htmlabstract Systematic study of genre in newspapers sheds light on the development of journalism discourse. The genre conventions that can be discerned in a newspaper text signal the underlying discursive norms and practices of journalism as a profession. Historical newspapers are increasingly becoming available thanks to digital newspaper archives (in the Netherlands available through Delpher.nl), providing the opportunity for large-scale empirical research. However, the digital archives do not contain fine-grained genre information that is required for this purpose. Therefore, we use machine learning to automatically assign genre labels to newspaper articles. Machine learning facilitates substantial improvements to the outcomes of existing research by providing increased amounts of enriched data. However, the decision-making process of the machine learning pipeline needs to be verified. Our previous findings (Bilgin et al., 2018) show that accuracy scores alone are not enough to assess the performance of these pipelines and that making an informed choice not only empowers optimal study of the historical development of genre, but also increases the trustworthiness of the results. This work shows that employing a transparent approach driven by model interpretability facilitates fair comparison as well as validation of the underlying decision-making criteria of the machine learning pipelines. The criteria are presented in the form of important features, creating insights on interactions between genre-related linguistic features and bag-of-words features.


The purpose of this report is to describe wellness programs and offer two suggestions for improving how they are delivered to commercial drivers and operators. It is not a large sample empirical study from which generalizations can be made. Rather, the Mineta Transportation Institute commissioned brief case studies of transportation companies to show what several organizations have done. Stress, nicotine use, sleep apnea, obesity and lack of information are significant barriers to wellness in commercial drivers/operators. Many wellness programs ask the individual driver/operator to lose weight; exercise more; and monitor blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol and other such indicators of health. However, little is done to change the environment or adopt structural interventions such as forbidding nicotine use, as is possible in 20 states. Other structural interventions include those possible at the levels of the company and community, including access to healthy food rather than the junk food drivers often can find on the road. At the societal level, more public transit that gets people walking and out of their cars, cities designed for people to walk and cycle in rather than drive from work to a sprawling suburb, and encouraging food manufacturers to make healthy food (rather than a toxic mix of sodium, fat and sugar to boost one's craving for a particular food) are just a few measures that could improve the health and well being of the public. The Union Pacific Corporation (rail transportation), and Con-way Freight (trucking) are included because they were willing to share information and are large publicly traded companies. The Utah Transit Authority (UTA) is included because other transit authorities recommended it to the authors, as it has a long history in wellness as part of local government and it too chose to participate. Two issues are discussed: the first is the importance of using the mitigation of erectile dysfunction in the promotion of wellness programs to commercial drivers/operators and the second issue is to urge employers to consider banning tobacco use, both on and off the job, where legal.


Fusarium Oxysporum f.sp. Radicis-Lycopersici (FORL) caused Fusarium Crown and Root Rot of tomato (FCRR), it's a serious constraint on tomato production and contributing to yield losses.

 Using a rapid bioassay, Hypovirulent Binucleate Rhizoctonia (HBNR) was tested for their ability to reduce Fusarium Crown and Root Rot (FCRR) of tomato, caused by Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. radicis lycopersici (FORL). Roots of tomato seedlings growing on 2% water agar in plastic boxes were inoculated with living or dead mycelial disks of HBNR. After 24 h, the pathogen was applied at 0, 3, 6, and 9 cm away from the position of the HBNR.

 When living HBNR was used, the treatments provided significant protection to tomato seedlings from FCRR infection at all distances tested. Tomato plants pre-inoculated with living HBNR at different times (12 h and 24 h before inoculation with the pathogen) and challenged with FORL showed significant reduction of FCRR lesion development. A significant reduction was still observed even when HBNR was inoculated simultaneously with or 12 h after inoculation of a pathogen. Seedlings treated with dead HBNR and culture filtrates also showed significantly reduced FCRR lesion development. When living HBNR were enveloped by a polycarbonate membrane filter, a significant reduction of FCRR lesion development was still observed.

 In all experiments, reduction of FCRR lesion development in seedlings treated with HBNR tended to decrease with longer distance from the inoculation point of FORL and HBNR. We developed a simple, rapid, and miniaturized bioassay for evaluating the efficacy of HBNR against FORL. The bioassays require only 12 - 18 days, which is at least 12 days less than the soil system employed by previous researchers.


This article brings behavioral biology research on attitude similarity as a kinship cue to bear on the laws, policies, and practices surrounding the placement of children in foster care. The basic logic of the article relies on the nature and power of kinship cues. Individuals perceive others as kin through fallible, often unconscious mechanisms. Because these mechanisms are fallible, individuals may come to believe that unrelated persons are kin. Once a cue gives rise to the perception of kinship, the individual who acquires this perception about another person is more likely to treat that other person favorably, providing important benefits to this other person. This prosocial behavior could certainly benefit foster children. More specifically, if foster parents perceive their foster children as kin, they may provide better care, likely reducing incidents of maltreatment. Attitude similarity serves as a kinship cue. Individuals who share attitudes on a variety of items are more likely to treat each other favorably. This article explores how public actors may be able to construct a kinship cue that elicits prosocial behavior by matching foster parents with children who share their attitudes.


I wrote a piece for this panel that seems to diverge from the mood and tempo of the other essays. It is a piece that is more academic in orientation, and like many academic pieces, wants to complicate things by posing additional nuances and problems to a communist resurgence in the Philippines as compared to the more optimistic prognoses of the other essays. Moreover, I am, in the final analysis, just an armchair intellectual, and as such would not and do not have any claims at political prescription. Thus my comments on the other papers must be taken with a grain of salt. It is an academic's reflection of and commentary on what are evidently political pieces. To assess the Manifesto, particularly in this century, may therefore also involve our reflecting on the experience of socialism, no matter how bureaucratized it was. To do this, however, also demands that we read about them.


Strategies for the improvement of quasi-axisymmetric stellarator configurations are explored. Calculations of equilibrium flux surfaces for candidate configurations are also presented. One optimization strategy is found to generate configurations with improved neoclassical confinement, simpler coils with lower current density, and improved flux surface quality relative to previous designs. The flux surface calculations find significant differences in the extent of islands and stochastic regions between candidate configurations. (These calculations do not incorporate the predicted beneficial effects of perturbed bootstrap currents.) A method is demonstrated for removing low-order islands from candidate configurations by relatively small modifications of the configuration. One configuration is identified as having particularly desirable properties for a proposed experiment.


Most models of neural response to electrical stimulation, such as the Hodgkin-Huxley equations, are deterministic, despite significant physiological evidence for the existence of stochastic activity. For instance, the range of discharge probabilities measured in response to single electrical pulses cannot be explained at all by deterministic models. Furthermore, there is growing evidence that the stochastic component of auditory nerve response to electrical stimulation may be fundamental to functionally significant physiological and psychophysical phenomena. In this paper authors present a simple and computationally efficient stochastic model of single-fiber response to single biphasic electrical pulses, based on a deterministic threshold model of action potential generation. Comparisons with physiological data from cat auditory nerve fibers are made, and it is shown that the stochastic model predicts discharge probabilities measured in response to single biphasic pulses more accurately than does the equivalent deterministic model. In addition, physiological data show an increase in stochastic activity with increasing pulse width of anodic/cathodic biphasic pulses, a phenomenon not present for monophasic stimuli. Those and other data from the auditory nerve are then used to develop a population model of the total auditory nerve, where each fiber is described by the single-fiber model.


Action Research is a self – reflective inquiry by participants, undertaken in order to improve their own educational practices in classroom situations. Action research is most helpful when it is self-critical and starts from recognition of a problem or statement, understanding, collecting data and then self-evaluating and then finally improving teaching practices. Action research has multiplier affect not only for teachers wherein they improve their teaching practices but also positive impact on students' engagement and renewed interest in classroom and studies.


In this paper we present and evaluate a search strategy called Decomposition Based Search (DBS) which is based on two steps: subproblem generation and subproblem solution. The generation of subproblems is done through value ranking and domain splitting. Subdomains are explored so as to generate, according to the heuristic chosen, promising subproblems first. We show that two well known search strategies, Limited Discrepancy Search (LDS) and Iterative Broadening (IB), can be seen as special cases of DBS. First we present a tuning of DBS that visits the same search nodes as IB, but avoids restarts. Then we compare both theoretically and computationally DBS and LDS using the same heuristic. We prove that DBS has a higher probability of being successful than LDS on a comparable number of nodes, under realistic assumptions. Experiments on a constraint satisfaction problem and an optimization problem show that DBS is indeed very effective if compared to LDS.


AIM
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a complex process. Increasing evidence has demonstrated that reactive oxygen species contribute to brain injury. Resveratrol (RVT) which exhibits significant antioxidant properties, is neuroprotective against excitotoxicity, ischemia, and hypoxia. The aim of this study was to evaluate the neuroprotective effects of RVT on the hippocampus of a rat model of TBI.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Twenty eight rats were divided into four groups. A moderate degree of head trauma was induced using Feeney"s falling weight technique. Group 1 (control) underwent no intervention or treatment. Head trauma was induced in Group 2 (trauma) and no drug was administered. Head trauma was induced in Group 3 and low-dose RVT (50 mg/kg per day) was injected. In Group 4, high-dose RVT (100 mg/kg per day) was used after head trauma. Brain tissues were extracted immediately after perfusion without damaging the tissues. Histopathological and biochemistry parameters were studied.

