Polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) is a versatile technique to achieve a wide range of polymeric nanoparticle morphologies. Most previous examples of self-assembled soft nanoparticle synthesis by PISA rely on a growing solvophobic polymer block that leads to changes in nanoparticle architecture during polymerization in a selective solvent. However, synthesis of block copolymers with a growing stimuliresponsive block to form various nanoparticle shapes has yet to be reported. This new concept using thermoresponsive polymers is termed polymerization-induced thermal self-assembly (PITSA). A reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization of N-isopropylacrylamide from a hydrophilic chain transfer agent composed of N,N-dimethylacrylamide and acrylic acid was carried out in water above the known lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAm). After reaching a certain chain length, the growing PNIPAm self-assembled, as induced by the LCST, into block copolymer aggregates within which dispersion polymerization continued. To characterize the nanoparticles at ambient temperatures without their dissolution, the particles were crosslinked immediately following polymerization at elevated temperatures via the reaction of the acid groups with a diamine in the presence of a carbodiimide. Size exclusion chromatography was used to evaluate the unimer molecular weight distributions and reaction kinetics. Dynamic light scattering and transmission electron microscopy provided insight into the size and morphologies of the nanoparticles. The resulting block copolymers formed polymeric nanoparticles with a range of morphologies (e.g., micelles, worms, and vesicles), which were a function of the PNIPAm block length.


: The Berlin Republic of today is neither Weimar (1918–1932) nor Bonn (1949–1990). It is by all standards the best democracy ever on German soil. Nevertheless, during the COVID-19 crisis there was a shift from democracy as a mode of governance to what the controversial legal theorist Carl Schmitt (1922) affirmingly described as a "state of exception"; a state that is desired and approved by the people (through opinion polls). It was the hour of the executive. The parliament disempowered itself. There was very little, if any, contestation or deliberation during the first eight weeks of the COVID-19 crisis. This article reflects on the implications of this mode of governance on institutions and actors of democracy in Germany, and offers a way of assessing the wellbeing of democracies in times of deep crisis.


Background Acne inversa (AI), also known as suppurative hidradenitis (HS), is a chronic, inflammatory, recurrent disease that is difficult to manage with the usual standard treatment, especially in the advanced stage of the disease. So the use of factors modulating the inflammatory response such as adalimumab may constitute a new therapeutic option. Purpose To evaluate the efficacy and safety of adalimumab in the treatment of severe AI. Materials and methods Retrospective cross-sectional study of patients diagnosed with AI (Hurley grade III) and adalimumab subcutaneous until August 2013. In all cases, informed consent was obtained (off-label indication). The data were obtained from the clinical history and computerised outpatient dispensing program. The efficacy of adalimumab was defined as clinical improvement in the affected regions, nodules and/or fistulas compared to the usual standard treatment (oral antibiotics, corticosteroids, antiandrogens and/or retinoids). Results Six patients were included, 2 men and 4 women, with a mean age of 28.8 ± 8.6 years (range: 17–39). The mean treatment duration was 4.8 ± 2.7 months (range: 1–9). In men, the affected regions were the genitals and the groin, while in women they were the armpits and groin. In one case, the affected area was not reflected in the medical history. 3 patients were active smokers. All patients had been treated previously with oral antibiotics, combined or not with antiandrogens, corticosteroids and/or isotretinoin and none had previously received a biological therapy. Only in one case there was a positive family history of the disease. 4 patients received loading doses of 160 and 80 mg administered subcutaneously at week 0 and 1, respectively (without interval) and 2 patients received loading dose of 80 mg at week 0. The maintenance regimen was 40 mg weekly except in 2 cases it was every other week, one because of severe headaches. All patients reported improvement with decreased drainage from all affected sites, remaining stable during the follow-up period. No significant adverse effects were reported. Conclusions Adalimumab may represent a new alternative in the management of severe AI with an acceptable safety profile, despite being administered at high doses during the induction phase and without a weekly break; the long-term benefit/risk of adalimumab is unknown. No conflict of interest.


Complex trajectories for Hamiltonians of the form H=pn+V(x) are studied. For n=2 , time‐reversal symmetry prevents trajectories from crossing. However, for n>2 trajectories may indeed cross, and as a result, the complex trajectories for such Hamiltonians have a rich and elaborate structure. In past work on complex classical trajectories, it has been observed that turning points act as attractors; they pull on complex trajectories and make them veer toward the turning point. In this paper, it is shown that the poles of V(x) have the opposite effect—they deflect and repel trajectories. Moreover, poles shield and screen the effect of turning points.


ABSTRACT Brain metastases are a devastating event in the progression of cancer and are expected to increase in incidence as chemotherapies improve and lead to better systemic disease control. The brain offers unique environment as it is protected by the blood–brain barrier, which strongly limits the penetration of drugs. Using a quantitative model system for experimental breast cancer brain metastasis, vascular permeability was heterogeneous in brain metastases, with only 10% of lesions exhibiting sufficient permeability to mount an apoptotic response to taxol, suggesting that inadequate chemotherapeutic drug distribution accounts for a lack of efficacy. We have tested 18 compounds, both traditional chemotherapeutics and small molecule inhibitors, for efficacy in an experimental brain metastasis model. Prevention of the development of brain metastases was observed using vorinostat, lapatinib, pazopanib, TPI-287, gemcitabine and irinotecan. No drug effectively shrunk already established metastases. Our work strongly suggests that preventive approaches for the development of brain metastases constitutes a feasible clinical goal. We advocate the use of "secondary brain metastasis prevention" trials, in which patients with limited, treated brain metastases (without whole brain radiotherapy) are randomized to a preventive or placebo, with time to the development of a new metastasis as an endpoint. Close collaboration between researchers and medical oncologists will be needed to address these challenges brought on by this growing and incurable disease. Disclosure B. Gril: Dr. Patricia Steeg received research founding from Glaxo Smith Kline (for lapatinib, pazopanib and PLK inhibitor) and from Millennium Pharmaceuticals (for TAK-285).


Background Although recent evidence has shown that area-level income inequality is related to increased risk for depression among adults, few studies have tested this association among adolescents. Methods We analysed the cross-sectional data from a sample of 1878 adolescents living in 38 neighbourhoods participating in the 2008 Boston Youth Survey. Using multilevel linear regression modelling, we: (1) estimated the association between neighbourhood income inequality and depressive symptoms, (2) tested for cross-level interactions between sex and neighbourhood income inequality and (3) examined neighbourhood social cohesion as a mediator of the relationship between income inequality and depressive symptoms. Results The association between neighbourhood income inequality and depressive symptoms varied significantly by sex, with girls in higher income inequality neighbourhood reporting higher depressive symptom scores, but not boys. Among girls, a unit increase in Gini Z-score was associated with more depressive symptoms (β=0.38, 95% CI 0.28 to 0.47, p=0.01) adjusting for nativity, neighbourhood income, social cohesion, crime and social disorder. There was no evidence that the association between income inequality and depressive symptoms was due to neighbourhood-level differences in social cohesion. Conclusions The distribution of incomes within an urban area adversely affects adolescent girls' mental health; future work is needed to understand why, as well as to examine in greater depth the potential consequences of inequality for males, which may have been difficult to detect here.


This thesis explores the relationship between censorship and allegory through an analysis of allegorical interpretations of censored texts. The allegorical texts Animal Farm by George Orwell and The Crucible by Arthur Miller are analysed with a view to understanding whether censors of allegory are correct to assume that their own interpretations are replicable for other readers, and censor accordingly.
Beginning with an exploration of the varieties of literary censorship affecting both primary texts, the thesis then moves on to a discussion of current literature concerning the fields of both allegory and censorship. With a methodological focus on reader-response criticism and the power and influence of a reader's own context over the allegorical text itself, the thesis hopes to fill the gap in current scholarship which approaches the issues of allegory and censorship from a perspective focused on cognitive linguistics. Each text's respective sections devote attention both to the censorship of the texts and their authors, and to critical responses and reviews which act as examples of literary interpretations. Close readings (selected on the basis of recurrence in discussions of the texts) are used to understand the elements of pre-existing knowledge required of readers to construct their allegorical interpretation. Finally, the allegorical parallels noted in the analysed interpretations are compared to those offered by the texts' censors, and with context and relevant theory in mind, the replicability of censors' interpretations is considered.
The conclusions reached in the thesis support the suggestion that censors' allegorical interpretations are replicable. However, the likelihood of readers producing such interpretations is largely influenced by their understanding of the allegorised scenario, and how closely this understanding matches that of the censors. In addition, the possibility for dominant readings of censored and controversial allegorical texts to alleviate interpretive pressures typically placed upon readers of allegorical literature may indicate that such


SETD2 regulates actin dynamics and cell migration via methylation of actin at Lys68 in a cellular complex containing Huntingtin. The methyltransferase SET domain–containing 2 (SETD2) was originally identified as Huntingtin (HTT) yeast partner B. However, a SETD2 function associated with the HTT scaffolding protein has not been elucidated, and no linkage between HTT and methylation has yet been uncovered. Here, we show that SETD2 is an actin methyltransferase that trimethylates lysine-68 (ActK68me3) in cells via its interaction with HTT and the actin-binding adapter HIP1R. ActK68me3 localizes primarily to the insoluble F-actin cytoskeleton in cells and regulates actin polymerization/depolymerization dynamics. Disruption of the SETD2-HTT-HIP1R axis inhibits actin methylation, causes defects in actin polymerization, and impairs cell migration. Together, these data identify SETD2 as a previously unknown HTT effector regulating methylation and polymerization of actin filaments and provide new avenues for understanding how defects in SETD2 and HTT drive disease via aberrant cytoskeletal methylation.


