Hippocampal activation is required for episodic memory. Encoding and retrieval of novel and memorable items have been related to different locations in the hippocampus; however, the data remain ambiguous. The application of a newly designed keyboard allowed investigation of brain activation during encoding and free immediate and delayed recall with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in young healthy controls (n = 12). Because of the repetitive learning and recall conditions, an individual learning gradient was used to contrast neural activity at different individual levels of novelty. During learning, subjects were asked to memorize 10 geometric patterns requiring the establishment of intra-item associations for memorization. After learning, subjects were asked to recall the items actively via the keyboard. Learning and recall were alternated five times. Delayed recall was scanned about 15 min after the fifth immediate recall condition without subjects having seen the items again. Left-sided anterior hippocampal activity was observed during conditions of initial learning as well as maximum recall. Neural activity during delayed recall did not reveal hippocampal responses and was characterized by a transition of neural activity from occipitoparietal regions to bilateral temporal cortices. We conclude that both lateralization and segregation depend on the specific relational characteristics of the stimuli requiring establishment of intra-item associations for encoding as well as retrieval. The absence of hippocampal activation during delayed recall together with the increase of lateral temporal involvement possibly corresponds with an emerging transition from episodic to long-term memory.


Classes are often too small units of modularization. In a lot of cases, a cohesive piece of functionality involves a group of related classes. Although mainstream languages provide class grouping mechanisms, such as packages and inner classes in Java, the typical object-oriented techniques, such as inheritance and subtype polymorphism, are not supported at the scope of such class groups. As a result, variations involving multiple classes must be encoded by variations of individual classes. Such encodings compromise type-safety and produce a considerable amount of glue code, which is often error-prone and not stable. The main statement of this thesis is that by making typical object-oriented techniques available at the scope of a group of classes we can provide a better support for managing variations at that scope. For the purpose of making inheritance and polymorphism available for a group of classes, we rely on the ideas of virtual classes and family polymorphism. A large-scale multiple inheritance is enabled by the propagating mixin composition. In this thesis we present the first implementation of these ideas for Java, and propose improvements to their semantics, namely a more intuitive linearization algorithm for propagating mixin composition and more flexible path-dependent types. We also introduce abstract virtual classes, which increase the advantages of family polymorphism by providing the possibility to describe interfaces for families of classes. Further, we propose a novel concept of dependent classes, which enhances virtual classes in analogous way like multimethods enhance single-dispatch. The multi-dispatch for classes not only enables dispatch of their functionality by multiple constructor parameters, but also generalizes family polymorphism with the possibility to express membership of an object in multiple families. The feasibility of the new concept is validated in two ways. First, we design a concrete language with dependent classes, called DepJ, and implement a type-checker and interpreter for it. Second, we formalize the features of dependent classes in vc^n and DC_C calculi, and verify their soundness and decidability. The expected advantages of virtual classes and dependent classes for variation management are validated by a set of variation scenarios. We explore variations at the scope of individual objects, as well as at the scope of a group of objects. We also investigate interactions of different kinds of variations and analyze specific variation scenarios in the context of object-oriented frameworks. We identify the problems of implementing these scenarios using conventional object-oriented techniques, and show that these problems are resolved by implementations with the advanced techniques. In particular, we show that virtual classes and propagating-mixin composition provide the typical advantages of inheritance for managing variations of a group of objects. Dependent classes provide the typical advantages of multi-dispatch for managing variations of a class. They also generalize the advantages of virtual classes with the possibility to modularize variations of multiple overlapping groups of objects, and provide a better solution for modelling multiple variations of a group of objects.


SWRL is a semantic web rule language that combines OWL ontologies with Horn Logic rules of the RuleML family of rule languages. Being supported by Protégé as well as by popular rule engines and ontology reasoners, such as Jess, Drools and Pellet, SWRL has become a very popular choice for developing rule-based applications on top of ontologies. However, being doubtful whether SWRL will become a W3C standard, it is difficult to reach out to the industrial world. On the other hand, SPIN has become a de-facto industry standard to represent SPARQL rules and constraints on Semantic Web models, building on the widespread acceptance of the SPARQL query language. In this paper, we argue that the life of existing SWRL rule-based ontology applications can be prolonged by being transformed into SPIN. To this end, we have developed a prototype tool using SWI-Prolog that takes as input an OWL ontology with a SWRL rule base and transforms SWRL rules into SPIN rules in the same ontology, taking into consideration the object-oriented scent of SPIN, i.e. linking rules to the appropriate ontology classes as derived by analyzing the rule conditions.


The last few years, the use of industrial robots for tasks such as material handling, welding, painting and assembly, has expanded considerably - also in general industry. A company's use of robots requires a certain expertise within the field of robotics. To hire in-house experts can be quite costly. Many small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) consider robots in their productions, but cannot afford employing specialists. The challenge is therefore to find a way for robot system integrators to perform support and knowledge-transfer to the SMEs from the integrator's location, making it cheaper and more efficient. To address this, one possibility is to enable remote operation of the industrial robots. This thesis aims to develop such a system, where new methods and technologies are used to achieve end-customer sup- port based on remote control. In developing a system like this, a major concern is how to efficiently communicate the state of the physical robot cell to the remote operator. The mul- tidisciplinary field CogInfoCom (Cognitive Infocommunications) deals with the connections between cognitive sciences and info communications, and was used for solving problems regarding transmission of the robot's condition to the operator. The system developed in this thesis centers around the use of a gripper analog that the op- erator moves in space to remotely control the robot. Auditory and visual feedback for com- municating the state of the robot during control is used. The system includes functions for scaling, self-motion, motion guidance and teach-in programming, and was developed for a NACHI MR20 7-axis industrial robot. The combination of a MARG-sensor and a Microsoft Kinect was used to determine the gripper analog's position and orientation in space. Practical experiments were performed for testing and verifying the scaling, the self-motion, the motion guidance and the teach-in programming. They demonstrated that all the func- tions lived up to their expectations. In addition, a test with a time-delay of one second was carried out. This resulted in indications that the control method aided the operator in time- delayed control, because it allowed him to plan motions ahead by relating them to his en- vironment. Moreover, a qualitative test with five participants was done to test the system's general usability. All the participants performed a pick-and-place task, and everyone suc- cessfully completed this task. The observations during the usability test, suggested that the user interface was intuitive and easy to understand. However, the differences in camera-view perspective and control perspective could often cause confusions. With that said, it was clear that efficient usage of the system can be achieved with minimal training. During the usabil- ity test, it was also explored how the persons of interest responded to a visual overlay, cover- ing the operator's computer monitor, turning red. In this case, the overlay gradually turned red to warn the operator that a singularity was approaching. Because most participants im- mediately halted the operation when this happened, the overlay concept was considered a beneficial way of conveying this information to the remote operator. In conclusion, the system's utilization of a gripper analog as a tangible interface provides an intuitive way of remotely controlling industrial robots. Moreover, the use of CogInfoCom, such as the concepts of auditory and visual feedback, is a convenient way to communicate information of the robot's state to the operator.


This article is concerned with the methodological question of frontier production functions estimation for agriculture, and the appropriateness of regression quantiles, as a useful semi-parametric approach. Better insights are reached using the proposed methodology that provides robust farm efficiency scores estimates. Using the 2007 Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) data for Greece, analysis shows that the distribution of efficiency scores is closer to normality when employing regression quantiles, while underestimation of efficiency obtained by other parametric or deterministic methods based on the conditional mean can be avoided. The results further suggest that government support aimed at enhancing farms viability should be directed towards payments decoupled from output or prices, as well as rural development payments that affect productivity in a uniform way.


Genome-wide association studies have identified hundreds of common genetic variants associated with obesity and Type 2 diabetes. These studies have focused on additive association tests. Identifying deviations from additivity may provide new biological insights and explain some of the missing heritability for these diseases. To identify non-additive associations we performed a genome-wide association study using a dominance deviation model for BMI, obesity and Type 2 diabetes (4,040 cases) in 120,286 individuals of British ancestry from the UK Biobank study. Known obesity-associated variants in FTO showed strong evidence for deviation from additivity (P=3×10−5) through a recessive effect of the BMI-increasing allele. The average BMI of individuals carrying 0, 1 or 2 BMI-raising alleles was 27.27kg/m2 (95% CI:27.22-27.31), 27.54kg/m2 (95% CI:27.50-27.58), and 28.07kg/m2 (95% CI:28.0-28.14), respectively. A similar effect was observed in 105,643 individuals from the GIANT consortium (P=0.003; Pmeta-analysis=1×10−7). We also detected a recessive effect (Pdomdev=5×10−4) at CDKAL1 for Type 2 diabetes risk. Homozygous risk allele carriers had an OR=1.48 (95% CI:1.32-1.65) in comparison to the heterozygous group that had an OR=1.06 (95% CI:0.99-1.14), a result consistent with a previous study. We did not identify any novel genome-wide associations. In conclusion, although we find no evidence for widespread non-additive effects contributing to the genetic risk of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, we find robust examples of recessive effects at the FTO and CDKAL1 loci.


This study is based on participant observation of a protest against the Mafia that occurred in Rome on 26 September 2009. First, this essay offers an analysis by using symbols and their meanings, which are illustrated through the 'pyramid of social protest'. Second, the framing and process of the protest are analysed. Two new concepts are presented: the culture of lawfulness frame and the implicit contested process. Third, this essay shows that defying the Mafia begins with individual motivation but ends with the collective motivation behind the decision to be an activist. This decision includes ethically oriented reasons rather than being based on a materialistically calculated reasoning. Finally, the struggle of anti-Mafia movement illuminates cultural anthropology through its desire for a progressive society in which strong symbolic interactionism among the activists play an important role.