RESULTS
Brain tissue malondialdehyde (MDA) levels in the trauma group were significantly higher than those in the control, lowdose RVT-treated, and high-dose-RVT-treated groups. The superoxide dismutase (SOD) levels in the control group were significantly higher than those in the trauma, low-dose RVT-treated, and high-dose RVT-treated groups. Glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) levels in the control group were significantly higher than those in the trauma and low-dose RVT-treated groups. The level of oxidative deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) damage (8-OHdG/106 dG) in the trauma group was higher than that in the control group, low-dose RVT-treated, and high-dose RVT-treated groups.

CONCLUSION
Resveratrol has a healing effect on neurons after TBI.


The training of lawyers for years has established ethical and practice protocols based upon an individual representation model, or, if the protocols contemplated a form of collective representation, they have envisioned formal, structured entities with powerful constituents. The good lawyers who represent the dispossessed, the exploited, and the powerless need to craft different protocols, ones which accept messier, less organized, and often contentious group representation. Writing about the ethical and political mission of "community lawyers" has flourished, but that scholarship has tended to elide some knotty practical questions about the lawyers' professional responsibilities in their work with such groups. This Article is a beginning attempt to review community group representation through the lens of a traditional "law of lawyering" perspective.A lawyer who accepts a "community group" as her client must attend to all of the professional ethical mandates applicable to more conventional corporate and partnership representation. She must distinguish with great care whether her client is an aggregate of community members, or an entity, and much will depend on the outcome of that discernment. The lawyer must engage the group members to assist them to decide which of those statuses will apply, and, in doing so, she must be clear about her relationship with the members as they make that choice.If the community group lawyer accepts the group as her client, she must uncover, or create, an authority scheme on which she may rely for her direction. Once she has accomplished that, the community group lawyer may counsel her clients in ways different from how she would counsel an individual client with an individual legal matter. In representing any entity, the lawyer will owe to the entity constituents a different - one might say lesser - deference for their preferences and their leanings, because of their status as proxies for a larger client. The more loosely-structured the entity is (and there is much evidence that community group representation will involve many loosely-structured groups), the greater the responsibility of the lawyer to ensure that the constituent with whom she meets is a faithful proxy for the wishes of the group.In addition to attending to her ethical responsibilities emerging from the very fact that her client is a group, the community lawyer must recognize further special duties from the fact that her client is not just a group, but a community group. This Article uncovers three considerations peculiar to the community group representation context. For those groups with explicit public missions, the lawyer has a responsibility to attend to that public mission, in ways she may not have permission to do for groups established to achieve purely private ends. At the same time (and often at odds with the prior commitment), the community group lawyer must attend with special care to the empowerment and group cohesion aspects of the group's work. Finally (and, again, at odds with the prior commitment), the community group lawyer may at times possess some moral duty to intervene with her group client to establish conditions, even if not chosen by the group, which are likely to increase the autonomy and the power of the group in the long run.The ideas developed in this Article emerge from the rich literature from so many progressive scholars over the past twenty-five years or more. The ideas need to be tested, nurtured and critiqued, though, especially by more stories from the field. The test of the ethical ideas will come from their usefulness in practice. This Article represents a beginning effort to offer a systematic structure, grounded in established theories of the law of lawyering, upon which to make those ongoing assessments.


Although Galileo's struggle to mathematize the study of nature is well known and oft discussed, less discussed is the form this struggle takes in relation to Galileo's first new science, the science of the second day of the Discorsi. This essay argues that Galileo's first science ought to be understood as the science of matternot, as it is usually understood, the science of the strength of materials. This understanding sheds light on the convoluted structure of the Discorsi's first day. It suggests that the day's meandering discussions of the continuum, infinity, the vacuum, and condensation and rarefaction establish that a formal treatment of the eternal and necessary properties of matter is possible; i.e., that matter as such can be considered mathematically. This would have been a necessary, and indeed revolutionary, preliminary to the mathematical science of the second day because matter itself was thought in the Aristotelian tradition to be responsible for the departure of natural bodies from the unchanging and thus mathematizable character of abstract objects. In addition, the first day establishes that when considered physically, these properties account for matter's force of cohesion and resistance to fracture. This essay closes by showing that this dual style of reasoning accords with the conceptual structure of mixed mathematics.


An X-band Electron Nuclear Double Resonance (ENDOR) spectrometer was constructed, tested at both room and liquid helium temperatures, and characterized at liquid helium temperature using a vanadylimidazole standard. An iron nitrosyl complex of transferrin was studied. Three methods of generating nitric oxide gas were tested and resulted in no differences in product formation. The g-factors for the rhombic complex--prepared with and without carbonate addition to the buffer--were determined. For the complex prepared with carbonate g$\sb{\rm x}$ = 2.052, g$\sb{\rm y}$ = 2.028, and g$\sb{\rm z}$ = 2.013. For the complex prepared without addition of carbonate g$\sb{\rm x}$ = 2.051, g$\sb{\rm y}$ = 2.028, and g$\sb{\rm z}$ = 2.011. Complex concentration was little affected by the addition of extra Fe$\sp{2+},$ but does decrease over time after reaching a maximum two to three minutes after the start of the reaction. The complex was observed to form preferentially at the C-terminal lobe of the protein. The histidine residue, which normally serves as a ligand for Fe$\sp{+3}$ does not appear to be necessary for binding of the iron nitrosyl complex. An ENDOR spectrum of the complex obtained at 3.6 K yielded a signal attributed to the effect of matrix protons.


In this chapter, we develop a new view on problems of movement control and planning from a Machine Learning perspective. In this view, decision making, control, and planning are all considered as an inference or (alternately) an information processing problem, i.e., a problem of computing a posterior distribution over unknown variables conditioned on the available information (targets, goals, constraints). Further, problems of adaptation and learning are formulated as statistical learning problems to model the dependencies between variables. This approach naturally extends to cases when information is missing, e.g., when the context or load needs to be inferred from interaction; or to the case of apprentice learning where, crucially, latent properties of the observed behavior are learnt rather than the motion copied directly. With this account, we hope to address the long-standing problem of designing adaptive control and planning systems that can flexibly be coupled to multiple sources of information (be they of purely sensory nature or higher-level modulations such as task and constraint information) and equally formulated on any level of abstraction (motor control variables or symbolic representations). Recent advances in Machine Learning provide a coherent framework for these problems.


The reassurance policing model is based on increasing visible patrols and, in turn, increasing the publics' feelings of safety. However, previous research has shown that the presence of police may not always be seen as reassuring. For example, research suggests that increased police patrols may have an adverse effect in areas where perceived risk of crime is already high. Furthermore, across the literature, many factors that affect feelings of safety in the presence of police patrols have been discovered. Age, gender and previous victimization are amongst the factors that have been investigated, as well as external factors such as street lighting. The present study aimed to address the effect that three different patrol types, namely the police helicopter, foot patrol and police cars, have on feelings of safety through a questionnaire among 531 participants (18-81 years, 73.8% female). Furthermore, the relevance of location and time of day were also investigated. Several demographic variables, such as employment status and ethnicity, were also recorded to address any impacts that these may have on feelings of safety. The questionnaire presented the participants with hypothetical scenarios and asked them to gauge how they might feel in those situations. Results showed that, overall, gender had little effect on feelings of safety across the scenarios. However, several age differences were uncovered. Furthermore, factors such as media consumption, previous victimization and perceived level of crime were also identified as causal factors influencing feelings of safety. The discussion addresses the potential for future research.


Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs) are ubiquitous in computer science. Many problems, ranging from resource allocation and scheduling to fault diagnosis and design, involve constraint satisfaction as an essential component. A CSP is given by a set of variables and constraints on small subsets of these variables. It is solved by finding assignments of values to the variables such that all constraints are satisfied. In its most general form, a CSP is combinatorial and complex. In this thesis, we consider constraint satisfaction problems with variables in continuous, numerical domains. Contrary to most existing techniques, which focus on computing a single optimal solution, we address the problem of computing a compact representation of the space of all solutions that satisfy the constraints. This has the advantage that no optimization criterion has to be formulated beforehand, and that the space of possibilities can be explored systematically. In certain applications, such as diagnosis and design, these advantages are crucial. In consistency techniques, the solution space is represented by labels assigned to individual variables or combinations of variables. When the labeling is globally consistent, each label contains only those values or combinations of values which appear in at least one solution. This kind of labeling is a compact, sound and complete representation of the solution space, and can be combined with other reasoning methods. In practice, computing a globally consistent labeling is too complex. This is usually tackled in two ways. One way is to enforce consistencies locally, using propagation algorithms. This prunes the search space and hence reduces the subsequent search effort. The other way is to identify simplifying properties which guarantee that global consistency can be enforced tractably using local propagation algorithms. When constraints are represented by mathematical expressions, implementing local consistency algorithms is difficult because it requires tools for solving arbitrary systems of equations. In this thesis, we propose to approximate feasible solution regions by 2k-trees, thus providing a means of combining constraints logically rather than numerically. This representation, commonly used in computer vision and image processing, avoids using complex mathematical tools. We propose simple and stable algorithms for computing labels of arbitrary degrees of consistency using this representation. For binary constraints, it is known that simplifying convexity properties reduces the complexity of solving a CSP. These properties guarantee that local degrees of consistency are sufficient to ensure global consistency. We show how, in continuous domains, these results can be generalized to ternary and in fact arbitrary n-ary constraints. This leads to polynomial-time algorithms for computing globally consistent labels for a large class of constraint satisfaction problems with continuous variables. We describe and justify our representation of constraints and our consistency algorithms. We also give a complete analysis of the theoretical results we present. Finally, the developed techniques are illustrated using practical examples.


