototype. Thanks to this collaboration, it was provided another case study with different level of servitization (compared to de Car2go one) on which to perform the first full application of the Methodology.
As a result, these activities have highlighted the forces of the Methodology that are its intuitiveness, short implementation time and easy to implement by people without experience, after a brief introduction to Lean Thinking and its techniques. At the same time, several limits have been found and accepted as starting points for future researches and insights.
The thesis is structured in the following Chapters:
 Chapter 1, Product-Service Systems: This is the opening Chapter, it provides an overview of the context in which the work has been developed, focusing in particular on the current importance of Product-Service Systems. In addition, it explains the objectives and the structure of the thesis are stated.
 Chapter 2, Tools and Methodologies for LPSD process: State of the Art: This Chapter is a deep analysis of literature on Lean, by exploring its principles and technique and it shows the state of the art as regards to their application in Product-Service Development context.
 Chapter 3, The proposed methodology: In this Chapter is shown the initial methodology in which is based the new one and a guide to its implementation is provided. Then, the additions to it are explained and the process to get to them is detailed.
 Chapter 4, Business Case Application: It exposes the business cases of Car2go and ADF giving complete examples of Methodology implementation.
 Chapter 5, Conclusions: This is the final Chapter where a summary of the methodology analysis is given and suggests future researches and investigations.


At the superconducting linac of FLASH at DESY, we have installed an electro-optic (EO) experiment for singleshot, non-destructive measurements of the longitudinal electric charge distribution of individual electron bunches. The time profile of the electric bunch field is electrooptically encoded onto a chirped titanium-sapphire laser pulse. In the decoding step, the profile is retrieved either from a cross-correlation of the encoded pulse with a 30 fs laser pulse, obtained from the same laser (electrooptic temporal decoding, EOTD), or from the spectral intensity of the transmitted probe pulse (electro-optic spectral decoding, EOSD). At FLASH, the longitudinally compressed electron bunches have been measured during FEL operation with a resolution of better than 50 fs. The electrooptic process in gallium phosphide was numerically simulated using as input data the bunch shapes determined with a transverse-deflecting RF structure. In this contribution, we present electro-optically measured bunch profiles and compare them with the simulation.


Financial misconduct and systemic risk are two critical issues in financial regulation today. However, for the past several years, financial misconduct and systemic risk have received markedly different treatment. After the global financial crisis, regulators responded to the traditional quantitative risks that banks pose — those found on their balance sheets and in their business models — with sweeping reforms on an internationally coordinated scale. Meanwhile, with respect to misconduct, regulators have reacted with a traditional enforcement approach — imposing fines and, in some cases, prosecuting individual malefactors. Yet misconduct is not only an isolated or idiosyncratic risk that can be spot treated with enforcement: misconduct can also be a significant source of risk to the financial system, particularly when it arises on an industry-wide basis. This Article creates a framework for understanding how and under what circumstances misconduct imposes such broad social and economic costs: "misconduct risk." This Article explores three features of the banking industry that, in combination, can give rise to misconduct risk — deficient accountability systems, performance-based compensation, and a fluid and transient labor market. Drawing on this conceptual foundation, this Article argues that misconduct risk requires a holistic and preventive approach on par with regulators' efforts to reduce classic balance sheet risks. Specifically, this Article urges bank supervisors to design regulatory tools that proactively target these contagion mechanisms in order to combat misconduct risk. This Article proposes a novel supervisory tool — "compliance stress testing" — and suggests how this tool can be incorporated into the existing international framework for regulating global banks.