Rabbits are most commonly perceived as soft, fuzzy, tender, loving, active household pets. However, rabbit meat is growing in popularity among urban farmers, foodies, and chefs alike. The pet rabbit industry is subject to a variety of laws and regulations intended to ensure the humane and proper treatment of these beloved pets. Yet, 'meat rabbits,' which are often the same breed or species as pet rabbits, are often not covered by either the protections that govern the treatment of animals used for meat or the protections that govern the treatment of rabbits as pets or companion animals. The lack of laws and regulations applicable to the meat rabbit industry has led to widely documented inhumane treatment and animal abuse. Such beloved companions deserve the benefits of increased government oversight of rabbit meat production. This Article proposes that, on the federal level, the United States Department of Agriculture inspection of commercial rabbit producers and processors hould be mandatory rather than voluntary. States must also play a central role because, given the nature of the rabbit meat industry, it is especially important that any new standards reach small farms and urban farmers, in addition to commercial producers. This Article proposes that state standards use puppy mill laws as guidance, given rabbits' societal status as companion animals. New laws governing the raising of meat rabbits should establish standards for light and ventilation, requirements for environmental enrichment, limits on breeding, and floor space minimums for cages. Such changes will ensure that the rabbit's more typical role as a companion animal is acknowledged, while providing the necessary protection from abuse and mistreatment when rabbits are raised for meat consumption.


This paper describes the designing pregroove dimensions to achieve stable data read-out. The spot size detection method and the push-pull method are used for focusing and tracking error signal detection, respectively. Experimental and theoretical results show that pregroove crosstalk and decrease in light intensity due to groove diffraction become smaller as the edge gradient of the pregroove decreases. The permissible range of the depth for a triangular pregroove is 40% larger than that of a rectangular pregroove. The triangular pregroove depth to attain the maximum tracking signal efficiency is about 100 nm for a refractive index of 1.5.


A technique that allows direct optical imaging of nanostructures and determines quantitatively geometric nanofeatures beyond the classical diffraction limit by using high-refractive index glass microspheres is introduced. The glass microsphere is put on the nanostructure that is immersed in oil. When illuminated by conventional oil-immersion microscope objective, a magnified virtual image of the sample is projected by the microsphere and recorded by the same objective. The image reveals the sub-diffraction nanofeatures of the sample due to a highly focused focal spot generated by the microsphere, i.e. a so-called "photonic nanojet". Experimental results on nanostructures demonstrates a resolution of λ/4 - λ/7, where λ is the illumination wavelength, by using a 60 μm glass microsphere and a normal wideband halogen lamp as illumination source.


Eagles seemed to dominate Marcus Morris's life. As a clergyman's son, he grew up with the eagle of the church lectern; as a priest himself he had his own lecterns. A brass inkwell topped by a flying eagle became the symbol of the most famous eagle of all - the children's magazine that influenced a generation. Eagle and its sister papers Girl, Swift and Robin were read by millions throughout the 1950s and 60s. They offered excitement in the adventures of Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, brilliantly drawn by Frank Hampson; of PC49, Riders of the Range, Tommy Walls, Luck of the Legion, Harris Tweed and Captain Pugwash. Small boys were fascinated by the cutaway drawings of modern wonders like the first jet airliner, by features on science, history and nature, and by the adventures of a roving Special Investigator. The religious and moral framework was strong, though not overstated, with Bible stories and lives of missionaries and saints featured regularly, and young readers were encouraged to become good citizens. David Hockney and Gerald Scarfe had their teenage drawings published in Eagle (the first published work for Scarfe), and many of the original illustrators of the magazine are well-known today - some have contributed cartoons drawn especially for this book. Each issue of Eagle had an Editor's Letter, signed by Marcus Morris, a name as widely known to his young readers as any modern pop idol. The fascinating story of this extraordinary man is now told for the first time. Morris was a radical priest, continually at odds with the Church establishment. His desire to spread the word of Christianity led him into journalism, and his Lancashire parish magazine was read throughout Britain and as far afield as Australia. This magazine was a commercial failure, but its literary success made Morris determined to spread its ethos to children. Eagle was the immensely successful outcome. Morris was a man of contrasts. His clerical status did not prevent him, or his beautiful and successful actress wife, from indulging in extramarital affairs. The success of Eagle and his other magazines brought him no substantial wealth, and his way of life was funded by a generous expense account. After arguments with new masters in Fleet Street he left the company and spent the rest of his working life with the fourth eagle in his life, the symbol of the National Magazine Company which he made one of the most successful publishers in Britain. Though he became disillusioned with the Church, he remained a priest, and in spite of being happily married until his death, he continued to enjoy liaisons with beautiful women. Although a legendary drinker and lover of good living, he was greatly respected, loved, and mourned by employees, parishioners, and his many friends. Prof Stephen Hawking, when asked what influence Dan Dare had on him: 'Why am I in cosmology?' Kenny Everett, on Eagle: 'Marcus made my childhood a lot easier to bear. Every week this divine colour magazine came through the letter box with lots of fab colour adventures; it was glossy and other worldly ...You don't know what this magazine meant to me. It saved me.' With a foreword by Sir Tim Rice.


There is a growing trend to use object-based implementations and modeling in industrial control applications. However, the object-based approach imposes new theoretical and practical problems. Those problems are due to a higher abstraction level that is achievable with objects as compared to the more traditional, state-based fault detection and isolation methods (FDI) approaches. This paper presents a description of the problems and solutions to them in the framework of a discrete FDI method referred to as ontological control. The results are also relevant in respect to domain-independent failure recovery methods, such as (Fodor et al., 1997).


We know the process by which children become social, moral, and creative beings, but when—and how—do they become mathematical beings? This thought-provoking volume follows ten children (ages seven through eighteen) in schools in New Zealand, England, Australia, Sweden, and an international school in Switzerland as they come to recognize the mathematical as part of their lives, their academic identities, and their identities as human beings. Through these students' experiences important themes emerge, including mathematics as work, a domain of learning, and an avenue for competition; mathematical ability as a key to how they are perceived by others; and the relationships between mathematics achievement and the larger social and academic picture. This comparative study of educational systems and academic development will inform readers in these and other salient areas:

* Theoretical bases for understanding children as mathematical subjects.

* Help in creating the mathematical self: tutoring and related programs.

* The roles of compulsory study and standardized assessment.

* Class and ethnic content in children's math narratives.

* The gendering of mathematical ability and activity.

* What children's math experience can teach us about teaching the subject.

Children Talk about Their Mathematics Lives opens bold windows onto how young people learn and how disparities arise, making it a cutting-edge resource for researchers and libraries, graduates and teachers in mathematics education and early childhood education.


This paper addresses the issue of closed-set text-independent speaker identification from samples of speech recorded over the telephone. It focuses on the effects of acoustic mismatches between training and testing data, and concentrates on two approaches: (1) extracting features that are robust against channel variations and (2) transforming the speaker models to compensate for channel effects. First, an experimental study shows that optimizing the front end processing of the speech signal can significantly improve speaker recognition performance. A new filterbank design is introduced to improve the robustness of the speech spectrum computation in the front-end unit. Next, a new feature based on spectral slopes is described. Its ability to discriminate between speakers is shown to be superior to that of the traditional cepstrum. This feature can be used alone or combined with the cepstrum. The second part of the paper presents two model transformation methods that further reduce channel effects. These methods make use of a locally collected stereo database to estimate a speaker-independent variance transformation for each speech feature used by the classifier. The transformations constructed on this stereo database can then be applied to speaker models derived from other databases. Combined, the methods developed in this paper resulted in a 38% relative improvement on the closed-set 30-s training 5-s testing condition of the NIST'95 Evaluation task, after cepstral mean removal.


Building on work carried out for the Law Society of Scotland in 2000, this report was commissioned by the Law Society of England and Wales to inform them with regard to the implementation of their Training Framework Review (TFR). The TFR included a series of controversial proposals designed to open up the traditional training of solicitors by enabling a wider range of routes to the profession. This report examined the 'day one' outcomes of a newly-qualified solicitor and by tracking backwards examined different learning and assessment mechanisms and their probability in achieving effectively the desired outcomes. The report concluded that the 'day one' outcomes covered a combination of skills, knowledge and work-based learning which had to be considered. The findings were deemed by many of the training providers to be pivotal in the decision by the Law Society to retain the core academic and vocational training routes.


To the expanding literature on lesbian and gay rights in Canada, Miriam Smith contributes this fascinating analysis of trends in the movement toward equality for sexual minorities in the last quarter of a century. Using archival material that has largely been ignored, as well as interviews with Canadian activists, Smith investigates the ways in which the lesbian and gay movement has changed in response to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Smith demonstrates that equality-seeking was well entrenched as a strategy and ideology in lesbian and gay rights networks prior to the existence of the Charter. However, in the wake of the Charter, the movement has shifted from a strategy primarily based on building a social movement to one is based on achieving concrete legal and policy victories. Rather than focusing on win/loss ratios before the courts under the Charter or on the analysis of legal cases, the work centres on the impact of the Charter from the perspective of the experience of those within the movement itself. Unlike the existing literature on the lesbian and gay rights movement in Canada, Smith's study presents an analysis of the evolution of federal-level social organizing based on primary sources. Into the discussion Smith also introduces Quebec politics as a unique cultural entity and one that is often overlooked in the context of lesbian and gay activism in Canada. Lesbian and Gay Rights in Canada is an excellent analysis of an important and rising social movement in Canadian politics.