Abstract The geographic location and heterogeneous multi‐ethnic population of Dubai (United Arab Emirates; UAE) provide a unique setting to explore the global molecular epidemiology of SARS‐CoV‐2 and relationship between different viral strains and disease severity. We systematically selected (i.e. every 100th individual in the central Dubai COVID‐19 database) 256 patients by age, sex, disease severity and month to provide a representative sample of laboratory‐confirmed COVID‐19 patients (nasopharyngeal swab PCR positive) during the first wave of the UAE outbreak (January to June 2020). Sociodemographic and clinical data were extracted from medical records and full SARS‐CoV‐2 genome sequences extracted from nasopharyngeal swabs were analysed. Older age was significantly associated with COVID‐19‐associated hospital admission and mortality. Overweight/obese or diabetic patients were 3–4 times more likely to be admitted to hospital and intensive care unit (ICU). Sequencing data showed multiple independent viral introductions into the UAE from Europe, Iran and Asia (29 January–18 March), and these early strains seeded significant clustering consistent with almost exclusive community‐based transmission between April and June 2020. Majority of sequenced strains (N = 60, 52%) were from the European cluster consistent with the higher infectivity rates associated with the D614G mutation carried by most strains in this cluster. A total of 986 mutations were identified in 115 genomes, 272 were unique (majority were missense, n = 134) and 20/272 mutations were novel. A missense (Q271R) and synonymous (R41R) mutation in the S and N proteins, respectively, were identified in 2/27 patients with severe COVID‐19 but not in patients with mild or moderate disease (0/86; p = .05, Fisher's Exact Test). Both patients were women (51–64 years) with no significant underlying health conditions. The same two mutations were identified in a healthy 37‐year‐old Indian man who was hospitalized in India due to COVID‐19. Our findings provide evidence for continued community‐based transmission of the European strains in the Dubai population and highlight new mutations that might be associated with severe disease in otherwise healthy adults.


Fourier transform infrared imaging is presented as a new analytical approach in the study of paint cross-sections. Analytical FT-IR reflection imaging provides the spatially resolved acquisition of infrared spectra with a resolution of about 7 μm. The technique reveals detailed information on the organic functional group distribution in the individual layers of embedded paint cross-sections and is used complementary to visual microscopy and scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersed X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX). This method was applied to a paint cross-section of Rembrandt's Portrait of a Standing Man (1639). FT-IR imaging of this cross-section identified and localized different compounds present in the layers of this sample. Identification of these compounds based on their infrared spectra is confirmed by results from art historical and conservation literature. Special attention was given to a discoloration that was observed in large parts of the described painting. This discoloration was clearly visible in the paint cross-section. A hypothesis on the nature of the discolored paint layer is formulated based on the FT-IR imaging results.


A photonic nanojet (PNJ) is a fine and high intensity light beam that is generated from a dielectric microsphere irradiated by a laser. A PNJ has a smaller beam diameter than the wavelength of the incident laser and can propagate for longer than 1 μm with high intensity and minimal divergence. In other words, a PNJ has a long depth of focus. Due to its outstanding optical properties, PNJ is suitable for laser micro machining. In this paper, we theoretically and experimentally investigated machining characteristics of laser micro machining using a PNJ. First, electromagnetic simulations were conducted to estimate hole diameter when PNJ is irradiated to a sample by changing a distance from the microsphere to the sample. The simulation demonstrated that sub-micrometer scale hole diameter could be obtained even when PNJ is defocused by 1 μm due to the long depth of focus. Next, machining experiments were also conducted on a silicon substrate. A femtosecond laser was used as the machining laser. By holding the microsphere with a micropipette and controlling its position, the position of the PNJ can be controlled in the z direction. Micrometer and sub-micrometer scale hole diameters were obtained even when the position of PNJ in the z direction was changed by 1 μm. The hole diameters obtained in the experiment were consistent with the hole diameter estimated by the simulation. In conclusion, the long depth of focus of a photonic nanojet enable to create sub-micrometer scale structure.


Abstract. This paper reports on a research in progress on the aspectual opposition between two major stems of verbal inflection in Ancient Greek: Present and Aorist. By studying a corpus of forms taken from Plato's philosophical dialogues, we try to elucidate the relationship between the choice of an aspectual stem and the meaning of the verb in the situation of utterance. Our selected items are verbal forms used to invite the addressee to speak. The Invitation to speak is a connection between two consecutive utterance situations; it pragmatically implies a specific way of causing the addressee to act. Through a detailed analysis of the part played by non-inflectional person markers (stressed pronouns as opposed to simple endings), connective particles and adverbials, it appears that Aorist is used when the agent seems to be presented as opposed to another one and the process is presented as interrupted, whereas Present is used in the case of continuation or resumption of the speech process. Focus is preferably put on one of the actants, to mark the opposition and newness of the Aorist process, whereas putting the emphasis on a continuing process requires the Present stem.


The ability to perform human-like manipulation actions using artificial robots is a major requirement in service robotics.
This is a problem related to both high-level symbolic reasoning and low-level control systems.
This work proposes a multi-layer framework to fully define and execute a wide range of such actions
in a generic and generalizable fashion.
We present the details of action definition and execution and collect them into a re-usable software library.

The first contribution of this thesis is definition of high-level and low-level components of actions as well as a clear mechanism to link them in execution.
To demonstrate the ability of execution system to generalize on a wide range of actions and objects, a large set of 300 trials is performed.
The success rate of each action is calculated and the failure cases are analyzed.

The second contribution is applying the concept of structural bootstrapping to get action parameters from human demonstrations and previous experiences.
Here, several human demonstrations obtained by different methods are processed.
New instructions are executed based on previous knowledge which enables system to go beyond hard-coded actions.

Last contribution is to integrate the actions with a symbolic decision making framework to benefit from the advantages of the state-of-the-art in planning.
Here we deal with grounding symbolic operators of planner to solve complex tasks such as making a simple cucumber salad.
We also feedback the faults of execution to the decision-making system which enables learning new operators through a human operator.


The purpose of this research is to construct a database of a non-stratified airflow past a steep simple terrain under an imposition of a uniform flow, and, in addition, is to do the accuracy inspection of the numerical model under development at present. This numerical model is referred to as the RIAM-COMPACT (Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University, Computational Prediction of Airflow over Complex Terrain), and is for the purpose of the prediction of airflow over complex terrain with several m to several km. This paper describes the experimental and numerical study of a non-stratified airflow past a three-dimensional isolated-hill in a uniform flow as the second phase. The Reynolds number, based on the uniform flow and the height of the hill, is about 10 4 . Airflows around the hill include the unsteady vortex shedding. Attention is focused on airflow characteristics in a wake region. For this purpose, the velocity components in the streamwise direction were measured with a SFP (Split-Film Probe) in the wind tunnel experiment. In addition, the flow visualization was performed by using the smoke-wire technique. Through comparison of the experimental and numerical results, they showed a good agreement. The accuracy of both of the wind tunnel experiment by the SFP and also numerical simulation by the RIAM-COMPACT were confirmed as the result.


Identifying topics of a textual document is useful for many purposes. We can organize the documents by topics in digital libraries. Then, we could browse and search for the documents with specific topics. By examining the topics of a document, we can quickly understand what the document is about. To augment the traditional manual way of topic tagging tasks, which is labor-intensive, solutions using computers have been developed.
This dissertation describes the design and development of a topic identification approach, in this case applied to disaster events. In a sense, this study represents the marriage of research analysis with an engineering effort in that it combines inspiration from Cognitive Informatics with a practical model from Information Retrieval. One of the design constraints, however, is that the Web was used as a universal knowledge source, which was essential in accessing the required information for inferring topics from texts.
Retrieving specific information of interest from such a vast information source was achieved by querying a search engine's application programming interface. Specifically, the information gathered was processed mainly by incorporating the Vector Space Model from the Information Retrieval field. As a proof of concept, we subsequently developed and evaluated a prototype tool, Xpantrac, which is able to run in a batch mode to automatically process text documents. A user interface of Xpantrac also was constructed to support an interactive semi-automatic topic tagging application, which was subsequently assessed via a usability study.
Throughout the design, development, and evaluation of these various study components, we detail how the hypotheses and research questions of this dissertation have been supported and answered. We also present that our overarching goal, which was the identification of topics in a human-comparable way without depending on a large training set or a corpus, has been achieved.


Estuaries are generally considered a source of CO2 to the atmosphere, although with significant uncertainties in magnitude and controlling factors between and within estuaries. We studied four northwestern Gulf of Mexico estuaries that experience extreme hydrologic conditions between April 2014 and February 2017 to determine the role of dry/wet cycle on estuarine CO2 system. Annual air–water CO2 flux ranged from 2.7 to 35.9 mol·C·m−2·yr−1; CO2 flux declined by approximately an order of magnitude along with declining river discharge. Episodic flooding made CO2 flux differ between dry (−0.7 to 20.9 mmol·C·m−2·d−1) and wet (11.6–170.0 mmol·C·m–2·d–1) conditions. During wet condition, increases in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and total alkalinity (TA) significantly elevated CO2 degassing. Furthermore, ventilation of river‐borne CO2 strengthened degassing when estuaries became overwhelmingly river‐dominated. During flood relaxation, all estuaries experienced heightened productivity, evidenced by DIC and TA consumption in the mid‐salinity range (10–30). When prolonged drought led to hypersalinity (>36.5), biogeochemical and evaporative effects enhanced DIC and TA consumption and CO2 degassing. Due to flooding and high wind speeds, these estuaries were a strong CO2 source during spring and summer. Then they transitioned to a weak CO2 source or sink during the fall. Low temperatures further depressed CO2 efflux during winter except when a pulse of freshwater input occurred. This study demonstrates that changes in the hydrologic condition of estuaries, such as dry/wet cycle and river discharge gradient, will greatly alter air–water CO2 flux and estuarine contribution to the global carbon budget.