With a radically changing world, cultural identity and images have emerged as one of the most challenging issues in the social and cultural sciences. These changes provide an occasion for a thorough reexamination of cultural, historical, political, and economic aspects of society. The INOR (Iceland and Images of the North) group is an interdisciplinary group of Icelandic and non-Icelandic scholars whose recent research on contemporary and historical images of Iceland and the North seeks to analyze the forms these images assume, as well as their function and dynamics. The twenty-one articles in this book allow readers to seize the variety and complexity of the issues related to images of Iceland.
The research project is led by Sumarliði Isleifsson of the Reykjavik Academy, Iceland, where most of the participants are based, and Daniel Chartier of the International Laboratory for the Comparative Multidisciplinary Study of Representations of the North, based at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal.
The Droit au pole series, published by the Presses de l'Universite du Quebec, disseminates literary and cultural studies that enable readers to understand and interpret the imaginary of the North, Winter, and the Arctic.


Dr. Ivan Oransky is a self-proclaimed science watchdog who, together with Adam Marcus, have taken on the world of science in a blaze of public shaming – disguised as science journalism – that has already caused irreparable damage to science, despite the informative nature of those reports. Their portal for launching attacks on the publishing establishment and on scientists is Retraction Watch, a blog that sees monthly traffic in the hundreds of thousands of hits. One of the loudly claimed key tenants of Retraction Watch is to hold science and scientists accountable, and to thus be open and transparent. What is not very known, because Oransky fails to provide a full listing of his own publications, i.e., he does not show equivalent transparency that he expects or demands from others, is that he held a very important role at Elsevier's The Lancet, a premier medical journal that he now aggressively critiques, almost without impunity. That role at The Lancet was primarily to record the death of medical scientists. In the real world, taking care of the dead and the deceased lies in the hands of an undertaker. It is thus very apt that the role of digital undertaker for The Lancet established the necessary credentials that Oransky required to overlook the cadaver he and Marcus wish to create of science, and of scientists' and publishers' reputations.


The global demand for food is increasing because of the growing world population. At the same time, availability of arable land is shrinking. Traditional plant breeding methods have made and will continue to make important contributions toward meeting the need for more food. In many areas of the world, however, the problem is food quality. There may be enough energy available from food, but the staple foods lack certain essential nutrients. In the developed world, demand for "functional foods" (that is, foods that provide health benefits beyond basic nutrition) is increasing. Nutritional improvements in foods could help to meet both of these demands for improved food quality. Modern agricultural biotechnology, which involves the application of cellular and molecular techniques to transfer DNA that encodes a desired trait to food and feed crops, is proving to be a powerful complement to traditional methods to meet global food requirements. An important aspect of biotechnology is that it provides access to a broad array of traits that can help meet this need for nutritionally improved cultivars. The new varieties developed through modern biotechnology have been identified by a number of terms, including genetically modified (GM or GMO), genetically engineered (GE or GEO), transgenic, biotech, recombinant, and plants with novel traits (PNTs). For the present discussion, the term "GM" will be used because of its simplicity and broad public recognition.


The metrical version of psalms LI–CL, known as the Paris Psalter, is a pedestrian and unimaginative piece of poetic translation. It is rarely read by students of Old English, and most Anglo-Saxonists make only passing reference to it. There is scarcely any literary criticism written on the text, although some work has been done on its vocabulary and metre. I hope to show in this article, however, that its stylistic peculiarities mark an important stage in the disintegration of the Old English poetic mode, and that analysis of these may go some way towards answering the difficult questions which surround the manner and the cause of the style's disappearance at the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. In particular, I shall examine this poet's selective use of the poetic diction normally associated with the form, and the impact of this selectivity on the systems of rank and formula.


The Early Eocene Okanagan High lands series of lacustrine shale and coal deposits, in far western North Ameri ca, constitutes a significant group of fossil sites with exceptional preserva tion of a diverse suite of organisms (Lagerstatten). With contemporaneous basins arrayed across about 1000 kilo metres of southern British Columbia and northern Washington, these sites offer a unique opportunity to examine the paleoecology of terrestrial commu nities spanning a temperate, low-sea sonality landscape in a montane setting during a time of generally warm tem peratures across the globe. The Okana gan Highlands sites provide an unpar alleled comparative framework within which to examine this major turning point in terrestrial community develop ment during the emergence of their broad modern character.


Experiments with several Arabidopsis thaliana mutants have revealed a web of interactions between hormonal signaling. Here, we show that the Arabidopsis mutant radical-induced cell death1 (rcd1), although hypersensitive to apoplastic superoxide and ozone, is more resistant to chloroplastic superoxide formation, exhibits reduced sensitivity to abscisic acid, ethylene, and methyl jasmonate, and has altered expression of several hormonally regulated genes. Furthermore, rcd1 has higher stomatal conductance than the wild type. The rcd1-1 mutation was mapped to the gene At1g32230 where it disrupts an intron splice site resulting in a truncated protein. RCD1 belongs to the (ADP-ribosyl)transferase domain–containing subfamily of the WWE protein–protein interaction domain protein family. The results suggest that RCD1 could act as an integrative node in hormonal signaling and in the regulation of several stress-responsive genes.


To understand Alabama history one must appreciate the impact of the failure of secession of the state in the subsequent half century as well as the causes for the success of the Civil Rights Movement in the state in the mid-twentieth century. The prophet of the first revolution was William Lowndes Yancey and the prophet of the second was Martin Luther King, Jr., two Southerners who set in motion forces that shaped American history beyond the borders of the state and region. In the years between their two lives Alabama changed dramatically.These examples of outstanding scholarship were published in"The Alabama Review"over the past forty years and provide an overview of a century of change in Alabama. The first articles center of the Civil War and Reconstruction era, which left Alabama reeling in turmoil. The efforts of the Greenbackers, the Grange, the Alliance, and the Populists ended in frustration as the politics of pressure and intimidation prevailed for the half-century after the Civil War. White as well as black poor had not yet appreciated the political power of their numbers. In the new century, progressives had a distinct sense that they could take on outside forces larger than themselves. National currents swept Alabama into movements for the regulation of railroads, women s suffrage, child labor reform, and welfare capitalism. Still, progressive reform coexisted with the most frightening political and social movement of early twentieth-century Alabama, the Ku Klux Klan, whose blessing or curse made or broke the careers of powerful politicians. The desperation of the Great Depression gave way to a revived sense that Alabamians could shape their world. Not only was this feeling new, but so were the politicians whose debut represented emergence of the poor determined to act in their own behalf. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was the first thunder of a social and political storm that would remake Alabama and the entire country."


Submicron powdered activated carbon (PAC) rapidly adsorbed natural organic matter (NOM) fromwater samples: a batch test of the adsorption kinetics showed that the NOM concentration dropped substantially within 15 s and then leveled off. In a tubular flow reactor test, NOM removal after a 15 s contact time was almost the same as removal values attained at longer contact times. Laboratory-scale and bench-scale pilotplant ceramic microfiltration (MF) experiments with submicron PAC adsorption pretreatment were conducted to evaluate NOM removal and to examine the effect of the PAC on filterability. The laboratory scale MF experiment revealed that PAC adsorption pretreatment could be accomplished with a detention (2.4 s) that was much shorter than the time expected from the adsorption kinetics test. This result suggests that adsorption pretreatment for MF could be accomplished by adding the submicron PAC directly into the feed line to the membrane and that installation of a special PAC contactor before the membrane unit is unnecessary. Although micron PAC rather than submicron PAC was used unintentionally in the pilot plant experiment, these PAC showed much better NOM removal than normal PAC, and no adverse effects, such as transmembrane pressure buildup and reversible or irreversible membrane fouling, were observed.


This paper mainly describes experiments that have been carried out on two shingle beaches on the south coast of England. The results for the higher energy environment of Chesil Beach showed that largest tracer material travelled farthest, and best correlations tended to be with the short axis. At Slapton, however, different sediment parameters appeared significant at various times. Where linear parameters were relevant correlations were again best with the short axis, but smaller material travelled farthest. This may reflect different wave regime, a less efficient sediment rejection mechanism, finer grades of sediment or better adjustment of tracer to indigenous background material at Slapton. There was a marked degree of selectivity at both sites between material recovered along a particular zone of the beach as compared with the overall recovery on the same day, and between the overall recovery for a particular day as compared with the originally injected tracer. Attempts have been made to correlate wave data from f.m.pressure recorders with longshore transport of the coarse grades of sediment in the inter-tidal zone. While at Chesil wave direction, frequency and height were all important there were no obvious relationships at Slapton. The results have relevance in respect of beach stability and in the conclusions drawn from tracer studies using coarse grades of sediment.