Abstract. Results of a transient numerical experiment performed in a coupled atmosphere-ocean-vegetation model with orbital forcing alone are compared to pollen-based vegetation reconstructions covering the last 6000 yr from four representative sites on the Tibetan Plateau. Causes of the vegetation change and consequences of the biomass storage are analysed. In general, simulated and reconstructed vegetation trends at each site are in good agreement. Both methods reveal a general retreat of the biomass-rich vegetation that is particularly manifested in a strong decrease of forests. However, model and reconstructions often differ with regard to the climatic factors causing the vegetation change at each site. The reconstructions primarily identify decreasing summer monsoon precipitation and changes in the temperature of the warm season as the responsible mechanisms for the vegetation shift. In the model, the land cover change mainly originates from differences in warm/cold seasonal temperatures and only to a lesser extent from precipitation changes. According to the model results, the averaged forest fraction on the Plateau shrinks by almost one-third from mid-Holocene (41.4 %) to present-day (28.3 %). Shrubs, whose fraction is quadrupled at present-day (12.3 %), replace most of this forest. Grass fraction increases from 38.1 % during the mid-Holocene to 42.3 % at present-day. This land cover change results in a decrease of living biomass by 0.62 kgC m−2. Total biomass on the Tibetan Plateau decreases by 1.9 kgC m−2, i.e. approx. 6.64 PgC are released due to the natural land cover change.


Databases and related information systems can benefit from the use of ontologies to enrich the data with general background knowledge. The DL-Lite family of ontology languages was specifically tailored towards such ontology-based data access, enabling an implementation in a relational database management system (RDBMS) based on a query rewriting approach. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach to implementing ontology-based data access in DL-Lite.The distinguishing feature of our approach is to allow rewriting of both the query and the data. We show that, in contrast to the existing approaches, no exponential blowup is produced by the rewritings. Based on experiments with a number of real-world ontologies, we demonstrate that query execution in the proposed approach is often more efficient than in existing approaches, especially for large ontologies. We also show how to seamlessly integrate the data rewriting step of our approach into an RDBMS using views (which solves the update problem) and make an interesting observation regarding the succinctness of queries in the original query rewriting approach.


The query – What is law? – is jurisprudence's foundational inquiry. While legal academics are often fascinated with that subject, practicing lawyers rarely if ever ask themselves that question. Rather, they ask – what law is applicable to my client's situation and how can I spin that law to my client's favor. Legal positivists, as legal philosophers, come close to examining the question, what is law, in the way a practitioner might ask, what is the law. The main difference, however, is that the legal positivist would generalize the question and then tell the practitioner to search for the proper sources of law.
Justice Antonin Scalia was a caricature of legal positivism. For him, the law was a closed set comprised primarily of constitutional or legislative text, judicial interpretation of that text, and logical application of that text to disputes. Beyond those sources, Scalia appeared increasingly skeptical, giving legislative history and even agency interpretation of statutory text limited legal weight – at least regarding labor law jurisprudence. Scalia also adhered to an originalist school of thought, whereby constitutional interpretation should be confined to what the drafters intended. Scalia believed that close adherence to language as it was used at the time of legislative drafting coupled with logical thinking prevented the rule of men from overtaking the rule of law.
As chance would have it, Scalia (born on March 11, 1936) and the National Labor Relations Act (signed into law on July 5, 1935) came into being within nine months of each other. Using biographical details from and historical events during Scalia's life, this article draws a picture of Scalia the man, hinting at influential sources and events in his life. The article allows the reader to draw inferences about the question – what is law – as he or she sojourns through Scalia's life. The first part of the Article, Justice in the Making, brings the reader on a trip through time, specifically, the half-century between 1936 and 1986. That voyage, which begins with Scalia's birth, summarizes the judicial development of labor law under the NLRA, using illustrative cases plucked during years significant in Scalia's educational and professional development. The voyage ends with Scalia's appointment to the bench, thereby bringing the reader right up to the point that Scalia is no longer a justice in the making but is making justice. The second part of the Article, Scalia's Labor Law Legacy, discusses Scalia's role in all nineteen NLRA cases decided during Scalia's time on the High Bench. That part is divided into three sections. Section A, Separation of Powers and the Government's Limited Authority to Act, reviews Scalia's analysis of labor cases dealing with separation of powers and government authority issues. It concludes that Scalia tended to enlarge the role of the judicial branch at the expense of legislative and executive power. Section B, Chevron and the Court's Relationship to the NLRB in Interpreting the NLRA, reviews Scalia's application of Chevron deference in labor cases, concluding that Scalia tended to enlarge the Court's interpretative role at the expense of agency interpretation. Section C, The Court's Review of the Board's Findings of Fact, reviews Scalia's deference to the NLRB's findings of fact, concluding that Scalia was quite comfortable undoing agency findings, notwithstanding that the substantial evidence test is primarily a tool of the courts of appeals used as a check on gross factual errors made by agencies. The article concludes by suggesting that, however influential one man may be on the law's development, the law transcends people, and is greater than what the positivist suggests, even if that positivist is a larger-than-life justice named Antonin Scalia.


Purpose – Naturally occurring brands combine history, anthropology, sociology and marketing to explain the phenomenon of communities defined by a sense of place. Focusing on both the Basque Country and Basques in Boise, Idaho, we discuss the naturally occurring brand of the Basque people throughout history into the modern day. We explain who the Basques are and how they have branded themselves through language, place, industry, food, drink and culture with mention of similarities to other communities and the lessons that other ethnic/cultural communities can learn. The purpose of the paper is to address the "marketing and imagined communities; nations and cities as brands" suggestion in this conference's call for papers. In particular, this paper reveals instances where Basques, consciously or not, branded themselves through products and artifacts that simultaneously serve as windows into this often overlooked culture, hence the "metaphor for history." Approach – Both a marketer and a historian join efforts to discuss branding and a people's history. A variety of branding issues are discussed in relationship to the Basque people via a history timeline and marketing branding literature. Photographs are included to highlight key points. Research Limitations – This paper is descriptive, not empirical. It introduces many different branding topics without, by necessity, much elaboration of each topic. Other marketers and historians, with equally good knowledge of the Basque community, might choose other branding issues to highlight and still other researchers might verify by a quantitative study of perceptions of agreement from Basque communities.


Aims To review all penetrative child sexual abuse (CSA) cases presenting to a local unit over 12 months and audit against national guidelines for sexually transmitted infection (STI) screening and Forensic medical examination appropriateness and timing. Methods This was a retrospective audit of all penetrative CSA cases including oral, anal and vaginal penetration presenting to the unit over 12 months from January 2010. The medical reports were reviewed for demographic data including age, gender and relationship to perpetrator and the local database was searched for any previous medical reports on the same children. The Hospital's results server was checked for any STI results relevant to the cases and the findings were audited against national guidelines for both STI screening and for forensic medical examination appropriateness and timing. Results 3% of all 1289 child protection referrals seen in the 12 month period were penetrative CSA cases. 60% of cases were female and 76% were under 13 years of age. 23% of cases had another child aged 11 to 16 years as the perpetrator and 89% of these were non-relations. 35% had previous child protection medicals performed within 3 months to 8 years. 20% (7 cases) were forensic medical examinations and 1 of these was deemed by the author to have been seen out of the appropriate forensic sampling window. 40% of the forensic cases where emergency contraception was indicated as part of the medical care were seen more than 5 days after the incident. We performed STI screening on 82% of cases as per local protocol and of those tested there was a 6% STI rate Conclusions A large number of penetrative CSA cases are seen yearly, many are re-referrals and a significant number are perpetrated by other children. Forensic medical examinations were indicated in 20% of cases however these often fell outside the window for timely emergency contraception and appropriate forensic sampling. A significant minority of cases seen also had an STI when screened. We suggest particular attention should be given to timing of medical examinations to optimise not only forensic sampling but also medical care and emphasise the importance of appropriate STI screening.


Jet substructure quantities are measured using jets groomed with the soft-drop grooming procedure in dijet events from 32.9  fb-1 of pp collisions collected with the ATLAS detector at s=13  TeV. These observables are sensitive to a wide range of QCD phenomena. Some observables, such as the jet mass and opening angle between the two subjets which pass the soft-drop condition, can be described by a high-order (resummed) series in the strong coupling constant αS. Other observables, such as the momentum sharing between the two subjets, are nearly independent of αS. These observables can be constructed using all interacting particles or using only charged particles reconstructed in the inner tracking detectors. Track-based versions of these observables are not collinear safe, but are measured more precisely, and universal nonperturbative functions can absorb the collinear singularities. The unfolded data are directly compared with QCD calculations and hadron-level Monte Carlo simulations. The measurements are performed in different pseudorapidity regions, which are then used to extract quark and gluon jet shapes using the predicted quark and gluon fractions in each region. All of the parton shower and analytical calculations provide an excellent description of the data in most regions of phase space.


