Purpose: The authors present ultrastructural and histologic studies of femtosecond laser incisions in human cornea. Methods: We use a CPA femtosecond laser designed to match current instrumentation for femtosecond surgery, i.e. a Nd:Glass femtosecond laser at a 1065 nm wavelength. The repetition rate is adjustable from 1 to 10 KHz, with maximum pulse energy of 60 µJ. The human cornea samples are fixed to an anterior chamber system that can be moved in 3D by micrometric precision motors in front of a fixed objective delivering the fs laser pulses. Human corneas are provided by the French Eye Bank. Laser energy range for cornea treatment goes from laser induced optical breakdown threshold up to ten time this threshold. Ultrastructural and histologic are then obtained using transmission electronic microscopy TEM and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Results: Observations of the cornea structures (i.e. epithelium, Bowman membrane, stroma, Descemet membrane and endothelium) presents no noticeable side damages like burned collagen or cells damage. Results does not vary with pulse energy (in the experimental energy range : 2 J/cm2 to 50 J/cm2) except for excessive delamination due to the shock wave propagation at high energy. Conclusions: The use of femtosecond laser pulses for keratoplasty implies use of energy higher than the one used for refractive surgery in transparent cornea. Our results demonstrate that cornea ultrastructure is not altered by this higher energy pulses opening the way to surgery in oedematous cornea.


The formal device of characterization in Chang-rae Lee's novel, The Surrendered, depicts differences between the ontology of race and the ontology of disability in ways that reveal the stakes of reading at the intersection of Asian American studies and disability studies. The Surrendered shows that in return for the privileged mantle of U.S. citizenship—which extols supersoldiers, model minority subjects, and humanitarian workers—ablenationalism demands the disavowal of impairments that are experientially rooted in supercripdom, neurodiversity, and substance addiction. The article argues that the co-articulation of race and impairment in Lee's novel suggests how intersectional reading practices can more fully explore the disability rights issues raised by racialized characters.


Nigeria has made frantic efforts towards achieving the millennium development goals (MDGs) as spelt out in the United Nations' Agenda for the world. A critical assessment of the e-Government strategies in Nigeria is important being responsible for 20% of the population of the entire African continent. This paper presents a review of the e-Government strategies in Nigeria; the human capital development initiatives; the information and communications technology (ICT) diffusion and e-Inclusion. The global and continental ranking of the country is presented as well as recommendations to accelerate developments towards achieving the MDGs. Findings revealed that there are ongoing efforts in Nigeria to address the issue of poverty. The various initiatives of government include: the National/State Economic Empowerment Strategies (NEEDS/SEEDS), the Vision 2020, the National e-Government Strategy (NeGST) and a well-formulated National IT policy to mention a few. The little hindrance encountered in the research is that the available data was only up to the year 2005 and 2006 in some cases. However, based on the human capital development indices such as: economic empowerment and poverty reduction, education, health, employment generation, etc, it was observed that the adult literacy level of 64.2% is satisfactory and better results are expected before 2015. The life expectancy level is constant (54 years) from 2002 to 2007, which is the one of the lowest in Africa. On school enrolment, the major problem is access and poverty. It was observed that only 25% of primary school leavers made it to the secondary school level, while about 14% of the students at this level made it to the tertiary level. Similarly, the average percentage of female enrolment in schools is 45%. The health facilities are under-funded and are grossly inadequate both in quality and quantity. There is an average of 1,700 persons per hospital bed and the ratio of physicians to the populace is about 1:6000. This calls for a state of emergency in this sector. One major sector of the economy that is experiencing a boost is the ICT and Telecoms. The sector had brought about a teledensity growth of 0.73 to 37.05 from 2001 to 2007. Consequently, Nigeria has been named the fastest growing Telecoms nation in Africa and the third in the world, with a number of direct and indirect jobs created. Similarly, the rate of Internet diffusion is encouraging bearing in mind that the level was almost nonexistent in 1999. It is obvious that Nigeria would be able to bridge the divide by 2015. Generally, there are some meaningful developments in the country arising from the various poverty eradication schemes but the resultant effect has not imparted positively on unemployment. This is the opinion of the populace and hence the need for government to restrategize, otherwise, fulfilling MDGs by 2015 may not be realistic.


Models for the latest stages of the cosmological evolution rely on a less solid theoretical and observational ground than the description of earlier stages like BBN and recombination. As suggested in a previous work by Vonlanthen et al., it is possible to tweak the analysis of CMB data in such way to avoid making assumptions on the late evolution, and obtain robust constraints on ''early cosmology parameters''. We extend this method in order to marginalise the results over CMB lensing contamination, and present updated results based on recent CMB data. Our constraints on the minimal early cosmology model are weaker than in a standard ΛCDM analysis, but do not conflict with this model. Besides, we obtain conservative bounds on the effective neutrino number and neutrino mass, showing no hints for extra relativistic degrees of freedom, and proving in a robust way that neutrinos experienced their non-relativistic transition after the time of photon decoupling. This analysis is also an occasion to describe the main features of the new parameter inference code MONTE PYTHON, that we release together with this paper. MONTE PYTHON is a user-friendly alternative to other public codes like COSMOMC, interfaced with the Boltzmann code CLASS.


This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Logic Programming, ICLP 2009, held in Pasadena, CA, USA, in July2009. The 29 revised full papers together with 9 short papers, 4 invited talks, 4 invited tutorials, and the abstracts of 18 doctoral consortium articles were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 initial submissions. The papers cover all issues of current research in logic programming, namely semantic foundations, formalisms, nonmonotonic reasoning, knowledge representation, compilation, memory management, virtual machines, parallelism, program analysis, program transformation, validation and verification, debugging, profiling, concurrency, objects, coordination, mobility, higher order, types, modes, programming techniques, abductive logic programming, answer set programming, constraint logic programming, inductive logic programming, alternative inference engines and mechanisms, deductive databases, data integration, software engineering, natural language, web tools, internet agents, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics


1. Eleven patients with essential hypertension and nine healthy normotensive volunteer subjects, all without a neurological disorder, had blood drawn and cerebrospinal fluid sampled for analysis of noradrenaline (NA). 2. Cerebrospinal fluid NA levels were elevated (P < 0.01) in the hypertensive patients but plasma levels of NA were similar between groups. 3. The results suggest there is noradrenergic hyperactivity in the central nervous system which is not reflected in abnormal peripheral sympathetic nervous system function in this group of patients.


State updating of distributed rainfall-runoff models via streamflow assimilation is subject to overfitting because large dimensionality of the state space of the model may render the assimilation problem seriously under-determined. To examine the issue in the context of operational hydrologic forecasting, we carried out a set of real-world experiments in which streamflow data is assimilated into the gridded Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting (SAC-SMA) and kinematic-wave routing models of the US National Weather Service (NWS) Research Distributed Hydrologic Model (RDHM) via variational data assimilation (DA). The nine study basins include four in Oklahoma and five in Texas. To assess the sensitivity of the performance of DA to the dimensionality of the control vector, we used nine different spatiotemporal adjustment scales, with which the state variables are adjusted in a lumped, semi-distributed, or distributed fashion and biases in precipitation and PE are adjusted at hourly or 6-hourly scale, or at the scale of the fast response of the basin. For each adjustment scale, three different assimilation scenarios were carried out in which streamflow observations are assumed to be available at basin interior points only, at the basin outlet only, or at all locations. The results for the nine basins show that the optimum spatiotemporal adjustment scale varies from basin to basin and between streamflow analysis and prediction for all three streamflow assimilation scenarios. The most preferred adjustment scale for seven out of the nine basins is found to be distributed and hourly. It was found that basins with highly correlated flows between interior and outlet locations tend to be less sensitive to the adjustment scale and could benefit more from streamflow assimilation. In comparison with outlet flow assimilation, interior flow assimilation produced streamflow predictions whose spatial correlation structure is more consistent with that of observed flow for all adjustment scales. We also describe diagnosing the complexity of the assimilation problem using spatial correlation of streamflow and discuss the effect of timing errors in hydrograph simulation on the performance of the DA procedure.