A plasmid carrying the 5' flanking region of the mouse proliferating-cell-nuclear-antigen (PCNA) gene or DNA polymerase beta gene was fused with the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) gene, then cotransfected into mouse N18TG2 cells with the expression plasmid for the p53 gene. Expression of the wild-type p53 repressed the CAT expression directed by the PCNA gene promoter, while it had little effect on the DNA polymerase beta gene promoter. RNase protection analysis revealed that the repression of the PCNA gene promoter by p53 was at the transcription step. Analysis with various deletion mutants in the PCNA gene promoter revealed that a specific sequence is not required for the repression, suggesting that p53 represses the PCNA gene promoter by interacting with some components of the basic transcription machinery. By analysis with various deletion mutants in the DNA polymerase beta gene promoter, we identified the unique 10-bp palindromic sequence (-24 to -15), in the presence of which p53 was not able to repress the promoter activity. This sequence conferred resistance to p53 repression onto the PCNA gene promoter, when it was placed 21-bp upstream from the transcription-initiation site.


Dynamic phenomena are common in science education. Students can learn about such system dynamic processes through model based learning activities. This paper describes a study on the effects of a learning from erroneous models approach using the learning environment SCYDynamics. The study compared three conditions. Two experimental conditions where students had to correct errors in a model were contrasted to working with a correct model. The experimental conditions differed on whether or not the students had to detect the errors before correcting them. Results indicate that this approach enhanced students' model testing and revising activities. Furthermore this approach was found to have a beneficial effect on learning common errors. Contrary to expectations this approach showed no learning effect on domain knowledge acquisition. The discussion further elaborates on improvements that might enhance this learning from erroneous model approach


THE FICTION AND POETRY WRITTEN BY THE CHARTISTS CONTINUE TO EXERT a powerful ideological pull on both historians and literary critics concerned with the Victorian period, not only because the reform movement was itself politically unique--"the first working men's party which the world ever produced," as Friedrich Engels described it [1] --but also because the creation of an alternative literary culture was seen from the very beginning by its members as an integral part of the struggle for political emancipation. Chartist writers, Martha Vicinus states, "sought to create a class-based literature, written by and for the people." [2] Thus, the novels, stories, and poems published regularly in Chartist newspapers such as the Northern Star represent a pioneering attempt to bridge the aesthetic gap between working-class politics and literature in Britain. At the same time as Chartism sought to give voice to a radical working-class viewpoint in the predominantly middle-class debate about the Condition-of-England Question at home, some of its leading activists also began to articulate a growing critical concern about the abuses of mid-Victorian imperialism abroad. It is this anti-colonial consciousness which the present essay seeks to explore, in particular as it is expressed in Ernest Jones's long epic, The New World, A Democratic Poem, which first appeared in the opening number of Jones's own Chartist journal, Notes to the People, in May 1851. In an article written a few years earlier, Jones had himself made bold claims about the international significance of poetry produced by writers who placed their art at the service of the people: Chartism is marching into the fields of literature with rapid strides....Its poetry is, indeed, the freshest and most stirring of the age; as in England, thus in France, America, Ireland, and Germany, the poetic spirit has struck the chords of liberty.... The people mould a poet, but a poet directs a people.... We say to the great minds of the day, come among the people, write for the people, and your fame will live for ever. [3] An appeal such as the above was by no means meant as a mere rhetorical flourish, but, as the Chartist press continued to show, reflected a genuine desire on the part of the Chartists to break through the cultural silence of working people and promote popular, democratic forms of poetry and fiction. In this effort, Jones, himself one of the most prominent and poetically talented leaders within the movement, played a key role. The literature of Chartism has of course also provided a rich store of ideas for historians and critics who seek to tease out the ideological contradictions of the Chartists themselves. The critical debate in recent years has for example concerned the question of Chartism's reproduction of an earlier popular radicalism, rather than creation of a completely new proletarian language of class protest. [4] While pointing out the problematic nature in this context of raiding fictional texts simply for their ideological content, Jutta Schwarzkopf nevertheless goes on to admit that much of her own study of the role of women within Chartism relies "on results gained from an analysis of Chartist novels" because they "afford important insights into Chartist thinking about women." [5] Thus, it has often been praxis to view Chartist fiction primarily as an historical source which documents the mixed expressions of both working-class and middle-class ideology within the movement, the political and gender implications of w hich continue to be explored. [6] Indeed, even among those scholars who have concentrated specifically on Chartist poetry, a genre which as Brian Maidment comments "has been of much more interest to historians than to literary critics," the emphasis has nevertheless more often than not been on questions of class and class consciousness. [7] In all of this the figure of Ernest Jones (1819-69) sits awkwardly within the nexus of class and gender. …


Script defence examination (SDE) is an important event for undergraduate students to undertake. In Australia, this examination is not commonly practiced, but in USA, UK, and Indonesia, this examination is a must. The SDE has some genre elements, one of them is generic pattern (GP). Knowing the GP sufficiently is assumed to assist undergraduate students to complete this examination appropriately with a high mark. Discussion on the GP in literature is limited only at doctorate level. The case of limited information of the GP of the SDE at undergraduate level has been questioned by academic communities. To address this inquiry, this paper presents the GP of SDE in state Islamic universities in Indonesia. The data for this study were obtained through multiple observations in two state Islamic universities of two provinces in Indonesia, Aceh and North Sumatera provinces. The GP of the Indonesian state Islamic universities was drawn and is discussed in this paper.


In this thesis, we investigate the use of posterior probabilities of sub-word units directly as input features for automatic speech recognition (ASR). These posteriors, estimated from data-driven methods, display some favourable properties such as increased speaker invariance, but unlike conventional speech features also hold some peculiarities, such that their components are non-negative and sum up to one. State-of-the-art acoustic models for ASR rely on general-purpose similarity measures like Euclidean-based distances or likelihoods computed from Gaussian mixture models (GMMs), hence, they do not explicitly take into account the particular properties of posterior-based speech features. We explore here the use of the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence as similarity measure in both non-parametric methods using templates and parametric models that rely on an architecture based on hidden Markov models (HMMs). Traditionally, template matching (TM)-based ASR uses cepstral features and requires a large number of templates to capture the natural variability of spoken language. Thus, TM-based approaches are generally oriented to speaker-dependent and small vocabulary recognition tasks. In our work, we use posterior features to represent the templates and test utterances. Given the discriminative nature of posterior features, we show that a limited number of templates can accurately characterize a word. Experiments on different databases show that using KL divergence as local similarity measure yields significantly better performance than traditional TM-based approaches. The entropy of posterior features can also be used to further improve the results. In the context of HMMs, we propose a novel acoustic model where each state is parameterized by a reference multinomial distribution and the state score is based on the KL divergence between the reference distribution and the posterior features. Besides the fact that the KL divergence is a natural dissimilarity measure between posterior distributions, we further motivate the use of the KL divergence by showing that the proposed model can be interpreted in terms of maximum likelihood and information theoretic clustering. Furthermore, the KL-based acoustic model can be seen as a general case of other known acoustic models for posterior features such as hybrid HMM/MLP and discrete HMM. The presented approach has been extended to large vocabulary recognition tasks. When compared to state-of-the-art HMM/GMM, the KL-based acoustic model yields comparable results while using significantly fewer parameters.


King of the waters describes how a brilliant Dutch engineer ultimately failed to implement his plans for modern irrigation in Siam. Homan van der Heide's identification with the interests of the rice farmers caused ambivalent reactions from his Siamese environment. Interwoven with the detailed description of the actions of the Dutch engineer, King Chulalongkorn and some of his ministers is the ambiguous performance of the Siamese state towards agriculture in the first decade of the twentieth century. The book shows the weight of many contingencies in state affairs, especially through the problematical interactions between the engineer Homan van der Heide and the minister of Agriculture, chao phraya Thewet -- they seemed to form a kind of jolie a deux. King of the waters sketches a dramatic picture of clashing cultures, comparable to many encounters in contemporary development cooperation.


This paper describes and implements an a real control technique using advanced automation technology. PID controller is one of the most controller used in industrial but it need to be adaptable in real situation in order to overcome the parameter variation and system disturbance. An adaptable PID controller based on analogical gate technique is implemented using an industrial Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) to control the temperature of a process by actuating of a three way valve. The valve distributes the hot and cooled air in order to adjust the temperature of a vessel. The system control hardware consists of first; PLC as a field controller with high sampling rates, second; Human Machine Interface (HMI) as a local operating and adjusting station, finally; SCADA software to adjust and supervise the overall system. The process parameter estimation, simulation results and practical results are obtained and compared for system validation. A comparison between conventional and the proposed adaptable one performance is introduced, showing merits and effectiveness of proposed algorithm.


Helper and suppressor T-cell activities were detected simultaneously in the spleen cells of mice immunized with para-azobenzoate (PAB)-mouse gammaglobulin (MGG). Dinitrophenyl (DNP)-specific B cells were raised by immunization with DNP-keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) and used as the indicator B-cell population. The helper and suppressor T-cell activities were determined after adoptively transferring spleen cells from PAB-MGG- primed donors and DNP-KLH-primed donors into X-irradiated recipients. Stimulation of these recipients with DNP-MGG-PAB detected helper T-cell activity, which was measured in terms of increased anti-DNP antibody responses of DNP-KLH-primed cells over these responses in the presence of unprimed cells. On the other hand, when DNP-KLH-primed cells were stimulated with DNP-KLH-PAB in the presence of PAB-MGG-primed cells, anti-DNP antibody responses were substantially lower than in unprimed normal cells. This suppressor cell population was (a) hapten-reactive, (b) present in B-cell-depleted spleen cells, (c) Thy-1 positive, (d) detectable earlier than the helper T-cell activities after priming (e) more radiosensitive than helper cells, and (f) found in the spleen but not the lymph nodes in contrast to helper T cells. These data indicate that these suppressor T cells are distinct from the helper T cells. PAB-reactive T cells clearly suppressed the antibody response by inhibiting KLH-reactive helper T-cell functions. The hapten-reactive T-lymphocyte system described here should be useful for analyzing and manipulating the immune response and for studying regulatory interactions of helper and suppressor T cells in the induction of antibody responses.