Computational methods of molecular modeling is a useful tool for planning of bioactive compounds such as drugs. This paper aims to describe initial aspects of approach in silico of the antifungal agent ketoconazole, using the ACD / ChemSketch® and Arguslab® software as a necessary step for future studies of structural change, hoping to optimize the action of this drug. The employed methodological steps were: (1) obtaining ketoconazole structure from Chemspide repository; (2) visualization of three-dimensional structure of this drug by ChemSketch® software, with representation of the electron density map; (3) performing semiempirical calculation Arguslab® and Avogrado® software (Austin Model 1-QM-AM1) to optimize the structure, determining the potential electrostatic and Mulliken atomic charges, generation of threedimensional maps of the electrostatic potential, calculation of orbital border and the minimum potential energy of the molecule. The optimization of ketoconazole structure proved to be feasible. From the electrostatic potential map and load distribution of Mulliken, identified the oxygen atom of the acyl termination (O3) as a preferred site for nucleophilic reactions. Energy ketoconazole minimum potential was estimated at -139841.4989 kcal/mol The now obtained descriptors will be key objects for future studies of relationships between three-dimensional structure of the drug and its biological activity.


The effect of an explosive charge closed to a structure plate is a strong loading for a ship. To be able to quantify the damage bred on a structure, we made any tests with a charge closed to a metallic plate. From experimental results, we elaborated an analytical model supposing a constant velocity for plastic hinge movement. From the Gurney's relation which we modified, we are able to determinate the initial velocity transmitted to the structure plate and to estimate the gas mass flowing to the downward step after the charge detonation.


Many recent researchers support the use of collaborative output tasks in L2 classrooms. This study compared the effects on the learning of English lexical collocations of two types of output tasks (reconstruction cloze task and reconstruction editing task). It aimed to see whether doing the tasks collaboratively led to greater knowledge of the target collocations than doing the same tasks individually and also whether the type of task would make a difference. The study was conducted in two intact intermediate adult English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classrooms. The participants had to complete four editing tasks or four cloze tasks either individually or collaboratively, and they were asked to take a vocabulary knowledge scale test administered before and after the treatment. The results revealed that completing the tasks collaboratively (in pairs) led to a greater gain of collocation knowledge than completing them individually. The results, also, showed a significant difference between the effects of two task types, with the editing tasks being more effective than the cloze tasks in the learning of lexical collocations.


Israel's heated public debate over the socio-political implications of increasing demographic diversity plays out with special prominence in Tel Aviv, home to large minority citizen populations and a destination for foreign workers and refugees from Asia and Africa. The city's New Central Bus Station, or tachanah merkazit, is a transit hub and commercial complex in which multiple ethnic groups enact aesthetic and cultural dimensions of Israeli urban and national identity in flux. This paper presents a sensory ethnography of the tachanah: sonic and musical expressions of "local" and "global" Israeliness are analyzed against a backdrop of near-constant motion and transit. The somatic and ideological dimensions of movement enable Jewish Israelis, minority citizens and foreigners to assimilate sounds of culture within the tachanah at deeply-felt, personal levels. The tachanah's sonic activity is inherently political, having the potential to impact collective identity and civic reality in Tel Aviv and across Israel. [soundscape, sensory ethnography, migration, ethnicity, Israel]


Abstract The Central African house snake Boaedon olivaceus has a large distribution from the forests of West Africa to Mabira Forest in Uganda. We sequenced two mitochondrial (cyt b and ND4) and two nuclear (c-mos and RAG1) genes from several populations of B. olivaceus in Central Africa and recovered two highly divergent lineages (Congo Basin and Albertine Rift) attributable to this species. Dating analyses with BEAST suggest the two lineages last shared a common ancestor during the mid-Miocene approximately 12 million years ago, and data from RAG1 showed consistent differences in two amino acids for topotypic Congo Basin B. olivaceus compared to the Albertine Rift lineage and all other examined species of Boaedon. Based on these striking molecular differences and significant differences in ventral scale counts and the number of supralabials contacting the eye, we describe the Albertine Rift lineage as a new species. The recognition of this new species bolsters the importance of the Albertine Rift as an important region for endemism and conservation in continental Africa. Based on the results of our phylogenetic analyses, the poorly known taxon Lycodonomorphus subtaeniatus upembae is elevated to full species status and transferred to the genus Boaedon. http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:D0C0E5B5-DBE9-4D21-B5FE-86221DDF60BA


This research is an exploratory study into Hong Kong citizens' attitudes towards tax evasion, undertaken to provide an indication of the extent of tax evasion in the territory. The research aims to establish whether citizens view tax evasion as an acceptable activity and to compare its acceptance with other misdemeanours such as petty theft. It also aims to establish whether a relationship exists between citizens' attitudes towards tax evasion and a) their demographic characteristics and b) their attitudes towards the tax system and tax environment. A survey was undertaken in Hong Kong, involving a representative sample of 654 citizens. The survey found that while tax evasion on all or a large part of income is considered unacceptable, small scale tax evasion (on less than 10% of income) is deemed an acceptable activity. Small scale evasion is considered more acceptable than all other misdemeanours included in the survey, including stealing a newspaper! Other findings were that citizens' belief that tax evasion is common amongst people they know is positively related to their acceptance of tax evasion, and that tax evasion is viewed as a more acceptable activity by lower than higher income groups, and by manual workers than managers, executives and professionals.


Pre-eminent among European political philosophers, Norberto Bobbio has throughout his career turned to the political theory of Thomas Hobbes. Gathered here for the first time are the most important of his essays which together provide both a valuable introduction to Hobbes's thought and a fresh understanding of Hobbes's place in the theory of modern politics. Tracing Hobbes's work through De Cive and Leviathan, Bobbio identifies the philosopher's relation to the tradition of natural law. That Hobbes must now be understood in both this tradition as well as in the seemingly contradictory positivist tradition becomes clear for the first time in Bobbio's account. Bobbio also demonstrates that Hobbes cannot be easily labelled "liberal" or "totalitarian"; in Bobbio's provocative analysis of Hobbes's justification of the state, Hobbes emerges as a true conservative. Though his primary concern is to reconstruct the inner logic of Hobbes's thought, Bobbio is also attentive to the philosopher's biography and weaves into his analysis details of Hobbes's life and world--his exile in France, his relation with the Mersenne circle, his disputes with Anglican bishops, and accusations of heresy leveled against him. The result is a revealing, thoroughly new portrait of the first theorist of the modern state.


Environmental contaminants may have impacts on reproduction and survival in wildlife populations suffering from multiple stressors. This study examined whether adverse effects of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) increased with poor population health and breeding conditions in three colonies (60–74°N) of great skua (Stercorarius skua) in the north-eastern Atlantic (Shetland, Iceland and Bjørnøya [Bear Island]). POPs (organochlorines [OCs] and polybrominated diphenyl ethers [BDEs]) were measured in plasma of incubating birds (n = 222), concentrations differing nearly tenfold among colonies: Bjørnøya (2009) > Bjørnøya (2010) > Iceland (2009) > Shetland (2009). Reproductive success (hatching success and chick survival) showed that breeding conditions were favourable in Shetland and at Bjørnøya (2010), but were very poor in Iceland and at Bjørnøya (2009). Biomarkers indicated that health was poor in the Shetland population compared to the other populations. Females whose chicks hatched late had high POP concentrations in all colonies except at Bjørnøya (2010), and females losing their eggs at Bjørnøya (2009) tended to have higher concentrations than those hatching. Moreover, there was a negative relationship between female POP concentrations and chick body condition at hatching in Iceland and at Bjørnøya (2010). Supplementary feeding experiments were conducted, and in Iceland where feeding conditions were poor, significant negative relationships were found between female POP concentrations and daily growth-rate in first-hatched chicks of control nests, but not in food supplemented nests. This suggests that negative impacts of POPs were mitigated by improved feeding conditions. For second-chicks, there was a strong negative relationship between the female POP concentrations and growth-rate, but no effects of supplementary feeding. Lowered adult return-rate between breeding seasons with increasing POP loads were found both at Bjørnøya (2009) and in Shetland, especially related to BDEs. This indicates stronger fitness consequences of POPs following seasons with very poor breeding conditions and/or high reproductive effort. This study suggests that the impacts of POPs may differ depending on population health and breeding conditions, and that even low concentrations of POPs could have ecological consequences during adverse circumstances. This is important with regard to risk assessment of biomagnifying contaminants in marine ecosystems.