Intellectual property treatment of traditional or local knowledge is a major issue of contention today, particularly since the implementation of the TRIPs Agreement, which establishes minimum levels of intellectual property protection for members of the World Trade Organization. Discourse surrounding local knowledge is highly charged with accusations of "piracy" from Western countries countered with allegations of "biopiracy" from Third World countries. Flowing beneath the surface of this dialogue are multiple levels of historical experience. Intellectual property frameworks were formed in the nineteenth century during a period when evolutionary views of the development of human societies were paramount. Local knowledge was subject to devolutionary assumptions that meant that an inverse relationship was believed to exist between degree of civilization and amount of local knowledge such as folklore. As a result, local knowledge was generally not protected within national or multilateral intellectual property frameworks. This lack of protection has significant implications today in a world where such frameworks are being applied on an increasingly global basis.


Due to the wave nature of light, resolution of optical imaging systems is limited to approximately half of the wavelength. The reason behind this limitation, known as diffraction limit, is the loss of information contained in evanescent waves at the far-field region. Here, we propose a new method to retrieve the information contained in evanescent waves in far field region resulting in a novel sub-wavelength imaging technique which can go beyond the diffraction limit. We theoretically prove that using interference of waves, between the target field and reference and reconstruction waves, one can apply a shift to the angular spectrum of the target field and convert a range of evanescent waves into propagating modes. Moreover, we demonstrate how these converted waves can be distinguished in far-field from other existing modes. Unlike previously developed sub-wavelength imaging techniques, the proposed method does not require either fluorescent materials or complex nano-structures to realize evanescent-to-propagating wave conversion. The performance of the method is numerically investigated illustrating a resolution of one-seventh of the working wavelength, which is much beyond the diffraction limit. The proposed technique can significantly simplify sub-wavelength imaging paving the road to develop practical low cost super-resolution imaging systems.


The book offers a comprehensive exploration of the policy, practice and evidence base of harm reduction. Starting with a history of harm reduction, the book addresses key ethical and legal issues central to the debates and developments in the field. It discusses the full range of psychoactive substances, behaviours and communities with chapters on injecting, dance drugs, stimulant use, tobacco harm reduction, alcohol use and sex work.


[1] The initiation of the Benguela upwelling has been dated to the late Miocene, but estimates of its sea surface temperature evolution are not available. This study presents data from Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 1085 recovered from the southern Cape Basin. Samples of the middle Miocene to Pliocene were analyzed for alkenone-based (U37K′, SSTUK) and glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (GDGT) based (TEX86, TempTEX) water temperature proxies. In concordance with global cooling during the Miocene, SSTUK and TempTEX exhibit a decline of about 8°C and 16°C, respectively. The temperature trends suggest an inflow of cold Antarctic waters triggered by Antarctic ice sheet expansion and intensification of Southern Hemisphere southeasterly winds. A temperature offset between both proxies developed with the onset of upwelling, which can be explained by differences in habitat: alkenone-producing phytoplankton live in the euphotic zone and record sea surface temperatures, while GDGT-producing Thaumarchaeota are displaced to colder subsurface waters in upwelling-influenced areas and record subsurface water temperatures. We suggest that variations in subsurface water temperatures were driven by advection of cold Antarctic waters and thermocline adjustments that were due to changes in North Atlantic deep water formation. A decline in surface temperatures, an increased offset between temperature proxies, and an increase in primary productivity suggest the establishment of the Benguela upwelling at 10 Ma. During the Messinian Salinity Crisis, between 7 and 5 Ma, surface and subsurface temperature estimates became similar, likely because of a strong reduction in Atlantic overturning circulation, while high total organic carbon contents suggest a "biogenic bloom." In the Pliocene the offset between the temperature estimates and the cooling trend was reestablished.


Nuclear power plants have existed for around 60 years. Even now, following the Fukushima Daiichi Plant meltdown, they continue to be constructed; leading to the possibility of further nuclear calamity. In the event of a disaster, the resulting nuclear fallout zone can span distances of more than 30 km; but what happens to the facilities that are lucky enough to reach the end of their lifespan? What will become of all the aged nuclear facilities? As the world begins to understand the importance of looking towards renewable energy sources, there are still those that cling to the idea that nuclear energy is the answer, even here in Canada.
How can decommissioned nuclear power plants provide opportunities for renewable growth?


In the early sixteenth century, a young English sugar trader spent a night at what is now the port of Agadir in Morocco, watching from the tenuous safety of the Portuguese fort as the local tribesmen attacked the 'Moors'. Having recently departed the familiar environs of London and the Essex marshes, this was to be the first of several encounters Roger Barlow was to have with unfamiliar worlds. Barlow's family were linked to networks where the exchange of goods and ideas merged, and his contacts in Seville brought him into contact with the navigator, Sebastian Cabot. Merchants and Explorers follows Barlow and Cabot across the Atlantic to South America and back to Spain and Reformation England. Heather Dalton uses their lives as an effective narrative thread to explore the entangled Atlantic world during the first half of the sixteenth century. In doing so, she makes a critical contribution to the fields of both Atlantic and global history. Although it is generally accepted that the English were not significantly attracted to the Americas until the second half of the sixteenth century, Dalton demonstrates that Barlow, Cabot, and their cohorts had a knowledge of the world and its opportunities that was extraordinary for this period. She reveals how shared knowledge as well as the accumulation of capital in international trading networks prior to 1560 influenced emerging ideas of trade, 'discovery', settlement, and race in Britain. In doing so, Dalton not only provides a substantial new body of facts about trade and exploration, she explores the changing character of English commerce and society in the first half of the sixteenth century.


The ALMA correlator back-end consists of a cluster of 16 computing nodes and a master collector/packager node. The mission of the cluster is to process time domain lags into auto-correlations and complex visibilities, integrate them for some configurable amount of time and package them into a workable data product. Computers in the cluster are organized such that individual workloads per node are kept within achievable levels for different observing modes and antennas in the array. Over the course of an observation the master node transmits enough state information to each involved computing node to specify exactly how to process each set of lags received from the correlator. For that distributed mechanism to work, it is necessary to unequivocally identify each individual lag set arriving at each computing node. The original approach was based on a custom hardware interface to each node in the cluster plus a realtime version of the Linux Operating System. A modification recently introduced in the ALMA correlator consists of tagging each lag set with a time stamp before delivering them to the cluster. The time stamp identifies a precise 16- millisecond window during which that specific data set was streamed to the computing cluster. From the time stamp value a node is able to identify a centroid (in absolute time units), base-lines, and correlator mode during that hardware integration. That is, enough information to let the digital signal processing pipeline in each node to process time domain lags into frequency domain auto-correlations per antenna and visibilities per base-line. The scheme also means that a good degree of concurrency can be achieved in each node by having individual CPU cores process individual lag sets at the same time, thus rendering enough processing power to cope with a maximum 1 GiB/sec output from the correlator. The present paper describes how we time stamp lag sets within the correlator hardware, the implications to their on-line processing in software and the benefits that this extension has brought in terms of software maintainability and overall system simplifications.


