Significance Cannabis use is becoming more prevalent, including during developmentally sensitive periods such as pregnancy. Here we find that maternal cannabis use is associated with increased cortisol, anxiety, aggression, and hyperactivity in young children. This corresponded with widespread reductions in immune-related gene expression in the placenta which correlated with anxiety and hyperactivity. Future studies are needed to examine the effects of cannabis on immune function during pregnancy as a potential regulatory mechanism shaping neurobehavioral development. While cannabis is among the most used recreational drugs during pregnancy, the impact of maternal cannabis use (mCB) on fetal and child development remains unclear. Here, we assessed the effects of mCB on psychosocial and physiological measures in young children along with the potential relevance of the in utero environment reflected in the placental transcriptome. Children (∼3 to 6 y) were assessed for hair hormone levels, neurobehavioral traits on the Behavioral Assessment System for Children (BASC-2) survey, and heart rate variability (HRV) at rest and during auditory startle. For a subset of children with behavioral assessments, placental specimens collected at birth were processed for RNA sequencing. Hair hormone analysis revealed increased cortisol levels in mCB children. In addition, mCB was associated with greater anxiety, aggression, and hyperactivity. Children with mCB also showed a reduction in the high-frequency component of HRV at baseline, reflecting reduced vagal tone. In the placenta, there was reduced expression of many genes involved in immune system function including type I interferon, neutrophil, and cytokine-signaling pathways. Finally, several of these mCB-linked immune genes organized into coexpression networks that correlated with child anxiety and hyperactivity. Overall, our findings reveal a relationship between mCB and immune response gene networks in the placenta as a potential mediator of risk for anxiety-related problems in early childhood.


Abstract This paper presents an instructional game system to support variable dyad learning activities for problem-solving exercises, particularly variable in difficulty level to make learning activities challenging and motivating for a wide range of people, or for the same person at different times. Furthermore, the system also allows teachers to adjust difficulty level of learning activities and to author the exercise problems. An instructional game is a highly motivating approach for reinforcing and exercising previously taught skills and concepts. This work uses dyad learning activities to mean synchronous learning activities involving two students who interact through a computer network. Variable dyad learning activities are developed by adjustment and combination of different factors, such as exercise problems, competition or collaboration, constraints on solving problems, and game scenarios. This paper describes the system design, adjustable factors, variable dyad learning activities, and a preliminary evaluation of the system.


A hydrochemical study was conducted for the north western part of the Auja Tamaseeh basin in Tulkarem area. It acts as an evaluation study of the human effect activities on the quality of the groundwater. The groundwater type is of an earth alkaline with increased portions of alkalis with prevailing bicarbonate. The mineral phases of calcite, dolomite and aragonite are the main constituents of the lithological formations in the recharge basin area. A spatial analysis was performed to correlate the polluted groundwater wells with the natural and anthropological activities using GIS. The polluted wells are located within populated areas and in high to moderate sensitive areas in close to the agricultural activities.


The longitudinal current sorting of graded sediment is analysed by use of a sediment transport formula developed recently by Engelund and Fredsoe (1976). The analysis yields that for a given longitudinal profile of a river, the longitudinal variation in mean grain diameter and the grain distribution curve is unique determined by the sediment input and water discharge. No requirement concerning an ultimate equilibrium state of the bed elevation is introduced. The analysis yields that the mean grain size will decrease as the slope of the river decreases and further, that originally logarithmic normally distributed sand will tend to be logarithmic hyperbolic distributed after sorting.


Recent studies indicate that alphaII-spectrin breakdown products (SBDPs) have utility as biological markers of traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, the utility of SBDP biomarkers for detecting effects of therapeutic interventions has not been explored. Acetylcholine plays a role in pathological neuronal excitation and TBI-induced muscarinic cholinergic receptor activation may contribute to excitotoxic processes. In experiment I, regional and temporal changes in calpain-mediated alpha-spectrin degradation were evaluated at 3, 12, 24, and 48 h using immunostaining for 145-kDa SBDP. Immunostaining of SBDP-145 was only evident in the hemisphere ipsilateral to TBI and was generally limited to the cortex except at 24 h when immunostaining was also prominent in the dentate gyrus and striatum. In Experiment II, cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) samples were analyzed for various SBDPs 24 h after moderate lateral fluid percussion TBI. Rats were administered either dicyclomine (5 mg/kg i.p.) or saline vehicle (n = 8 per group) 5 min prior to injury. Injury produced significant increases (p < 0.001) of 300%, 230%, and >1000% in SBDP-150, -145, and -120, respectively in vehicle-treated rats compared to sham. Dicyclomine treatment produced decreases of 38% (p = 0.077), 37% (p = 0.028), and 63% (p = 0.051) in SBDP-150, -145, and -120, respectively, compared to vehicle-treated injury. Following CSF extraction, coronal brain sections were processed for detecting degenerating neurons using Fluoro-Jade histofluorescence. Stereological techniques were used to quantify neuronal degeneration in the dorsal hippocampus CA2/3 region and in the parietal cortex. No significant differences were detected in numbers of degenerating neurons in the dorsal CA2/3 hippocampus or the parietal cortex between saline and dicyclomine treatment groups. The percent weight loss following TBI was significantly reduced by dicyclomine treatment. These data provide additional evidence that, as TBI biomarkers, SBDPs are able to detect a therapeutic intervention even in the absence of changes in neuronal cell degeneration measured by Fluoro-jade.


What Can Be Said of Those Who Remain Behind? A Historic, Cultural and Situational Perspective on the Poplar Grove Scot. -- The study of migration within North America has been a popular area of research for many sociologists. Their focus is frequently the rural to urban trend with particular emphasis on motivations for this type of migration. Overwhelming evidence from these studies now indicate that these rural peoples have consistently left their places of birth and socialization as a means of effecting the promise of affluence proffered by urban centers. -- The extension of the promise of affluence to the rural hinterland and its resulting migration is but one aspect of the more extensive phenomenon termed modernization. Modernization is the fulfillment of the ideology of the technological age. Those who fail to grasp the "evolving truth" and who remain behind in rural areas with neither affluence or even the promise of affluence are termed "losers" in the efforts to modernize. In the words of the poet writer Alden Nowlan; -- "They are the rural people in a world ruled by city dwellers. They inhabit regions that have been made the Horrible Examples and whipping boys of their respective countries...." -- In this research the effort was made to investigate those who remained behind in Poplar Grove, Cape Breton. Poplar Grove has been a veritable spring board for outmigrants and the present community is now collapsed by its long term effort. Had this study been conducted by questionnaires "sent out" from some urban academic center the residents of this collapsed community might have been studied as "losers" (victims). The strategy of participation in the culture allowed an experience of the life within Poplar Grove--a life with perceptions of reality existing long before the advent of modernization. In Chapters 2 through 4 of this dissertation the attempt has been made to present these perceptions against the background of modernization. -- There are three parts to these perceptions of reality presented herein: the historic, cultural and situational. Chapter 2 introduces those historic events that have shaped the present life of Poplar Grove people. This chapter deals especially with the socio-economic adaptation of the Scot Highlanders to the new land and their first encounters with modernization. -- Chapter 3 in detailing some of the elements of the traditional life depicts the distinctive culture of Poplar Grove. In this rather ethnographic chapter the colour of the traditional life is accented so as to provide the reader with this significant finding: social relationships in Poplar Grove still exist in a different manner than elsewhere in North America, a variety of gemeinschaft still predominates. -- Chapter 4 is the most restricted chapter of the dissertation dealing only with a small number of tactics that are locally employed to combat the insalubrious effects of modernization. In particular the tactic of occupational diversity is discussed and it is demonstrated that this tactic can be employed to allow local definitions of situation to prevail over those imposed by modernizing agents. -- Finally, a brief conclusion explains the use of the word "perspective" in the title of the dissertation.


"Inquiring Organizations: Moving from Knowledge Management to Wisdom' assembles into one volume a comprehensive collection of the key current thinking regarding the use of C. West Churchman's Design of Inquiring Systems as a basis for computer-based inquiring systems design and implementation. Inquiring systems are systems that go beyond knowledge management to actively inquire about their environment. While self-adaptive is an appropriate adjective for inquiring systems, they are critically different from self-adapting systems as they have evolved in the fields of computer science or artificial intelligence. Inquiring systems draw on epistemology to guide knowledge creation and organizational learning. As such, we can for the first time ever, begin to entertain the notion of support for "wise" decision-making. Readers of "Inquiring Organizations: Moving from Knowledge Management to Wisdom" will gain an appreciation for the role that epistemology can play in the design of the next generation of knowledge management systems, systems that focus on supporting wise decision-making processes.


The 2012 performance of Pussy Riot's "Punk Prayer" in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, their subsequent release of an extended and edited video, and their ultimate arrest for committing "hooliganism" generated a large amount of interest both within Russia and on an international scale. While Western accounts and analyses were marked by their tendency to frame the political content, Russian responses were framed by references to tradition and history. Significantly, there was disagreement amongst the latter with regard to the activist value of Pussy Riot. I argue that this ambiguity arises from a profound socio-spatial anxiety that was triggered by the Pussy Riot performances but was never examined. At the core of the anxiety lies a discomfort with the implications of Pussy Riot's spatial transgressions because the techniques used to engage in activism ultimately invoked regimes of vision and technology to exert power over the public that implicitly resembles surveillance techniques used by the very object of criticism, the Russian regime.