Background. Self-reported task durations are frequently used as input when assessing exposures related to musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), in spite of being associated with errors. This work aimed to estimate the extent to which low-back pain status, true task duration, biomechanical load and pace influence errors in self-reported task durations.Methods. 48 workers with—and 48 workers without— low-back pain, matched by gender, age group and job type, were recruited through a health service provider. T-tests con-firmed that matching was successful. Each worker performed three standardized tasks—i.e. shelving boxes, filing journals and typing texts—in a combination of the following conditions: one of three durations (60, 80 or 100 minutes); two paces in shelving (walking at 3 km/hr vs. 6 km/hr); and two loads in shelving (box weight 1.25 vs. 2.5 kg). Partici-pants were asked about the perceived duration of each task immediately after the work session while being aware of the total duration of the session. Posture and kinematics of the back (iLMM™) and heart rate (portable Polar®) were monitored throughout sessions.Results. Regression analyses indicated that task type, true task duration and low-back pain status affect errors in self-reported task durations. Workers with low-back pain overestimated the shelving task more than workers without pain, by 15 to 36 minutes, depending on the true duration of the task. This occurred at the expense of a larger underestimation of the other two tasks, and mainly the typing task.Discussion. Since errors in self-reported task duration appear to be significantly de-pendent on the worker's musculoskeletal pain status, as well as factors in the job, we recommend that efforts be made to correct such errors by calibration modeling, or, at a minimum, that researchers be aware of this potential effect on exposure assessments and on epidemiological research that deals with work-related MSDs.


Th is article discusses possible eponyms of the dish pullus Frontonianus in the cookbook "De re coquinaria" (Apic. 6, 8, 12). Th e attribution faces a number of diffi culties, such as the authorship and dating of the corpus ascribed to Apicius and the fact that the cognomen Fronto did not belong to one particular nomen gentilicium. Th e author considers several Frontones: the addressee of Martial's epigram (I, 55, 2), a rich patron mentioned in Juvenal's satire (1, 12), and a person who wrote on agriculture and was a contemporary of the emperor Septimius Severus. A special section is dedicated to M. Cornelius, the teacher of Marcus Aurelius and the most famous among Frontones. Th e article studies both external evidence and the internal logic of the correspondence of M Cornelius Fronto in order to fi nd out his attitude to food and to consider the possibility that the dish was named aft er him. Th e author concludes that there are no compelling arguments to attribute pullus Frontonianus with certainty to any of the Frontones discussed.


Debt buyers have flooded courts nationwide with collection lawsuits against consumers. This article reports the findings from the broadest in-depth study of debt buyer litigation outcomes yet undertaken. The study demonstrates that in debt buyer cases, (1) the vast majority of consumers lose the vast majority of cases by default the vast majority of the time; (2) consumers had no lawyer in ninety-eight percent of the cases; and (3) those who filed a notice that they intended to defend themselves without an attorney fared poorly, both in court and in out of court settlements. This study challenges the notion that there is an "adversary system" within the context of debt buyer lawsuits. The findings suggest that no such adversary system exists for most defendants in consumer debt cases. Instead, these cases exist in a "shadow system" with little judicial oversight, which results in mass produced default judgments. The procedural and substantive due process problems which are endemic in debt buyer cases call for heightened awareness and remedial action by the bench, the bar, and the academy. As lawyers who are "public citizens, with a special responsibility for the quality of justice," the profession can do better. This article proposes suggestions for further study, and several common sense reforms.


In a study of beef quality, consumers tasted steak samples and participated in an experimental auction to determine their willingness to pay. Steaks differed in marbling, tenderness, country of origin, and aging method. Marbling and tenderness had statistically significant impacts on consumers' palatability ratings for steaks. Tenderness significantly impacted consumers' willingness-to pay values. There appear to be threshold levels of marbling and tenderness, below which consumers discount steaks. Steaks from Australia were rated lower for overall acceptability, and bids were lower than for the U.S. steak samples. Dry-aging methods negatively impacted taste panel ratings and bids.


I will be having a solo exhibition at the Barony Centre in West Kilbride in May 2018 of some new works I have been developing over the past 12 months. The work is based on research I have been looking into around the expansion of refugee camps as a result of conflict in a number of parts of the world. This is the first solo exhibition I have undertaken for quite some time and features the first new work made after losing the majority of my research and practice in the Mackintosh Building fire in May 2014.

The origins of this work are rooted in reading Native Land, Stop Eject, a catalogue to accompany the exhibition of the same name at Fondation Cartier in Paris in 2008. This exhibition was conceived by filmmaker Raymond Depardon and urbanist and philosopher Paul Virilio and explores notions of identity and sedentariness. It comments-

"While the world has reached a critical moment in its history, where the environment conditions what humans do and what they will become, the exhibition Native Land, Stop Eject proposes a reflection on the notions of being rooted and uprooted, as well as related questions of identity."

I was reading this book whilst on holiday in the Greek islands in the summer of 2015 and witnessed the early stages of migration and refugees making their way from Syria and other conflict zones via Turkey and North Africa, across the Mediterranean to any beach they could make it to. This was a truly poignant moment where a grim realisation of some of the texts from Native Land was unfolding before me, seven years after the publication of this book.

This spawned a large wealth of research which resulted in me making work related to the notion of land use and the formation of 'super' refugee camps, Za'atari and Azraq in Jordan and more recently Kutapulong in Bangladesh. These camps have been conceived as temporary places but are fast becoming permanent due to the ongoing conflicts in the respective countries. I am interested in the architecture of the buildings, the attempts by UNHCR to provide some form of shelter and the financial, political and human rights issues associated with housing and the relocation of these displaced people back to their own lands.

As part of disseminating the ideas I will be working with the local Primary school in West Kilbride, whereby the children will be making their own versions of refugee camps based on a printed template I will give to them. They will be gathering their own materials, recycling and rubbish and will collage this on to the templates to be included alongside my own work in the exhibition.We will run workshops with volunteers to help with the cutting and fabrication of the new shelters the children create.


: Its author ever hopeful of abandoning nature-culture or nature-society, this brief sketch is an attempt to understand some part of the dyad. It fishes among materials on biological relatedness, ideas about reproduction, and configurations of kinship that might amount to a naturalist cosmology, detectable among other things in the problems it generates. There is nothing new in apprehending how much of society was already 'in' the nature that came to be distinguished from it. However, the anthropologist's net has its own gauge, and thus the argument at once depends on historical niceties and disregards them. What gets caught in the mesh flung over this huge area are certain issues concerning identity and individuality. These demand a closer inquiry into the character of the relations being supposed, the matter with which the article opens.


Image segmentation is an important step in image processing, with many applications such as pattern recognition, object detection, and medical image analysis. It is a technique that separates objects of interests from the background in an image. Geometric active contour is a recent image segmentation method that overcomes previous problems with snakes. It is an attractive method for medical image segmentation as it is able to capture the object of interest in one continuous curve. The theory and implementation details of geometric active contours are discussed in this work. The robustness of the algorithm is tested through a series of tests, involving both synthetic images and medical images. Curve leaking past boundaries is a common problem in cases of non-ideal edges. Noise is also problematic for the advancement of the curve. Smoothing and parameters selection are discussed as ways to help solve these problems. This work also explores the incorporation of the multi-resolution method of Gaussian pyramids into the algorithm. Multi-resolution methods, used extensively in the areas of denoising and edge-selection, can help capture the spatial structure of an image. Results show that similar to the multi-resolution methods applied to parametric active contours, the multi-resolution can greatly increase the computation without sacrificing performance. In fact, results show that with successive smoothing and sub-sampling, performance often improves. Although smoothing and parameter adjustment help improve the performance of geometric active contours, the edge-based approach is still localized and the improvement is limited. Regionbased approaches are recommended for further work on active contours.


This project has been devoted to design a computer system with a tangible user interface, in the context of future supervision of remote dropin dialysis patients. The tangible computer system was developed as an example of how two concepts in human work, accountability and awareness, can be supported through tangible user interfaces. A current trend within CSCW discusses accountability in design in terms of how software should make its own actions accountable. We choose to use an alternative route, namely to use the tangible interface for explicating nurses and patients actions for each other. Explicating actions is key benefit with a tangible interface in work environments that is physical colocated. We conclude that our strategy can be investigated further in settings where the work is carried out in a physical colocated space.


Traditional methods for estimating the solar energy potential in buildings determine energy yields on an annual base and make use of highly aggregated geo-spatial data. This work proposes a method for detailed assessment of the potential solar energy yield in the temporal and spatial domain. Solar irradiance is evaluated using numerical methods based on hourly variation of solar irradiance and on actual building geometry. Results of our initial studies allow exploration of the variation patterns in solar yield depending on local and time-varying factors, which cannot be seen in coarse level solar planning tools. This helps identifying surfaces with good solar yield that are deemed unfavorable according to traditional planning practices.


PURPOSE
The biology of HIV-associated cancers may differ depending on immunologic and virologic context during development. Therefore, an understanding of the burden of Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) relative to antiretroviral therapy (ART), virologic suppression, and CD4 count is important.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
KS and NHL diagnoses during 1996 to 2011 were identified among patients with HIV infection in eight clinical cohorts in the United States. Among patients in routine HIV clinical care, the proportion of cases in categories of ART use, HIV RNA, and CD4 count at diagnosis were described across calendar time. Person-time and incidence rates were calculated for each category.

RESULTS
We identified 466 patients with KS and 258 with NHL. In recent years, KS was more frequently diagnosed after ART initiation (55% in 1996 to 2001 v 76% in 2007 to 2011; P-trend = .02). The proportion of patients with NHL who received ART was higher but stable over time (83% overall; P-trend = .81). An increasing proportion of KS and NHL occurred at higher CD4 counts (P < .05 for KS and NHL) and with undetectable HIV RNA (P < .05 for KS and NHL). In recent years, more person-time was contributed by patients who received ART, had high CD4 counts and had undetectable HIV RNA, whereas incidence rates in these same categories remained stable or declined.