The drive to recruit more male primary teachers has been a longstanding aim of many Western countries. Within England the Training and Development Agency for Schools has undertaken a 10‐year marketing campaign to increase the numbers with limited success. Researchers have attempted to analyse the reasons for this failure, considering many areas, for example, the feminisation of the teaching profession, the low status of the primary teacher and concerns about child protection. This paper discusses the findings of a research study undertaken by a group of providers of ITE (initial teacher education) aiming to examine current issues relating to the recruitment and retention of male students in primary ITE. Many similar studies have researched only the male 'voice'. However, in an attempt to explore any differences in contributory factors, the research reported here examined views of both successful male and female trainees on ITE courses and their course providers. The findings indicated that gender was overwhelmingly seen as irrelevant by trainees themselves. Where there was a significant difference to other studies it was that there was no significant gender difference observed in relation to concerns about child protection. The study also identified successful strategies for retention and completion. Within these there was however a gender divide and the research highlighted that some strategies were seen as particularly supportive for male trainees. Where this is the case it is important that providers/policy makers acknowledge these and continue to address particular groups' needs.


Context. The detection and identification of oscillation modes (in terms of their � , m, and successive n) is a great challenge for present and future asteroseismic space missions. "Peak tagging" is an important step in the analysis of these data to provide estimations of stellar oscillation mode parameters, i.e., frequencies, rotation rates, and further studies on the stellar structure. Aims. Our goal is to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the asteroseismic spectra computed from the time series that are representative of MOST and CoRoT observations (30- and 150-day observations). Methods. We apply the curvelet transform – a recent image processing technique that looks for curved patterns – to echelle diagrams built using asteroseismic power spectra. In the resulting diagram, the eigenfrequencies appear as smooth continuous ridges. To test the method, we use Monte-Carlo simulations of several sun-like stars with different combinations of rotation rates, rotation-axis inclination, and signal-to-noise ratios. Results. The filtered diagrams enhance the contrast between the ridges of the modes and the background, allowing a better tagging of the modes and a better extraction of some stellar parameters. Monte-Carlo simulations have also shown that the region where modes can be detected is enlarged at lower and higher frequencies compared to the raw spectra. In addition, the extraction of the mean rotational splitting from modes at low frequency can be done more easily using the filtered spectra rather than the raw spectra.


This article attempts to examine audit committee composition and structure affecting and leading to enhanced audit committee performance, with due regard for the principles of good governance and international best practices. The article recommends the ideal composition and structure of the audit committee to assist committees to meet their requirements, to ensure optimal performance and to improve the effectiveness of their oversight of financial reporting and corporate governance. The framework developed could also be used as a guideline in the selection and recruitment process for audit committees. The requirements are based on the regulatory requirements of the King II Report on Corporate Governance in South Africa (2002), the Companies Amendment Act 20 of 2004, the Corporate Laws Amendment Bill (2006), the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), the JSE Limited requirements, the Blue Ribbon Committee Report (1999) and the Sarbanes‐ Oxley Act of 2002 in the USA.


Abstract Iranian long legged wood frog, Rana pseudodalmatina Eiselt & Schmidtler, 1971 is a brown frog species endemic to the Hyrcanian forest. The objective of the present study is to collect detailed information on the feeding habits of 44 specimens of this species (24 ♂, 20 ♀) by analyzing the stomach contents of individuals from 10 populations inhabiting range. The food habit of R. pseudodalmatina generally varies by the availability of surrounding prey items, and it is a foraging predator, the food of which consists largely of Coleoptera (mainly Carabidae, Dytiscidae and Haliplidae), Diptera (Muscidae) and Hymenoptera (Formicidae), and no difference was found between females and males in the stomach content.


Abstract. The influence of subglacial water on the dynamics of ice flow has been the object of increasing interest in the past decade. In this study we focus on large-scale, long-term changes in surface elevation over Northeast Greenland and the corresponding changes in subglacial water routeways. Our results show that over timescales ranging from decades to millennia the area may experience redistribution of and fluctuation in subglacial water outflux under the main glacier outlets. The fluctuations in subglacial water routing occur even in the absence of external forcing. Based on these results we conclude that changes in the subglacial water routeways are an intrinsic part of the drainage basin dynamics, where the subglacial system is likely always in a transient state. The results also imply that fluctuations at the margins observed at present might originate from changes several hundred kilometres upstream. Since surface elevation changes may propagate upstream over timescales much longer than the observational period, the cause of the fluctuations may not be present in current observational records.


Health systems consist of all the people and actions whose primary purpose is to improve health. It is therefore urgent to assess current performance and to judge how health systems can reach their potential. This cross sectional study was conducted in Dhamar city, Yemen to assess the impression about level of the healthcare services. About 240 subjects agreed to participate in this study but analysis was carried out on 194 subjects who provided complete data on the variables of interest to this study. Participates satisfaction was measured using a semi-structured worker/patient judgments questionnaire. Participates were asked to supply the following information about themselves: age, sex, marital status, occupation, level of education, types of the hospital; employment, and monthly income. The overall level of satisfaction was assessed on a three point scale: 1= poor, 2= fair, 3= good. The results of the current study found that private hospitals have higher overall healthcare quality than public hospitals. This study indicated that patient of private hospitals are more satisfied and feel more trust in healthcare service provider than public hospitals. The result of the present study provided insights to both health care providers and hospital managers to improve service quality and patient satisfaction in the hospital environment in Yemen.


Fault-tree analysis is commonly used for risk assessment of industrial systems. Several computer packages are available to carry out the analysis. Despite its common usage there are associated limitations of the technique in terms of accuracy and efficiency when dealing with large fault-tree structures. The most recent approach to aid the analysis of the fault-tree diagram is the BDD (binary decision diagram). To use the BDD, the fault-tree structure needs to be converted into the BDD format. Converting the fault tree is relatively straightforward but requires that the basic events of the tree be ordered. This ordering is critical to the resulting size of the BDD, and ultimately affects the qualitative and quantitative performance and benefits of this technique. Several heuristic approaches were developed to produce an optimal ordering permutation for a specific tree. These heuristic approaches do not always yield a minimal BDD structure for all trees. There is no single heuristic that guarantees a minimal BDD for any fault-tree structure. This paper looks at a selection approach using a neural network to choose the best heuristic from a set of alternatives that will yield the smallest BDD and promote an efficient analysis. The set of possible selection choices are 6 alternative heuristics, and the prediction capacity produced was a 70% chance of the neural network choosing the best ordering heuristic from the set of 6 for the test set of given fault trees.


Introduction: Diabetes mellitus is associated with long-term damage, dysfunction and failure of various organs especially the eyes, kidneys, heart and blood vessels. Abnormalities of LV function primarily reflected a diastolic abnormality which was an early sign of diabetic cardiomyopathy and had been shown to precede systolic dysfunction in diabetic patients. Echocardiography can be used for the diagnosis of diabetic cardiomyopathy or diabetesinduced myocardial dysfunction. Moreover, tissue Doppler Imaging (TDI) had emerged as a new sensitive technique for the evaluation of diastolic function. Aim of the work was to detect early left ventricular dysfunctions in children with type 1 diabetes mellitus and their correlation with the glycemic control of these children. Subjects and methods: This study included two groups, (Group Ι) included 46 children who were diagnosed as type 1 diabetic patients, and (Group II) which included 23 apparently healthy, age and sex matched children as a control group. They were subjected to thorough history taking, clinical examination, laboratory investigations including total serum cholesterol and triglycerides. Left ventricular functions were assessed by resting Trans Thoracic Echocardiography (TTE) and Tissue Doppler Imaging (TDI). Results: There were significant higher diastolic indices by both TTE and TDI in type 1 diabetic children than the control group. Diagnosis of definite left ventricular diastolic dysfunction was detected in 5 (10.9%) diabetic children by TTE and in 7 (15%) diabetic children by TDI. Finally, there were insignificant associations between duration of the disease, hypoglycemic attacks, DKA, systolic and diastolic blood pressures, HbA1c% levels and different echocardiographic, tissue Doppler parameters. Conclusion: Alteration of myocardial function induced by DM may begin earlier than was generally thought and these changes might be not correlated with duration of diabetes nor glycemic control. Children and adolescents with T1DM already have significant changes in myocardial diastolic function of the LV and seem to be at risk of developing further cardiac dysfunctions.


BACKGROUND
The specific benefits of aerobic exercises in smoking cessation are unclear, as they have different characteristics, intensities, and durations. The purpose of this systematic review with meta-analysis was to evaluate the effects of aerobic exercise, with or without co-interventions, compared with a control group of cognitive behavior treatment on smoking cessation.

METHODS
This review was prospectively registered on PROSPERO, and the searches were performed from 2016 to 2018. Randomized controlled trials evaluating the effects of aerobic exercise, with or without nicotine therapy replacement, compared with usual care were included. The primary outcome was smoking cessation defined as the prevalence of those who quit or continuous abstinence. Meta-analysis was calculated using random effects model in the comprehensive meta-analysis software.

RESULTS
The authors identified 18 trials reporting data for a total of 2815 participants. There was moderate-quality evidence that aerobic exercise was better than usual care in promoting smoking cessation at short term (11 trials, risk ratio 0.79; 95% confidence interval, 0.66-0.94). However, there were no differences between aerobic exercises and usual care at medium- or long-term follow-ups.

CONCLUSIONS
According to review, aerobic exercise may be effective in promoting smoking cessation at short-term, but not at medium- and long-term follow-ups.