Over the last 20 years, science education studies have reported that there are very different understandings among students of science regarding the key aspects of climate change. We used the cognitive linguistic framework of experientialism to shed new light on this valuable pool of studies to identify the conceptual resources of understanding climate change. In our study, we interviewed 35 secondary school students on their understanding of the greenhouse effect and analysed the conceptions of climate scientists as drawn from textbooks and research reports. We analysed all data by metaphor analysis and qualitative content analysis to gain insight into students' and scientists' resources for understanding. In our analysis, we found that students and scientists refer to the same schemata to understand the greenhouse effect. We categorised their conceptions into three different principles the conceptions are based on: warming by more input, warming by less output, and warming by a new equilibrium. By interrelating students' and scientists' conceptions, we identified the students' learning demand: First, our students were afforded with experiences regarding the interactions of electromagnetic radiation and CO2. Second, our students reflected about the experience-based schemata they use as source domains for metaphorical understanding of the greenhouse effect. By uncovering the—mostly unconscious—deployed schemata, we gave students access to their source domains. We implemented these teaching guidelines in interventions and evaluated them in teaching experiments to develop evidence-based and theory-guided learning activities on the greenhouse effect.


50% of individuals of selective IgA deficiency have high serum titers of antibody to bovine proteins, and high levels of circulating immune complexes that contain bovine antigens. Because in animal studies, immunization with antigen-antibody complexes is a very effective means of producing anti-idiotypic antibodies, we sought such autoantibodies in two sera known to have large amounts of anticasein. After IgG isolation and two-stage affinity chromatography, IgG-like material (molecular weights of H and L chains on SDS-PAGE), with binding activity for the F(ab')2 of anticasein were isolated from both sera. Pooled human gamma globulin or IgG myeloma proteins did not inhibit binding of specific anti-anticaseins to the corresponding anticasein, but sodium caseinate did block this binding (by 80 and 95%) indicating that most of these autoantibodies have affinity for the casein-binding site. Naturally occurring anti-idiotypic antibodies have been difficult to conclusively demonstrate in human sera; consequently, these experiments provide evidence of a unique model which may be used to explore the network theory of immunoglobulin regulation in humans.


COVID-19 continues to impact households and economies worldwide. For this reason, in June 2020 APRA started assessing its likely effects on food systems and livelihoods in Malawi. This report presents insights from the second round (R2) of data collection in October 2020. Data was collected from a stratified random sample of 111 households (59 female and 52 male respondents) drawn from an APRA household survey of groundnut producers in Mchinji and Ntchisi districts, Central Region, as well as from eight key informants. One additional round of research is planned for the first half of 2021.


Abstract We define a family of formal Khovanov brackets of a colored link depending on two parameters. The isomorphism classes of these brackets are invariants of framed colored links. The Bar-Natan functors applied to these brackets produce Khovanov and Lee homology theories categorifying the colored Jones polynomial. Further, we study conditions under which framed colored link cobordisms induce chain transformations between our formal brackets. We conjecture that for special choice of parameters, Khovanov and Lee homology theories of colored links are functorial (up to sign). Finally, we extend the Rasmussen invariant to links and give examples where this invariant is a stronger obstruction to sliceness than the multivariable Levine–Tristram signature.


Abstract The new mineral species braccoite, ideally NaMn2+5 [Si5AsO17(OH)](OH), has been discovered in the Valletta mine dumps, in Maira Valley, Cuneo province, Piedmont, Italy. Its origin is probably related to the reaction between ore minerals and hydrothermal fluids. It occurs as subhedral crystals in brown-red coloured thin masses, with a pale-yellow streak and vitreous to resinous lustre. Braccoite is associated with tiragalloite, for which new data are provided, as well as gamagarite, hematite, manganberzeliite, palenzonaite, quartz, saneroite, tokyoite, unidentified Mn oxides, organic compounds, and Mn arsenates and silicates under study. Braccoite is biaxial positive with refractive indices α = 1.749(1), β = 1.750(1), γ = 1.760(1). It is triclinic, space group P1̄ , with a = 9.7354(4), b = 9.9572(3), c = 9.0657(3) Å, α = 92̄691(2), β = 117.057(4), γ = 105.323(3)°, V = 740.37(4) Å3 and Z = 2. Its calculated density is 3.56 g/cm3. The ten strongest diffraction lines of the observed powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern are [d in Å, (I), (hkl)]: 3.055 (69)(22̄1), 3.042 (43)(102), 3.012 (65)(32̄1̄ ), 2.985 (55)(23̄1̄ ), 2.825 (100)(213̄), 2.708 (92)(220), 2.627 (43)(23̄2̄), 2.381 (58)(41̄1̄ ), 2.226 (25)(214̄) and 1.680 (433̄)(36). Chemical analyses by wavelength-dispersive spectroscopy electron microprobe gave (wt.%): Na2O 4.06, CaO 0.05, MnO 41.76, MgO 0.96, Al2O3 0.04, CuO 0.02, SiO2 39.73, As2O5 6.87, V2O5 1.43, SO3 0.01 and F 0.04. H2O 2.20 was calculated on the basis of 2OH groups p.f.u. Raman spectroscopy confirmed the presence of (SiO4)4-, (AsO4)3- and OH groups. The empirical formula, calculated on the basis of Σ cations-(Na,K) = 11 p.f.u., in agreement with the results of the crystal structure, is Na1.06(Mn2+4.46Mn3+0.32Mg0.19V3+0.01Al0.01Ca0.01)[Si5(As0.48Si0.37V5+0.15)O17(OH)](OH0.98F0.02); the simplified formula is Na(Mn,Mg,Al,Ca)5[Si5(As,V,Si)O17(OH)](OH,F). Single-crystal XRD allowed the structure to be solved by direct methods and revealed that braccoite is the As-dominant analogue of saneroite. The structure model was refined on the basis of 4389 observed reflections to R1 = 3.47%. Braccoite is named in honour of Dr Roberto Bracco (b. 1959), a systematic minerals collector with a special interest in manganese minerals. The new mineral was approved by the International Mineralogical Association Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (IMA 2013-093).


A Different Drummer is a chamber opera adaptation of Donald Davis's story "A Different Drummer" from his collection Listening for the Crack of Dawn, published by August House. The opera lasts about seventy minutes, and calls for a cast of three and an orchestra of sixteen players. It contains a prologue, epilogue and four scenes in a single act. The score is prefaced by a paper describing the musical strategies employed in setting the story as an opera. Three chapters describe the adaptation from short story to opera, the essential musical elements, and details of the application of the musical elements in each scene of the opera. The libretto is presented in the fourth chapter.


Dysregulation of plasma lipids, especially cholesterol levels, has been identified as a critical risk factor for various complex human diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and Alzheimer's disease. Recent genome wide association studies (GWAS) have implicated a number of susceptibility loci for complex traits of lipid metabolism. However, these loci only explain a limited proportion (25-30%) of the genetic heritability and a comprehensive understanding of the underpinning regulatory mechanisms has not been achieved. To better understand the mechanisms and to identify potential novel regulators, in this study, we utilized an integrative genomics approach that leveraged multiple genetic and genomic datasets including 1) GWAS from Global Lipids Genetics Consortium (GLGC) for four lipid traits (high density lipoprotein cholesterol [HDLC], low density lipoprotein cholesterol [LDLC], triglycerides [TG], and total cholesterol [TC]), 2) expression quantitative trait loci(eQTLs) from genetics of gene expression studies of human tissues related to lipid metabolism(such as liver and adipose tissues), 3) knowledge-driven biological pathways, and 4) data-driven regulatory gene networks. The integration of these diverse data sources enabled tissue-specific investigations on whether the genetic variants associated with lipid traits from GWAS were concentrated on specific parts of gene regulatory networks, termed "subnetworks", and whether novel key regulators of the lipid subnetworks could be identified based on data-driven network structures.We identified 17, 16, 18, and 14 subnetworks for HDLC, LDLC, TC, and TG, respectively. Among these, subnetworks associated with lipid metabolism, protein modification, response to external stimulus, receptor activity, and neurophysiological process were shared among the four lipid traits. Among the trait-specific subnetworks, those involved in glutathione metabolism, and taurine and hypotaurine metabolism were found to be HDLC-specific while cadherin-associated subnetworks were LDLC-specific. Finally, by utilizing the gene-gene relationships revealed by the network architecture, we detected key regulator genes, both known (e.g.APOE, APOA5,and ABCA1) and novel (e.g.NCAM1, and F2), in these lipid-associated subnetworks. Our results shed lights on the complex mechanisms underlying lipid metabolism and highlight potential novel targets for lipid regulation.