In this volume of essays John Howard Yoder projects a vision of Christian social ethics rooted in historical community and illuminated by scripture. Drawing upon scriptural accounts of the early church, he demonstrates the Christian community's constant need for reform and change. Yoder first examines the scriptural and theoretical foundations of Christian social ethics. While personally committed to the "radical reformation" tradition, he eschews "denominational" categorization and addresses Christians in general. The status of Christian community, he argues, cannot be separated from the doctrinal content of beliefs and the moral understanding of discipleship. As a result, the Christian's voluntary commitment to a particular community, as distinct from secular society, offers him valuable resources for practical moral reasoning. From a historical perspective, Yoder reviews the efforts of sixteenth-century radical (or Anabaptist) reformers to return to the fundamental ethical standards of the New Testament, and to disengage the community, as a biblically rooted call to faith that does not imply withdrawal from the pluralistic world. Rather, radical commitment to Christianity strengthens and renews the authentic human interests and values of the whole society. His analyses of democracy and of civil religion illustrate how Christianity must challenge and embrace the wider world.


Abstract Fire has long served as a tool in agriculture, but the practice's link with economic activity has made its health consequences difficult to study. Drawing on data from satellite-based fire detection systems, air monitors, and vital records in Brazil, we study how in utero exposure to smoke from sugarcane harvest fires affects health at birth. Exploiting daily changes in fire location and wind direction for identification, we find that late-pregnancy smoke exposure decreases birthweight, gestational length, and in utero survival. Fires less associated with smoke exposure predict improved health, highlighting the importance of disentangling pollution from its economic correlates.


We advocate the position that unsupervised learning of rich representations requires careful consideration of an issue that usually receives only cursory attention: The definition of a statistical 'event', or 'sample'. Data sets are presumed to have been generated by sampling from some probability distribution that is to be estimated, but there is no general canonical way to select a model for a given data set and define the correspondence between the various components of its joint random variable and particular subsets, or more generally, features, of the data. Any attempt to automate this choice must confront the fact that without a definition of 'event', this exercise cannot be formulated as a statistical learning problem. We introduce two supplementary criteria, information at a distance and information contrast, in order to clear this impasse, and show anecdotal results from using each. We argue that this issue also arises (whether recognized or not) in automated learning of feature hierarchies to form a rich representations, because distinct events are selected at one level of the hierarchy and bound together to form joint events at the next level.


Abstract The biological control agent Aphthona nigriscutis Foudras (Chrysomelidae) established in Fremont County, WY since 1992 on leafy spurge was released into a mixed stand a native plant Euphorbia robusta Engelm. During host range testing, E. robusta was a likely host for A. nigriscutis under laboratory conditions. In 1999, A. nigriscutis was observed feeding on both E. esula and 31 of 36 E. robusta plants present on about 2 ha (5 ac) where the visually estimated E. esula canopy cover was 50%. By August 2001, E. esula cover had declined to less than 5% and E. robusta plants had increased to 450 plants with 26 (5.8%) showing feeding damage. In 2006 Euphorbia esula ground cover was 2% and of 598 E. robusta plants originally marked, 391 could be located and four of these had damage consistent with A. nigriscutis feeding. For the 8-yr period, E. esula ground cover was inversely correlated to E. robusta density and positively correlated to A. nigriscutis feeding damage on E. robusta. This study shows that while also acceptable to A. nigriscutis in the field, feeding on E. robusta declined with declining densities of the target weed while E. robusta population densities increased. It seems that some risk in this regard is acceptable in light of the damage from the target weed and the generally high level of selectivity provided by biological control agents. Nomenclature: Leafy spurge, Euphorbia esula L. EPHES; Apthona nigriscutis Foudras


Abstract : This paper addresses the problem of realizing the benefits of pre- computed schedules in the face of partially unpredictable execution environment. We focus specifically on the problem of manufacturing production scheduling, where advance planning is crucial to overall factory performance but is, at the same time, confounded by the unpredictability of factory operations. we present a scheduling framework where decision-making responsibility is shared between a global scheduler, responsible for establishing and maintaining execution constraints in accordance with overall performance objectives, and a local dispatcher, responsible for containing execution within globally imposed constraints and notifying the scheduler when containment is no longer possible. We identify the sources of local executional flexibility that can be expected in a pre-computed schedule, and describe an execution-time scheduler (the dispatcher) capable of exploiting this flexibility.


Burnt area maps based on satellite observations are frequently used in calculations related to fire regime, such as those of carbon dioxide emissions. Nevertheless, burnt area estimates between products vary widely, and validation against independent data is scarce, especially for Europe. Here we compare two active fire maps (the ATSR World Fire Atlas and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Active Fire Product) and two fire scars maps (the L3JRC and the MODIS Burned Area Product) to independent national statistics taken from 22 European countries between 1997 and 2008. We also tested the coincidence between satellite products derived by calculation of the fraction of active fires that were confirmed by a subsequent drop in reflectance. As a large proportion of fire pixels (between 40% and 66%, depending on the product) is located on urban land or crop fields, filtering out fires located on these land uses greatly improves the agreement between satellite-based burnt area estimates and national statistics and it also improves the coincidence between satellite products. The MODIS Active Fire Product appears to be most suitable for use as a proxy for burnt area patterns, showing a high correlation to national statistics (R2 = 0.9), relatively low spatial and temporal heterogeneity and only a slight underestimation of the total burnt area (19 000 ha year–1). Unfiltered products show cases of substantial wildfire overestimation in all products, mainly attributable to anthropogenic activity, in the case of active fire products, and drought-induced vegetation dieback, in that of fire scar maps. Thus, filtering out fires on anthropogenic land uses seems to be essential when analysing patterns of forest fires from satellite observations. However, if agricultural fires are to be included, a combination of MODIS Active Fire and MODIS Burned Area products is recommended. We obtained that such combination shows low temporal and spatial heterogeneity and the highest coincidence between satellite products (25%), although the correlation to national statistics is not very high (R2 = 0.67) and clearly underestimates the total burnt area (187 000 ha year–1).


THE ROYAL CONFESSOR: PASTORAL CARE AND POLITICAL COUNSEL AT THE LATE MEDIEVAL SWEDISH COURTAuthors of medieval political thought were more concerned with the personal qualities of the prince than with political institutions. They wrote more about his virtues than about his role in parlia- ment. This article examines the sacrament of penance as one of the didactic means by which such norms were communicated to the prince. The royal confessor was the crucial link in this transfer, and this article traces his appearance at the late medieval Swedish court and also discusses the confessional manuals that were produced to help him interrogate his royal confessant. The Swedish court is relatively unexplored as a locus of devotion and little is known about its clerical personnel. This article presents the appearance of the papally-sanctioned royal confessor, in the reign of Magnus Eriksson in 1347, and offers a brief discussion of the careers of a number of later incumbents of this office, suggesting that the post of royal confessor was a likely path to a bishopric. The main part of the article is a scrutiny of manuals for confessors and penitents, which elucidates the political norms communicated through the pastoral care of the confessors. At the centre of this discussion is a Swedish instruction for royal devotion – Fjorton rad om et gudelikt leverne (c.1457), compiled by the Vadstena abbess, Ingeborg Gerhardsotter, for King Christian I – and a popular Latin manual for confessors that included a specific interrogatory for temporal lords, the Defecerunt of St Antoninus of Florence (print 1499). What, according to these texts, were the particular spiritual dangers of holding power? And did the confessor examine the policies of the king? The Defecerunt provides didactic examples that demonstrate how princes sin in their exercise of central governmental concerns, such as jurisdic- tion, warfare, relations to the church, taxation and usurpation. Ideally, if administered in accordance with the advice in the Defecerunt and similar manuals, the sacrament of penance would not only benefit the spiritual wellbeing of the king, but also instill a set of constitutional standards.


This Article addresses the novel question of whether states parties can successfully implement the Children's Rights Convention by placing legal obligations on prospective parents, thereby influencing not just a child's environment, but also the procreation of that child. First, the Article takes a unique version of the child-centered perspective, one that recognizes that as we move back in time in the direction of and even before a child's birth, our obligations to the child grow because our actions become ever more influential. The perspective also takes into account current moral theories of parental obligation to prospective children. The Article then interprets the Convention from this perspective, exploring whether it requires states to pursue policies that heighten prospective parents' perceptions of the duties they owe their prospective children before having them. If the Convention represents a sea change in the international legal community's thinking about the relationship between children and adults, it has also inadvertently initiated another sea change: altering the traditional relationship between prospective parents and their prospective children, and with it the right to procreate.


would have fi gured out by now, it is how stars form. The basic idea for how stars form goes back to Immanuel Kant and PierreSimon Laplace in the 18th century, and the details of how they shine and evolve were worked out by physicists in the fi rst half of the 20th century. Today the principles that govern stars are taught in middle school, and exotica such as dark matter dominate the headlines. It might seem that star formation is a problem that has been solved. But nothing could be further from the truth. The birth of stars remains one of the most vibrant topics in astrophysics today. In the simplest terms, the process represents the victory of gravity over pressure. It starts with a vast cloud of gas and dust fl oating in interstellar space. If the cloud—or, more often, a dense part of such a cloud called a core—is cool and dense enough, the inward pull of its gravity overpowers the outward push of gaseous pressure, and it begins to collapse under its own weight. The cloud or core becomes ever denser and hotter, eventually sparking nuclear fusion. The heat generated by fusion increases the internal pressure and halts the collapse. The newborn star settles into a dynamic equilibrium that can last millions to trillions of years. The theory is self-consistent and matches a KEY CONCEPTS


Strombolian explosive activity is generally characterized by a series of short, mild explosions caused by the bursting of large individual gas pockets at the magma free surface; however individual explosions at Stromboli Volcano (Italy) show how these events can be complex and heterogeneous. A new method to study the dynamics of Strombolian eruptions is proposed here, based on the acquisition and elaboration of high-speed videos at Stromboli Volcano. The analysis of high-speed videos of Strombolian explosions reveals previously unreported processes, including pre- and post- explosion crater floor deformation and multiple jet pulses within a single explosion, different explosive styles at individual vents, deformation and fragmentation of in-flight scoria clasts. Video frame elaboration allows us to measure the mass flux, velocity and exit angle of ejecta. In addition, particle velocity trends, in the light of shock tube fragmentation/ejection experiments, may provide information on the source depth of single explosion pulses. These results should be useful for future researches and may help describe quantitatively the dynamics and energetics of Strombolian eruptions, with implications on related hazard assessment.