CONCLUSION
Over time, KS and NHL occurred at higher CD4 counts and lower HIV RNA values, and KS occurred more frequently after ART initiation. These changes were driven by an increasing proportion of patients with HIV who received effective ART, had higher CD4 counts, and had suppressed HIV RNA and not by increases in cancer risk within these subgroups. An improved understanding of HIV-associated cancer pathogenesis and outcomes in the context of successful ART is therefore important.


As laboratories round the world produce ever-greater volumes of DNA sequence data, efficient computational analysis techniques are becoming essential. This article surveys several efforts that apply machine learning techniques to gene recognition. Machine learning methods are well suited to sequence analysis because they can learn useful descriptions of genetic concepts when given only instances, rather than explicit definitions, of those concepts. This article looks at several such approaches to gene recognition in two broad classes: search by signal and search by content.<<ETX>>


The aim of the study is to evaluate the economic-financial performance of a sample of 236 Italian companies in relation to their environmental performance, measured in terms of CO2 emissions normalized by company turnover. In addition to the company's economic management, the analysis also considers the equity structure and company liquidity, over a period of 6 years (2008-2013). The analysis involves the creation of four maps of positioning, serving to represent the companies of the sample in relation to their different attitudes: (i) Green efficiency, (ii) operational efficiency, (iii) company profitability, (iv) financial viability, (v) company liquidity. The examination of positioning maps also serves in identifying extreme cases, meaning the totally inefficient and the "virtuous" companies, and for conducting sectoral analyses to evaluate potential relations between company performances and the characteristics of their industrial sector.


The prostate is conventionally divided into zones. Prostate adenocarcinoma (CaP) is commonly confined to the peripheral zone. Cytochrome P-450 (CYP) isoenzymes are constitutively expressed and inducible enzymes, many of which are involved in hormone and carcinogen hydroxylation. These include the CYP1A1, CYP1A2 and CYP1B1 isoforms. Human prostates (n 5 12) were obtained, with ethical approval, from radical retropubic prostatectomies. Study participants exhibited low PSA (520 mg/l serum) and low volume of disease (5two/eight core biopsies positive for CaP). Following resection, tissue sets consisting of peripheral zone and transition zone were isolated from a lobe pre-operatively identified as negative for CaP. Real-time RT-PCR was employed to quantitatively examine CYP1A1, CYP1A2 and CYP1B1. CYP1A1 expression was quantifiable in either or both zones of nine tissue sets and was unquantifiable in three others. In six tissue sets, higher levels of CYP1A1 expression were observed in the transition zone compared to the peripheral zone. CYP1A2, although detectable, was not quantifiably expressed. CYP1B1 expression was detected in both zones of all tissue sets examined. Interindividual variation in CYP1B1 expression levels in peripheral zone (0.5--2-fold) and transition zone (0.5--5-fold) were noted. In ten tissue sets found to be cancer free, CYP1B1 expression was 2- to 6-fold higher in the peripheral zone compared to the transition zone. In the remaining two tissue sets, CYP1B1 expression was approximately equal in both zones; histopathology showed CaP in one of the zones. CYP1B1 preferentially catalyses the 4-hydroxylation of 17b-oestradiol, metabolically activates exogenous procarcinogens and inactivates anticancer agents. Our results suggest that CYP1B1 may influence susceptibility to CaP.


From one of twentieth-century China's greatest writers and the author of Lust, Caution, this is an unforgettable story of a love affair set in 1930s Shanghai. Manzhen is a young worker in a Shanghai factory, where she meets Shijun, the son of wealthy merchants. Despite family complications, they fall in love and begin to dream of a shared life together - until circumstances force them apart. When they are reunited after a separation of many years, can they start their relationship again? Or is it destined to be the romance of only half a lifetime? This affectionate and captivating novel tells the moving story of an enduring love affair, and offers a fascinating window onto Chinese life in the first half of the twentieth century. Eileen Chang was born in Shanghai in 1920. She studied literature at the University of Hong Kong but returned to Shanghai in 1941 during the Japanese occupation, where she established her reputation as a literary star. She moved to America in 1955 and died in Los Angeles in 1995. Karen S. Kingsbury taught and studied in Chinese-speaking cities for nearly two decades, and currently lives in Pennsylvania, USA. She has translated Love in a Fallen City for Penguin Classics, as well as other essays and stories by Chang. "A giant of modern Chinese literature". (The New York Times). "Eileen Chang is the fallen angel of Chinese literature". (Ang Lee). "A dazzling and distinctive fiction writer". (New York Times Book Review). "Chang's world is a stark and mysterious place where people strive to find their way in love but often fail under the pressures of family, tradition, and reputation". (New Yorker).


The goal of this guide is to help language educators develop surveys that produce useful information for evaluation in language programs. To that end, survey methods are situated within a method of evaluation that emphasizes use and usefulness (Norris & Watanabe, 2011; Patton, 2008). This approach is explicitly geared to ensure that evaluations impact programs in the ways stakeholders desire. By undertaking survey methods in this way, people who do evaluation in their programs will be more likely to use survey findings for understanding and improvement.


Two software development hurdles to advancing real-world operationalization of satellite datasets for water management are addressed in this study. First, a simple, easy-to-build and open-source web portal connecting to a back-end complex model is developed for resource-constrained developing nations. Second, to enhance the skill of satellite-based predictions, an innovative and dynamic web analytics-based correction system is developed to reduce the uncertainty of satellite estimates. The correction system comprises dynamic precipitation bias correction and streamflow correction. Dynamically web crawled in-situ hydrologic data pertaining to the region are used to estimate satellite estimation bias. These corrected datasets are finally shared through the web portal. On average, these dynamic correction techniques reduced root mean squared error in streamflow by 80–90% for the case of South Asian river basins. The take-home message is that it is now possible to build cost-effective operational web portals based on satellite data and non-proprietary software.


Mountain search and rescue in the Alps of Austria and Switzerland is a prominent and challenging example of emergency response tasks. Significant numbers of search and rescue operations are carried out every year. In Switzerland, the "Alpine Rettung" in 2001 served 12'739 mission hours in 431 missions. Of these, 8'193 hours were spent on search missions. 17'229 members served a total of 40'720 hours. Operating in small teams, rescue personnel have to be coordinated overlarge areas, often in rough terrain and adverse weather conditions. Additional assets like helicopters or reconnaissance planes are called in on demand. Operations control typically used a mobile command post (car or van), that is driven close to the area. Due to the number of such tasks and complexity of operations, often with human lives at stake, there is significant demand for assistance by state-of-the-art technology. Key tasks of support are, on the one hand, position, situation and intent reporting of field teams to operations control. On the other hand, operations control needs to forward to field teams operational orders and assistance information, e-g- actual visual or thermal overhead imagery. Thus, there is an important need to exchange data between field teams and operations control ! The purpose of the SARFOS project is to develop a so-called forward emergency response coordination and communication system using a combination of latest technology in the field of integrated satellite and terrestrial communication, navigation and information databases. The answer to the demand identified during requirements analysis is to define, implement and finally demonstrate a prototype system, designed especially for and in cooperation with key mountain rescue services.


Background: In many developed countries, associations have been documented between higher levels of area unemployment and workforce exit, mainly for disability pension receipt. Health of individuals is assumed to be the primary driver of this relationship, but no study has examined whether health explains or modifies this relationship. Methods: We used data from 98 756 Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study members who were aged 40–69 and working in 2001, to assess whether their odds of identifying as sick/disabled or retired in 2011 differed by local authority area unemployment in 2001, change in local area unemployment from 2001 to 2011 and individual reported health in 2001 (self-rated and limiting long-term illness). Results: Higher local area unemployment and worse self-rated health measures in 2001 were independently related to likelihood of identifying as sick-disabled or retired, compared to being in work, 10 years later, after adjusting for socio-demographic covariates. Associations for local area unemployment were stronger for likelihood of identification as sick/disabled compared to retired in 2011. Associations for changes in local area unemployment from 2001 to 2011 were only apparent for likelihood of identifying as retired. For respondents that identified as sick/disabled in 2011, effects of local area unemployment in 2001 were stronger for respondents who had better self-rated health in 2001. Conclusions: Strategies to retain older workers may be most effective if targeted toward areas of high unemployment. For persons in ill health, local area unemployment interventions alone will not be as efficient in reducing their exit from the workforce.


Although previous molecular dynamics studies proposed the existence of Zr-centered Frank-Kasper Z16 structures in Cu-Zr metallic glasses, it cannot be concluded yet, owing to the degeneracy problem of the Voronoi index and the artifact in sets of potentials for Cu-Zr systems. We solve both problems by combining a recently developed Finnis-Sinclair potentials to generate realistic atomic structures and the ${p}_{3}$ code to properly differentiate local structures. In previous studies, the Voronoi index $\ensuremath{\langle}0,0,12,4\ensuremath{\rangle}$ was typically associated with Frank-Kasper Z16 local structures. However, we demonstrate that this index includes two types of polyhedra, only one of which is associated with the Frank-Kasper Z16 structures. We reveal that the Z16 structures are more frequent than the other structures and that the two have different behaviors. The tendency of Zr-centered Z16 local structures to be neighbors of Cu-centered icosahedral local structures is also confirmed. Our findings illustrate the importance of properly differentiating local structures in order to elucidate the behavior of metallic glasses at the atomic scale.