Pigs and pig organs are frequently used prior to human trials in experimental transplant research into how to optimise human transplantation. But what exactly happens when transplant professionals perform experimental research on pigs? Similarly, what happens when a pig is on the surgical table? Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Danish transplant research laboratories, we investigate how pig experiments facilitate 'collaborative intimacies' among medical professionals. Collaborative intimacies are used here as an empirical and theoretical framework for conceptualising and re-imagining the social relationships between species and the medical disciplines that emerge in laboratory work. Collaborative intimacies in the lab provide medical training and facilitate moral reflection and social networking among transplant professionals. As such, we argue that research utilising animal models is not only about technological progress and ethical dilemmas; rather, collaborative intimacies make us understand how intimate relations among medical professionals in translational research unfold and how such relations matter for professional and technological futures.


Conjugated polymer-semiconductor quantum dot (QD) composites are attracting increasing attention due to the complementary properties of the two classes of materials. We report a convenient method for in situ formation of QDs, and explore the conditions required for light emission of nanocomposite blends. In particular we explore the properties of nanocomposites of the blue emitting polymer poly[9,9-bis(3,5-di-tert-butylphenyl)-9H-fluorene] together with cadmium sulphide (CdS) and cadmium selenide (CdSe) precursors. We show the formation of emissive quantum dots of CdSe from thermally decomposed precursor. The dots are formed inside the polymer matrix and have a photoluminescence quantum yield of 7.5%. Our results show the importance of appropriate energy level alignment, and are relevant to the application of organic-inorganic systems in optoelectronic devices.


The acute stress response involves the secretion of catabolic glucocorticoids, such as corticosterone (CORT) in birds, that mobilize intrinsic energy stores primarily through a gluconeogenic pathway involving fat breakdown, thus linking body condition and stress. We measured changes in CORT and gluconeogenic metabolites (triglycerides, free glycerols, glucose) during handling stress in curve-billed thrashers Toxostoma curvirostre from two habitats (urban vs. desert) that may differ in food abundance in the wild, in captivity, and in response to both food restriction and subsequent recovery. Urban thrashers were heavier and secreted more CORT than desert birds in the field, but differences did not persist in captivity. Decreased access to food resulted in decreased body mass and a diminished ability to elevate plasma CORT in response to handling stress. However, the opposite effect was observed as these birds recovered from food restriction. Plasma levels of glucose and triglycerides did not change with stress. Food restriction also increased locomotor activity, which likely further exacerbated energy loss. These observations suggest that body condition and stress differences between urban and desert birds may be related to differences in their relative energetic states, possibly due to food availability. Body condition may affect the extent to which an individual can elevate CORT and use free glycerol as energy during acute stress.


This step-by-step, highly visual text provides a comprehensive introduction to managing and maintaining computer hardware and software. Written by best-selling author and educator Jean Andrews, A+ GUIDE TO MANAGING AND MAINTAINING YOUR PC closely integrates the CompTIAA+ Exam objectives to prepare you for the 220-801 and 220-802 certification exams. The new Eighth Edition also features extensive updates to reflect current technology, techniques, and industry standards in the dynamic, fast-paced field of PC repair. Each chapter covers both core concepts and advanced topics, organizing material to facilitate practical application and encourage you to learn by doing. Supported by a wide range of supplemental resources to enhance learning--including innovative tools, interactive exercises and activities, and online study guides--this proven text offers an ideal way to prepare you for success as a professional PC repair technician.


Functional and enterprising competencies were identified in the integrated entrepreneurial performance model and the paper highlights which key skills and which supportive skills should be included in entrepreneurial training models and programmes. Functional competencies depend on business management/general business and technical skills. Enterprising competencies depend on entrepreneurial and personal skills. A clear distinction is made between general management and entrepreneurial skills. A multi-sample of 570 start-up and established small and medium enterprises (SMEs) was used to determine whether there are statistically significant differences between the groups in terms of the importance and proficiency in these competencies. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to confirm the validity and reliability of the measuring instrument and several statistical tests, including t-tests and ANOVAs, were performed to test the hypotheses. Established SMEs considered functional competencies as being much more important than start-ups. This finding implies that start-up SMEs need to focus on the importance of functional competencies if they want to increase their chances of becoming established businesses. It was found that start-up, as well as established SMEs, consider enterprising competencies as important. The established group considered themselves very proficient in both the functional and enterprising competencies while the divergent was true for the start-up group.


The promise of oceanic discovery has long intrigued scientists and explorers, whether with the idea of studying underwater ecology and climate change or with the hope of uncovering natural resources and historic secrets buried deep in archaeological sites. This quest to explore the oceans requires skilled human access, yet much of the oceans are inaccessible to human divers; nearly ninetenths of the ocean floor is at 1 km or deeper [1]. Accessing these depths is imperative since factors such as pollution and deep-sea trawling threaten ecology and archaeological sites. While remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are inadequate for the task, a robotic avatar could go where humans cannot and still embody human intelligence and intentions through immersive interfaces.


Thesis (M.M. (Business Executive Coaching))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2013.


Energy loss characteristics in a rotating bead-filled capsule are impacted by bead shape, size, surface texture, density, and capsule fill level. In this paper, the energy loss results are reported from experiments of bead-filled cylindrical capsules rolling down a ramp in a controlled manner without sliding. These experiments were motivated by the potential applications of bead-filled capsules for energy dissipation and vibration control systems, as well as for understanding energy use in rotating drum-based industrial processes. The experiment used a plexiglass cylindrical capsule filled with beads of different sizes, materials, and textures. The bead-filled capsule was rolled down an inclined ramp and came to a stop on a level ramp. The position at which the capsule stopped was recorded. As the capsule rolled down the ramp, the potential energy converted to kinetic energy. When the kinetic energy dissipated, the capsule came to a stop. The distance traveled by the capsule is controlled by the energy loss caused by the collision and the friction of the beads. The nature of the collision and friction of the beads depended on the amount, size, type, and texture of the beads in the cylinder. The data was analyzed to determine the conditions for optimal fill level, which is defined as the case for maximum energy loss. We found that the intermediate filling level had the most energy loss. This optimal filling was obtained for each bead type.The maximum energy dissipation increased with bead surface texture and bead density but decreased with bead size.


Background Elder mistreatment is a well-recognized public health issue with complex underlying factors. The current study hypothesized that there is no effect of any of the following factors on any type of elder mistreatment: ethnicity, age group, education status, gender, living arrangement, concentration problems, medication for any disease, income level of caregiver, use of alcohol and tobacco products, and dependence on family or caregivers for daily activities. Materials and methods We conducted a cross-sectional study of 339 elders adults aged 60 or above residing in a rural part of eastern Nepal between August and November 2016. Multi-stage cluster sampling was adopted to select the study subjects. Information was collected using semi-structured questionnaires administered to elderly people by a designated interviewer. Factors associated with elder mistreatment were analyzed using logistic regression. Results Our findings revealed that 61.7% of 60+-year-olds experienced some form of mistreatment (physical 2.4%, psychological 22.4%, caregiver neglect 57.5%, financial 12.1% and stranger-inflicted 8.3%). Elder mistreatment was associated with the following characteristics of elders: dependent on family for daily living activities, illiterate, experiencing concentration problems, residing in a living arrangement with their son(s)/daughter(s)-in-law, taking regular medications, belonging to the Dalit community according to the Hindu traditional caste system, and residing with a caregiver having a monthly family income of less than NRs. 20,000 (193USD). Conclusions Our data show that elder mistreatment is prevalent in a rural community of Nepal. Addressing the lower socio-economic or socio-cultural classes of caregivers and elders via community-focused development programs might have significant implications for improving the well-being of elders.


BACKGROUND
There has been an evolving role of surgery for malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) over the past 25 years. The objective of this study was to investigate whether the survival results for MPM patients after surgery have improved within this time period by an analysis of a prospective cohort of 540 patients.

METHODS
Five hundred and forty consecutive patients with MPM were treated by a thoracic surgical team. These patients were categorized into two groups: Group I (before September 1999, n = 270) and Group II (after September 1999, n = 270). The two groups were compared for clinicopathologic data and survival results. The statistical analyses of all prognostic parameters used overall survival as the endpoint.

RESULTS
Group II had higher proportions of epithelial tumors and patients who had preoperative PET scan, extrapleural pneumonectomy (EPP), postoperative radiotherapy and pemetrexed chemotherapy. The overall survival results were significantly better in Group II compared with Group I (p = 0.004). Four factors were found to be independently associated with an improved survival in multivariate analysis: epithelial subtype (p <0.001); surgeon's experience with >100 cases (p = 0.006), patients who underwent EPP (p = 0.001) and those who received pemetrexed chemotherapy (p = 0.016). The median survival for patients selected for EPP was 20 months, as compared to 9 months for pleurodesis/decortication and pleurodesis.