Abstract 2230 Dyskeratosis congenita (DC) is an inherited bone marrow failure syndrome with a complex clinical phenotype, including dysplastic nails, lacy reticular pigmentation, and oral leukoplakia (the diagnostic triad). Numerous other physical abnormalities may be present, in addition to cytopenias due to bone marrow failure, and a high risk of leukemia or solid tumors. However, many patients have no physical findings at diagnosis. Patients with DC have very short telomeres, and approximately one-half have a mutation in one of six genes important in telomere biology. Telomere length in leukocyte subsets, measured by automated flow fluorescence in situ hybridization (flow-FISH), is both sensitive and specific for identifying individuals with DC. Telomeres consist of nucleotide repeats and a protein complex at chromosome ends that are critical in chromosomal stability which shorten during normal cell division. Cross-sectional studies of normal individuals suggest that telomere length decreases with age in a sigmoid pattern from birth to old age. In a cross-sectional analysis of 26 patients with DC, we previously observed that telomere length appeared to be stable or even to slightly increase with age (BP Alter et al, Blood 110:149, 2007). Similar results were shown in 23 different DC patients by others (M Bessler et al, FEBS Lett 2010 in press). We speculated that these data were influenced by early presentation (or recognition) of clinically more severe patients, while patients with similar telomere length who were clinically milder were identified at older ages. In this pilot study, we examined, for the first time, the longitudinal age-association of telomere attrition in nine patients with DC who were followed for five to seven years (currently 8 – 50 years of age). These include three patients with mutations in TERC, and two each with TINF2, TERT, and DKC1 mutations. When first studied, four had normal hematopoiesis, three moderate cytopenias, one was receiving androgens, and one was on transfusions. Subsequently, one with normal hematopoiesis developed mild thrombocytopenia, one who was on transfusions responded to androgens, and one with moderate aplastic anemia became severe. In all cases, telomere length decreased with age. In a linear regression model, the average annual decrease in telomere length in lymphocytes was 167 base pairs/year (bp/yr) + 104, similar to the rate in granulocytes, 159 + 92 bp/yr. According to the literature, the rate of telomere attrition in longitudinal studies in normal blood is ∼45-50 bp/yr, albeit by methods other than flow-FISH; the rate of telomere shortening appears to decrease with increasing age. The average patient Z-scores at the beginning of the study were -3.9 standard deviations below the median for age in healthy normal controls, and were -4.3 at the end, consistent with the impression that DC patient telomeres shorten somewhat more than expected from normal aging. These data support the hypothesis that the earlier cross-sectional results for patients with DC indeed were influenced by the cross-sectional rather than longitudinal nature of the data. The current longitudinal data suggest that telomere shortening could possibly be accelerated in patients with DC, but larger studies are required. Our results indicate that patients with DC have telomeres that are much shorter than normal for their age, and that over time they continue to shorten, consistent with DC being classified as a disorder of premature aging. Disclosures: Lansdorp: Repeat Diagnostics: Equity Ownership.


Commodity-hardware technology has advanced in great leaps in terms of CPU, memory, and I/O bus speeds. Benefiting from the hardware innovation, recent software routers on commodity PC now report about 10 Gbps in packet routing. In this paper we map out expected hurdles and projected speed-ups to reach 100 Gbps in packet routing on a single commodity PC. With careful measurements, we identify two notable bottlenecks for our goal: CPU cycles and I/O bandwidth. For the former, we propose reducing per-packet processing overhead with software-level optimizations and buying extra computing power with GPUs. To improve the I/O bandwidth, we suggest scaling the performance of I/O hubs that limits packet routing speed to well before 50 Gbps.


Many platforms for civic engagement, whether online or offline, are inconvenient and disconnected from the source of issues they are meant to address. They require that citizens leave the places they normally inhabit physically or virtually and commit to a separate space and set of processes. Town hall meetings are still a key point of engagement, occurring during specific times and in specific places. Online forums function similarly, in that deliberation occurs within profile-based websites for which you need to sign up and regularly return. This paper responds to the design challenge and research question: How do you address barriers to "minimum effective engagement" in community projects, and ensure that all citizens can have their voice heard on how to improve their local communities?In order to raise levels of participation in community projects and expand the range of voices heard in governmental decision-making, there is a need for civic technology that is lightweight and compelling enough to enjoy continued use and to promote civic learning. In this paper, I develop a theoretical basis for effective citizenship through crowdsourcing monitorial activity by finding connections between several theories of citizenship and learning, which point to this activity fostering civic learning through reflective political practice.Using a needs assessment of Boston-area municipalities, I reinforce my argument and concretize a set of design goals for a new socio-technical system to foster local civic learning and engagement around issues like urban planning. In the end, I respond to the research challenge and design goals by introducing a prototype for a location-based survey platform for Android smartphones called Action Path, and discuss early-stage user feedback and future work.


In this thesis nanocomposite materials for use in high performance electrical contacts are tested. Self mating silver as coatings on cupper substrates are the most used material combination in power connectors today. In this work two new concepts were tested. The first one was to change one of the mating surfaces to a hard thin coating and keep the other surface made of silver. Tested coatings were nanocomposites with hard carbides in a matrix of amorphous carbon. TiC/a-C and Ti-Ni-C/a-C were tested both electrically and tribologically. The total amount of carbon and the amount of carbon matrix was important, both for the electrical and the tribological properties. The Ti-Ni-C coating also showed that substituting Ti in TiC with the weak carbide former Ni changed the stability of the carbides. The substitution resulted in more a-C matrix and less C in the carbides. Thin coatings of nc-TiC/a-C and Ti-Ni-C/a-C showed high potential as material candidates for use in electrical contacts. The other tested concept was to modify the used silver instead of replacing it. This was done by embedding nanoparticles of solid lubricant IF-WS2 in the silver. The results from reciprocating sliding displayed low friction and high wear resistance. The modified silver surfaces lasted for 8000 strokes with a friction of about 0.3 while at the same time allowing for a low contact resistance. The results for surfaces of pure silver coating displayed a friction of 0.8-1.2 and that the silver was worn through already after 300 strokes. A new method to investigate inherent hardness and residual stress of thin coatings, on complex geometries or in small areas, was also developed. An ion beam was used to create stress free coating as free standing micro pillars. Hardness measured on the pillars and on as-deposited coating were then used to calculate the residual stress in the coatings.


New York State is the third largest dairy state in the United States based on milk production (behind California and Wisconsin). Since the mid-1990's, the trend toward hiring Hispanic workers on New York's larger dairy farms (usually 400 cows or more) has steadily increased and currently the trend is moving to smaller dairies (in the 50-100 cow range). The purpose of this study is to create a demographic profile of Hispanic dairy workers on New York farms and to gain an understanding of the workers' perceptions regarding their employment situation. The information was collected in personal interviews from 111 Hispanic workers on 60 farms, and included compensation and other information collected from employers. Three- fourths of the surveyed workers are from Mexico and about one-fourth from Guatemala. They are typically young (84% were 30 years old or younger) and almost always male. The workers are not highly educated, only 51% have attended no more than primary school. One-fourth completed secondary school, including 2% who attended or graduated from a university. Hiring Hispanic dairy workers is still a relatively new practice, as 72% of the employers reported that they hired their first Hispanic employee since January 2000. In addition, 73% of the surveyed employees said their tenure with the farm had been two years or less. On average, surveyed workers had three U.S. employers since they began working in this country. Starting wages reported by employers for their Hispanic employees ranged from $5.50 to $10.00 per hour, with a mean of $6.87. Current wages range from $5.50 to $11.50, with an average wage of $7.51. Hispanic dairy employees received a variety of employer provided benefits, including: housing with water, heat and electricity (91%), transportation (52%), telephone in residence (51%), satellite television (47%), and space for a garden (63%). On average, the Hispanic dairy workers surveyed worked 62 hours per week and only 16% worked less than 51 hours per week. These workers also said they would like to work an average of 66 hours per week if possible and that they would look for other employment if they could not work at least 55 hours. Both workers and employers identified challenges in a cross-cultural employment situation. Employees indicated that their top three greatest challenges were crossing the border, language and lack of freedom to do what they want. Employers, on the other hand, indicated that the top three obstacles were language, cross-cultural understanding and immigration issues.