We conducted a comparative (2D landmark-based geometric and traditional) morphometric analysis on tadpoles at early developmental stages. Two species of brown frog (Rana dalmatina and R. temporaria) and the common toad (Bufo bufo) were involved, all raised in the laboratory from fertilized eggs collected in their natural habitat. Taxonomic identification was confirmed by the DNA barcoding method with the 16S rRNA sequence as the gene marker. Interested to compare the methodologies for quantification and description of morphological differences among tadpoles of mentioned species, we aimed to: 1) calculate interspecies genetic distances as the most relevant measurement for species differentiation, 2) determine and describe size and shape variation, 3) identify relationships among the analyzed species at the morphological level and 4) assess their classification accuracy. Within the framework of the specified aims, both methodologies produced very similar results, i.e., the smallest divergence was between R. dalmatina and R. temporaria, while the most discriminative were B. bufo and R. temporaria. However, we observed subtle shape variation of the distal region of the tail that was detected only by the geometric morphometrics. Our findings support the following. Geometric morphometric method captures more subtle shape differences that were unable to be recovered from linear measurements. It performs slightly better in classification rate. Although it was not quantified, it stands to reason that there is no difference in time investment between the two approaches. Geometric morphometrics provides more information that can be leveraged to answer further questions and it has a clear advantage in visualizing.


This panel explores how social norms get troubled and rewritten on social media. It brings together three presentations, all of which speak to the central conference theme by engaging with how specific rules and norms regarding privacy, friendship, shame and commodification are appropriated, rejected or transformed. We analyze the rule breaking and rule making through social media practices like teacher-student interactions on Facebook, friendship and flirting on Tumblr, and microcelebrity attention seeking practices and self-presentation on different social networking sites. Our arguments are predicated on the well established sociological reasoning that rules for any conduct are discovered, created and sustained by social actors through their everyday practices, and become particularly visible, when broken (Garfinkel, 1967). We also rely on the thesis that different groups differ on "what behaviors are normative and which are not" (Ren et al 2010: 125), thus a specific group's cohesion may rely on explicit or implicit questioning of an otherwise widely accepted norm. The latter is particularly relevant for analyzing human coexistence in digital contexts. While "social media constitute an arena of public communication where norms are shaped and rules get contested," (van Dijck, 2013:19), there are no universally applicable norms and values that apply to the internet as a space (Albrechtslund, 2008). We argue that it thus becomes a particularly fertile space for groups and communities to negotiate "constitutive rules," which "create the possibility of the very behavior that they regulate" (Searle, 2009: 10). Our empirical data is geographically and culturally broad, ranging from a study of lifestyle Influencers in Singapore, schoolteachers and students in Estonia and sex-bloggers in the USA. Based on it we interrogate the interconnections of social media practices, wider social norms and platform affordances to offer explanations, descriptions and provocations on how breaking norms can be a calculated strategy to capture attention (Sorry not sorry: influencers, exposes, and para-apologetic transgressions); an outcome of the practices and socio-technical affordances of a particular community (Queering friendships - blurred lines of relationships on tumblr); or how lines are being drawn in the sand of what constitutes acceptable social media behavior for teachers and students (Nightmare readers and double standards – the case of teacher-student interactions on Facebook). References Albrechtslund, A. (2008). Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance. First Monday, 13(3). Available from: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2142/1949 Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Penguin Ren, Y., Kraut, R., Kiesler, S., Resnick, P. (2010). Regulating Behavior in Online Communties, in (Eds) R. E. Kraut & P. Resnick. Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design. MIT Press, 125-178. Searle, J. (2009). Making the social world: The structure of human civilization, Oxford University Press Van Dijck, J. (2013). The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford University Press: Kindle Edition.