This chapter argues that much of contemporary state transformation is driven not by socialization, nor by trade liberalization in the abstract, but by the particular legal-institutional form of trade liberalization since 1948. Contemporary trade liberalization has been a product of US (and, later, US-European) power, exercised through the creation and operation of the GATT and its successor, the WTO, and reflected in the GATT/WTO's substantive rules. The particular form and processes of trade liberalization have entailed not just the abandonment of certain national policies, but also shifts of authority within the state, the creation of new kinds of state capacities, and new processes of policy-making. European state transformation is part of this story. The changing organization of Western European states and EU institutions can not be fully understood without considering the exigencies of partnering with the United States to govern the institutions of the global trading system. For the EU to join the United States in governing the GATT/WTO required changes in the organization of the European state: shifting authority upward within states and to the Commission, expanding state capacity within states and at the European level, and changing processes of member-state and European trade policy-making. Europe chose to transform along lines that have enabled it to co-govern the world trading system. European-US governance of the world trading system has, in turn, favored changes in the organization of the state in third countries toward a Western industrialized model of the state.


MgAl2O4 (MA) nano powder was synthesized via molten salt technique, by heating stochiometric composition of MgO and nano boehmite. The reactant and potassium chloride, as the reaction media, were fired at 800-1000 °C at different dwell times (0.5-5 h) in the ambient atmosphere. After washing and filtration, the spinel nano powder was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Brunauer-Emmett- Teller (BET) techniques. It was demonstrated that the formation temperature decreased to 850 °C. The nano spinel particles revealed an average size of 30 nm with a narrow size distribution. The mechanism of MgAl2O4 formation was found to be a template type where the morphology and size of product were similar to those of alumina formed from boehmite decomposition. Prolonging the reaction time from 0.5 to 3 h, the reaction was further completed and crystallinity was improved. However, the increase of temperature was more effective in this regard.


In this paper a novel approach is proposed to address the problem of deriving non-stationary stochastic processes which are compatible in the mean sense with a given (target) response (uniform hazard) spectrum (UHS) as commonly desired in the aseismic structural design regulated by contemporary codes of practice. The appealing feature of the approach is that it is non-iterative and "one-step". This is accomplished by solving a standard over-determined minimization problem in conjunction with appropriate median peak factors. These factors are determined by a plethora of reported new Monte Carlo studies which on their own possess considerable stochastic dynamics merit. In the proposed approach, generation and treatment of samples of the processes individually on a deterministic basis is not required as is the case with the various "two-step" approaches found in the literature addressing the herein considered task. The applicability and usefulness of the approach is demonstrated by furnishing extensive numerical data associated with the elastic design UHS of the current European (EC8) and the Chinese (GB 50011) aseismic code provisions. Purposely, simple and thus attractive from a practical viewpoint, uniformly modulated processes assuming either the Kanai-Tajimi (K-T) or the Clough-Penzien (C-P) spectral form are employed. The Monte Carlo studies yield damping and duration dependent median peak factor spectra, given in a polynomial form, associated with the first passage problem for UHS compatible K-T and C-P uniformly modulated stochastic processes. Hopefully, the herein derived stochastic processes and median peak factor spectra can be used to facilitate the aseismic design of structures regulated by contemporary code provisions in a Monte Carlo simulation-based or stochastic dynamics-based context of analysis.


This study aims to analyze the correlation (N=621) among tertiary students' career planning, e-recruiting adoption acceptance, and employability awareness in Taiwan. Tertiary students' perceived career planning includes four factors, namely, self-appraisal, job expectancy, goal selection, and problem solving. E-recruiting adoption acceptance includes four factors, namely, playfulness, ease of use, effectiveness, and usefulness. Employability awareness includes four factors, namely, personal adaptability , employability ambition, career identity, and labour market. Participants responded to a 5-point Likert-type scale for each factor. Analysis was conducted using the structural equation modeling (SEM), and a good model fit was found for both the measurement and structural models. Research findings demonstrate that tertiary students' career planning significantly and directly influences employability awareness. Career planning significantly and indirectly influences employability awareness by e-recruiting adoption acceptance. Tertiary students' career planning and e-recruiting adoption acceptance fit the influence model and empirical data of employability awareness. Implications of this study, including the value of student self-assessment of their skills and utility of the e-recruiting to underpin personal career development planning and inform graduate recruitment processes, are discussed and recommendations made.


An approach to time‐ordered operators based upon von Neumann's infinite tensor product Hilbert spaces is used to define Feynman–Dyson algebras. This theory is used to show that a one‐to‐one correspondence exists between path integrals and semigroups, which are integral operators defined by a kernel, the reproducing property of the kernel being a consequence of the semigroup property. For path integrals constructed from two semigroups, the results are more general than those obtained by the use of the Trotter–Kato formula. Perturbation series for the Feynman–Dyson operator calculus for time evolution and scattering operators are discussed, and it is pointed out that they are ''asymptotic in the sense of Poincare'' as defined in the theory of semigroups, thereby giving a precise formulation to a well‐known conjecture of Dyson stated many years ago in the context of quantum electrodynamics. Moreover, the series converge when these operators possess suitable holomorphy properties.


This lecture addresses a phenomenon that arises repeatedly in history: concurrent and interrelated corruption in the political system and in business that puts political and business establishments on the defensive. When corruption from business spills over into government, the story is likely to end with politicians seeking to cover for their own actions or to elevate themselves on an ethical pedestal above their peers. Resulting legislative action - hostile to business and driven by self serving political considerations in the wake of scandal - is often not well thought out, and may hinder economic growth and stability. The lecture discusses two examples of this phenomenon in England and the United States respectively. First, the South Sea Bubble of 1720 - during which many Members of Parliament took bribes in South Sea Company stock and traded in the stock on inside information - was followed by Parliament's draconian restriction in the Bubble Act on transferability of shares for over 100 years thereafter. Second, there were two attempts at the end of the Eighteenth and the first half of the Nineteenth Century to establish a permanent Bank of the United States modeled on the Bank of England. This undertaking was championed by Federalist and Whig politicians who, while they may have sought economic stability, also encouraged speculation in government securities on inside information, and bribery by the Bank of Members of Congress. The debate over the Bank was in part a debate over corruption that came with it. The First Bank of the United States was opposed and eventually allowed to expire by Jeffersonian Democrats and the Second Bank was attacked, and then pushed out of business, by President Jackson. Congress failed to establish a national bank until the Wilson Administration in 1913, two and a quarter centuries after establishment of the Bank of England. The lecture concludes that corruption of government by business is not only bad for government, but in the long run bad for business. Business sometimes overreaches in influencing government officials, but at the risk of a backlash in which politicians - in self righteous indignation or in order to cover up for their own actions - embrace harsh anti-business policies, regardless of whether those policies are in the national economic interest.