Decision-making is a significant tool in water resources management applications. This work addresses the global management decision dilemma for the sustainability of the groundwater resources of a watershed: should stakeholders use groundwater for irrigation and human consumption or should they construct infrastructure, for example water reservoirs, for irrigation purposes? The former constitutes an easy but non-sustainable solution, while the latter protects the groundwater body from overpumping, avoids the associated overpumping penalties, and utilizes both surface and groundwater watershed resources. The main question arising in the second case relates to the amount of surface water that can be used taking into consideration water scarcity and potentially dry hydrological years. Therefore, this proposed decision-making framework will provide the best management solution for the water needs of an area based on the balanced use of surface and groundwater resources, considering the ecosystem sustainability and the surface and groundwater sustainability. In addition, this work can help decision-makers to examine and compare various scenarios using different approaches before making a decision regarding the cost and the capacity of a hydrologic/hydraulic project, and the varied economic charges that water table limit violations can cause inside an audit interval.


Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGR) and its receptors are focus of interest because of their role in several biological processes that involve angiogenesis in non malignant and malignant states. This work aimed to valuate the serum level of vascular endothelial growth factor in children with different haematological malignancies and to correlate its level with the clinical manifestations and laboratory data of the disease. The study was carried out on 36 children with newly diagnosed hematological malignancies. They were divided into 3 groups. Group 1 included 20 patients with acute leukemia; 14 of them had acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and 6 had acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML). Group 2 included 10 patients with non-Hodgkins lymphoma (NHD), while group 3 included 6 patients with Hodgkin's lymphoma (HD). In addition, ten apparently healthy age and sex matched children as control group (group 4) were included. All groups were subjected to a complete history taking, full clinical examination and complete diagnostic work up to diagnose acute leukemia and lymphoma. Serum VEGF level was detected by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) at diagnosis. Investigations were repeated in the leukemic patients after induction of remission. The level of serum VEGF was significantly higher in all patients than control. However, no significant difference between the levels of serumVEGF in ALL and AML patients or in NHL and HD patients was detected. A significant (p<0.001) decrease in serum level VEGF was found in leukemic patients after induction of remission as compared with the newly diagnosed leukemic patients. SerumVEGF level showed significant correlation with the WBCs count in ALL and NHL groups, and with the platelet count in ALL, HD and NHL groups. SerumVEGF level correlated significantly with glandular enlargement in ALL, HD and in NHL groups, and with hepatomegaly in ALL and NHL groups. It can be concluded that serumVEGF may have a clinical relevance in the diagnosis and follow up of children with hematological malignancies and raises the possibility of using angiogenesis inhibitors as a novel therapeutic strategy in childhood hematological malignancies.


Abstract. The area of Northern Bohemian coal basin is rich in brown coal. Part of it is undermined, but large areas were mined using open-pit mines. There are numerous reclaimed waste dumps here, with a horse racetrack, roads and in some cases also houses. However, on most of the waste dumps, there are forests, meadows and fields. Above the coal basin, there are the Ore mountains which are suspected to be sliding down to the open mines below them. We installed 11 corner reflectors in the area and monitor them using the TerraSAR-X satellite. One of the reflectors is situated in the area of radar layover, therefore it cannot be processed. We present preliminary results of monitoring the remaining corner reflectors, with the use of 7 TerraSAR-X scenes acquired between June and December 2011. We process whole scene crops, as well as the artificial reflector information alone. Our scene set contains interferometric pairs with perpendicular baselines reaching from 0 to 150 m. Such a configuration allows us to distinguish deformations from DEM errors, which are usual when the SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) DEM (X-band) is used for Stripmap data. Unfortunately, most of the area of interest is decorrelated due to vegetation that covers both the Ore mountains and the reclaimed waste dumps. We had to enlarge the scene crop in order to be able to distinguish deformations from the atmospheric delay. We are still not certain about the stability of some regions. For the installed artificial reflectors, the expected deformations are in the order of mm/year. Generally, deformations in the area of interest may reach up to about 5 cm/year for the Ervěnice corridor (a road and railway built on a waste dump). When processing artificial corner reflector information alone, we check triangular sums and perform the processing for all possible point combinations – and that allows us to correct for some unwrapping errors. However, the problem is highly ambiguous.


Sinkholes represent a hazard to property and human safety in a wide variety of geologic settings across the globe. In most cases, the subsidence rate of a sinkhole represents the most significant potential impact and risk to public safety. Since 1979, the Kansas Geological Survey has studied numerous sinkholes using high-resolution seismic reflection in an attempt to better understand the mechanisms that control their formation. Most sinkholes in central Kansas form as a result of dissolution of the Permian Hutchinson salt (Figure 1). The fluid source and associated pathway responsible for leaching these bedded evaporites have been natural, anthropogenic, and a combination of both. Sinkholes have been a part of the landscape in the North American midcontinent long before modern oil, gas, and mineral exploration, but clearly the activities of man have played a significant role in both increasing the number of sinkholes and affecting their subsidence rates.


This short essay, written for a symposium, argues that if unions agree to arbitrate employment discrimination claims (as newly permitted by 14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett), there is a high risk that a union's duty to protect and advance the collective interests of all members will diverge from the particular interests of an employee asserting a discrimination claim. The essay identifies three potential risks. The first is simply that union leaders may themselves hold discriminatory biases and accordingly fail to support individual employees adequately in the grievance and arbitration process. The more subtle — and probably more significant — risks stem from the fact that employment discrimination claims are likely to be valued significantly more highly by a discrete minority of union members than by the majority. Accordingly, a union acting entirely in good faith might bargain away the right to litigate in court in return for employer concessions that are valued more highly by the membership as a whole. A union might also value pursuing antidiscrimination claims less highly than other potential grievances. Additionally, supporting a member's discrimination claim will often directly disadvantage other members. At least as traditionally understood, a union's duty of fair representation would offer inadequate recourse in these scenarios. In Pyett, the Court cavalierly dismissed concerns of potential conflicts as an attack on collective bargaining more generally. This improperly ignores a key distinction. Since most benefits secured by unions are not mandated by employment laws, labor relations law generally takes away from individual employees only the speculative potential that they might have made a better deal bargaining individually. But the right to bring an employment discrimination claim in court is guaranteed by statute — and accordingly individual employees stand to lose significant rights that they would otherwise enjoy.


Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR1) spectroscopy is an important experimental technique that allows one to study protein structure in solution. An important challenge in NMR protein structure determination is the assignment of NMR peaks to corresponding nuclei. In structure-based assignment (SBA), the aim is to perform the assignments with the help of a homologous protein. NVR-BIP is a tool that uses Nuclear Vector Replacement's (NVR) scoring function and binary integer programming to solve SBA problem. In this work, we introduce a method to improve NVR-BIP's assignment accuracy with amino acid typing. We use CRAACK that takes the chemical shifts of C, N and H atoms and returns the possible amino acids along with their confidence scores. We obtain improved assignment accuracies and our results show the effectiveness of integrating amino acid typing with NVR.


Efficient spot-size convertors are an essential component of modern integrated optoelectronics, providing a simple and reliable interface with fibers. One recently proposed design functions by forcing the field from a small spot rib waveguide into a large spot one by using a taper. Accurate models of these structures, and a clear understanding of the coupling mechanisms they rely upon, are essential if optimized designs are to be produced. Furthermore, it is necessary to develop analysis techniques which are accurate yet not computationally intensive, suitable for use within an iterative design environment. Here, the well known and proven spectral index method is extended to efficiently analyze this class of vertically coupled rib waveguide spot-size transformer, providing both the guided modes and for the first time, the substrate radiation modes of the structure. These modes can then subsequently be used to design and determine the performance of the full tapered structure.


Significance A cosmic impact event at ∼12,800 Cal B.P. formed the Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) layer, containing peak abundances in multiple, high-temperature, impact-related proxies, including spherules, melt glass, and nanodiamonds. Bayesian statistical analyses of 354 dates from 23 sedimentary sequences over four continents established a modeled YDB age range of 12,835 Cal B.P. to 12,735 Cal B.P., supporting synchroneity of the YDB layer at high probability (95%). This range overlaps that of a platinum peak recorded in the Greenland Ice Sheet and of the onset of the Younger Dryas climate episode in six key records, suggesting a causal connection between the impact event and the Younger Dryas. Due to its rarity and distinctive characteristics, the YDB layer is proposed as a widespread correlation datum. The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis posits that a cosmic impact across much of the Northern Hemisphere deposited the Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) layer, containing peak abundances in a variable assemblage of proxies, including magnetic and glassy impact-related spherules, high-temperature minerals and melt glass, nanodiamonds, carbon spherules, aciniform carbon, platinum, and osmium. Bayesian chronological modeling was applied to 354 dates from 23 stratigraphic sections in 12 countries on four continents to establish a modeled YDB age range for this event of 12,835–12,735 Cal B.P. at 95% probability. This range overlaps that of a peak in extraterrestrial platinum in the Greenland Ice Sheet and of the earliest age of the Younger Dryas climate episode in six proxy records, suggesting a causal connection between the YDB impact event and the Younger Dryas. Two statistical tests indicate that both modeled and unmodeled ages in the 30 records are consistent with synchronous deposition of the YDB layer within the limits of dating uncertainty (∼100 y). The widespread distribution of the YDB layer suggests that it may serve as a datum layer.