Intra-articular anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) cysts are rare, the pathogenesis remains unknown, with trauma often implicated. Often asymptomatic, incidental MRI findings, 11% produce symptoms such as pain, locking or instability. Treatment of intra-articular ganglia differs from the traditional 'bash it with a bible' mantra for ganglia elsewhere with surgical debridement generally indicated for symptomatic cases. This case report describes a 43-year-old male car mechanic who presented with a symptomatic ACL cyst diagnosed on MRI. While waiting for surgery the patient fell up his stairs at home, causing forced hyperflexion of his knee. After an initial sharp pain, within 24 h the patient experienced complete resolution of symptoms. Postfall MRI showed no evidence of the initial lesion, leading to our conclusion that for this patient, a fall up the stairs was the equivalent of 'bashing it with a bible' for an ACL ganglion cyst of the knee.


The build system of a software project is responsible for transforming source code and other development artifacts into executable programs and deliverables. Similar to source code, build system specifications require maintenance to cope with newly implemented features, changes to imported Application Program Interfaces (APIs), and source code restructuring. In this paper, we mine the version histories of one proprietary and nine open source projects of different sizes and domain to analyze the overhead that build maintenance imposes on developers. We split our analysis into two dimensions: (1) Build Coupling, i.e., how frequently source code changes require build changes, and (2) Build Ownership, i.e., the proportion of developers responsible for build maintenance. Our results indicate that, despite the difference in scale, the build system churn rate is comparable to that of the source code, and build changes induce more relative churn on the build system than source code changes induce on the source code. Furthermore, build maintenance yields up to a 27% overhead on source code development and a 44% overhead on test development. Up to 79% of source code developers and 89% of test code developers are significantly impacted by build maintenance, yet investment in build experts can reduce the proportion of impacted developers to 22% of source code developers and 24% of test code developers.


Access to Health Information and Health Care Decision Making of Women in a Rural Appalachian Community By Tracy L. LeGrow Access to health care is a challenge in rural communities. Higher rates of chronic illness and poor use of preventive health practices combine to increase mortality rates among residents of rural areas. The health status of residents of West Virginia is among the poorest in the United States. The current study utilizes both quantitative and qualitative methodology, including the use of surveys, participant observation and ethnographic interviews, to explore the health status, beliefs and social support of women in a rural Appalachian community. Seven major themes were identified relevant to women's experiences with health care: Definitions of Health, Barriers and Aides to Obtaining Health Care, Attitude Towards Health Care, Faith's Role, Environmental Factors, Home Remedies and Sources of Information. Health was defined as including both physical and mental health factors. Relationships and personal responsibility for one's own health were seen as important. Barriers identified included lack of night and weekend coverage, cultural differences between providers and patients, fear of hearing negative news and the implications of substance abuse in the community. The use of a health care consumer approach to health care was seen as helpful in terms of getting one's needs met and was often developed as the result of becoming a mother. The impact of faith on health care yielded mixed results. Concerns regarding the impact of coal mining on health were identified as an area of concern. Home remedies were utilized often as a part of managing health and this was consistent with the importance of family as a source of support and of information regarding health. Implications for alternative methods of service delivery are offered.


This unique book provides a comprehensive review of the latest science on a key aspect of appetite control. It brings together contributions by leading researchers worldwide who approach this complex, multifaceted issue from a variety of differing perspectives, including those of food science, psychology, nutrition, and medicine, among others.

It is well known that products that require greater oral processing tend to be more sating. At the same time, the orosensory exposure hypothesis holds that flavor and texture in the mouth are critical in determining meal-size. They may act as key predictors of nutritional benefits and so promote better processing of foods. These two related ideas are at the forefront of current thinking on flavor-satiety interactions. Yet, until Flavor, Satiety and Food Intake no book has offered an integrated treatment of both concepts. The only single-source reference of its kind, it brings health professionals, product developers, and students up to speed on the latest thinking and practices in this fascinating and important area of research.

•Provides readers with a unique and timely summary of critical recent developments in research on the impact of flavor on satiety

•Explores a topic of central importance both for food professionals seeking to develop healthier products and health professionals concerned with obesity and over-eating

•Brings together relevant topics from the fields of food science, psychology, nutrition and medicine

Flavor, Satiety and Food Intake provides product developers with valuable information on how to integrate sensory evaluation with product formulation and marketing. It will also serve as a useful resource for health professionals and is a must-read for students of a range of disciplines in which appetite and satiety are studied.


SUMMARY 1. Diurnal variations in urine calcium oxalate and calcium phosphate activity products were observed in normal men and patients with recurrent calcium oxalate or mixed oxalatephosphate renal stones. 2. Maximum and minimum calcium oxalate products were higher in the patients than in the controls, the difference being most marked in the patients with calcium oxalate stones. 3. Maximum and minimum calcium phosphate products expressed as octocalcium phosphate [(Ca,H2(P04),], brushite or hydroxyapatite, were significantly higher than normal in the patients with mixed stones but not in the patients with calcium oxalate stones. 4. The raised calcium oxalate products in the patients were due mainly to increased concentrations of Ca2+ ions; these, in turn, were due mainly to an increased rate of excretion of calcium. Raised calcium phosphate products were due mainly to hypercalciuria, combined with abnormally high urine pH values. 5. Patients with recurrent calcium stones appear to fall into two types: (1) patients with calcium oxalate stones associated with hypercalciuria, a normal or raised urine oxalate and a normal urine pH; (2) patients with mixed oxalatephosphate stones associated with hypercalciuria, a normal or raised urine oxalate and a raised urine pH. 6. The implications of these findings in regard to treatment are discussed.


Cross-entropy loss together with softmax is arguably one of the most common used supervision components in convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Despite its simplicity, popularity and excellent performance, the component does not explicitly encourage discriminative learning of features. In this paper, we propose a generalized large-margin softmax (L-Softmax) loss which explicitly encourages intra-class compactness and inter-class separability between learned features. Moreover, L-Softmax not only can adjust the desired margin but also can avoid overfitting. We also show that the L-Softmax loss can be optimized by typical stochastic gradient descent. Extensive experiments on four benchmark datasets demonstrate that the deeply-learned features with L-softmax loss become more discriminative, hence significantly boosting the performance on a variety of visual classification and verification tasks.


BACKGROUND
The loss of normal ambulatory function after stroke, besides causing disability, leads to progressive deconditioning and exposes patients to increased risk of cardiovascular diseases and recurrent stroke. Conventional rehabilitation is mainly limited to the subacute period after stroke. Effective, safe and sustainable interventions for patients and healthcare system, including the long-term, should be identified.

AIM
To verify the feasibility, safety and preliminary efficacy of an original home-based rehabilitation model compared to a standard supervised program in chronic hemiplegic stroke survivors.

DESIGN
Pilot, two-arm, parallel group, randomized, controlled clinical trial.

SETTING
Community-dwelling poststroke patient/Hospital.

POPULATION
Twelve chronic hemiplegic stroke patients (age=66.5±11.9 years, males, N.=9).

METHODS
Participants were randomly assigned for a 10-week period to a structured home-based exercise program (N.=6) and a standard supervised group-setting program (N.=6). The feasibility outcomes included adherence to interventions, retention rate and safety. Satisfaction was also evaluated by the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire. Efficacy was assessed by the 6-minute walk test, Timed Up and Go and Stair Climb tests. The impact on Quality-of-life was estimated using the physical activity domain of the Short Form-36 questionnaire. Operators' time consuming was also calculated.

RESULTS
Adherence was 91% in the home-based exercise group and 92% in the standard supervised group. The retention rate was 100%, with no adverse events reported and high satisfaction scores for both interventions. 6-minute walk test and physical activity domain significantly increased in both groups (P=0.03). Timed Up and Go improved in both groups, significantly for the home-based exercise group (P=0.03) while Stair Climb remained stable. Time required to operators to implement the home-based exercise program was 15 hours vs. 30 hours for the standard supervised one.

CONCLUSIONS
In a sample of hemiplegic chronic stroke patients, a structured home-based exercise program was feasible, safe and capable of inducing improvements in functional capacity and Quality-of-life comparable to a conventional supervised rehabilitation program A future larger randomized controlled trial will be needed to confirm such results.

CLINICAL REHABILITATION IMPACT
With the limitation of a small sample size, the study suggested that a home-based program for chronic stroke might be an effective alternative to traditional supervised programs with the peculiarity of being sustainable for patients and healthcare system.


In order to construct scientifically reasoning artifacts we not only have to close the loop between hypothesis generation and evaluation but also to make the system embodied. To genuinely understand scientific insights, "robot scientists" need to represent scientific knowledge within their own representational structure rather than in terms of a priori defined logical propositions. Two main features of such systems are identified: projective constructivism that reverses the flow of information processing, and cognitive canalization that reduces computational requirements.


Recent theory stresses the role of new job types ('new work') in counterbalancing the erosive effect of task-displacing automation on labor demand. Drawing on a novel inventory of eight decades of new job titles linked to United States Census microdata, we estimate that the majority of contemporary employment is found in new job tasks added since 1940 but that the locus of new task creation has shifted—from middle-paid production and clerical occupations in the first four post-WWII decades, to high-paid professional and, secondarily, low-paid services since 1980. We hypothesize that new tasks emerge in occupations where new innovations complement their outputs ('augmentation') or market size expands, while conversely, employment contracts in occupations where innovations substitute for labor inputs ('automation') or market size contracts. Leveraging proxies for output-augmenting and task-automating innovations built from a century of patent data and harnessing occupational demand shifts stemming from trade and demographic shocks, we show that new occupational tasks emerge in response to both positive demand shifts and augmenting innovations, but not in response to negative demand shifts or automation innovations. We document that the flow of both augmentation and automation innovations is positively correlated across occupations, yet these two faces of innovation have strongly countervailing relationships with occupational labor demand.