This paper deals with application of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for selection of an appropriate host country for further English language education abroad. The main sample of this study was chosen from Turkish Students who were newly graduated from Akdeniz University. Host country selection process includes the identification of relevant criterions which found necessary by demanders such as; easy application procedure, low expenses for education and daily life, security level of city life, level of social-cultural life, easy travel connection between home and host countries. The described process also includes the identification and evaluation of candidate English speaking host countries such as; the United States of America, England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Malta with the quest for consensus among multiple decision makers. The hierarchical model was designed in such a way and the experiences in implementing and using the model are discussed


Because of the increasingly diverse and dynamic environments in which they must operate, modern middleware platforms need to explicitly support 'modifiability'. Modifiability should encompass change that is both static and dynamic, small scale and large scale. Also, the process of modification should be flexible, easy to perform and consistency-preserving. To address these needs, a generic component-based modifiability approach is proposed here, and used to build a highly-modifiable middleware framework. The modifiability approach provides design support for building component frameworks (CFs), that is reusable and extensible component architectures that are targeted at specific domains. In the approach, CFs build upon a minimal, technology-independent component model and can be recursively assembled into more complex CFs. The middleware framework - an instantiation of the proposed approach - takes the form of a specific assembly of CFs, each of which addresses a distinct middleware-related concern. This middleware framework supports two styles of modification: First, 'architectural modification' enables large-scale, static changes, such as customising the framework to a new application domain or underlying infrastructure. Second, 'system modification' enables changes that are based on specific customisations of the framework; these changes are smaller in scope (e.g. replacing protocol implementations) but are applicable at both deploy-time and run-time. A prototype implementation demonstrates the feasibility of the approach and framework presented and demonstrates a sufficient degree of supported modifiability.


"This paper proposes and implements a methodology for a detailed, comparative analysis of the level and structure of costs for three similar poverty alleviation programs in Latin America: the Programa Nacional de Educacion, Salud y Alimentacion (PROGRESA) in Mexico, the Programa de Asignacion Familiar-Fase II (PRAF) in Honduras, and the pilot Red de Proteccion Social (RPS) in Nicaragua. These innovative programs target cash transfers to the poorest communities and households, and condition them on attendance at school and health clinics. This conditionality effectively transforms the cash transfers into human capital subsidies for poor households." From Text


Peer-learning is an effective way to assist students to acquire study skills and content knowledge, especially in university courses that students find difficult, and it is an effective adjunct to improve student retention. In 2014, Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, commenced Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) in two first-year undergraduate subjects: a mathematics (statistics) unit and a business unit. The key finding in this evaluation was that while female mathematics students improved their final marks in response to attending a greater number of sessions per semester, male students achieved lower final marks on average. Although several studies have shown that in PASS-like programs gender tends to not be a significant factor relating to achievement, our results suggest otherwise. In this article we posit the observed differences in achievement attributed to gender arise from complex gender-related issues, including gender stereotypes, student gender ratios in class, the gender of the teacher relative to the gender of the student, and gender-related motivation, engagement, and subject choice. An approach to remediate gender-associated differences in achievement for PASS attendees is proposed.


Early 2017 I read an old book that shed a new light on the writing of this dissertation. At that time I had been working on my dissertation on and off for over five years and the end was not in sight. Ever since I took a part-time position as a lecturer in 2012, I had been engaged in a balancing act between two busy jobs, having one foot in the academic world and one foot in practice as an architect and designer of bridges. At first, teaching and working with students gave me a lot of energy and opened my mind to new ideas, and was as such very beneficial to my work as an architect. However, the combination of working two jobs and writing a dissertation as well proved no easy task. Even though I managed to write some journal papers during brief bursts of writing frenzy, I had become aware that the balance between work and family life had imperceptibly tilted to the wrong side. By the end of 2016 it became clear to me that my inner machine needed a major revision. I needed time for myself to think about the further development of my career(s), so come Christmas eve I took a six week break from work. To distract my mind, I started reading Henri Gautier's 'Traite des Ponts' [1], the very first comprehensive handbook for bridge designers (figure 1). My fellow board member of the Dutch Bridge Foundation and a fervent Francophile, Jan de Boer, had lent me his first edition from 1716, a beautiful leather-bound specimen with intriguing engravings of bridges, details of joints and depictions of various tools employed in the art of early eighteenth century bridge building. I have always had a fascination for old books and history and I was curious about this fellow bridge designer from the time of Louis XIV. Despite the old French language and the somewhat different typography, the 'Traite des Ponts' turned out to be surprisingly accessible reading material. Reading the Traite provided me with a whole new lens to look at my dissertation subject. In fact, looking back on my subject across a bridge of three hundred years proved to be a very good remedy against my writers block. Henri Gautier (1660-1737), who was sometimes referred to as Hubert Gautier, was an architect, engineer and inspector of the 'Corps des grands Chemins, Ponts, & Chaussees du Royaume', the erstwhile corps of engineers for roads and bridges at the service of the king of France. From his own rich working experience, Gautier writes about a discipline that he and I both share. For an engineer in the service of the king, his writing is remarkably down-to-earth. He writes very spontaneously and with plenty of self-reflection about his metier. I especially enjoyed discovering parallels between Gautier's practice and the current bridge building practice. Gautier wrote his Traite out of dire necessity as he had noticed that not a single architectural author had so far concerned himself with the art of bridge building. To his frustration only sideway glances on the subject of bridge design were offered in the literature of those days and he wondered how a schooled architect was supposed to learn the art of bridge design if his training was deprived of the right books on the subject. He further notes that even the great Vitruvius, the Roman architect of antiquity, doesn't dignify to write on the art of bridge design. For this reason Gautier took it upon himself to collect what little had been written on the subject and to comment on it. More important however is that Gautier shares with us his own practice experience acquired through the many bridges he had built in his lifetime. It is interesting to note that Gautier does not write to impress the reader with the vast extent of his knowledge. Rather he writes out of a personal motivation to share his knowledge, dedicating his work to 'those that are ignorant' (on this specific subject, red.). Gautier deeply feels it to be his duty to share his experience, describing the tools and the means that he employed to come to a bridge designs, all in a way that makes it easy to understand. According to Gautier bridges are 'amongst the most difficult of structures (to design and to build, red.), deserving our full attention, and belong to a domain of Architecture where there are the most precautions to keep, more place to fear and to doubt, and to which one can never take too much care'. At times, reading the Traite was like a deja vu; the parallels to my own practice brought a smile on my face. I found it most refreshing to note that a certain amount of friction between architects, engineers and contractors appears to be of all ages. Gautier doesn't hold contractors in a very high regard. According to him 'Contractors do not hesitate to enrich themselves at the expense of the King or of those who work for them. Engineers or inspectors of the works, on the contrary, have only in mind the honesty with which they act and [the desire red.] to be highly esteemed. They do not hesitate to regard the former as their enemies, when they are unfaithful.' (p.248). Nowadays, it is fortunate for all parties involved in the building of a bridge that the laws and fines imposed for building faults have been adapted to modern times, as can be appreciated from this fragment on legal guaranties. 'If the structure is made out of earth or out of a mediocre material, a six year warranty must be given and in case of a fault committed by the contractor, the law indicates that said contractor shall be whipped, shaven and banned." (p.225). Gautier however finds these laws to be unjust as he believes that the responsibility for a fault should to some extent be shared by the architect if it is the design that is to blame. These amusing notes set aside, Gautier concludes his preface with the following recommendation that I choose to quote in Gautier's original words: 'Le sujet des Ponts est assez vaste pour donner de l'occupation aux plus habiles. Jusqu'ici personne n'a traite de cette matiere autant qu'elle le merite. J'ai ose l'entreprendre, & je souhaite que quelqu'autre fasse mieux, afin que tout le monde en profite davantage.' I would translate this ancient French text as follows: 'The topic of Bridges is vast enough to give occupation to the most skilled. So far no one has dealt with this subject as well as it deserves to be treated. I have dared to undertake it, and I wish someone else would do better, so that everyone can benefit from it to the full.' Three hundred years later, reading this very personal recommendation from a fellow bridge designer opened my eyes. What more encouragement did I need to write a dissertation on the topic of bridge design! And like Gautier, I have undertaken this task to the best of my knowledge and experience, hoping it will benefit those who choose to venture in the challenging art of bridge design.