The Afrotropical genus Cyclolimnichus Deleve is revised. The only previously descriptionbed species in the genus, C. presignis Deleve, is redescriptionbed and three species, C. dentoni and C. ovalis from Cameroon and C. jaechi from Kenya, are descriptionbed as new. Two species groups are identified according to external morphology and male genitalia, the first comprises C. presignis and C. jaechi, and the second C. ovalis and C. dentoni. A key to the species of Cyclolimnichus is provided.


ABSTRACT The majority of developing countries have indicated capacity building as a condition for implementing their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. This is in the context of shortfalls in past initiatives on capacity building under different bilateral and multilateral agencies including bodies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which can be largely attributed to their short-term, ad-hoc, supply-driven, and project-based nature. Article 11 of the Paris Agreement points to a potentially new paradigm for capacity building. Based on a review of literature on past experience, as well as analysis of countries' capacity building perspectives in the NDCs, this paper attempts to draw lessons for better capacity building for NDC implementation. The paper aims at answering the questions: What are the capacity building needs expressed in the NDCs? Where are the matches and mismatches with past efforts, and what kind of capacity building can address the current needs? We propose a capacity building framework that addresses climate change as a long term problem. We suggest that universities in developing countries should serve as central hubs for a sustainable, institution-based capacity building system, supported by strengthened partnerships and long term financing. Finally, we suggest that, for the next round of NDCs, developing countries should be more explicit and specific in their demands and approaches to capacity building. Key policy insights The next round of developing countries' NDCs should be more specific about their capacity building needs and align them better with the financial support system under the Paris Agreement. The capacity building needs identified in the NDCs fall short of learning from previous efforts, including that capacity building must be specific and demand-driven, to ensure country ownership. A new framework for capacity building needs to be established, with: a capacity building mechanism under the UNFCCC, developing country universities as the central hub; strengthened partnerships; and a long term financial support system. This framework should be tailored towards the differences in capacity needs among different groups of developing countries.


There has been much progress in the clinical treatment of Progressive Vascular Diseases (PVD) since the introduction of statins, calcium channel blockers, and other relevant drugs. Yet long term PVD still plagues much of our aged population. The use of gene therapy, delivering therapeutic transgenes, should provide both long-term and safe treatment, as well as more physiologically relevant treatments. Adeno-associated Virus (AAV) can provide long term and safe gene delivery, very appropriate for long term PVD. In regards to therapeutic transgenes for the treatment of PVD, there is the choice of several gene categories, all of which may provide a significant level of efficacy yet have different metabolic modes of action. As examples there are anti-inflammatory cytokine genes, blood lipoproteinmetabolism genes, and anti-oxidant genes.


The paper gives an overview of techniques used for characterization of IC-engines as acoustic sources of exhaust and intake system noise. Some recent advances regarding nonlinear source models are introduced and discussed. To calculate insertion loss of mufflers or the level of radiated sound information about the engine as an acoustic source is needed. The source model used in the low frequency plane wave range is often the linear time invariant one-port model. The acoustic source data is obtained from experimental tests or from 1-D CFD codes describing the engine gas exchange process. The IC-engine is a high level acoustic source and in most cases not completely linear. It is therefore of interest to have models taking weak non-linearity into account while still maintaining a simple method for interfacing the source model with a linear frequency domain model for the attached exhaust or intake system. The use of source characterization in acoustic design of mufflers is also briefly discussed.


OBJECTIVE We aimed to elucidate whether potato consumption is associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We analyzed data in three cohorts consisting of U.S. male and female health professionals without diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer at baseline: 70,773 women from the Nurses' Health Study (1984–2010), 87,739 women from Nurses' Health Study II (1991–2011), and 40,669 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986–2010). Potato consumption was assessed quadrennially using validated food frequency questionnaires (FFQs), and we calculated 4-year change in potato consumption from consecutive FFQs. Self-reported T2D diagnosis was confirmed using a validated supplementary questionnaire. RESULTS During 3,988,007 person-years of follow-up, 15,362 new cases of T2D were identified. Higher consumption of total potatoes (including baked, boiled, or mashed potatoes and french fries) was significantly associated with an elevated risk for T2D: the pooled hazard ratio (HR) of T2D compared with <1 serving/week was 1.07 (95% CI 0.97–1.18) for 2–4 servings/week and 1.33 (95% CI 1.17–1.52) for ≥7 servings/week after adjustment for demographic, lifestyle, and dietary factors. In addition, the pooled HRs of T2D for every 3 servings/week were 1.04 (95% CI 1.01–1.08) for baked, boiled, or mashed potatoes, and 1.19 (95% CI 1.13–1.25) for french fries. We further estimated that the HR of T2D was 0.88 (95% CI 0.84–0.91) for replacing 3 servings/week of total potatoes with the same amount of whole grains. Last, in comparison with stable potato consumption, every 3-servings/week increment of potato consumption in 4 years was associated with a 4% (95% CI 0–8%) higher T2D risk. CONCLUSIONS Greater consumption of potatoes, especially french fries, was associated with a higher T2D risk, independent of BMI and other risk factors. Replacement of potatoes with whole grains was associated with a lower T2D risk.


We introduce a hierarchical Bayesian model for the discovery of putative regulators from gene expression data only. The hierarchy incorporates the knowledge that there are just a few regulators that by themselves only regulate a handful of genes. This is implemented through a so-called spike-and-slab prior, a mixture of Gaussians with different widths, with mixing weights from a hierarchical Bernoulli model. For efficient inference we implemented expectation propagation. Running the model on a malaria parasite data set, we found four genes with significant homology to transcription factors in an amoebe, one RNA regulator and three genes of unknown function (out of the top ten genes considered).


Objective: This study aimed to investigate correlations between a panel of biomarkers/tumor markers and high-risk (HR) human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive versus HR-HPV-negative cervical lesions. Materials and Methods: The study included 188 women who consecutively attended a colposcopy clinic because of PAP smears suggesting cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), and 40 women with normal vaginal cytology. Tissue microarray blocks were prepared from representative cervical cone or punch biopsies. Sections were stained for 12 biological markers, previously shown to be relevant in cervical neoplasms, and expression was correlated to the presence or absence of HR-HPV in cervical lesions. Results: No correlations between expression of biomarkers and HPV status were found in normal epithelium. Expression of c-myc, CD4+, Ki-67, and p16INK4a correlated significantly to HR-HPV-infected epithelium compared with HR-HPV-negative epithelium. When adjustment was made for CIN grade, only the expression of Ki-67 correlated significantly with HPV status and CIN grade. Human papillomavirus status was stratified to normal epithelium, low-grade CIN, and high-grade CIN. Fragile histidine triad (FHIT), E-cadherin, Rb, Ki-67, and p16INK4a expression was significantly increased in HPV-positive tissue by increasing CIN grade. No correlation to tumor marker expression was observed in the HPV-negative tissue. Conclusions: This study described correlations, previously not investigated, between HPV status and tumor marker expression, that is, E-cadherin, Rb, and fragile histidine triad. Surprisingly, p16INK4a was not, although Ki-67 expression was, independently correlated to HPV positivity. The results of this study suggest that p16INK4a instead correlates independently with increasing CIN grade.


Since the introduction of mandatory helmet legislation (MHL) in Australia, debate on the effect of MHL on cyclist head injuries has been ongoing. The debate sometimes revolves around the statistical methodology used to assess intervention effectiveness. Supporters of rescinding the MHL thereby encouraging cyclists to ride without helmets, regularly dismiss statistical evaluations as being flawed for various reasons. In a more general context, researchers want to estimate whether and how a policy intervention changed an outcome of interest. Quasi-experimental interrupted time series (ITS) is the most appropriate design to evaluate the longitudinal effects of policy interventions and segmented regression analysis is often used as a powerful statistical method for ITS. Recent research has employed a log-linear regression model for the hospital admission counts of head and limb injuries from New South Wales, Australia, from a 36 month period centred at the time of legislation. Estimation of the model was done using a frequentist approach. In this paper, we re-analyse this data using empirical Bayes and full Bayesian methods, since the use of these methods has become popular in road safety studies. In particular, we show how a full Bayesian method can be readily implemented in WinBUGS software. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each method and describe and compare the different estimation methods in terms of parameter estimates. The results show that all three estimation methods give consistent conclusions regarding the positive effect of compulsory helmet wearing on cyclist head injuries in New South Wales.


Single complete denture opposing natural dentition is a common occurrence in clinical practice. Malposed, tipped or supraerupted teeth in the opposing arch is a perplexing problem in achieving a harmonious balanced occlusion in single complete denture patients . It is developed for stability of denture bases in relation to supporting structures during functional and parafunctional movements. Lack of occlusal balance may lead to denture instability, mucosal soreness, tissue changes and accelerated ridge resorptionThe single complete denture with a technique of occlusal refinement by functionally generated amalgam stops condensed in prepared resin teeth after initial balancing of the denture with semiadjustable articulator. This technique provides intimacy of contact in all excursions by carving the amalgam in plastic stage. Amalgam stops improve the efficiency of the resin teeth. Dentures fabricated using this technique require fewer and simpler post-insertion adjustment.


The article defines the levels of typicality of the company's income or expenses, which arose as a result of the risk in the past, and the probable amount of future income (expenses). The Matrix of economic activity risks was built on the basis of the separation of two factors: the level of materiality and the probability of occurrence of risk; this allows determining the situations of reserves forming for repaying company losses. A form of a management report on the risks of the company has been proposed, which sets as its task to pass to all interested parties information about those risks the probability of which and the extent of damage from occurrence of which can be assessed with a sufficient degree of reasonableness. The qualitative characteristics of the company's economic risk and methods for their evaluation are also analyzed.