In BALB/c mice infected i.v. with attenuated strain 19 of Brucella abortus, the organism replicates to high numbers in the spleen and reaches peak concentrations at 2 wk postinfection (p.i.). The infection is then progressively cleared so that by 8 wk p.i. numbers of bacteria have decreased 10,000 fold or more. Passive transfer assays were performed with T cell-enriched spleen cells and serum of donor mice infected 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 8 wk previously. Antibodies conferred significant protection to recipients at and after 3 wk p.i., whereas protection by T cells was not evident until 4 wk p.i. The combined transfer of serum and cells enhanced protection over that provided by serum or cells alone when transfers were made before, but not after, challenge infection. Protection conferred by T cell-enriched spleen cells of 6-wk donors was unaffected by the presence of equal quantities of cells from 3-wk donors, but was abrogated by the removal of both CD4 and CD8 T cell subsets. Experiments with purified CD4 and CD8 subsets revealed that cell-mediated protection resided at equivalent levels in both subsets. Daily treatment of mice with Cyclosporin A for 4 wk after infection caused some increase in numbers of brucellae in spleens and livers. Although immune responses of treated animals were markedly suppressed, there was little effect of treatment on numbers of macrophages in the spleen, on enhanced killing of Listeria monocytogenes in the spleen, or on the nature and intensity of splenic and hepatic inflammatory responses. These data indicate that acquired resistance to infection with B. abortus in mice is the result of independent, and probably also interactive, effects of antibodies and T effector cells of both CD4 and CD8 phenotypes. The initial decline in bacterial numbers in the spleen, which occurred in the absence of detectable cell-mediated immunity in that organ, could probably be ascribed principally to effects of antibodies and to nonimmune stimuli responsible for increased formation, attraction, and activation of macrophages.


How behavior and institutions are affected by social relations is one of the classic questions of social theory. This paper concerns the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society. Although the usual neoclassical accounts provide an "undersocialized" or atomized-actor explanation of such action, reformist economists who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the "oversocialized" way criticized by Dennis Wrong. Under- and oversocialized accounts are paradoxically similar in their neglect of ongoing structures of social relations, and a sophisticated account of economic action must consider its embeddedness in such structures. The argument is illustrated by a critique of Oliver Williamson's "markets and hierarchies" research program.


Progress in economics and finance is based on new understandings of value and risk. The development of theories and tools for measuring value and risk lets us manage economic development for the collective benefit of society. Unfortunately, current economic theories associated with understanding the value and function of currency are limited.

Financial theories of value associated with debt and equity are fairly robust, well examined and falsifiable. These theories generally value capital assets as a claim on future cash flows denominated in a currency unit discounted for the time value of money, inflation expectations, and uncertainty.

Theories associated with currency generally ignore fundamental questions such as why currency has value and fail to examine what function currency provides in an economy. Instead, economists generally explain currency as having three roles, namely (1):

Unit of account
Medium of exchange
Store of value

These are non-falsifiable and not helpful definitions.

We posit that currency acts as a protocol existing not in the objective but in the intersubjective realm. Currency acts as an expectation spread across a transactome of actors. By assessing various currencies through this lens a crude valuation is derived which indicates most protocols have a $1,000-$5,000 per participant value. Research includes 50 of the world's largest currencies, gold, BTC and SolarCoin.

Using the relative capital model we determine currency value to be an emergent network property.

The general thesis is that a currency is a subjective phenomenon that emerges from individuals seeking to optimize their own utility functions. This leads to the use of intermediate trade goods. Eventually these trade goods become used primarily for their level acceptance across a wide spectrum of transactional actors, a transactome.

The best currency paradoxically is the one with the lowest redemption value or traditional utility. This ultimately leads to paper or fiat currency and other information instruments.

Currency as a form of capital has 2 traits as a protocol and a medium of expression. The protocol emerges as the dominant trait with the medium having different utility. Example the USD $ protocol can be expressed in paper, metal or electronic media.

Our findings are that the transactome as measured by the estimated number of accepting participants of a protocol is a useful metric for measuring the effects of currency as an intersubjective phenomenon. Studying $16 trillion of currency assets including 50 fiat currencies, Gold, BTC and SolarCoin leads to a few interesting conclusions.

Namely:

1. Networks or transactomes of protocols are not bound by nation state boundaries.

2. Currency protocols are born, mature and die. The average currency has a 27 year life.

3.The average emergent M0 value of a currency ranges from $1,000 — $5,000 USD per participant in a transactome when adjusted for GDP.