This thesis reports on low-energy injection studies, considering a multi-shot and multiturn injection method in radial phase space, using only one kicker magnet. A new model is presented in which the coupling between the radial and longitudinal phase space significantly increases the injection efficiency at low energies. Coupling with the longitudinal phase space takes place if the energy of the injected beam is different from the equilibrium ring energy and if there is dispersion at the septum position. Coupling with the vertical phase space, introduced by skew quadrupole fields, also increases the injection efficiency. A computer program, MCIS, has been written in order to make quantitative predictions from the new model. Calculations are presented for HELIOS, a superconducting synchrotron with a final electron energy of 700 MeV. The present injection energy is 200 MeV. The calculations show that if injection were to take place off-energy by δ m ≈ 1 %, then the injection energy could be lowered to a minimum of about 35 MeV. This prediction only takes into account single particle beam dynamics. The effect of most other parameters on the injection efficiency is also calculated. Experimental studies of the injection process were performed during the commissioning period of Helios, which was carried out by a team under the author's direction. Data obtained at an injection energy of 100 MeV are compared with calculations. A precise measurement of the relative energy deviation of the injected beam δ m has been made. The agreement with the model is good and it proves the presence of longitudinal coupling for the optimum injection conditions. The measurement of the optimum kicker strength also agrees with the model, as does the general behaviour of injection as a function of several parameters. The measurements lead to a high level of confidence in the model presented. The belief in the general validity of the model is reinforced by its agreement with the overall injection behaviour of accelerators other than HELIOS, which inject successfully at low energies.


Humanoids can learn motor skills through the programming by demonstration framework, which allows matching the kinematic movements of a robot with those of a human. Continuous goal-directed actions (CGDA) is a framework that can complement the paradigm of robot imitation. Instead of kinematic parameters, its encoding is centered on the changes an action produces on object features. The features can be any measurable characteristic of the object such as color, area, etc. The execution of actions encoded as CGDA allows a robot-configuration independent achievement of tasks, avoiding the correspondence problem. By tracking object features during action execution, we create a trajectory in an n-dimensional feature space that represents object temporal states, allowing generalization, recognition, and execution of action effects on the environment. Experiments have been performed, using a humanoid robot in a simulated environment. Evolutionary computation was used for joint parameter calculation of a humanoid robot. The objective is to generate a motor trajectory which leads to a feature trajectory equal to the objective one. In one of the experiments, the robot performs a spatial trajectory based on spatial object features. In a new experiment, the robot paints a wall by following a color feature encoding. Graphical Abstract


Recognition of prior learning (RPL) is increasingly understood as a complex phenomenon, generating potential outcomes for the individual beyond formal accreditation and learning. It is argued here that all assessment practice is influenced by an underpinning philosophy that is an orienting and governing structure for the execution of the assessor's professional task. The assessment philosophy consists of values, intentions and beliefs that shape the assessment interaction and its outcomes. If these foundations of assessment remain unspoken and unexamined, the assessor may fail to gain a critical understanding of their own approach to inform how to ethically manage these effects.  The explicit construction and articulation of a philosophical base enables a considered response to the operations of power within RPL, and in particular the ontological aspects of assessment. This brings ethical and practical rigor to the process and, as it is proposed here, increases the efficacy of RPL with nontraditional learners. This article discusses a particular assessment philosophy described by a group of RPL assessors within the Australian vocational education sector. These assessors were participants in a doctoral study at the University of New South Wales, Australia, examining the experiences of RPL for nontraditional learners (Hamer, 2013b). The analysis presented here forms a component of the research findings. Keywords: Recognition of prior learning, assessment philosophy, ontological, nontraditional learner, skills recognition, vocational education


While physicists are continually looking for ways to unify the theory of relativity, which describes large-scale phenomena, with quantum theory, which describes small-scale phenomena, computer scientists are searching for technologies to build the quantum computer. The accelerating electrons explain not only the Maxwell Equations and the Special Relativity, but the Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation, the Wave-Particle Duality and the electron's spin also, building the Bridge between the Classical and Quantum Theories. The Planck Distribution Law of the electromagnetic oscillators explains the electron/proton mass rate and the Weak and Strong Interactions by the diffraction patterns. The Weak Interaction changes the diffraction patterns by moving the electric charge from one side to the other side of the diffraction pattern, which violates the CP and Time reversal symmetry. The diffraction patterns and the locality of the self-maintaining electromagnetic potential explains also the Quantum Entanglement, giving it as a natural part of the Relativistic Quantum Theory and making possible to build the Quantum Computer.


Until recently, there was no data available on the genome sequences of medicinal plants. But now, public databases for the transcriptomes of important medicinal plants are available. But an analysis pipeline effectively combining publicly available tools is lacking which would otherwise enable in-depth analysis of the transcriptomes. In this context, we have developed an effective in silico analysis pipeline using tools such as FastQC, FastQ Groomer, TopHat, Cufflinks, Cuffmerge and Cuffdiff available in Galaxy platform and other tools such as DAVID, ExPASy, MetaCyc and PlantCyc. We have tested the pipeline for comparative analysis of the transcriptome of Catharanthus roseus (L.) G.Don and Rauvolfia serpentina (L.) Benth. ex Kurz, two well-known medicinal plants. This study identified genes that are similarly expressing in the roots of these plants leading to the formation of the same secondary metabolite, "Strictosidine" and also identified differentially expressing genes in the leaves of C. roseus and R. serpentina lead to the formation of different metabolites, "Vinblastine" and "Ajmaline". The findings of the study indicated that the pipeline developed is effective and helped to analyze the transcriptomes and expression data.


2Centre Oceanografic de les Balears (I.E.O.), Moll de Ponent s/n, Ap. 291, 07080 Palma de Mallorca, Spain. 3 Centro Oceanografico de Malaga (I.E.O.), Puerto pesquero s/n, 29640 Fuengirola (Malaga), Spain. SUMMARY: The MEDITS-99 sampling was performed along all the Iberian Peninsula coasts of the western Mediterranean (from the Alboran Sea to Cape Creus) in a space-scale of 1000 Km N-S, at depths ranging between 27-790 m. Fish and decapod crustaceans were dominant in the megafaunal compartment sampled by trawling. Based on both the fish and the decapod crustacean compositions, a comparison of trophic guilds has been attempted, with fish and decapods classified as: 1) migrator macroplankton feeders (mM), 2) non-migrator macroplankton feeders (nmM), 3) nektobenthos-suprabenthos feeders (NS), 4) epibenthos feeders (Epib), 5) large detritus-scavengers (Sca), 6) infaunal feeders (Inf), 7) deposit feeders (Dep) and 8) small detritivorous feeders (Det). Multivariate techniques showed the following differences in the trophodynamics of the megafaunal assemblages along the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula: 1) crustaceans (mainly decapods) have different trophic structures on the shelf and on the slope; 2) on the slope, fish exhibited more clear changes as a function of the geographical gradient than crustaceans; and 3) trophodynamics of bathyal fish showed some geographic variations between the Alboran Sea, the Catalano-Balearic Basin, and the Algerian Basin (Vera Gulf and Alicante sectors), with a progressive north-south increase in planktophagous species.