CONCLUSIONS
Significant improvement of overall survival results has been achieved in the more recent 270 MPM patients through accumulated experience in a specialist treatment center.


Abstract Kaolin is found in deposits of economic concentration in the Jabal Al-Harad/ Batn El-Ghoul area in southern Jordan. Ten representative kaolin samples were collected from the area and investigated for their mineralogical and chemical composition. Mineral characterization was carried using X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetrical analysis (TGA), differential thermal analysis (DTA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). X-ray fluorescence (XRF) studies were conducted to determine the chemical composition of the kaolin deposits. Kaolinite was the predominant mineral, followed by quartz, with traces of illite-muscovite, Fe-bearing minerals (hematite), anatase and feldspar. The average chemical composition of the kaolin samples was 58.02 wt.% SiO2, 28.00% Al2O3, 1.48% Fe2O3, 1.26% TiO2 and 0.41% K2O (ignited basis). Dehydroxylation and mullitization temperatures (from DTA) were close to the theoretical values. Hexagonal booklets and stacks of kaolinite, as well as individual platelets, were present in the Jabal Al-Harad kaolin. Based on granulometric and descriptive mineralogical analyses, the mineral assemblages and kaolinite morphology, the Jabal Al- Harad kaolin deposit is thought to have originated from greatly weathered surfaces related to the Precambrian basement rocks. The kaolin was found to be suitable for manufacturing of common bricks, medium-fired bricks and sanitary ware, although a beneficiation process would be required; it could also be used in the refractory, white cement, paper and advanced ceramic industries.


Emerging elastic applications generate voluminous datasets, which are often required to be transferred across the network irrespective of flow level bandwidth guarantees. The primary concern in efficient transfers of such bulk data is to minimize the net transfer time. Variable bandwidth advance reservation (VBAR) can efficiently support such applications by reserving time variant bandwidth over the duration of a connection in advance. In this work, we address the routing and bandwidth scheduling problem in VBAR with the objective of minimizing the data transfer time. We propose three heuristic algorithms, and evaluate their performance for a single request under a given network state. We also evaluate the performance of the heuristics in a network under a dynamic traffic scenario. We demonstrate that VBAR outperforms conventional standard advance reservation and immediate reservation approaches in terms of delay, blocking probability, and network throughput. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed heuristic outperforms existing solutions in the dynamic traffic scenario with significantly lower time and storage complexities.


Research on urban design and walking often emphasizes macro-scale features of the physical environment, such as block length and number of intersections, that can be measured remotely using GIS and or aerial photographs. In contrast, urban designers emphasize the importance of micro-scale features in individuals' use and experience of neighbourhood environments. This paper moves beyond examining correlations of individual built environment features and walking, to begin to test proposals about which composite characteristics of the built environment (safety, comfort, etc.) may have the greatest impact on walking. Several urban design characteristics of 11 neighbourhoods throughout California were observed. Self-report, adult walking data on the number and types of walking trips were obtained from surveys administered to parents of 3rd–5th graders. Urban design features related to both accessibility and safety are associated with the amount of walking that adults do in their neighbourhoods. Grouping related urban design variables into indices provides some clarity as to how the built environment may impact walking. Safety emerges as the most important built environment characteristic (of those tested), related to both destination and recreational walking.


The past few decades have seen major advances in evaluation and treatment of fetal cardiovascular diseases. Largely due to advances in imaging, recognition of structural pathology in the developing human heart can now be performed as early as the 12th week of pregnancy and can be seen to develop and progress through gestation. Because of the observation that serious structural congenital heart disease may progress from seemingly minor disease if untreated, several centers are now intervening before birth to address such abnormalities and attempt to prevent the further development of structural disease. Furthermore, detailed assessment of cardiac rhythm, function, and myocardial mechanics is now also possible as early as the first trimester. Transplacental treatment for fetal rhythm abnormalities has dramatically changed the outcomes for affected pregnancies in the past decade. More recently, several centers have begun to incorporate routine fetal cardiovascular assessment in the evaluation of diseases such as congenital cystic adenomatiod malformation of the lung, twin-twin transfusion syndrome, and congenital diaphragmatic hernia where structural disease may impose significant comorbidity postnatally, and hemodynamic derangements and functional pathology secondary to the primary process may impact the fetus in utero. Recognition of potentially treatable fetal cardiac disease may alter the prognosis for these patients in the perinatal period as in utero treatment to address the primary abnormality has been shown to improve the hemodynamic derangements observed. Finally, prenatal recognition of fetal cardiac disease in general may be changing the natural history and incidence of disease in the postnatal population.

Regardless of training and background, any healthcare professional involved in the diagnosis and management of diseases of the fetus and newborn now needs to be cognizant of the potential contribution of prenatal cardiac assessment and treatment in the congenitally malformed or unwell fetus. In this special issue on the fetus as a cardiac patient, we have invited a few papers addressing issues unique to this patient group.

The first paper of this special issue addresses ethical issues relating to fetal diagnosis of a major abnormality with special emphasis on cardiac malformations. Presented are discussions of the ethical concept of beneficence and the principle of patient autonomy in the context of counseling expectant mothers and the complex ethical situation which arises in the consideration of the fetus as a patient.

The second paper presents a comprehensive review of cardiac findings in twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS), a condition which is a severe complication of monochorionic twin pregnancy. TTTS is characterized clinically on ultrasound by polyhydramnios in the "recipient" twin and oligohydramnios in the "donor" with varying degrees of cardiac dysfunction in the recipient. The pathophysiology of the syndrome itself and of the development of cardiomyopathic changes remains incompletely understood. The review discusses what is known with respect to the cardiac findings at presentation, natural history, and response to treatment and discusses current approaches to a comprehensive cardiac evaluation of affected fetuses. The third paper describes a large series of fetuses presenting with findings consistent with cardiomyopathy or myocarditis and represents a large natural history study of these entities, underlining the particularly high perinatal loss rate with diagnosis of dilated cardiomyopathy or myocarditis, as opposed to many of the hypertrophic myopathies.

The issue concludes with two thought-provoking review articles regarding the intrauterine environment and the complex interaction the developing fetal brain and circulatory system have with each other and the placental circulation. In the first of these, the authors present a discussion of intrauterine hypoxia, its various causes, and mechanisms whereby disease in the fetus may result. The final paper presents a comprehensive review of the current understanding of pathologic findings in the developing brain of the fetus and infant with congenital heart disease. Methods for detection, potential etiologies, and implications for neurodevelopmental outcome are discussed. Intriguing speculation regarding the possibility of altering the natural history of developmental brain abnormalities via in utero intervention will leave the reader eagerly anticipating future developments in the rapidly advancing field of fetal cardiovascular assessment and treatment.

Anita J. Moon-Grady

Shinjiro Hirose

Greg Kesby

Samuel Menahem

Wayne Tworetzky


This article presents a systematic quantitative performance analysis for large finite element computations on extreme scale computing systems. Three parallel iterative solvers for the Stokes system, discretized by low order tetrahedral elements, are compared with respect to their numerical efficiency and their scalability running on up to $786\,432$ parallel threads. A genuine multigrid method for the saddle point system using an Uzawa-type smoother provides the best overall performance with respect to memory consumption and time-to-solution. The largest system solved on a Blue Gene/Q system has more than ten trillion ($1.1 \cdot 10 ^{13}$) unknowns and requires about 13 minutes compute time. Despite the matrix free and highly optimized implementation, the memory requirement for the solution vector and the auxiliary vectors is about 200 TByte. Brandt's notion of "textbook multigrid efficiency" is employed to study the algorithmic performance of iterative solvers. A recent extension of this paradigm to "parallel textbook multigrid efficiency" makes it possible to assess also the efficiency of parallel iterative solvers for a given hardware architecture in absolute terms. The efficiency of the method is demonstrated for simulating incompressible fluid flow in a pipe filled with spherical obstacles.


A major problem in the evaluation of the performance of a multiprogrammed computer system is the development of an accurate description of its normal workload. This paper formulates the workload characterization problem for a computing environment and presents three types of simplified models for the system workload. The probabilistic models of the workload presented here can be validated with respect to the real workload and are easy to use in a performance evaluation study. The results of a study of the workloads on the Univac 1108 computer at the Computer Science Center of the University of Maryland are also presented.


This study looks at the actual value that connectivity in vehicles can bring to society and the different sectors affected, Connectivity is one of the four critical megatrends facing the automotive industry. These trends are autonomous driving, shared mobility and electrification, yet connectivity is both separate and integrated to these other megatrends. The importance of connectivity is therefore fundamental to the future evolution of the industry. The vehicle is emerging as the next digital platform which may be analogous to the evolution of the smartphone and the opportunities that connectivity provides has incentivized automakers to increasing install embedded connectivity to capture the value from this new ecosystem. Such vehicles are often termed connected vehicles. One estimate from McKinsey Advance Industries (2016) predicts that on-demand mobility and data-driven services from such vehicles could account for approximately $2 trillion (or approximately 30%) of the automotive revenue pool by 2030, with data connectivity services accounting for between $450-$750 billion per year. This growth is built upon advanced mobile telecommunication standards, in particular, cellular standards, which provide the enabling infrastructure for new connectivity-based products and services to emerge in the automotive/mobility sector.