4. Currency scales to solve the transactional gradients in an economy and is thus a function of the flows and assets found in that economy.

5. Any form of capital can be generalized using the formula P=Max [R, N S] to express the indeterminent nature of capital prior to its transaction. Where P=Price, R=redemption value of a currency, N=Network scale of a transactome and S= a speculative co-efficient equivalent to an epsilon with a mean of 0.

6. Metcalf's law doesn't hold for most currency. The network effect is linear at scale and not exponential per node. This assumed to be a function of the limited need for transaction nodes vs. the actual field of potential transactional nodes using a protocol.


An obstacle to research in automatic paraphrase identification and generation is the lack of large-scale, publiclyavailable labeled corpora of sentential paraphrases. This paper describes the creation of the recently-released Microsoft Research Paraphrase Corpus, which contains 5801 sentence pairs, each hand-labeled with a binary judgment as to whether the pair constitutes a paraphrase. The corpus was created using heuristic extraction techniques in conjunction with an SVM-based classifier to select likely sentence-level paraphrases from a large corpus of topicclustered news data. These pairs were then submitted to human judges, who confirmed that 67% were in fact semantically equivalent. In addition to describing the corpus itself, we explore a number of issues that arose in defining guidelines for the human raters.


BACKGROUND
Superficial basal cell carcinoma (SBCC) is a skin cancer commonly treated by general practitioners. Little is known about how GPs choose from the available treatment options.

METHOD
A cross sectional survey was conducted by self administered questionnaire.

RESULTS
Of 257 GPs surveyed, 107 responded (adjusted response rate 59%). Sixty-three percent reported treating more than two SBCC per month, managing 90% themselves, mostly by surgery (57%), and imiquimod 5% cream (19%). Forty percent of SBCC patients were referred to a plastic surgeon, and 26% (IQR 0-50%) to a general surgeon. Contraindications to surgery included lesion site (14%), and size (12%). Sixty-two percent of GPs reported never using curettage and cautery, and 23% never cryotherapy. If the cost of imiquimod 5% cream were to be subsidised through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, GPs predicted its use for SBCC would increase from 34 to 58% (p>0.001).

DISCUSSION
General practitioners manage most lesions themselves and refer appropriately. Areas of educational need were identified with respect to management of inadequately treated or recurrent lesions.


Although many provisioning tools are available for deployment and management of composite cloud services to overcome the manual efforts that are tedious and error-prone, users are often required to specify Infrastructure-as-Code (IAC) solutions via low-level scripting. IAC demands domain knowledge for provisioning the services across heterogeneous cloud platforms and incurs a steep learning curve. To address these challenges, we present a technology-and platform-agnostic self-service framework called CloudCAMP. It incorporates domain-specific modeling so that the specifications and dependencies imposed by the cloud platform and application architecture can be specified at an intuitive, higher level of abstraction without the need for domain expertise. CloudCAMP transforms the partial specifications into deployable Infrastructure-as-Code (IAC) using the Transformational-Generative paradigm and by leveraging an extensible and reusable knowledge base. The auto-generated IAC can be handled by existing tools to provision the services components automatically. We validate our approach quantitatively by showing a comparative study of savings in manual and scripting efforts versus using CloudCAMP.


Many musical traditions value creative music making in the form of composition and improvisation. However, research indicates American public school teachers consider improvisation and composition among the least important and most difficult skills to teach. Because instrumental methods courses serve as one source for preparing future instrumental teachers, this mixed methods study elicited experiences, values, and decisions from a national population (N = 321) of instrumental methods instructors. The results of the national survey and interviews with selected participants (n = 8) served as the data sources. Results indicated general support for improvisation and composition in teacher preparation, but low levels of prioritization in instrumental methods courses. Instructors' comfort with those skills, curricular space, and preparation for existing jobs were among reported barriers to prioritizing composition and improvisation in coursework. Recommendations include greater intentionality in planning for composition and improvisation by teacher educators, professional development opportunities for in-service teachers, and encouraging future music teachers to seek musical experiences beyond typical requirements.