This thesis looks at an ideal of social intercourse, which obtained in France in the second half of the sixteenth century and which can be traced in Montaigne's Essais. We begin by. defining a number of terms employed in the thesis concerning contemporary social groups and moral concepts. There follows an investigation of the composition of the society in which Montaigne and his immediate forbears lived. We note the relative flexibility of the boundaries between noble and non-noble at the beginning of the century and the various means by which the latter sought to accede to positions of greater social prestige and financial privilege. The importance of education as an element of social training is discussed with reference to the case of Montaigne and the influence of the Humanists on his experiences is traced through his father's handling of the matter. The insistence upon the moral benefits of a liberal education which emerges from this study, leads us to investigate the ideal of manners formulated in Baldassare Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, as this work is one of the most well-known conduct manuals of the period. We then analyse the points of comparison between Castiglione and Montaigne, first taking the essay 'De la Praesumption' as a specific instance of Montaigne's awareness of the same code of manners as Castiglione. The final part of the thesis attempts to trace Montaigne's application of this code to practical situations and looks at areas of his behaviour such as dress, gesture and language for evidence of these rules of conduct. We note how the rules are interpreted by Montaigne, both in his public role as soldier, mayor of Bordeaux and lord of the family estate and in the private domain of his literary creation.


This is a splendid presentation of an ancient northern story cycle, brought to life by Lela Kiana Oman, who has been retelling and writing the legends of the Inupiat of the Kobuk Valley, Alaska, nearly all her adult life. In the mid-1940s, she heard these tales from storytellers passing through the mining town of Candle, and translated them from Inupiaq into English. Now, after fifty years, they illuminate one of the world's most vibrant mythologies. The hero is Qayaq, and the cycle traces his wanderings by kayak and on foot along four rivers - the Selawik, the Kobuk, the Noatak and the Yukon - up along the Arctic Ocean to Barrow, over to Herschel Island in Canada, and south to a Tlingit Indian village. Along the way he battles with jealous fathers-in-law and other powerful adversaries; discovers cultural implements (the copper-headed spear and the birchbark canoe); transforms himself into animals, birds and fish, and meets animals who appear to be human.


Five antioxidant and two oxidative stress assays were applied to serum samples of 43 healthy males. The antioxidant tests showed different inter-assay correlations. A very good correlation of 0.807 was observed between the ferric reducing ability of plasma (FRAP) and total antioxidant status (TAS) assay and also a fair correlation of 0.501 between the biological antioxidant potential (BAP) and TAS assay. There was no statistically significant correlation between the BAP and FRAP assay. The anti-oxidant assays have a high correlation with uric acid, especially the TAS (0.922) and FRAP assay (0.869). The BAP assay has a much lower and no statistically significant correlation with uric acid (0.302), which makes BAP more suitable for the antioxidant status. The total thiol assay showed no statistically significant correlation with uric acid (0.114). The total thiol assay, which is based on a completely different principle, showed a good and statistically significant correlation with the BAP assay (0.510) and also to the TAS assay, but to a lower and not significant extent (0.279) and not with the FRAP assay (−0.008). The oxy-adsorbent test (OXY) assay has no correlation with any of the other assays tested. The oxidative stress assays, reactive oxygen metabolites (ROM) and total oxidant status (TOS), based on a different principle, do not show a statistically significant correlation with the serum samples in this study. Both assays showed a negative, but not significant, correlation with the antioxidant assays. In conclusion, the ROM, TOS, BAP and TTP assays are based on different principles and will have an additional value when a combination of these assays will be applied in large-scale population studies.


Djana Antonucci Correa, linguist and professor at the State University of Ponta Grossa (Parana), organized a provocative, disturbing, and uncomfortable book, that seeks effective answers regarding the teaching of Portuguese language and the practice of linguists. In articles originated in events that took place in this university over the past few years, permeated by questions about language policy, Carlos Alberto Faraco, Maria do Rosario Gregolin, Gilvan Muller de Oliveira, Telma Gimenez and Luiz Carlos Travaglia – each located in their own theoretical and practical experience – reveal, directly or indirectly, the "crisis of purpose" that linguistics is undergoing in Brazil (perhaps, in the world, if we could expand our perspective). In return, they suggest ways for implementing the teaching of Portuguese, and the relationship between research and society. For these and other reasons that we will try to highlight, The Social Relevance of Linguistics, has become "the book of the hour."


The combination Computer Based Training systems with Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science has led to the development of Intelligent Tutoring Systems nearly 30 years ago. A common agreement has been reached about the constituents of an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). Nonetheless, the interpretation of the role of each component in the ITS is still heterogeneous. Together with the absence of formal methods in ITS, this leads to the situation, that the components of ITSs are strongly domain dependent and not reusable. The situation is analyzed for case-based ITS, i.e. ITS based on a narrative story line. A formal model of the tutoring process is introduced into the ITS architecture. The model is based on the idea to support the training of two cognitive processes, i.e. the process of diagnostic reasoning, and the process of general knowledge application. The integration of the tutoring process model as the central component in the ITS has led to a homogenization of the architecture. Based on the new architecture, the ITS Docs 'n Drugs has been realized.


Since they appeared, wireless technologies have deeply transformed our society. Today, wireless internet access and other wireless applications demandincreasingly more traffic. However, the continuous traffic increase can be unbearableand requires rethinking and redesigning the wireless technologies inmany different aspects. Aiming to respond to the increasing needs of wirelesstraffic, we are witnessing a rapidly evolving wireless technology scenario.This thesis addresses various aspects of the transmitters used in wireless communications.Transmitters present several hardware (HW) impairments thatcreate distortions, polluting the radio spectrum and decreasing the achievabletraffic in the network. Digital platforms are now flexible, robust and cheapenough to enable compensation of HW impairments at the digital base-bandsignal. This has been coined as 'dirty radio'. Dirty radio is expected in future transmitters where HW impairments may arise to reduce transmitter cost or to enhance power efficiency. This thesis covers the software (SW) compensation schemes of dirty radio developed for wireless transmitters. As describedin the thesis, these schemes can be further enhanced with knowledge of thespecific signal transmission or scenarios, e.g., developing cognitive digital compensationschemes. This can be valuable in today's rapidly evolving scenarioswhere multiple signals may co-exist, sharing the resources at the same radiofrequency (RF) front-end. In the first part, this thesis focuses on the instrumentation challenges andHWimpairments encountered at the transmitter. A synthetic instrument (SI)that performs network analysis is designed to suit the instrumentation needs.Furthermore, how to perform nonlinear network analysis using the developedinstrument is discussed. Two transmitter HW impairments are studied: themeasurement noise and the load impedance mismatch at the transmitter, asis their coupling with the state-of-the-art digital compensation techniques.These two studied impairments are inherent to measurement systems and areexpected in future wireless transmitters. In the second part, the thesis surveys the area of behavioral modeling and digital compensation techniques for wireless transmitters. Emphasis is placed on low computational complexity techniques. The low complexity is motivated by a predicted increase in the number of transmitters deployed in the network, from base stations (BS), access points and hand-held devices. A modeling methodology is developed that allows modeling transmitters to achieve both reduced computational complexity and low modeling error. Finally, the thesis discusses the emerging architectures of multi-channel transmittersand describes their digital compensation techniques. It revises the MIMOVolterra series formulation to address the general modeling problem anddrafts possible solutions to tackle its dimensionality. In the framework of multi-channel transmitters, a technique to compensate nonlinear multi-carrier satellite transponders is presented. This technique is cognitive because it uses the frequency link planning and the pulse-shaping filters of the individual carriers. This technique shows enhanced compensation ability at reduced computational complexity compared to the state-of-the-art techniques and enables the efficient operation of satellite transponders.


The discovery of a new type of inflammatory cell1 would not feature in the wish list of a student of immunology grappling with the congested pathways of multiple cytokine molecules regulating a myriad of cell–cell interactions. However, the chest physician will be acutely aware that, with all our advanced knowledge of mechanisms underlying allergic asthma, there is clearly an unmet need for new therapy which will depend on further dissection of the cross-talk between immune and somatic cells in the lung. While the majority of patients with asthma respond to treatment with bronchodilator drugs and corticosteroids, others at the severe end of the spectrum are difficult to treat.2 These patients generate a substantial morbidity and socio-economic burden and asthma exacerbations carry a significant risk of fatal attacks.

The new cell type discovered by Petersen et al surfaced in the analysis of data from a model of chronic asthma in the mouse. Animal models, particularly in the mouse, have given us a working hypothesis that underpins the understanding of basic mechanisms of allergy. Data that build on, or deviate, from this provide new opportunities to develop novel therapy that may prove effective in difficult-to-treat asthma, where corticosteroid insensitivity is a particular problem. A major advance from studies of mouse models was the recognition of the polarisation of CD4 thymus-derived lymphocytes into T-helper (Th) 1 cells specialised to help defend against, …


Early therapeutic intervention programs help children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to improve their socio-emotional and functional skills. To relieve the children's caregivers while ensuring that the children are adequately supported in their training exercises, new technologies may offer suitable solutions. This study investigates the potential of a robotic learning assistant which is planned to monitor the children's state of engagement and to intervene with appropriate motivational nudges when necessary. To analyze stakeholder requirements, interviews with parents as well as therapists of children with ASD were conducted. Besides a general positive attitude towards the usage of new technologies, we received some important insights for the design of the robot and its interaction with the children. One strongly accentuated aspect was the robot's adequate and context-specific communication behavior, which we plan to address via an AI-based engagement detection system. Further aspects comprise for instance customizability, adaptability, and variability of the robot's behavior, which should further be not too distracting while still being highly predictable.