Below are highlighted results from the study:

• Connectivity is a megatrend that is transforming the automotive industry towards a new mobility sector. In the near future, most new vehicles will be increasingly equipped with embedded connectivity capabilities due to safety regulations, development of V2X functionality, and the potential service revenue.

• The growing value of connectivity in the automotive sector is predicated on the development of high performance, open telecommunication standards, such as advanced cellular technology (e.g. 4/5G).

• The vehicle is becoming the next big digital platform, generating competition between the existing mobile/smartphone ecosystem and the emerging vehicle ecosystems for control of the value of automotive/mobility services.

• Connected vehicle applications are still small but are growing. Current estimates of the revenue from the vehicle ecosystem to automakers were calculated at $670 (US) and $593 (WW) per connected vehicle, based on a subset of existing applications in 2018.

• The total revenue from connectivity-enabled products and services in the automotive sector was calculated to grow from $223 billion to $483 billion from 2018-2023 for a subset of existing revenue pools, with forecasts predicting as much as $2 trillion by 2030.

• Market revenues do not provide the whole picture, especially when multi-sided business models are deployed. Therefore, the total economic value, including consumer surplus and relevant externalities, is important to bear in mind when determining the value of connectivity in the automotive sector or regulation of the sector.


Most clients are sharper than their advisers give them credit for. That makes them the most likely people to identify--and question--a financial arrangement that appears to influence a CPA's judgment. Should a client somehow fail to discover an undisclosed commission arrangement, his or her attorney or even a competing insurance agent will almost certainly blow the whistle. Once revealed, a hidden commission arrangement could destroy the CPA's credibility with a client. And that's just the beginning. To prevent this from happening, here's what CPAs need to know about disclosing commissions. WHY DISCLOSE? The most obvious reason is that the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct, Rule 503--"Commissions and Referral Fees"--requires disclosure. Here's the part of rule 503 pertaining to this discussion: "A member in public practice who is not prohibited by this rule from performing services for or receiving a commission and who is paid or expects to be paid a commission shall disclose that fact to any person or entity to whom the member recommends or refers a product or service to which the commission relates." It's also important to note that rule 503 prohibits CPAs from accepting commissions from certain attest clients, regardless of disclosure. CPAs can find the entire text of rule 503 at www.aicpa.org/about/ code/et503.htm. CPAs work hard becoming their clients' trusted advisers. Receipt of commissions may appear to sway that judgment. People judge others by their own experiences and what they would do in similar situations. Even if a particular fee arrangement does not actually influence a CPA's judgment, it may appear to--just as bad from the client's viewpoint. In such situations the CPA becomes just another insurance promoter and his or her role as trusted adviser and valued source of independent advice evaporates. Clients begin to question whose best interests the CPA has at heart--the client's or his or her own? CPAs should also be aware that some state boards of accountancy have their own rules on commissions and referral fees. Practitioners are advised to check with their own state board to ensure these rules are not more restrictive than the AICPA's. Telling clients about a commission arrangement before they, their attorney or--even worse--a competing insurance agent discovers it, keeps the relationship open and aboveboard. Disclosure is not a negative thing. The fact is, money is not usually the issue with most clients--unless the CPA fails to make the disclosure early and in a forthright manner. GETTING CAUGHT CPAs can get caught failing to disclose commissions in a variety of ways. Here are just a few of the most common: * The client asks why the CPA brought a particular insurance agent into the transaction. If the client has to ask, the damage is already done. Any answer other than "we have a commission-sharing arrangement" conflicts with rule 503. * The client or his or her attorney queries the state insurance department to find out if the CPA holds an insurance license. If the CPA does, he or she is most likely receiving a commission. …


The much anticipated Supreme Court decision in United States v. Booker and Fanfan has both invalidated the mandatory nature of the federal Sentencing Guidelines as well as restored judicial discretion for federal judges. With the Booker decision there is a renewed opportunity to correct some of the imbalance that came about as a result of the mandatory guidelines and the sentencing policies of the past twenty years. Booker has implications for all future sentencing as the power between the judiciary and the jury has been realigned and the power of the government has been reduced. Sentencing cannot accomplish legitimate goals when it is absolutely uniform nationwide regardless of any justifiable distinctions between defendants or crimes. Based on this principle, the goals of the United States Sentencing Commission were to eliminate unwarranted departures and to advance the goals of uniformity and proportionality. Warranted departures are those factors that should be taken into account when sentencing. In drafting the Guidelines, the Commission sought to establish a system that maintained fairness and avoided rote application in sentencing practices. Instead, the Guidelines that became effective in 1987 produced a mandatory, rote sentencing process that omitted any judicial discretion and promoted a much-criticized shift in power from the judiciary to the prosecution. Judges resented the fact that their sentencing discretion had evaporated as sentences became harsher and the prison population in this country has swelled to unprecedented numbers. Booker will promote sentencing that is likely to be closer to the original goals of the Sentencing Reform Act which contemplated that sentences would reflect fairness and certainty, two of the hallmarks of due process. With the Booker decision, the Court has opened the way to promote alternative sentencing methods and to allow the judiciary to consider all relevant matters when sentencing. Lower courts will use the reasonableness standard to achieve the goals and policies of sentencing: retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. In doing so, courts will now be able to consider all relevant factors concerning a defendant and the offense, restored discretion in sentencing.


THE BRILLIANT Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti painted magnificent frescoes on the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, laboring from 1508 to 1512. Commissioned by Pope Julius II, Michelangelo performed this work himself without assistance. Scholars debate whether he had any guidance from the Church in the selection of the scenes, and what meaning the scenes were to convey. In the fresco traditionally called the Creation of Adam , but which might be more aptly titled the Endowment of Adam , I believe that Michelangelo encoded a special message. It is a message consistent with thoughts he expressed in his sonnets. Supreme in sculpture and painting, he understood that his skill was in his brain and not in his hands. He believed that the "divine part" we "receive" from God is the "intellect." In the following sonnet, Michelangelo explains how he creates sculpture and painting and how, I believe, God himself gave man the gift of intellect 1 :


The ban on gay men donating blood in Great Britain is to be lifted on 7 November 2011, after new evidence, including research in the BMJ , indicated that this would not affect the safety for recipients.

Men who abstain from anal and oral sex with another man for at least one year will be eligible if they meet the other criteria for selecting donors, the Department of Health announced on 8 September. This 12 month "deferral" applies whether or not condoms were used.

"Donor selection rules are based on good evidence to maintain their credibility with donors, and this change . . . is proportionate to the current risk," said Lorna Williamson, medical and research director of NHS Blood and Transplant, which manages donations in England and north Wales. Our priority is "to …


"Fail often to succeed sooner" is a common mantra that we are told is the secret to success. When reporting research results, however, scholars rarely write about their failed attempts and only focus on the successful ones. Perhaps the source of this disconnect between what we preach and what we do can be found in the underlying assumption that published work is meant to move the field forward and failed attempts supposedly do not. The goal of the confessions presented in this paper is to show that even failed attempts are genuine and valuable contributions to our field provided that we learn from our mistakes and correct them. The 27 confessions span from planning oversights, digital and analog design errors, misunderstanding of devices, overlooked parasitics, LVS errors, and troubles in testing.


Significance Several studies on the impact of yoga and meditation on mental and physical health have demonstrated beneficial effects. However, the potential molecular mechanisms and critical genes involved in this beneficial outcome have yet to be comprehensively elucidated. This study identified and characterized the transcriptional program associated with advanced meditation practice, and we bioinformatically integrated various networks to identify meditation-specific core network. This core network links several immune signaling pathways, and we showed that this core transcriptional profile is dysfunctional in multiple sclerosis and severe COVID-19 infection. Very importantly, we demonstrated that the meditative practice enhanced immune function without activating inflammatory signals. Together, these results make meditation an effective behavioral intervention for treating various conditions associated with a weakened immune system. The positive impact of meditation on human well-being is well documented, yet its molecular mechanisms are incompletely understood. We applied a comprehensive systems biology approach starting with whole-blood gene expression profiling combined with multilevel bioinformatic analyses to characterize the coexpression, transcriptional, and protein–protein interaction networks to identify a meditation-specific core network after an advanced 8-d Inner Engineering retreat program. We found the response to oxidative stress, detoxification, and cell cycle regulation pathways were down-regulated after meditation. Strikingly, 220 genes directly associated with immune response, including 68 genes related to interferon signaling, were up-regulated, with no significant expression changes in the inflammatory genes. This robust meditation-specific immune response network is significantly dysregulated in multiple sclerosis and severe COVID-19 patients. The work provides a foundation for understanding the effect of meditation and suggests that meditation as a behavioral intervention can voluntarily and nonpharmacologically improve the immune response for treating various conditions associated with excessive or persistent inflammation with a dampened immune system profile.


One of the most common and efficient way to preserve ancient books is to digitize them, and make their content someway browsable. However, this process often does not take into account the fruition point of view. Exploiting the currently available technologies allows for new ways of content fruition, to attract more people and help them to better understand the available information. In this paper, we present a solution for an innovative and multimodal exploration of ancient books contents, using both touch and touchless gestures. This allows people for both near and far distance interaction, which results in different interaction models.