This paper analyzes the determinants of partial ownership of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational firms and, in particular, why partial ownership has declined markedly over the last 20 years. The evidence indicates that whole ownership is most common when firms coordinate integrated production activities across different locations, transfer technology, and benefit from worldwide tax planning. Since operations and ownership levels are jointly determined, it is necessary to use the liberalization of ownership restrictions by host countries and the imposition of joint venture tax penalties in the U.S. Tax Reform Act of 1986 as instruments for ownership levels in order to identify these effects. Firms responded to these regulatory and tax changes by expanding the volume of their intrafirm trade as well as the extent of whole ownership; four percent greater subsequent sole ownership of affiliates is associated with three percent higher intrafirm trade volumes. The implied complementarity of whole ownership and intrafirm trade suggests that reduced costs of coordinating global operations, together with regulatory and tax changes, gave rise to the sharply declining propensity of American firms to organize their foreign operations as joint ventures over the last two decades. The forces of globalization appear to have increased the desire of multinationals to structure many transactions inside firms rather than through exchanges involving other parties. Mihir A. Desai C. Fritz Foley James R. Hines Jr. Harvard Business School University of Michigan University of Michigan Morgan 363 Business School Business School Soldiers Field 701 Tappan Street 701 Tappan Street Boston, MA 02163 Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234 Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234 and NBER email@example.com firstname.lastname@example.com email@example.com


Background and Purpose: Plants were one of the first and available useable sources in treatment. Phytotherapy has been customary from past years in many countries such as Iran by the reason having various and reach flora. Unfortunately current people have a less knowledge and information in this condition. Recently many of countries are planning to enter ancient medicine and ethnobotanical findings to their health and safety system. This can help to discovering new drugs and connecting between ancient and modern medicine. In this research results of floristical, ethnobotanical and phytochemical studies of 22 collected Lamiaceae plant species from Sarband (Shazand-Markazi Province) has been reported. Methods and Materials: Twenty two plant species of ten Lamiaceae genera were collected from Sarband (Shazand-Markazi Province) by field walking and then identified using available references. Herbarium voucher samples were prepared and kept in Arak University Herbarium. Also a part of plant material was prepared for primary phytochemical experiments. Collecting information from endemic people believes and present documents were done for each species. Data of the all studies were ordered in Tables. Results: Results showed existing 22 Lamiaceae species from 10 genera in Sarband (ShazandMarkazi Province). Salvia with 7 species had the most species and 4 genera had one. Secodary metabolites based on used methods were differently found in all of examined species with the exception of Ziziphora species. Alkaloids were found just in Eremostachys mollucelloides and Salvia sulcata. Heart glycosides just were found in Salvia syriaca. All of studies species exceptional two species of Teucrium lacked anthraquinone. Almost studied plants in this research were used as infused and boiled form from aerial parts special leaf, flower, fruit and seed. Most of them were used for cough and digestive disease treatment. Most of them were valuable as medicinal and nutritional plant by the reason having polyfenolic compounds special flavonids and essential oils. Conclusion: Day by day genetic resources and habitats of endemic and medicinal plant are decreased by the reason of increasing urbanism, modernism and industrializing of human societies. Also endemic knowledge and information of ancient people are forgotten. Then conservation of medicinal plant species, endemic knowledge and connecting between ancient and modern medicine are necessary by doing floristically, ethnobotanical and phytochemical studies in each region for society health and safety system improvement and work production in sustainable development direction.


We present a method for optical identification of dielectric and metal nanoparticles in a liquid matrix using phase retrieval of reflectance with TE- and TM-polarized light. A formula is derived for extracting the effective complex dielectric function of a nanoparticle colloid based on different complex reflectance components. The phase retrieval is performed using the maximum entropy method. We observe excellent accuracy both for dielectric and metallic nanoparticles with volume fractions up to 10%.