Background and aims : The relationship between pleural malignant mesothelioma and exposure to asbestos is well-known, but there is no accurate information regarding high risk occupations and types of exposure in Iran. In this study we specified high risk jobs for asbestos exposure. Methods : In this case-control study, 64 cases with diagnosis of pleural malignant mesothelioma who were admitted in Masih Daneshvari Hospital between the years 2001 and 2009 were studied. All the cases and 58 controls participated in a telephone interview for job history and occupational and environmental exposures to asbestos. Results : Asbestos exposed occupations in mesothelioma group included corrugated asbestos cement sheet production 11(%17.2), Insulation 6(%9.4), construction 6(%9.4), asbestos warehouse 3(%4.7), oil and gas shaft drilling 2(%3.1) and car brake shoe manufacturing 2(%3.1). In controls, the only exposed occupation was construction 8(%13.79). Odds Ratio calculated for occupational exposure to asbestos was 5.51(CI=2.26-13.47). Residency in neighbourhood of corrugated asbestos cement sheet production factory was the most prevalent cause for environmental exposure. Conclusions : In %46.87 of mesothelioma cases, source of exposure to asbestos was corrugated asbestos cement sheet industry due to employment in the factory, residency in neighbourhood of the factory or use of its products.


Since early in the HIV epidemic, epidemiologists identified individuals who transact sex as a high-risk group for contracting HIV. Where the issue of transacting sex has been framed as sex work, harm-reduction advocates and scholars call for decriminalization as a primary legal solution to address HIV. Where the issue is defined as trafficking, advocates known as abolitionists argue instead for the criminalization of the purchase of sex.Global health governance institutions are porous to these competing ideas and ideologies. This article first historicizes the contestation between harm-reduction and abolition in global governance on health. The paper then turns to a new arena in which these battles are playing out: measurement and indicators. The contested political environment of the sex work and trafficking debates has resulted in numerous calls to accurately measure "the problem" so that law and policy makers can identify appropriate legal solutions. Rather than being an objective technical tool for effective policymaking, however, this article argues that data and indicators serve as a site of politics and governance. Building on literature from law and sociology, the author analyzes the political battles being waged through the data and indicators on trafficking that reproduce rather than resolve the larger debate on sex work and trafficking. Indicators become instrumental in providing the justification for the competing legal positions. In other words, how people and issues are counted and defined is instrumental for how laws and policy recommendations are made. Finally, in keeping with other critics of the over-emphasis on criminal solutions to trafficking and sex work, the author argues that the ongoing legitimation of criminalization projects vis-a-vis indicators comes at a cost to structural solutions to address the underlying factors that lead to violence and exploitation associated with trafficking or sex work.


Summary Integrating quality of service (QoS) in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a difficult challenge and a very tedious task. It requires to find a compromise between several QoS parameters. The energy criterion is one of the most important of these parameters that will provide a long lifetime for a given MANET. This paper proposes a new clustering algorithm for the OLSR routing protocol which consumes less energy and enhances transmission delay. This algorithm manages nodes density and mobility; and gives major improvements regarding the number of elected clusters Head. We have conducted some comparison with other clustering algorithms to prove the efficiency of our algorithm. Our main objective is to elect a reasonable number of clusters Head that will serve for hierarchical routing using OLSR as a routing protocol. The second objective is to increase the network lifetime by considering the Ad hoc residual energy when taking routing decisions. We have found that our algorithm optimize the end to end delay by adopting a selective forwarding approach based on the hierarchical routing model


Abstract Photosynthetic adaptation in terrestrial vascular plants involves a complex interaction of components that extend across a broad structural and spatial hierarchy, often functioning in concert with one another at multiple scales. Thus, understanding the evolutionary mechanisms leading to these adaptations requires evaluation across the entire spectrum of plant form from the chloroplast to the landscape. Adaptive traits across this structural/spatial hierarchy can emerge at any level and then feed-back or feed-forward to cause adaptive changes at adjacent levels. Today's sophisticated instruments enable direct measurement of photosynthesis at most of these hierarchical levels and across phylogenetic boundaries. As a result, identification of functional properties in plant form (architectural and spatial), independent of physiological processes, is becoming a reality. In this review we focus on one apparent theme across this hierarchy of organizational complexity—the impact of plant form on the distribution of incident sunlight to photosynthetic surfaces, and the transfer and processing of mass nutrients (e.g. CO2 and water). The trade-offs and net effects of these exchange processes drive photosynthetic adaptation, and appear to be related to economic efficiencies rather than simply magnitude.


Films of SnO2 were prepared by the spray pyrolysis technique onto glass substrate heated up to 500°C. Optical absorption measurements in the wavelength range 300-900 nm were studied and confirmed that annealing films at 550oC for different annealing time has a significant effect on the optical properties of the films. The optical constants confirmthat SnO2 films have an indirect band gap that decreased from3.3 to 3.1eV as the annealing time increases to 3hrs. The dispersion of the refractive index was analyzed using the concept of a single oscillator. The values of the single oscillator energy Eo were 6.6, 6.57, 6.48 and 6.18eV, while the dispersion energy Ed valueswere 94, 82, 77, and 70 for the as deposited and the annealed films for 1, 2, and 3hrs respectively. The increase in the density of localized states Eu from595 to 667meVcauses an expanding in theUrbach tail and consequently decreases the energy gap.


Due to the new technologies development based on renewable sources of energy, in recent years Stirling engines have become very important in the energetic sector. Many of them do not allow the use of fluid lubricants and, thus, the effect of friction losses is important. For this purpose, a mathematical model has been developed based on the force balance in the crankshaft using the pressure distribution in the cylinders. The aim of this work is to characterize the mechanical losses in a Genoa 03 Stirling engine using a numerical model and experimentally via the drag method. The results of this model have been compared with those obtained experimentally on Genoa 03 Stirling engine. In the experimental results, a proportional increase in friction torque due to the average pressure and the speed of the crankshaft is observed. The first of these is caused by an increase of dry friction forces and the second, by the viscous friction between the working fluid and the inner walls of the engine. Also in this paper, irreversible processes in a beta type Stirling engine have been investigated in order to highlight the impact of losses on mechanical power and its performance. This article develops the first study of the mechanical losses of Genoa 03 experimental Stirling engine, which has an output power of 3 kW. Although the model response follows the same trends as the experiments, those simplifications provide errors which become more significant as the engine speed increases.


The purpose of this study was to examine attitudinal factors associated with increased research productivity of individual clinical faculty in 66 United States and Canadian schools of dentistry. Thirteen variables, evaluating the subjects perceptions of their research background, work environment, attitude and outcome effects from publishing, and the use of colleagues in conducting research, were evaluated. The 833 respondents represented a response rate of 64.9% (833/1200) from a 50% stratified random sample of faculty who (1) had full-time appointments and held at least the D.M.D. or D.D.S. degree or the foreign equivalent, (2) taught in a clinical department of the dental school, and (3) were not departmental chairpersons or administrators (assistant dean, associate dean, or dean). Respondents reported a mean of 10.3 yr. (range = 1 to 45, SD = 7.3) in full-time dental education (career age) and a mean of 10.1 career publications (range = 0 to 110, SD = 13.8). Analysis of variance for mean number of career publications, by increasing agreement in response to each attitudinal variable, yielded a significant positive association for each of the 13 attitudinal variables. Implications of the findings were discussed with respect to strategies for improving research productivity of individual faculty.


We study a multiprocessing computer system which accepts parallel programs that have a fork-join computational paradigm. The multiprocessing computer system under study is modeled as K homogeneous servers, each with an infinite capacity queue. Parallel programs arrive at the multiprocessing system according to a series-parallel phase type interarrival process with mean arrival rate of h. Upon the program arrival, it forks into K-independent tasks and each task is assigned to an unique server. Each task's service time has a k-stage Erlang distribution with mean service time of /spl lambda/. A parallel program is completed upon the completion of its last task. This kind of queuing model has no known closed form solution in the general (K/spl ges/2) case. In this paper, we show that by carefully modifying the arrival and service distributions at some imbedded points in time, we can obtain tight performance bounds. We also provide a computational efficient algorithm for obtaining upper and lower bounds on the expected response time. The methodology is flexible and allows one to trade-off the tightness of the bounds and computational cost.


This is an interim report of the project investigating the use of hospital in-patient care by married and non-married people. The project developed from the work of Dr. Morton Kramer during a sabbatical year at the London School of Hygiene in 1968 in which he drew attention to the large
variations in hospital admission rates and lengths of stay between married and non-married patients. The proposal was subsequently made to the DHSS in 1972-3 that further investigation of this phenomenon should form part of the research programme of the Unit during that year. For the
past 18 months the authors of this report have been reviewing the literature on the relationship between marital status, illness and the use of health services, and they have also carried out further extensive analyses of information COllected in the Hospital In-Patient Enquiry and
Hospital Activity Analysis. The results of that work are presented in this report, which is intended to form a background to the proposals (submitted separately) for the fieldwork stage of the project. The report first reviews the evidence of differential utilisation rates between married and non-married people, and then discusses some causes and consequences of them.


The use of saline water in agriculture is becoming a reality in many regions of the world, given the increased demand for fresh water, both for irrigated agriculture, as well as for urban and industrial supply. In this context, the aim of this research was to evaluate the effect of different salinity levels in irrigation water, associated with amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, on the emergence, growth and yield of the castor bean, cv. BRS Energia, in an experiment where plants were maintained in lysimeters under field conditions, at the CCTA / UFCG. A randomised block design in a 5 x 5 factorial with three replications was used to study the effects of five levels of electrical conductivity of the irrigation water (0.4, 1.4, 2.4, 3.4 and 4.4 dS m-1) associated with five levels of nitrogen fertilizer (50, 75, 100, 125 and 150% of the dose recommended for testing in pots). The salinity of the irrigation water from 0.4 dS m-1 affects negatively and in a linear manner the percentage of emergence (PE), the emergence speed index (IVE), plant height (AP), the stem diameter (DC), the shoot dry-weight (FSPA) and root dry-weight (FSRaiz) and the seed mass of the primary raceme (MSemRP), whereas increasing levels of nitrogen caused an increase in DC, FSPA and FSRaiz. The application of increasing doses of N reduced the effect of salinity on the DC and FSRaiz of the castor bean cv. BRS Energia.