In this paper, we propose a novel lip-to-speech generative adversarial network, Visual Context Attentional GAN (VCA-GAN), which can jointly model local and global lip movements during speech synthesis. Specifically, the proposed VCA-GAN synthesizes the speech from local lip visual features by finding a mapping function of viseme-to-phoneme, while global visual context is embedded into the intermediate layers of the generator to clarify the ambiguity in the mapping induced by homophene. To achieve this, a visual context attention module is proposed where it encodes global representations from the local visual features, and provides the desired global visual context corresponding to the given coarse speech representation to the generator through audio-visual attention. In addition to the explicit modelling of local and global visual representations, synchronization learning is introduced as a form of contrastive learning that guides the generator to synthesize a speech in sync with the given input lip movements. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed VCA-GAN outperforms existing state-of-the-art and is able to effectively synthesize the speech from multi-speaker that has been barely handled in the previous works.


Background and Aim: Yogurt is one of the most consumed foods with different probiotic effects. The aim of this study was to evaluate antimicrobial effects of non-industrial yogurts on two common enteropathogens – Salmonella and Shigella. Methods: In this experimental study, we evaluated the antimicrobial effects of 30 various non-industrial yogurt samples on 11 Shigella sonnei, 7 Shigella flexneri, 2 Shigella boydii, and 15 Salmonella enteritidis isolates. All bacterial isolates were locally isolated from patients suffering from diarrhea. Using the well diffusion method, we evaluated the antimicrobial effect of whey protein from yogurt before and after 24 hours incubation at 42°C. The data was analyzed using independent t test and chi-square in SPSS (version 11.5). P value less than 0.05 was considered significant. Results: None of the yogurts had antimicrobial effect on Shigella and Salmonella isolates before 24 hours incubation at 42°C. After incubation, however, 9 (30%) and 12 (40%) samples out of the 30 yogurt samples showed antimicrobial effects on 25%-50% and less than 25% of isolates, respectively. Six yogurt samples (20%) did not have any antimicrobial effects. Only 1 yogurt sample exhibited antimicrobial effect on more than 50% of the tested isolates. Conclusion: Our results suggested that some samples of non-industrial yogurts have an antibacterial effect on Shigella and Salmonella. However, neither of them had an influence on more than 51.5% of isolates. Therefore, reliance on yogurt as a standalone treatment is not recommended.


It is oftentimes the case that a frequent Web surfer, wishing to find something 'specific' to his or her particular search query, is presented with a vast number of possible search matches, out of which only a few are pertinent to what the surfer actually desires. If the machine knows what semantic data, not syntactic, is being provided on a Web page, then it can present the user with richer information and more accurate search results. A solution is to make use of the technologies that aim to achieve the vision of the 'the semantic Web' technology. This research is to use meta data (XML) in Web pages and manipulating it using RDF, through aids from an ontology and intelligent agents would make information content machine understandable and facilitate search facilities.


It is clear that a banking union at the European level is a gain, but it is not a solution for all the problems that have been revealed by the last financial crisis. Although the Single Rulebook uniforms banks' risks management and micro-prudential supervision, the macro-prudential components contained are reduced and academically challenged. The question of Member States outside the Eurozone on the participation within the Single Supervisory Mechanism is when is the right moment and not if, since there is an implicit horizon for joining the Eurozone and thus to the mechanism. For these Member States, where the banking system is dominated by banking groups supervised by the European Central Bank, entering into a close cooperation with the Single Supervisory Mechanism does not appear to be a necessity, given that national supervision authorities are applying the Single Rulebook, and cooperation between national authorities and the European Central Bank is clearly established.


The world history book to define all others, "National Geographic Visual History of the World" is a classic in the making. No other volume offers such a comprehensive and richly illustrated chronicle of world events, from the construction of the Pyramids to the overthrow of the Taliban. Readers see how momentous happenings, personalities, catastrophes, discoveries, and inventions unfold in a visually stimulating layout. Four eight-page gatefolds bring to life major events of world history and thousands of paintings, photographs and illustrations depict subjects ranging from the Roman Empire to the Reformation, World War II, to the war in Afghanistan. A timeline at the bottom of every page highlights the most important events, names, and dates of the era, and color-coded cross-referencing helps point readers to other applicable sections. Ideal for people who prefer to flip through books at random, this highly accessible resource contains sidebars on the great religions, influential ideologies, and other topics, as well as biographies of world leaders and notable personalities in the arts and humanities. "National Geographic Visual History of the World" is an indispensable, impressive, and extravagantly illustrated reference of social, cultural, and military history in one volume. It is a must-have for all families, armchair historians, and serious scholars alike.


Extravascular transport of fluorescein isothiocyanate-conjugated bovine serum albumin and a graded series of fluorescein isothiocyanate-dextrans from Mr 19,400 to 71,800 were studied in both normal tissue (granulation) and tumor (VX2 carcinoma) grown in a rabbit ear chamber. Sodium fluorescein was used as a representative small molecule. A one-dimensional diffusion model adequately described extravascular transport in both normal and tumor tissue. Measured diffusion coefficients showed a relationship with molecular size which progressively deviates from that of free diffusion in water, with values for albumin being significantly reduced from that for a dextran of equivalent size. Macromolecular transport in tumor tissue was hindered to a lesser extent than in normal tissue, which is consistent with reports of reduced contents of glycosaminoglycans, and markedly large interstitial space in tumors. Diffusion coefficients for dextran were found to vary with molecular weight according to the expression, D = a(Mr)b, in both normal tissue (a = 10(6) and b = -2.96) and tumor (a = 2.51 X 10(-2) and b = 1.14).


The research work presented in this thesis describes the development and testing of a new data analysis methodology for the automated near real-time detection and approximate location of pipe bursts and other events which induce similar abnormal pressure/flow variations (e.g., unauthorised consumptions, equipment failures, etc.) in Water Distribution Systems (WDSs). This methodology makes synergistic use of several self-learning Artificial Intelligence (AI) and statistical/geostatistical techniques for the analysis of the stream of data (i.e., signals) collected and communicated on-line by the hydraulic sensors deployed in a WDS. These techniques include: (i) wavelets for the de-noising of the recorded pressure/flow signals, (ii) Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) for the short-term forecasting of future pressure/flow signal values, (iii) Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) for the selection of optimal ANN input structure and parameters sets, (iv) Statistical Process Control (SPC) techniques for the short and long term analysis of the burst/other event-induced pressure/flow variations, (v) Bayesian Inference Systems (BISs) for inferring the probability of a burst/other event occurrence and raising the detection alarms, and (vi) geostatistical techniques for determining the approximate location of a detected burst/other event. The results of applying the new methodology to the pressure/flow data from several District Metered Areas (DMAs) in the United Kingdom (UK) with real-life bursts/other events and simulated (i.e., engineered) burst events are also reported in this thesis. The results obtained illustrate that the developed methodology allowed detecting the aforementioned events in a fast and reliable manner and also successfully determining their approximate location within a DMA. The results obtained additionally show the potential of the methodology presented here to yield substantial improvements to the state-of-the-art in near real-time WDS incident management by enabling the water companies to save water, energy, money, achieve higher levels of operational efficiency and improve their customer service. The new data analysis methodology developed and tested as part of the research work presented in this thesis has been patented (International Application Number: PCT/GB2010/000961).


Software development is an expert task that requires complex reasoning and the ability to recall language or API-specific details. In practice, developers often seek support from IDE tools, Web resources, or other developers to help fill in gaps in their knowledge on-demand. In this paper, we present two studies that seek to inform the design of future systems that use remote experts to support developers on demand. The first explores what types of questions developers would ask a hypothetical assistant capable of answering any question they pose. The second study explores the interactions between developers and remote experts in supporting roles. Our results suggest eight key system features needed for on-demand remote developer assistants to be effective, which has implications for future human-powered development tools.


In the Constitution Act, 1982, the federal government and the provinces made a bargain regarding Senate reform: while Parliament should be allowed to make minor changes to the Senate unilaterally, certain specified changes, including changes to the method of selecting Senators, would require provincial consent. This bargain reflects the fact that Senate reform would affect both federal and provincial interests, given the Senate's dual roles as a house of the federal Parliament and, at least ideally, as a means by which provincial and regional interests can be represented in Ottawa. The Harper government's efforts to unilaterally provide for the election of "Senate nominees," most recently via Bill C-7, would subvert this bargain. This comment argues that this proposal is unconstitutional, and will likely be held to be such by the Supreme Court of Canada in the upcoming Senate reform reference. It also argues, however, that the Harper government's proposal to impose non-renewable term limits on Senators is constitutional and would not upset the bargain laid out in the 1982 Act. Finally, this article argues more broadly that preserving the role that the 1982 Act guaranteed to the provinces in shaping Senate reform is the best way to uphold not only the text of the Constitution, but the principles of democracy and federalism that undergird it.


It is assumed that gender plays a significant role in determining the conflict resolution style of an individual, although some studies dismiss such a notion. In this paper, the author has tried to explore the relationship between gender and conflict resolution styles among aspiring Indian managers. Indeed it is imperative to develop a gender perspective on conflict resolution styles considering the fast changing composition of Indian workforce, where women occupy important positions across levels and industries. Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument was administered on aspiring Indian managers (i. e. the full-time management students, for the purpose of the study) in order to find out the patterns of conflict resolution styles based on their genders. Further, descriptive statistics was used to find out the most preferred style of leadership by males and females. T-test was used to find out the significant difference amongst the two genders in the usage of various conflict resolution styles. The empirical results revealed that the aspiring Indian managers generally adopt accommodating style of conflict resolution, followed by avoiding style, irrespective of their gender. Moreover, there is a significant difference in the competing style of conflict resolution mode between the two genders. Males are more competing than females – a phenomenon that may be attributed to the socio-cultural milieu and Indian ethos.