Not Eden represents a challenging new appraisal of the methods, purpose and practice of spiritual life writing. Part 1 examines some of the traditions that have governed spiritual life writing in the past. A dominant assumption, displayed in many confessional texts, has been that spiritual autobiographies chart a journey away from the concerns of this world towards a deeper understanding of the divine. However, alternative forms of spiritual life writing have always existed alongside these authoritative traditions. In these, spirituality appears as deeply interwoven with the fabric of everyday life. It is embodied, contingent and involves deep connections with others. Part 2 consists of a work of spiritual life writing in which the claims made in part one are explored and tested. It constitutes a fully worked example of the way in which spiritual life writing can enable us to face the deepest challenges of this world.


This paper explores in particular how Teikei groups, as forms of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), operate in Japan, focussing on one particular group. The paper links the Teikei approach to debates around social capital and consumer-citizenship, arguing that pre-existing consumer/citizen institutions may usefully be engaged in developing food citizenship and CSA operations. The discussion is linked to CSA and various other alternative food networks (AFNs) that have grown up in various forms in Japan, the US, the UK and elsewhere in Europe over the past thirty years or so. CSA in similar fashion to Teikei involves bringing producers and consumers closer together in terms of reconnecting the agricultural producer and consumer to aid food traceability and quality (including organic). CSA also exhibits elements of new assemblies of agricultural governance based on enhanced consumer-citizenship where consumers, to varying degrees, have a say in what and how produce is grown and how the land is managed.


The research aim to knowed the Influence Varying Degrees of Tofu Waste in the Broiler Carcass Quality Rasion. The research by the used  ng 80 broilers Strain CP 707 in 5 treatments which each treatment consist of 4 replications, which in every replication consist of 4 broilers. Rasion treatment consist of AT0 (Ration without Tofu Waste), AT10 (Ration 90% + Tofu Waste 10%), AT20 (Ration 80% + Tofu Waste 20%), AT30 (Ration 70% + Tofu Waste 30%) and AT40 (Ration 60% + Tofu Waste 40%). The observed variables is the value of pH, fat percentage and organoleptic test in the colours, textures and aromas. Methode of data analysis using the methode of spectrum analysis and kruskalwallis Complete Random Design Pattern (RAL), if there is a difference between the treatment continued with Duncan's Multiple Range Test (DMRT). The result showed that the influence tofu waste the real effect to pH flash and the colour of the carcass, but it is not influenced to aromas, textures, and fat content of the broilers. The highest pH in  ration contain tofu waste 40%  (6,10) treatment while the lowest in control (5,40), treatment highest colour in ration contain tofu waste 10% (3,29) while the lowest in control (2,92) treatment , highest quality in ration contain tofu waste 30% (3,24) treatment while the lowest in control (3,01)  treatment, highest texture in ration contain tofu waste 40% (3,69) treatment while lowest in ration contain tofu waste 30% (3,52), the highest carcass fat in control (1,03) treatment while the lowest in ration contain tofu waste 30% (0,90).


The transmission of any data is always subject to corruption due to errors, but video transmission, because of its real time nature must deal with these errors without retransmission of the corrupted data. The error can be handled using forward error correction in the encoder or error concealment techniques in the decoder. This MPEG-2 compliant codec uses data hiding to transmit error correction information and several error concealment techniques in the decoder. The decoder resynchronizes more quickly with fewer errors than traditional resynchronization techniques. It also allows for perfect recovery of differentially encoded DCT-DC components and motion vectors. This provides for a much higher quality picture in an error-prone environment while creating an almost imperceptible degradation of the picture in an error-free environment.


Reading is not often thought of as a topic that affects mathematics, but it is a reality for low-level reader students. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how teachers describe the relationship between mathematics and literacy skills, and to explore specific methods mathematics teachers used to accommodate low-level readers in their mathematics instruction. Participants were six teachers from a rural elementary school. Data was collected through recorded interviews and supplemental email questions that were coded. The data gathered showed that teachers use literacy in mathematics classrooms through word problems and mathematics stories. The most common accommodation was pairing low-level reading students together with a higher-level reading student. Thesis Mentor:_____________________


PURPOSE: To establish the reference ranges of some biochemical
parameters for adult Kenyan population.
METHODS: In a prospective involving 1100 healthy blood donors
(age: 18-55 yr) in Kenyatta National Hospital, Kenya reference
ranges of some biochemical analytes were constructed by using the parametric methods to estimate 2.5 and 97.5 percentiles of
distribution.
RESULTS: The reference ranges of the analytes were: alanine
aminotransferase (ALT) [males (0-39) U/L, females (0-34) U/L];
aspartate aminotransferase (AST) [males (6-40) U/L, females (3-37) U/L]; alkaline phosphatase (ALP) [males (13-201) U/L, females (5-227) U/L]; albumin (ALB) [males (29-52) g/L, females (28-50) g/L]; protein (PROT) [males (57-89) g/L, females (56-88) g/L]; creatinine (CREAT) [males (59-127) μmol/L, females (54-122) μmol/L]; glucose (GLU) [males (2.8-6.8) mmol/L, females (2.6-7) mmol/L]; phosphorus (PHOS) [males (0.5-2.0) mmol/L, females (0.2-2.4) mmo/L]; potassium (POT) [males (3-5.3), females (3.1-5.1) mmo/L];
sodium (SOD) [males (111-153) mmol/L, females (117-151)
mmol/L]; Blood urea nitrogen BUN [males (1.5-5.9) mmol/L, females (1.2-6.0) mmol/L] and Uric acid (UA) [males (120-458) μmol/L, females (89-415) μmol/L]. Age differences in the established reference ranges were observed in ALT, ALB, CREAT, ALP and UA in males and in ALT, ALB, and CREAT in females. Gender differences were observed in ALT, AST, ALB, CREAT and UA in the 18-28 yr old, ALT, AST, ALB, SOD and UA in 29-39 yr old and AST, ALB, and UA in 40-50 yr old.
CONCLUSION: Age and sex specific reference ranges of some
biochemical parameters were established some of which were
different from those reported in literature. There therefore the need for each clinical chemistry laboratory to establish its own ranges.

 Keywords: Reference range, Biochemical parameter, Adult
Kenyan, Kenyatta National Hospital.


Deciduous teeth have an important role in the process of growth and development of a child, requiring guidance and mentoring from parents as first educators in early childhood. This study aims to analyze the determinants of parental behavior in maintaining deciduous teeth in early childhood. Method: This was an analytic study with a cross sectional design. The study was conducted on parents of students in PAUD Gandul Sub-Distric, Cinere District, Depok City, with a total sample of 90 respondents. Collecting data using a questionnaire that has been tested for validity with product moment correlation and reliability with Cronbach Alpha Coefficient. Data analysis using Chi-Square and Logistic Regression. Results: The determinant variables that had a significant relationship with parental behavior were attitudes towards dental health with p value 0.000, access to information p value 0.033 and teacher influence p value 0.037. The variable that has the greatest influence on parental behavior is attitudes towards dental health with an OR value of 5.636. Conclusion: Parents' attitudes have the greatest influence on behavior to maintain deciduous teeth in early childhood.


Traditionally, the process of investment casting is used for making complex components. But, investment casting is considered economical only when the production volume is high enough. If only limited numbers of pieces are promptly required such as in making prototypes, design iterations and design optimisations the investment casting process proves to be very costly due to time and tooling cost for making dies for producing wax patterns. In such situations, the rapid prototyping technologies are considered very useful as these can produce the patterns with good accuracy and without the necessity of costly hard tooling. The fused deposition modeling (FDM) is one of the rapid prototyping technology that can use plastic material, which can be effectively used for making patterns for investment casting. This combination of the traditional investment casting process with the modern rapid prototyping technologies to obtain a new process may be termed as hybrid investment casting. This study is intended to develop a framework for developing a hybrid investment casting process for industrial applications. For this newly developed process, various process parameters, their control and effects have been represented to obtain the desirable mechanical and metallurgical properties of the castings.


This paper examines the effects of expected inflation on the responsiveness of output to nominal disturbances in the framework of a localized markets model. The mechanism described in the theoretical part of the paper is that expected inflation has a positive effect on the transaction frequency, which in turn increases the flow of price information across markets. More information implies less misperception of monetary shocks as relative shifts in excess demand, resulting in lower sensitivity of real output to these socks. The empirical implication of this proposition -- namely ,that expected inflation reduces the coefficient of nominal shocks in an output equation -- is tested first using data across countries, and then with time series data from the United States. The first test uses Lucas's and Alberro's estimates of Phillips Curve coefficients from different countries and the corresponding average inflation rates. The second test involves data from the post-World War II period. It uses nominal rates of return on Treasury Bills and corporate bonds as measures of anticipated inflation and Barro's estimates of unanticipated money. In general, results in both tests provide support (stronger than expected)for the implication of the theory.