The geometric and operational features of gas turbine engine combustors are receiving increased scrutiny due to a growing concern regarding environmental impact, performance, durability, and manufacturability. To minimize the risk associated with new projects, optimization of designs which are similar to those in current operation is attractive. To achieve this goal, a methodology that is efficient and can reveal interactions between parameters that affect performance is necessary. An approach which addresses these requirements is statistically designed experiments (e.g., multivariate experiments or "design of experiments"), which offers efficiency as well as the ability to identify interactions between variables. This approach was adopted and demonstrated in the present study utilizing a set of hardware specifically developed to allow multivariate experiments to be conducted. A radial mixer geometry consisting of four parameters (primary and secondary swirl vane angles, the presence of a venturi, and the co-/counter swirl sense) was examined. The design was developed to maintain constant effective area and overall dimensions. The responses selected for study were stability (i.e., reaction lean blow-out) and fuel distribution.The results reveal that (1) the multivariate approach is effective in the present application, (2) the swirl sense between the primary and secondary swirlers play an influential role in determining the uniformity of the spray, (3) the size of the fuel spray area is affected by the mixer venturi and the swirl sense, (4) the symmetry of the fuel presentation is affected by the interaction of the swirler angles, (5) Lean Blow Out (LBO) is not affected by the parameters selected, and (6) the parameters affecting fuel distribution and combustion stability differ, indicating that the combustion performance is not described entirely by fuel distribution.Copyright © 1997 by ASME


Use of social technologies (e.g., cellular telephones, social networking sites) is highly prevalent among American adolescents, in some cases outpacing that of adults (Nielsen Company). Rapid cultural change such as that represented by technological advances comes with the potential to diminish elders' authority over youth. We analyzed qualitative interviews with 20 African American and European American mother–early adolescent dyads to consider ways in which mothers would—or would not—exert authority over adolescents' use of social technologies. Three distinct approaches emerged: abdication/loss of authority, conflicted authority, and retained authority. Mothers' use of these different approaches varied based on factors that included mothers' and adolescents' expertise regarding the technology being used, mothers' perceptions of risks associated with particular technologies, and mothers' and adolescents' beliefs and experiences with respect to social technology use.


To understand the role of chirality in shaping biological supramolecular systems it is instructive to visualize the subtle effects of stereochemistry on the structure of model aggregates at the molecular level. Here, we apply conformer-specific IR-UV double-resonance laser spectroscopy in a cold ion trap to derive a detailed description of the protonated homodimers of (1R,2S)-cis- and (1R,2R)-trans-1-amino-2-indanol (c-AI2H+, t-AI2H+). Although the protonated monomers (c-AIH+, t-AIH+) only differ by the chirality of one carbon atom, their conformations are clearly distinct. c-AIH+ has an intramolecular NH+O hydrogen bond (H-bond), while t-AIH+ lacks such an interaction. This has crucial consequences on the geometry and stability of the corresponding c-AI2H+ and t-AI2H+ dimers. While there is a competition between intra- and intermolecular H-bonds in c-AI2H+, the formation of t-AI2H+ does not require deformation of the monomers. This difference results in higher binding energies of t-AI2H+ compared to c-AI2H+. To optimize the H-bond network, the two dimers do not necessarily involve the corresponding most stable monomers. c-AI2H+ and t-AI2H+ differ in their UV photodissociation mass spectra and in their electronic spectra, which suggests different geometries also in the excited state.

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A new vascularized bone transplantation model is described, including the anatomy and surgical technique of isolating a rabbit femoral diaphyseal segment on its nutrient vascular pedicle. The histologic and biomechanical parameters of pedicled vascularized femoral autotransplants were studied following orthotopic reimplantation in the resulting mid‐diaphyseal defect. Vascularized femur segments were isolated in 10 rabbits on their nutrient pedicle, and then replaced orthotopically with appropriate internal fixation. Postoperative weightbearing and mobility were unrestricted, and the contralateral femora served as no‐treatment controls. After 16 weeks, the bone flaps were evaluated by x‐ray (bone healing), mechanical testing (material properties), microangiography (quantification of intraosseous vasculature), histology (bone viability), and histomorphometry (bone remodeling). Bone healing occurred by 2 weeks, with further callus remodeling throughout the survival period. Eight transplants healed completely, while two had a distal pseudarthrosis. Microangiography demonstrated patent pedicles in all transplants. Intraosseous vessel densities were comparable to nonoperated (control) femora. We found ultimate strength and elastic modulus to be significantly reduced when compared to normal controls. Viable bone, increased mineral apposition rate, and bone turnover were demonstrated in all transplants. The method described, and the data provided will be of value for the further study of isolated segments of living bone, and in particular, for investigations of reconstruction of segmental bone loss in weight‐bearing animal models. This study also provides important normative data on living autologous bone flap material properties, vascularity, and bone remodeling. We intend to use this method and data for comparison in subsequent studies of large bone vascularized allotransplantation. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc. Microsurgery, 2008.


Abstract In many present-day applications in seismic processing, the assumption of a homogeneous model leads to simple yet powerful approximations, which also work well when heterogeneity is not negligible. While the classical normal moveout (NMO) hyperbola assumes an effective constant velocity medium, de Bazelaire, based on optical projections, introduced an alternative way to account for heterogeneity by shifting the reference time rather than the velocity. Although modern multiparameter NMO descriptions usually are based on the same set of parameters, we show through reparameterization that they can be divided into the same two types of approximations: one assuming an effective medium, the other describing the optical analogue in a medium of constant near-surface velocity. We provide new insights into the auxiliary-medium concept and introduce a generalized osculating equation, which allows for the forward and inverse transformation between the effective and the optical domain, thereby providing a uni...


A comparison of benthic polychaete communities off the Sand Island Wastewater Outfall was undertaken to recognize organic enrichment indicator species for Hawaiian waters. Primary-treatment sewage is discharged off the south shore of O'ahu at 70 m depth. A historical data set spanning 9 yr for seven sites at 70 m and two recent studies at 20, 50, and 100 m depths were analyzed. Geochemical data did not support the assumption that the outfall is an important source of organic enrichment in nutrient-poor sandy sediments within oligotrophic tropical waters. Five polychaete species, however, appeared particularly sensitive, positively or negatively, to environmental conditions near the outfall. Neanthes arenaceodentata (Nereididae) and Ophryotrocha adherens (Dorvilleidae) have been dominant at sites within the outfallÕs zone of initial dilution (ZID). Since 1993, N. arenaceodentata has virtually disappeared, and O. adherens concurrently became abundant and continued to ßourish at ZID sites. Well-known indicators within the Capitella capitata complex (Capitellidae) were present at ZID and control (far Þeld) sites though their ZID abundance was greater. Two sabellids, Euchone sp. B and Augeneriella dubia were inversely distributed, the smaller Euchone sp. B at far Þeld sites and larger A. dubia within ZID stations. The former was most likely restricted to a greater proportion of Þne sediment particles at two far Þeld sites. The most abundant and widespread polychaete off O'ahu's south shore was Pionosyllis heterocirrata (Syllidae), which does not seem to represent a sensitive indicator species. Ophryotrocha adherens was the most abundant indicator species within the ZID; P. heterocirrata was the most ubiquitous species at all sites and should always be expected in these sediments. Traditional measurements of numerical abundance, species richness, and diversity (H0) have not shown a clear distinction between ZID and far Þeld sites in annual analyses. An examination of composited data over an 11-yr period does support such a distinction. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) analyses clearly delineate different assemblages. We suggest that MDS analyses are sensitive to the community differences present near the outfall. The ZID community is clearly contained within the Environmental Protection AgencyÐapproved ZID boundary. Because each ZID and far Þeld site supports a diverse and coarsely similar polychaete fauna, no pollution level effects seem to be present.


In many application domains, such as education, sequences of events occurring over time need to be studied in order to understand the generative process behind these sequences, and hence classify new examples. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-granularity sequence classification framework that generates features based on frequent patterns at multiple levels of time granularity. Feature selection techniques are applied to identify the most informative features that are then used to construct the classification model. We show the applicability and suitability of the proposed framework to the area of educational data mining by experimenting on an educational dataset collected from an asynchronous communication tool in which students interact to accomplish an underlying group project. The experimental results showed that our model can achieve competitive performance in detecting the students' roles in their corresponding projects, compared to a baseline similarity-based approach.