Image registration has received great attention from researchers over the last few decades. SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transform), a local descriptor-based technique is widely used for registering and matching images. To establish correspondences between images, SIFT uses a Euclidean Distance ratio metric. However, this approach leads to a lot of incorrect matches and eliminating these inaccurate matches has been a challenge. Various methods have been proposed attempting to mitigate this problem. In this paper, we propose a scale and orientation harmony-based pruning method that improves image matching process by successfully eliminating incorrect SIFT descriptor matches. Moreover, our technique can predict the image transformation parameters based on a novel adaptive clustering method with much higher matching accuracy. Our experimental results have shown that the proposed method has achieved averages of approximately 16% and 10% higher matching accuracy compared to the traditional SIFT and a contemporary method respectively.


This monograph is the first comprehensive and independent analysis of Human Libraries (formerly Living Libraries) in Australia. 'Human Libraries' refers to an innovative social inclusion community initiative developed in Europe that is increasingly being adopted by public libraries across Australia, and some community groups and government agencies. The report provides an overview of Human Library practices and identifies key challenges for policymakers and practitioners. It also contributes to scholarly debates on anti-racism work and on the benefits and limits of cross-cultural contact or dialogue within that work. 'Human Libraries Australia' is a national strategy for connecting and strengthening local communities through one-on-one conversation between Living Books (generally people facing prejudice within a community) and Readers (members of the general public). 'Human Libraries Australia' is funded by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and actively supported by the Australian Library and Information Association. In this monograph we document the aims, history and key practices of Human Libraries in Australia, and provide discussion points for people involved.


Many state-machine Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocols have been introduced so far. Each protocol addressed a different subset of conditions and use-cases. However, if the underlying conditions of a service span different subsets, choosing a single protocol will likely not be a best fit. This yields robustness and performance issues which may be even worse in services that exhibit fluctuating conditions and workloads. In this paper, we reconcile existing state-machine BFT protocols in a single adaptive BFT system, called ADAPT, aiming at covering a larger set of conditions and use-cases, probably the union of individual subsets of these protocols. At anytime, a launched protocol in ADAPT can be aborted and replaced by another protocol according to a potential change (an event) in the underlying system conditions. The launched protocol is chosen according to an "evaluation process" that takes into consideration both: protocol characteristics and its performance. This is achieved by applying some mathematical formulas that match the profiles of protocols to given user (e.g., service owner) preferences. ADAPT can assess the profiles of protocols (e.g., throughput) at run-time using Machine Learning prediction mechanisms to get accurate evaluations. We compare ADAPT with well known BFT protocols showing that it outperforms others as system conditions change and under dynamic workloads.


Abstract. The density of rain gauges in many regions is lower than standard. Therefore, there are no precise estimates of precipitation in such regions. Today the use of satellite data to overcome this deficiency is increasing day to day. Unfortunately, the results from different satellite products also show a significant difference. Hence, their evaluation and validation are very important. The main objective of this study is to investigate the accuracy of the daily precipitation data of TRMM-3B42 V7 and PERSIANN-CDR satellites under a case study in the southern slopes of Alborz mountains, Iran. For this purpose, satellite precipitation data were compared with ground measured precipitation data of 12 synoptic stations over a 15- year period. The statistical criteria of MAE, RMSE, and Bias were used to assess error and the statistical indices of POD, FAR, and CSI was used to evaluate the recognition rate of occurrence or non-occurrence of precipitation. The results showed that there is a low correlation between satellite precipitation data and ground measured precipitation data, and the lowest and the highest values of correlation coefficient are from 0.228 to 0.402 for TRMM and from 0.047 to 0.427 for PERSIANN, respectively. However, there is a theoretical consensus on other assessment parameters, so that TRMM data is preferable in terms of the amount of data bias and the False Alarm Ratio (FAR) and PERSIANN data is superior in terms of RMSE, POD, and CSI. Also, it seems that in the study region, both of TRMM and PERSIANN have overestimated the number of daily precipitation events, so that the number of daily precipitation events was estimated about 125% and 200% of ground stations by TRMM and PERSIANN, respectively.


Occupancy models were used to identify environmental parameters that best predicted the prevalence of four functionally important focal stream taxa: Tallaperla spp. (stonefly), Cambarus spp. (crayfish), Pleurocera proxima (snail), and Cottus bairidi (mottled sculpin). The study was conducted on a landscape scale within the Upper Little Tennessee River Basin (in thirty-seven streams reaches draining catchments between 18-1670 ha, within a 1,130 km 2 area). The estimated proportion of patches occupied within a reach was used as a measure of focal taxon prevalence and thirty-four models were used to examine the relative association of environmental parameters with taxon occupancy. The prevalence of all four taxa was associated with land cover, and Tallaperla was largely absent below a threshold of 85-90% forest cover in the watershed. Occupancy modeling has expanded our understanding of how functionally important stream consumers are influenced by environmental parameters operating at both local and regional watershed extents. INDEX WORDS: Akaike Information Criterion, Cambarus, Consumers, Cottus bairdi, Detection, Forest Loss, Habitat, Land-use, Little Tennessee River Basin, Occupancy, Pleurocera proxima, Southern Appalachians, Stream Chemistry, Tallaperla USE OF OCCUPANCY MODELS TO EXAMINE STREAM CONSUMER PREVALENCE ACROSS A LAND COVER GRADIENT IN THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS, USA


N.S.B. Gras, the father of Business History in the United States, argued that the era of mercantile capitalism was defined by the figure of the "sedentary merchant," who managed his business from home, using correspondence and intermediaries, in contrast to the earlier "traveling merchant," who accompanied his own goods to trade fairs. Taking this concept as its point of departure, this essay focuses on the predominantly Italian merchants who controlled the long-distance East-West trade of the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Until the opening of the Atlantic trade, the Mediterranean was Europe's most important commercial zone and its trade enriched European civilization and its merchants developed the most important premodern mercantile innovations, from maritime insurance contracts and partnership agreements to the bill of exchange and double-entry bookkeeping. Emerging from literate and numerate cultures, these merchants left behind an abundance of records that allows us to understand how their companies, especially the largest of them, were organized and managed. These techniques can also be put in the context of premodern attitudes toward commerce and the era's commercial-political relations. The Commercial Revolution anticipated the Industrial Revolution by over half a millennium and laid the groundwork for today's world of global business.


A common way to express sentiment about some product is by comparing it to a different product. The anchor for the comparison is a comparative predicate like "better". In this work we concentrate on the annotation of multiword predicates like "more powerful". In the single-token-based approaches which are mostly used for the automatic detection of comparisons, one of the words has to be selected as the comparative predicate. In our first experiment, we investigate the influence of this decision on the classification performance of a machine learning system and show that annotating the modifier gives better results. In the annotation conventions adopted in standard datasets for sentiment analysis, the modified adjective is annotated as the aspect of the comparison. We discuss problems with this type of annotation and propose the introduction of an additional argument type which solves the problems. In our second experiment we show that there is only a small drop in performance when adding this new argument type. 1


Objectives: This research brief explores the literature addressing quality in undergraduate education to identify what previous research has said about quality and to offer future directions for research on quality in undergraduate education.

Method: We conducted a scoping review to provide a broad overview of existing research. Using targeted search terms in academic databases, we identified and reviewed relevant academic literature to develop emergent themes and implications for future research.

Results: The exploratory review of the literature revealed a range of thoughtful discussions and empirical studies attempting to define quality in undergraduate education. Many publications highlighted the importance of including different stakeholder perspectives and presented some of the varying perceptions of quality among different stakeholders.

Conclusions: While a number of researchers have explored and written about how to define quality in undergraduate education, there is not a general consensus regarding a definition of quality in undergraduate education. Past research offers a range of insights, models, and data to inform future research.

Implication for Theory and/or Practice: We provide four recommendations for future research to contribute to a high quality undergraduate educational experience. We suggest more comprehensive systematic reviews of the literature as a next step.


Konstantinova, A.I. & Yembaturova, E.Yu.: The family Myodocarpaceae: looking at the system from the standpoint of comparative carpology. — Plant Div. Evol. 128: 347–367. 2010. — ISSN 18696155. The fruit structure of five Myodocarpus species and four Delarbrea species (Myodocarpaceae, Apiales) was studied. It was found that the species studied share several fruit structure traits, such as: dimerous gynoecium, presence of peculiar secretory cavities ("oil vesicles") and a free column separating from mericarp tissues. However, many distinctions in fruit structure of Myodocarpus and Delarbrea were also revealed: pericarp consistence (dry versus fleshy), dispersal type (anemochory versus zoochory) and details of column separation mode, presence or absence of sclereids, groups of "hydrocyte parenchyma" cells and tannins in the pericarp as well as secretory canals location pattern. Myodocarpus and Delarbrea also show some differences in the seed coat structure. Data from comparative carpology confirm that Myodocarpaceae comprises modern remnants of an ancient branch of Apiales evolutionary tree. Myodocarpus and Delarbrea, closely related to Araliaceae and Apiaceae, share some features of both families, although they are obviously distinct. Within Myodocarpaceae, Myodocarpus and Delarbrea represent different phylogenetic lineages and their fruit structure provides evidence for that. Moreover, carpological data strongly support the presence of two groups within Myodocarpus.