Calcareous fens are species-rich peatlands thought to form at discrete alkaline groundwater discharge points. Here the spatial and temporal variability in the peat pore-water hydrodynamics at a fine (plot) scale of three calcareous fens in southern Ontario was investigated over three growing seasons to evaluate the sensitivity of these wetlands to weather fluctuation and landscape position. Only a small area of the fens demonstrated patterns of groundwater upwelling, and positive vertical hydraulic gradients (VHG) were low, peaking at 0.1. Local decreases in saturated hydraulic conductivity generated areas of pore-water over-pressuring in the peat profile through much of the fens. Several areas were subjected to large negative VHG (max = −0.2), causing sustained groundwater recharge. In this study the strength of the connection to the principal source area of water (alkaline stream) determined the pattern and variability of calcareous fen peat hydrodynamics amongst three growing seasons differing markedly in precipitation. The range of pore-water hydrodynamics evident in this study provides evidence for the processes controlling the sensitivity of calcareous fens to climate and land-use change. A conceptual model linking calcareous fen landscape position to weather- and climate-induced hydrodynamic variability is presented to guide management of these biodiverse ecosystems.


Large numbers of infants and young children suffer from the short- and long-term health effects of poor breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices. Strategies to improve the availability of and access to low-cost fortified complementary foods can play an important corresponding role to that of behavior change in improving nutritional status of young children. However, the nutritional quality of complementary foods used in publicly funded programs is not always optimal, and such programs are costly and reach only a tiny fraction of those who could benefit. To broadly reach the target population, such foods need to be commercially available at affordable prices and promoted in a way that generates demand for their purchase. A sensible long-term policy for the promotion of low-cost fortified complementary foods calls for attention to their nutritional formulations and cost, the economics of production, and the legislative, regulatory, and competitive framework in which marketing occurs. This paper provides information on how to improve the nutritional formulations of fortified complementary foods and outlines the necessary conditions for a market approach to their production and promotion.


A general issue in the study of vagueness concerns whether vagueness can be reduced to a form of ambiguity (Fine 1975, Pinkal 1995, Williamson 1994). In this talk I propose to discuss the link between the notions of vagueness and ambiguity in the perceptual domain. Wellknown examples of ambiguous stimuli are so-called bistable figures, such as Necker's cube or Jastrow's duckrabbit, namely physically stable configurations that can be perceived in two different ways. A striking aspect of the perception of bistable stimuli is that even when one's attention is sustained, spontaneous transitions still happen from one percept to the other (Hupe and Rubin 2003). On the other hand, a concept or category is characterized as vague if it has borderline cases, namely cases for which the concept fails to apply clearly or to be excluded clearly. Typically, in a series of color hues ranging from a clear red to a clear yellow, some stimuli would count as borderline cases of either category when it is no longer clear to which category they should be assigned. While vagueness and ambiguity have often been opposed in the semantic domain (much as underdetermination vs. overdetermination of meaning, in K. Fine's words), D. Raffman has suggested that within soritical series, borderline cases pattern typically as ambiguous stimuli (Raffman 1994). Moreover, as discussed by Raffman, soritical transitions from one category to the other typically give rise to hysteresis effects, namely to the longer persistence of one percept over the other, depending on which category one is coming from (Lindsey, Brown and Raffman 2005 in progress, cited in Raffman 2005). As it turns out, this effect is also observed in the perception of bistable figures (see Hock, Kelso and Schoner 1993). In this talk, I wish to examine some philosophical consequences of the idea put forward by Raffman that borderline cases within soritical series might pattern as ambiguous stimuli. If the analogy is correct, one important such consequence seems to me to be that there should be no fact of the matter, in the relevant instances, as to whether patches of color in the borderline area can be classified as red or not. Indeed, bistable figures are such that there is no fact of the matter as to whether they should be perceived one way or the other, given that physically they are invariant. Rather, variations in judgments are to be traced solely to perceptual instability on the side of perceiving subjects. To that extent, the analogy appears to run against epistemic accounts of vagueness, which postulate the existence of an unknowable sharp cut-off within soritical series. A second aspect I shall examine concerns the characterization of the uncertainty specific to vagueness. Standardly, for bistable figures it is said that one percept excludes the other. A duck-rabbit is perceived as a duck or as a rabbit, but not as something in between. Prima facie therefore, the analogy between bistability and vagueness may seem inadequate. However, bistable figures themselves can be arranged in transition series consisting of slight alterations between adjacent members in the series (Fisher 1967, Gregson 2004). An interesting aspect of such configurations is the fact that although one percept becomes less probable than the other as one moves along the series, both percepts can still be applied all along in principle for such stimuli, even for the end stimuli. One issue is whether the uncertainty which is often used to characterize vagueness can be explained in a similar way 9 on the basis of a competition between overlapping categories.


Over the past decade, leading epidemiologists have noted the importance of social factors in studying and understanding the distribution and determinants of disease in human populations; but to what extent are epidemiologic studies integrating genetic information and other biologic variables with information about individual-level risk factors and group-level or societal factors related to the broader residential, behavioral, or cultural context? There remains a need to consider ways to integrate genetic information with social and contextual information in epidemiologic studies, partly to combat the overemphasis on the importance of genetic factors as determinants of disease in human populations. Even in genome-wide association studies of coronary heart disease and other common complex diseases, only a small proportion of heritability is explained by the genetic variants identified to date. It is possible that familial clustering due to genetic factors has been overestimated and that important environmental or social influences (acting alone or in combination with genetic variants) have been overlooked. The accompanying article by Bressler et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2010;171(1):14-23) highlights some of these important issues.


Abstract. Climate simulation codes, such as the Community Earth System Model (CESM), are especially complex and continually evolving. Their ongoing state of development requires frequent software verification in the form of quality assurance to both preserve the quality of the code and instill model confidence. To formalize and simplify this previously subjective and computationally expensive aspect of the verification process, we have developed a new tool for evaluating climate consistency. Because an ensemble of simulations allows us to gauge the natural variability of the model's climate, our new tool uses an ensemble approach for consistency testing. In particular, an ensemble of CESM climate runs is created, from which we obtain a statistical distribution that can be used to determine whether a new climate run is statistically distinguishable from the original ensemble. The CESM ensemble consistency test, referred to as CESM-ECT, is objective in nature and accessible to CESM developers and users. The tool has proven its utility in detecting errors in software and hardware environments and providing rapid feedback to model developers.


This article aims at identifying emergent secondary centers and measuring their impact on residential and commercial real estate values, through the estimate of hedonic gradients. Urban sprawl combined with the formation of suburban employment centers have produced more complex spatial patterns characterized by polycentric structures. This paper assumes that these changes in urban forms have influenced location choices of both households and firms but have a differentiated impact on two types of urban values: residential and commercial real estate values.We use hedonic regressions to estimate the impact of the polycentric structure of the city on residential and commercial real estate values among other traditional factors. These estimations are completed by semi-parametric regressions in order to analyse sharply the form of the price gradients in a polycentric city. Data on residential and commercial real estate transactions come from PERVAL database recorded by French notary offices. The precise geolocation of transactions used in addition with a rich set of intrinsic characteristics of the buildings allows a sharp estimation of the spatial pattern of real estate prices. It is completed by a rich set of location attributes coming from several data sources recorded at a fine spatial scale and concerning mainly accessibility, socio-economic attributes, local amenities and equipments, distance to the main subcenters. The study is conducted within the Lyon and Bordeaux metropolitan areas in France, allowing a comparison of two different urban patterns and urban sizes. The various scales of the urban polycentrism are explored by taking into account two types of subcenters (by emergence and integration of satellite towns) and by estimating semi-parametric hedonic models. The first contribution of the paper is to analyse sharply two main trends of urban centrality through real estate values: residential centrality and employment centrality. The residential centrality is recomposed by the increasing influence of urban amenities at the expect of employment accessibility. Economic centrality is increasingly differentiated from residential centrality. The second contribution of this paper is to provide a precise estimation of the form of the hedonic gradients for residential and commercial real estate values through the use of semi-parametric regressions.


This chapter emphasizes the social, pragmatic, and cultural nature of codeswitching (CS) over the search for grammatical constraints on the phenomenon. While the bulk of research performed on language mixing has concentrated on spontaneous oral production, the present investigation focuses on CS in literary writing. Through the quantitative and qualitative analysis of a selection of contemporary Nuyorican and Cuban American bilingual literature (poetry, drama, and fiction) the goal of the study is to determine the extent to which literary CS reflects ordinary bilingual speech and performs socio-pragmatic functions similar to those ascribed to natural bilingual discourse. It also seeks to establish whether literary CS displays any substantial differences across genres and/or between the two groups analyzed.


The recent years have witnessed a growing concern in the EU institutions for the ways in which openness and citizen participation are believed to distract efficient decision-making. Various examples of such attitudes can be easily identified, demonstrating how the EU institutions still fail to possess a deeper understanding of the role of transparency in legitimate governance. This paper discusses the ways in which the right of public access often turns into institutional politics with the institutions and the Member States in fact buttressing their own interests. This has serious consequences for the understanding of citizens' rights to participate in democratic decision-making. These questions are examined in the areas of legislative matters and international relations. The problems identified are then placed in the context of wider administrative culture in the relevant EU institutions, reflected in their responses to the citizens' concerns. The paper concludes with a few remarks on the wishes of the European Council to create greater legitimacy for the Economic and Monetary Union, and the role of openness in that discussion.