Absorption of light is directly associated with dissipative processes in a material. In suitably tailored resonators, a specific level of dissipation can support coherent perfect absorption, the time-reversed analogue of lasing, which enables total absorption and zero scattering in open cavities. On the contrary, the scattering zeros of lossless objects strictly occur at complex frequencies. While usually considered nonphysical due to their divergent response in time, these zeros play a crucial role in the overall scattering dispersion. Here, we introduce the concept of coherent virtual absorption, accessing these modes by temporally shaping the incident waveform. We show that engaging these complex zeros enables storing and releasing the electromagnetic energy at will within a lossless structure for arbitrary amounts of time, under the control of the impinging field. The effect is robust with respect to inevitable material dissipation and can be realized in systems with any number of input ports. The observed effect may have important implications for flexible control of light propagation and storage, low-energy memory, and optical modulation. (c) 2017 Optical Society of America


The magnitude and variability of warming of air and the solar dimming/brightening phenomenon are investigated for Bahrain. The temperature records show highly significant warming trends through six months of the year (April–September) for absolute maximum (AbsTx), and through five months (April–July and October) for absolute minimum (AbsTn). Greater warming overwhelms the daytime extremes over the nocturnal ones and the hot, dry part of the year than the cool, wet season, leading to significant widening range between AbsTx and AbsTn. The highest recorded temperature reveals an alarming warming rate of 0.60°C decade–1. Almost exclusively above-average values characterise the last 15 years, with the year 2010 set as the hottest within the study period. Accompanying this warming climate has been increasing variability of the within-year monthly temperatures. Although two statistical tests agree on significant solar dimming only for July and November, the data do reveal a return to decreased sunshine since 2002/2003. Adoption of serious measures would be needed to overcome the anticipated future environmental insecurity resulting from climate warming.


: We consider the production of an arbitrary number of colour-singlet particles near partonic threshold, and show that next-to-leading order cross sections for this class of processes have a simple universal form at next-to-leading power (NLP) in the energy of the emitted gluon radiation. Our analysis relies on a recently derived factorisation formula for NLP threshold e(cid:11)ects at amplitude level, and therefore applies both if the leading-order process is tree-level and if it is loop-induced. It holds for di(cid:11)erential distributions as well. The results can furthermore be seen as applications of recently derived next-to-soft theorems for gauge theory amplitudes. We use our universal expression to re-derive known results for the production of up to three Higgs bosons at NLO in the large top mass limit, and for the hadro-production of a pair of electroweak gauge bosons. Finally, we present new analytic results for Higgs boson pair production at NLO and NLP, with exact top-mass dependence.


Objective: Endoscopic therapy is increasingly being used in the treatment of high-grade intraepithelial neoplasia (HGIN) and mucosal adenocarcinoma (BC) in patients with Barrett's oesophagus. This report provides 5 year follow-up data from a large prospective study investigating the efficacy and safety of endoscopic treatment in these patients and analysing risk factors for recurrence. Design: Prospective case series. Setting: Academic tertiary care centre. Patients: Between October 1996 and September 2002, 61 patients with HGIN and 288 with BC were included (173 with short-segment and 176 with long-segment Barrett's oesophagus) from a total of 486 patients presenting with Barrett's neoplasia. Patients with submucosal or more advanced cancer were excluded. Interventions: Endoscopic therapy. Main outcome measures: Rate of complete remission and recurrence rate, tumour-associated death. Results: Endoscopic resection was performed in 279 patients, photodynamic therapy in 55, and both procedures in 13; two patients received argon plasma coagulation. The mean follow-up period was 63.6 (SD 23.1) months. Complete response (CR) was achieved in 337 patients (96.6%); surgery was necessary in 13 (3.7%) after endoscopic therapy failed. Metachronous lesions developed during the follow-up in 74 patients (21.5%); 56 died of concomitant disease, but none died of BC. The calculated 5 year survival rate was 84%. The risk factors most frequently associated with recurrence were piecemeal resection, long-segment Barrett's oesophagus, no ablative therapy of Barrett's oesophagus after CR, time until CR achieved >10 months and multifocal neoplasia. Conclusions: This study showed that endoscopic therapy was highly effective and safe, with an excellent long-term survival rate. The risk factors identified may help stratify patients who are at risk for recurrence and those requiring more intensified follow-up.


Most of the research in communication complexity theory is focused on the fixed-partition model (in this model the partition of the input between Alice and Bob is fixed). Nonetheless, the best-partition model (the model that allows Alice and Bob to choose the partition) has a lot of applications in studying stream algorithms and complexity of branching programs. In the paper, we show how to transform separations between communication complexity classes from the fixed-partition to the best-partition models. Using these and previously known methods, we give an answer to the open question asked by Göös, Pitassi, and Watson by providing an almost complete picture of the relations between best-communication complexity classes between Pop and PSPACEop.


Just as persons have the capacity to enter into contracts and to have those agreements enforced, they likewise have the capacity to amend those agreements into which they have already entered. In the case of the typical bilateral agreement, amendment will require the consent of both parties thereto. In a business venture in which there may be many owners, there is still sometimes seen the requirement that all of the participants therein approve any amendment to the operative agreement. While obtaining unanimous consent may at times be difficult, unanimous consent most clearly eliminates possible disputes as to the efficacy of the amendment and its effectiveness to bind non-consenting parties.Partnership law consistently provides a default rule that amendment of the partnership agreement requires the unanimous consent of the partners; but the partnership agreement may alter this threshold to the effect that unanimous approval is not required. Under the law of limited partnerships, the default rule is again all of the partners (general and limited) must approve an amendment, but that threshold may be altered in the partnership agreement. The law of LLCs is not so consistent. While there is a significant number of jurisdictions that provide a default rule of unanimous approval of the members to amend the operating agreement, another set of jurisdictions allow for amendment by a mere majority or some other threshold of the members. Alternatively, by permitting a merger to proceed with the approval of less than all members, it is possible to bind persons to an operating agreement to which they have not consented.If less than a majority of the parties to the contract, be it a partnership or operating agreement, is there (i) a limit to the extent such amendments may be effective to alter the fundamental contract of the parties, or (ii) a limit to the extent to which such amendments may be binding on those who do not consent?This article will begin with a largely chronological review of cases that have assessed the enforceability of non-unanimous amendments. From there it will address the development of dissenters' rights in corporations and the limited development of the same mechanism in LLCs, considering the viability of either as a means of militating the effect of non-unanimous amendments. The third and last component of this article will consider and largely reject various theories including fiduciary obligations and the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing as limitations on the scope of amendments that any be adopted by less than all participants in the venture.


The relationship between circulation weather types (WTs) and the spatial variability of precipitation across the Iberian Peninsula were studied using a high density, quality controlled, homogenized monthly precipitation database with approximately 3000 stations and interpolated to a 10 km grid. The circulation WTs were computed using an objective version of the Lamb classification centered on the Iberian Peninsula. A total of 26 WTs were selected for the period 1948–2003. Daily WTs were grouped to obtain their monthly frequencies, and used as potential independent variables in a linear least‐square non‐negative regression model with a forward stepwise selection. Results show the impact of each WT on precipitation in the Iberian Peninsula with a spatial resolution which had never been achieved before and additionally were obtained on a monthly scale highlighting the large seasonal cycle observed in each class, and including significantly different patterns in winter and summer. Nevertheless, results confirm that most of the precipitation in the Iberian Peninsula is produced by just a few WTs, with W, SW and C being the most influential. The association between WTs and precipitation is more robust in winter months and for the western IP areas, while it is lower during summer months and for the eastern IP areas. Spatial analysis revealed that precipitation on the Mediterranean coastland is mostly related with easterly flows (NE, E, SE and their hybrid counterparts), while on the Cantabrian coastland. N and NW flows are the most influential WTs. In general, cyclone‐related types are the least frequent ones and also the most efficient in generating precipitation; while anticyclone‐related types have the highest frequencies, but also the lowest contribution to total monthly rainfall in the Iberian Peninsula.


Many redaction-critical analyses of David's Prayer (2 Sam 7:18–29) attribute it—in varying degrees—to the primary Deuteronomistic Historian. But the use of the divine epithet [inline-graphic 01] throughout the prayer suggests a non-Deuteronomistic hand at work. Adding to the unexpected use of the epithet is the uniform but curious Greek translation of it in this isolated passage—κύριέ μου κύριε. The translation probably reflects an association with "my lord the king" or "my lord PN," which is a common way of addressing royalty in DtrH. Such a mode of address fits naturally with the speaker's frequent use of "your servant" as a self-referent in the prayer. Upon further reflection one can argue that the surprising use of this epithet points to a common aural tradition that predates the development of variant textual traditions and that the name itself most likely stems from a pre-Deuteronomistic redactional layer.


This study argues that this previously banned author devoted his entire life to articulating a religion of self-liberation in his autobiographical books, examining his life and work within the context of fringe religious movements that were linked with the avant-garde in New York City and Paris at the first of the 20th century. This study shows how these transatlantic movements - including Gurdjieff, Rosicrucianism, and Theosophy - gave him the hermeneutical devices, not to mention the creative license, to interpret texts and symbols from mainline religions in an iconoclastic manner, ranging from obscure Taoist treatises to the mystical works of Jacob Boehme. The influence of numerous philosophical sources widely circulated in his most critical years - particularly Henri Bergson's Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932) - also helped him develop a religious view situated between transcendence and immanence, in which self-liberation through the channeled flow of elan vital is the chief objective. Miller's knowledge of these intellectual currents, along with his involvement with sidestream religious groups, inspired him to meld his religious and literary aims into one perplexing project.