In this research work, a study has been carried out on the current development of teleoperation and the control strategies adopted to co-ordinate human operator input and computer autonomous control. Based on the findings, a human and computer cooperative control concept has been developed to overcome the shortcomings of the existing control strategies. It utilises the human and computer characteristic advantages to complement each other to improve task performance and increase task success rate. Some aspects of the tasks are shared between humans and computers while computer assistance is introduced into the human supervisory functions in this co-operative control. Traditional problems of teleoperation such as time delay and task dependence of high-level control have been addressed and overcome by utilising the distributed and parallel processing system architecture and an expandable knowledge base incorporated with generic and task specific modules. Guidelines and an ideal system model have been proposed to provide system developers with future design guidance. A telerobotic system has been built based on the developed human and computer cooperative control concept. It uses the client/server model to achieve distributed and parallel processing. Operators can perform tasks through direct manual control and computer assisted task-level control provided in the system. Multiple manual inputs have been introduced to suit different control conditions. They provide the operator with intuitive and hardware independent input methods to manipulate the remote robot. A computer vision system has been developed to provide not only the visual feedback of the remote environment but also assistance in object location and robot navigation. Task modules containing generic and specific task handling functions are used for achieving human and computer co-operation at both task planning and execution levels. The experiment results obtained from the system evaluation have shown that the task completion time in co-operative control mode is half the time required in human direct manual control. Task performance achieved in co-operative control mode is less sensitive to the difference between the operators' capability. In conclusion, the usability and effectiveness of the co-operative control, and the validity of the techniques of camera calibration and image processing has been proven through the demonstration task.


The combined study of continental trace fossils and associated sedimentary facies provides valuable evidence of colonization trends and events throughout the Phanerozoic. Colonization of continental environments was linked to the exploitation of empty or under-utilized ecospace. Although the nonmarine trace fossil record probably begins during the Late Ordovician, significant invasion of nonmarine biotopes began close to the Silurian-Devonian transition with the establishment of a mobile arthropod epifauna (Diplichnites ichnoguild) in coastal marine to alluvial plain settings. Additionally, the presence of vertical burrows in Devonian high-energy fluvial deposits reflects the establishment of a stationary, deep suspension-feeding infauna of the Skolithos ichnoguild. The earliest evidence of plant-arthropod interaction occurred close to the Silurian-Devonian boundary, but widespread and varied feeding patterns are known from the Carboniferous. During the Carboniferous, permanent subaqueous lacustrine settings were colonized by a diverse, mobile detritus-feeding epifauna of the Mermia ichnoguild, which reflects a significant paleoenvironmental expansion of trace fossils. Paleozoic ichnologic evidence supports direct routes to the land from marginal marine environments, and migration to lakes from land settings. All nonmarine sedimentary environments were colonized by the Carboniferous, and subsequent patterns indicate an increase in ecospace utilization within already colonized depositional settings. During the Permian, back-filled traces of the Scoyenia ichnoguild record the establishment of a mobile, intermediate-depth, deposit-feeding infauna in alluvial and transitional alluvial-lacustrine sediments. Diversification of land plants and the establishment of ecologically diverse plant communities through time provided new niches to be exploited by arthropods. Nevertheless, most of the evolutionary feeding innovations took place relatively early, during the Late Paleozoic or early Mesozoic. A stationary deep infauna, the Camborygma ichnoguild, was developed in Triassic transitional alluvial-lacustrine deposits. Terrestrial environments hosted the rise of complex social behavioral patterns, as suggested by the probable presence of hymenopteran and isopteran nests in Triassic paleosols. An increase in diversity of trace fossils is detected in Triassic-Jurassic eolian deposits, where the ichnofauna displays more varied behavioral patterns than their Paleozoic counterparts. Also, a mobile, intermediate-depth, deposit-feeding infauna, the Vagorichnus ichnoguild, was established in deep lake environments during the Jurassic. In contrast to Paleozoic permanent subaqueous assemblages typified by surface trails, Jurassic ichnocoenoses are dominated by infaunal burrows. High density of infaunal deposit-feeding traces of the Planolites ichnoguild caused major disruption of lacustrine sedimentary fabrics during the Cretaceous. Most insect mouthpart classes, functional feeding groups, and dietary guilds were established by the end of the Cretaceous. Diversification of modern insects is recorded by the abundance and complexity of structures produced by wasps, bees, dung-beetles, and termites in Cretaceous-Tertiary paleosols. The increase in bioturbation migrated from fluvial and lake-margin settings to permanent subaqueous lacustrine environments through time.


of a thesis at the University of Miami. Thesis supervised by Professor Michael Antoni. No. of pages in text. (85) Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) is a debilitating illness that is over represented among women and characterized by extreme fatigue and myriad distressing somatic complaints, with no known etiology or putative biomarker, though recent research has shown evidence of immunological abnormalities in CFS/ME. One of the major symptoms of CFS/ME is experiencing unrefreshing sleep or poor subjective sleep quality, which as a construct, can encompass sleep duration, sleep efficiency, sleep latency, and sleep disturbances, among other aspects of sleep quality. The subjective account of poor sleep quality has been consistently shown in CFS/ME, though objective evidence of sleep-related abnormalities by polysomnography or multiple sleep latency tests are inconsistent. Despite evidence of increased fatigue, somatic symptoms, pro-inflammatory cytokines and poor subjective sleep quality in CFS/ME, the association among these variables has not yet been studied extensively in women with CFS/ME, even though the relationship between poor subjective and objective sleep quality and inflammation, fatigue, and symptom severity has been established in other healthy and chronically ill populations. Additionally, CFS/ME patients report increased prevalence of mood disorders such as depression. Depression has been linked to both inflammation and poor sleep quality in other contexts, but not yet in CFS/ME. Due to depression's known relationship to increased inflammation and poor sleep quality, I hypothesized that the relationship between poor sleep quality and inflammation would be more salient for more depressed CFS/ME women. This study sought to examine the main effects of poor sleep quality on pro and antiinflammatory cytokines, fatigue severity and interference, symptom severity and frequency in CFS/ME women and also measure the moderating effect of depression on the relationship between poor sleep quality and pro and anti-inflammatory cytokines. In total, 95 women with CFS/ME provided blood samples, as well as self-reported measures of poor sleep quality, depressive symptomatology, CFS/ME somatic symptoms and fatigue. On average patients scored in the clinically elevated range for poor sleep quality on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) global score. Multiple regression analyses showed that worse sleep quality overall (PSQI global score) related to more severe and more frequent CFS (non-sleep) symptoms, more fatigue severity and interference in daily life, and greater levels of inflammation (interleukin-2 [IL-2], IL-6, and tumor necrosis factoralpha [TNF-α]), when controlling for age and educational level. When the analyses were repeated using sleep quality subscale scores, the poor sleep quality subscale score was positively related to increased pro-inflammatory (IL-2, IL-6, and TNFα) and anti-inflammatory (IL-10) cytokine levels. Longer sleep latency was positively related to increased pro-inflammatory and sleep regulating cytokines (IL-1β and TNF-α). The sleep disturbance subscale score was positively related to increased pro-inflammatory IL-6, which is known to disrupt sleep at increased concentrations. Shorter sleep duration was positively related to TNF-α. Poor sleep efficiency was not related to any pro or antiinflammatory cytokine studied. When examining the moderating effect of depression, poor global sleep quality's relationship to IL-4 and IL-6 was positively moderated by depressive symptom severity such that poorer sleep related to greater IL-4 and IL-6 to a significantly greater degree in women reporting more depressive symptoms. Additionally, sleep duration relationship to IL-4 was also positively moderated by depression symptom status such that the association between shorter sleep duration and IL-4 was significantly greater for more depressed women. Importantly, depression, fatigue severity and interference, and CFS symptom severity and frequency were not related to any cytokine. In conclusion, poorer sleep quality is associated with greater fatigue, CFS symptoms, and inflammation is significant in CFS/ME women, and may be more pronounced in CFS/ME women who are more depressed. These preliminary and novel findings deserve further research using longitudinal study designs to establish the temporality of these associations, and may shed light on the biopsychosocial mechanisms underlying this chronic condition. This work also suggests that subgroups within this heterogeneous population (e.g., depressed women) may respond in distinctive ways to sleep disruptions, which could inform intervention strategies.


It has been more than two decades since the publication of the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT) and the Stockholm Diabetes Intervention Study. These two landmark studies demonstrated unequivocally that lowering blood glucose delayed the onset and slowed the progression of microvascular complications in type 1 diabetes (1,2). Five years later, the United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS) confirmed that microvascular and macrovascular complications in type 2 diabetes can be reduced by lowering blood glucose levels, lipid levels and blood pressure through intensive therapy (3-6).


Marine microbes require copper (Cu) for a variety of key enzymes and can therefore experience limitation when concentrations are low. However, when Cu concentrations are too high, it becomes toxic causing decreased cell growth and even cell death. Laboratory culture experiments have shown that a diverse array of microbes produce organic ligands that complex Cu (CuL) and buffer the free ion concentration, which is the most bioavailable fraction. In this way, the microbes impose a control on the speciation of Cu, decreasing the toxic effects of Cu and making seawater conditions favorable for growth. Studies have shown that CuL complexes produced in laboratory cultures have similar complexation strengths to those found in seawater samples, which suggests a biological source of CuLs in seawater where dissolved Cu is almost entirely bound by organic ligands. However, information about individual CuL complexes is lacking which limits our understanding of the sources, sinks, and cycling of dissolved Cu. In order to fill this gap in knowledge, molecular level information about CuL complexes produced in culture and found in seawater must be obtained. To investigate this, liquid chromatography (LC) was coupled to two mass spectrometers (MS), an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) MS and an electrospray ionization (ESI) MS. By using data supplied by both techniques, the molecular charateristics of CuLs were determined laboratory cultures of the marine diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum and the cyanobacterium Synechococcus, as well as investigating the distribution of CuLs in natural seawater samples along a line from 56°N to 20°S, along 152°W through the north and central Pacific Ocean. The CuLs identified in laboratory cultures had molecular formulae and fragmentation patterns characteristic of linear tetrapyrroles, a group of organic compounds commonly found in biological systems. This identification was further supported by absorbance and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The distribution of CuLs in the Pacific Ocean showed a highly dynamic and complex mixture of ligands, closely tied to biological cycles.


The Aware Home Research Initiative (AHRI) at Georgia Tech is devoted to the multidisciplinary exploration of emerging technologies and services based in the home. Starting in 1998, our collection of faculty and students has created a unique research facility that allows us to simulate and evaluate user experiences with off-the-shelf and state-of-the-art technologies. With specific expertise in health, education, entertainment and usable security, we are able to apply our research to problems of significant social and economic impact.


The application of joint-torque sensory feedback (JTF) in robot control has been proposed in the past that, unlike the model-based controllers, does not require the dynamic model of the robot links. JTF, however, assumes precise measurement of joint torque and accurate friction model of the joints. This paper presents an adaptive JTF control algorithm that does not rely on these assumptions. First, the robot dynamics with JTF is presented in a standard form with a minimum number of parameters, where the inertia matrix appears symmetric and positive definite. Second, an adaptive JTF control law is developed that requires only incorporation of uncalibrated joint-torque signals, i.e., the gains and offsets of multiple sensors are unknown. Also, all physical parameters of the joints including inertia of the rotors, link twist angles, and friction parameters are assumed to be unknown to the controller. The stability analysis of the control system is presented. Experimental results demonstrating the tracking performance of the proposed adaptive JTF controller are presented


On the margins of Europe lie a number of micro-states and micro-territories. Global best practice in telecommunications fits them poorly ‒ it does not scale down to the necessary level. The problems are aggravated by geographical remoteness and (except for Iceland) not being part of the EU's common legal framework and policy processes. On the other hand, not being members of the European Union (EU) allows much greater flexibility. Jersey and Guernsey comprise the Channel Islands, British Crown Dependencies in the English Channel, off the coast of France, a legacy of William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy. The Isle of Man, another British Crown Dependency, lies between England and Ireland. The Faroe Islands lie between Great Britain and Iceland, part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but not of the EU. The other Danish territory is Greenland, a vast icy expanse located in North America, but more closely connected to Europe. Iceland has been independent from Denmark for decades and is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), with an outstanding application to join the EU. While telecommunications is generally scalable, this eventually breaks down. There are too few people for parliaments, for ministries, for competition authorities, for regulators, for operators and for markets. While expertise can be bought in, the scale of markets cannot be adjusted. One of the constraints of small island developing states (SIDS) is the high cost and limited access to undersea cables. By comparison, the European islands are very well provided for high capacity and even redundancy. This allows relatively affordable access for telephony and for Internet access. The small sizes mean a lack of economic diversity. For example, Greenland is heavily dependent on fisheries. Jersey, Iceland and the Isle of Man have relied on financial services, with complaints that the British territories are tax havens. Heavy dependence of employment by government. The heavy burden of the contemporary regulatory state is not easily borne by small islands. There are severe constraints on the people available to serve as judges, in competition authorities and in regulators. These institutions can be afforded, but add to the costs for citizens and businesses. Iceland, through its membership of the EEA, has to transpose most of the EU regulatory framework, as do Cyprus and Malta. Not designed for micro-states, and not easily or at least legally customisable. Small markets. Greenland has elected to have a monopoly in telecommunications, while the others have tried for competition. They have been more successful in mobile than fixed, typically with two GSM operators, migrating to 3G.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the reliability of contrast-unenhanced power Doppler (CUPD) and contrast-enhanced power Doppler (CEPD) ultrasound (US) assessment of synovial vascularity of knee joint synovitis by prospective comparison with the "gold standard," arthroscopy.

METHODS
A total of 18 knees of 17 patients with refractory rheumatoid and psoriatic knee joint synovitis were examined by US. Recognition of PD synovial vessel flow and its spatial arrangement in relation to the pannus/cartilage interface (P/CI) or fluid/synovium interface (F/SI) were studied by CUPD- and CEPD-US after a single intravenous bolus of galactosel palmitic acid (Levovist). Arthroscopy video recordings were reanalyzed by computer image analysis to assess synovial vascular marking. CUPD and CEPD flow signal scores were compared with each other and with corresponding vascular marking scores. Using villous vascular marking as reference, CUPD and CEPD sensitivity and specificity were measured. Interobserver variability was evaluated.

RESULTS
Compared with the unenhanced PD method, contrast administration increased the PD flow signal score in 13/18 knees (72.2%), allowing increased detection of F/SI PD flow signal configuration (p < 0.018) and of the coexistence of P/CI and F/SI PD imaging (p < 0.0078). With arthroscopy as reference, contrast-enhanced PD was found to be more useful than the unenhanced method, showing more reproducible PD signal scores (p = 0.05 vs p = nonsignificant), as well as higher sensitivity (80% vs 30%), but lower specificity (62% vs 87%), in the recognition of increased vascularity of synovial villi. Interobserver agreement was 100%.

CONCLUSION
The prospective comparison with arthroscopy showed the reliability of the CEPD method in synovial vessel recognition and its potential clinical usefulness in assessment of knee joint synovitis.


An underlying aim in conservation planning is to maximize the long‐term persistence of biodiversity. To fulfil this aim, the ecological and evolutionary processes that sustain biodiversity must be preserved. One way to conserve such processes at the feature level (e.g. species, ecosystem) is to preserve a sample of the feature (e.g. individuals, areas) that is representative of the intrinsic or extrinsic physical attributes that underpin the process of interest. For example, by conserving a sample of populations with local adaptations—physical attributes associated with adaptation—that is representative of the range of adaptations found in the species, protected areas can maintain adaptive processes by ensuring these adaptations are not lost. Despite this, current reserve selection methods overwhelmingly focus on securing an adequate amount of area or habitat for each feature. Little attention has been directed towards capturing a representative sample of the variation within each feature. To address this issue, we developed the raptr R package to help guide reserve selection. Users set "amount targets"—similar to conventional methods—to ensure that solutions secure a sufficient proportion of area or habitat for each feature. Additionally, users set "space targets" to secure a representative sample of variation in ecologically or evolutionarily relevant attributes (e.g. environmental or genetic variation). We demonstrate the functionality of this package, using simulations and two case studies. In these studies, we generated solutions using amount targets—similar to conventional methods—and compared them with solutions generated using amount and space targets. Our results demonstrate that markedly different solutions emerge when targeting a representative sample of each feature. We show that using these targets is important for features that have multimodal distributions in the process‐related attributes (e.g. species with multimodal niches). We also found that solutions could conserve a far more representative sample with only a slight increase in reserve system size. The raptr R package provides a toolkit for making prioritizations that secure an adequate and representative sample of variation within each feature. By using solutions that secure a representative sample of each feature, prioritizations may have a greater chance of achieving long‐term biodiversity persistence.


In some settings, steps are being taken to more fully integrate pharmacists in primary health care as a means of improving the public's health and reducing drug-related iatrogenesis. Yet, evidence of improvement in health outcomes from pharmacists' inputs is mixed; the diversity of research approaches and methodologies makes it difficult to reach an overall conclusion about it. A detailed review and analysis of two published articles using different methodological approaches to assess the role of community pharmacists in primary health care, but similarly reporting unfavourable findings regarding pharmacists' impacts, is conducted. The Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) design did not account for possible within-group differences in the delivery of the pharmacist intervention, and could not ascertain there were differences in pharmaceutical care received by intervention and control group heart failure patients. The RCT did not include an evaluation of pharmacists' recommendations to physicians. The qualitative discourse analysis did not distinguish between patients' response to pharmacists' recommendations and the appropriateness of those recommendations. Researchers face two key challenges in demonstrating pharmacist impacts in primary care. The first is methodological – and relates to the need to identify, measure and evaluate the range and complexity of pharmacists' work in conducting medication review and pharmaceutical care. The second relates to the differing levels of status and power of two key players in the field of medicines-related health care – the physician and pharmacist –a relationship whose contribution to 'negative impact' studies needs consideration. An appeal for 'methodological creativity' in pharmacist impact studies is made.


This research was carried out with the help of metaphor to determine the perception of folk dances trainers regarding the concept of folk dances. The study was carried out with a total of 141 folk dances trainers (85 men and 56 women), who depend on the Folk Dances Federation of Turkey. In the study, a semi-structured interview form was used to allow participants to freely express their opinions on the specific subject. In this context, each participant was asked to write a metaphor about the concept of folk dances and to explain it. To determine the metaphorical perceptions of the concept of ''folk dances'' the trainers were asked to complete such clauses as "folk dances are like…." and "Because ...". In this study, phenomenological design was used from qualitative research approaches. In the analysis of data, content analysis technique was used. Frequency and percent values were calculated. The opinions of an in-field expert and an out-of-field expert were consulted as a reliability procedure. As a result of the calculation, the reliability of the research was calculated as %98.5. According to the study findings, it is seen that the trainers expressed their opinions on 86 types of metaphors that are divided into 12 conceptual categories for the concept of "folk dances" and 141 views for this. The category in which maximum exists is metaphor of "Happiness, Excitement and Energy Aspect" and the most used the words were found to be "love" (f=8), "ambition" (f=5), "life" (f=5) and "adaptation" (f=5). In addition, it is observed that trainers form metaphors with many concrete tools and abstract concepts such as "labour, gain, stress ball, serotonin, culture, umbrella, pen" regarding the concept of folk dances. As a result, it was determined that the most used metaphor for folk dances is "love" and that the category the most produced by the trainers is "happiness, excitement and energy aspect" and that the trainers have a positive perception in the metaphors produced by the "folk dances" concept.


Ontology mapping plays an important role in interoperability over ontologies. Many researchers have proposed algorithms and tools for (semi-)automatically mapping one concept to another concept. Among them, WordNet is widely used as the domain knowledge support in the mapping process. To our knowledge, however, most of them only use synonym, hypernym and hyponym relations in WordNet and the actual meanings provided in natural English(as gloss) are often ignored. In this paper, we treat the concepts(c) as English words (w) and propose an ontology mapping technique where we use the meanings of the words as given in Wordnet (in English) for semantic mapping by constructing their parse trees first and simplifying them for computing similarity measures. Our experimental results show that our method performs better in Recall and F1-Measure than many techniques reported in the literature.


RADON EXHALATION OF BUILDING MATERIALS FARREL SIDNEY WENTZEL M.Sc full thesis, Department of Physics, University of the Western Cape Public concern about all radiation and radon exhalation from building materials has been highlighted recently. The purpose of this study is to address this public concern and to investigate the contribution of building materials to indoor radon levels. As in soil and rocks, radon gas is formed inside the building materials by decay of the parent nuclide Ra. It is not possible to determine the radon exhalation rate simply from the activity concentration of Ra, instead one must measure radon exhalation rates directly from the surface of the material. Rn has been identified as an important factor that could result in a health hazard by studies all around the world. The exhalation experiments were done at the UWC physics department, in the Nuclear Physics Lab. A RAD7 radon detector was used to measure the radon concentration in an air tight chamber that contained various building material samples. The RAD7 records the number of alpha particles with energy of 6.11 MeV which results from the decay of Po, the daughter of Rn. The RAD7 detector converts counts into Becquerel's per cubic metre (Bq/m). The building materials tested were the raw materials used in construction such as two different types of building sand, building stones, coarse aggregate, floor and roof tiles, various granites from across the world that were sourced locally and uranium bearing sandstone originating from a Beaufort-West prospecting site. Stones from this site were used as filler material in the construction of two farm houses. Most building materials were found to have a very low rate of radon exhalation. The only materials that had any significant radon exhalation were 2 granite samples with a maximum exhalation rate of 1.5 Bq.m.h and the uranium bearing sandstone. It is safe to say that the overwhelming majority of building materials tested are safe to use but some granites may require further study. The uranium bearing sandstone is a definite radiation protection issue and should not be used in any construction. IV http://etd.uwc.ac.za/


This article demonstrates how an integral element of the fabric
of governance on the eastern Indonesian island of Lombok, and many
other parts of the Indonesian archipelago, are non-state local security
arrangements, such as night watches and militias. These groups play a
significant role in the local infrastructure of security and law enforcement.
Consequently, this article challenges a common assumption by
legal scholars, and many other observers of Indonesia, that state-based
institutions such as the police are the exclusive, and only legitimate, mode
of law enforcement in Indonesia. Through an ethnographic engagement
with the idea of law enforcement on Lombok, I seek to broaden these
assumptions about legitimate modes of statecraft. These non-state entities
fill a void in the Indonesian law enforcement architecture that the state
is unable or unwilling to fulfil (or potentially finds it more practical to
delegate to local non-state institutions).


Trust as a phenomenon is very abstract. Trust can be examined at deferent levels.Trust is the consequence or positive impressions from mutual interactions.Trust in an organization stems from the behavior of direct managers, as well as the organization's leaders, but organizations with high trust are those where staff feels their trust is reciprocated and that they are themselves trusted by their mangers. Organizational trust is defined as the organization's willingness, based upon its culture and communication behaviors in relationships and transactions, to be appropriately vulnerable, based on the belief that another individual, group or organization is competent, open and honest, concerned, reliable and identified with common goals, norms, and values.Trust may be classified as basic, simple, blind, or authentic.It may be divided to calculus-based trust, knowledge-based trust and identification-based trust.The literature review shows that trust creates added value in an organization. It effects on the performance, the atmosphere of work, effectiveness, employee satisfaction and commitment.


© Oxford University Press 2008. All rights reserved. Patients are phenotypes; thus all medical conditions are a product of genes and the environment. One genotype can produce many phenotypes depending on the environments encountered. Such phenotypic plasticity promotes reproductive success by creating a better fit between the genotype and the environment. Evolutionary insights into kin selection, life history, parental investment, and sexual selection help us to understand: the origins of child abuse and homicide in step-families; deadbeat dads; attachment disorders; failure to thrive; female infanticide; excess male mortality from accidents, suicide, and disease; risky behaviour; immunosuppression; reproductive cancer; marital violence; and genital cutting. Many of these problems reflect reproductive conflicts of interest between individuals. Other conflicts occur within individuals and involve life history trade-offs. Conflicts of interest within and between individuals constrain natural selection, and prevent an optimal world wherein adaptation is maximized at all levels simultaneously.


The process of monitoring user emotions in serious games or human-computer interaction is usually obtrusive. The work-flow is typically based on sensors that are physically attached to the user. Sometimes those sensors completely disturb the user experience, such as finger sensors that prevent the use of keyboard/mouse. This short paper presents techniques used to remotely measure different signals produced by a person, e.g. heart rate, through the use of a camera and computer vision techniques. The analysis of a combination of such signals (multimodal input) can be used in a variety of applications such as emotion assessment and measurement of cognitive stress. We present a research proposal for measurement of player's stress level based on a non-contact analysis of multimodal user inputs. Our main contribution is a survey of commonly used methods to remotely measure user input signals related to stress assessment.


This report describes a series of geophysical surveys conducted in conjunction with geotechnical investigations carried out by the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the value of and potential uses for data collected via geophysical techniques with respect to ongoing investigations related to linear infrastructure. One or more techniques, including direct-current resistivity, capacitive-coupled resistivity, and ground-penetrating radar, were evaluated at sites in continuous and discontinuous permafrost zones. Results revealed that resistivity techniques adequately differentiate between frozen and unfrozen ground, and in some instances, were able to identify individual ice wedges in a frozen heterogeneous matrix. Capacitive-coupled resistivity was found to be extremely promising due to its relative mobility as compared with direct-current resistivity. Ground-penetrating radar was shown to be useful for evaluating the factors leading to subsidence in an existing road. Taken as a whole, the study results indicate that supplemental geophysical surveys may add to the quality of a geotechnical investigation by helping to optimize the placement of boreholes. Moreover, such surveys may reduce the overall investigation costs by reducing the number of boreholes required to characterize the subsurface.


Nitrogen (N) supply often limits the productivity of temperate forests and is regulated by a complex mix of biological and climatic drivers. In excess, N is linked to a variety of soil, water, and air pollution issues. Here, we use results from an elevation gradient study and historical data from the long-term Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study (New Hampshire, USA) to examine relationships between changes in climate, especially during winter, and N supply to northern hardwood forest ecosystems. Low elevation plots with less snow, more soil freezing, and more freeze/thaw cycles supported lower rates of N mineralization than high elevation plots, despite having higher soil temperatures and no consistent differences in soil moisture during the growing season. These results are consistent with historical analyses showing decreases in rates of soil N mineralization and inorganic N concentrations since 1973 that are correlated with long-term increases in mean annual temperature, decreases in annual snow accumulation, and a increases in the number of winter thawing degree days. This evidence suggests that changing climate may be driving decreases in the availability of a key nutrient in northern hardwood forests, which could decrease ecosystem production but have positive effects on environmental consequences of excess N.


Varied environmental compartments (such as soil and water) potentially contaminated with different metals/metalloids can impact the health of both plants and animals/ humans. Trace amounts of Cu, Mn, Mo, Ni and Zn are beneficial for higher plants, whereas, Cr, Cu, Co, Mn, Mo, Se, V and Zn are known as the micronutrient metal/metal‐ loids for animals/humans. However, elevated levels of the metals/metalloids can cause severe toxic consequences in both plants and animals/humans. Common in plants and animals/humans, phytochelatins (PCs), the principal non-protein, S-rich, thiolate pepti‐ des, protect (through different mechanisms) cellular functions and metal/metalloid ho‐ meostasis by performing their chelation and/or detoxification. With the major aim of broadening the current knowledge on the subject, this chapter (a) overviews PCs' role and modulation separately in metal/metalloid-exposed plants and animals/humans; (b) discusses major methods for determination of PCs and bioassays for enzymes involved in PC synthesis; (c) evaluates the connection of PCs with bionanoparticles; and finally (d) highlights so far unexplored aspects in the present context.