Students attend mathematics courses in Turkey for totally 11 years, throughout education life ranging from primary school to university, including eight years in primary education and three years in secondary education (four years based on new arrangement); however, level of mathematic knowledge of students is upsetting when they reach university education. Students attend various schools including normal high school, Anatolian high school, and science high school, and most students may leverage mathematics knowledge both in ordinary high school education and private teaching institution; however, mathematics skills and knowledge of students, who attend vocational high schools, could not be sufficiently improved. In many departments of vocational high schools, mathematics course is available only in the first education year of high school, and later, most vocational courses are emphasized. Those students are not well-educated in the field of mathematics and when they graduate from vocational high schools and they start to attend vocational colleges, they also take mathematics courses and they fail even in principal mathematics courses. Moreover, students perceive vocational colleges as a step towards four-year faculty education after they take ETE (external transfer examination). In current study, 275 students who had mathematics courses from the same teacher and attended various departments of a private charity university, were subjected to mathematics examination which was compiled from ETEs of previous years, and thus, level of mathematics knowledge of students was investigated. Findings of current study indicated that level of mathematics knowledge for students attending vocational colleges is upsetting.


Plants are one of the great resources of the world, and as humankind has evolved, socially, spiritually, and economically, we have found, collectively, a myriad uses for the plants around us. One of those uses is for the prevention, treatment, and cure of various disease states. Documented knowledge about such use dates back at least 4000 years, and several of the plant mentioned in the ancient texts remain important drug agents today.
Globally, there is now a tremendous interest in examining, scientifically, the basis for the use of various plants in health care systems, and in rationalizing their application through standardized preparations. As a consequence of this heightened interest, the First International Congress on Traditional Medicine and Materia Medica was held in Nov. 2000 in Tehran. It brought together a wide range of participants and offered numerous interesting presentations on the importance of traditional medicine and its evaluation. Following this success, the Second International Congress on Traditional Medicine and Materia Medica was held from 4 Oct. to 7 Oct. 2004 in Tehran. The organizers were the Traditional Medicine and Materia Medica Research Center (TMRC), Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBMU), the Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences (IOMS) from Kuwait, World Health Organization (WHO), Herbal Medicine Research Center (HMRC) from Malaysia and the Iranian Association of Pharmacognosy (IAP).
The Congress program was developed to cover recent research advances and achievements, and future thinking in traditional medicine and materia medica. The Congress was an excellent opportunity to share innovative ideas and latest research findings. The result, as offered in the Abstracts from the meeting, was a meaningful intellectual exchange of ideas and concepts of contemporary research programs in many different countries around the world as each studies their medicinal plants to assure their safety and efficacy. Our deepest and most sincere thanks go out to the organizers of this meeting for the wonderful work that they have done to make this Congress possible, and for the generous gift of their unbridled hospitality so that all present felt welcome and appreciated. The following concluding remarks will inform you the future plans of the organizers.

Concluding Remarks:
Dear Colleagues, for the past three days we have joined here at the 2nd International Congress on Traditional Medicine and Materia Medica. Participants from 22 countries have gathered to listen, to understand, and to exchange ideas regarding the successes, the failures, and the visions for traditional medicine that we have respectively experienced. Unfortunately, representatives from four countries Algeria, Kuwait, Emirates, and Spain were unable to join us.
We have gathered for science and for social interaction. In the process we have reached new levels of understanding and respect for the diversity of our disparate, rich cultural heritages.
We have seen the importance of examining the very oldest texts of the ancient medical practitioners in order to generate new ideas for traditional medicine. We have seen and heard reports on the diversity and effectiveness of the many practices used in various cultures under the broad term Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The techniques of CAM are having a significant impact on health care in many parts of the world, as this knowledge becomes more broadly available, and the effectiveness of the techniques and practices is being scientifically studied. We have heard of the importance of establishing relationships with local healers and health practitioners to access and accumulate knowledge and validate contemporary ethnomedical information.
We have seen the importance of and need for enhanced quality control of the plant materials used in Traditional Medicine and how this goal is being approached in different countries through the use of biomarker compounds or the identification of active principles.
We have heard of efforts to develop comprehensive centers of excellence to address the challenges of local health issues through the detailed investigation of the local flora and ethnomedical traditions.
We have heard about the variability of a given species of plant, the biological evaluation of plants to investigate their effectiveness, and the studies of their active constituents. There have been presentations on the efforts to take specifically active compounds and optimize their activity and reduce their toxicity.
Various participants have reported on the impact of new technologies, new bioassays, and new biologically active compounds. Many speakers have emphasized how important it is to reach across the disciplines and develop multidisciplinary collaborative research programs in order to address important social and health issues.
We have been enormously enriched by these presentations and will leave with much to think about. Collectively, I believe that each of us can agree that natural products, whether as single or multiple component traditional medicines, or as isolated or chemically modified active principles, must continue to be thoroughly investigated in order for them to play and important and sustainable role in global health care now and in the future.
It is important to indicate that there will be a 3rd International Congress on Traditional Medicine and Materia Medica. The site will be in Malaysia and it will be held about three years from now. By the time of that Congress, there will have been advances in all aspects of the sciences that impact on Traditional Medicine. We hope that each of us will be able to participate in that Congress and contribute our experiences with those new advances so that we can all benefit from them and integrate them as necessary into our research efforts.


This essay examines the history of electoral modernization in the Philippines from its beginning in the early 1990s to the present. The essay identifies the problems the country has encountered and accomplishments it has achieved and draws lessons from these experiences which may be useful for electoral modernization in other countries with similar socioeconomic conditions. It will become clear that not only the characteristics of the technologies but also political, legal, administrative, economic, and even socio-cultural factors have significant influence, both positive and negative, on the modernization process.


Where has the energy from global warming gone? By measuring the net radiative incoming and outgoing energy at the top of Earth's atmosphere, it is possible to determine how much energy remains in the Earth system. But where exactly does the energy go? The main energy reservoir is the ocean, which sequesters energy as heat. Because energy is exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean, this heat can resurface at a later time to affect weather and climate on a global scale. A change in the overall energy balance will thus sooner or later have consequences for the climate. Existing observing systems can measure all the required quantities, but it nevertheless remains a challenge to obtain closure of the energy budget. This inability to properly track energy—due to either inadequate measurement accuracy or inadequate data processing—has implications for understanding and predicting future climate.


What happens when the rich are allowed to hide their money in tax havens, and what we should do about it
The Panama Papers were a reminder of how the superrich are allowed to hide their wealth from the rest of us. Dirty Secrets uncovers the extent of the corruption behind this crisis and shows what needs to be done in the face of this unregulated spread of rampant greed.

Tax havens, we are often told, are part of the global architecture of capitalism, providing a freedom from regulation necessary to make markets work. In this book, leading authority Richard Murphy uncovers the truth behind this lie. The fact of the matter is that this increasingly popular practice threatens the foundations of democracy, sowing mistrust and creating a regime based upon opacity.

As Murphy shows, how we manage our economy is a political decision, and one that can be changed. Dirty Secrets proposes ways to regulate tax havens and what the world might look like without them.


This paper reviews and compares the leading characteristics of research evaluation system in the world. On the basis of this comparison, and focusing in particular on China. The advantages and disadvantages of different approach employed in research evaluation are analyzed. The areas for improvement of research evaluation system in China are outlined. This paper aims to provide useful information for members of the scholar community and research policy official about the basic aspect of research evaluation


We have constructed a microfabricated circular corral for bacteria made of rings of concentric funnels which channel motile bacteria outwards via non-hydrodynamic interactions with the funnel walls. Initially bacteria do move rapidly outwards to the periphery of the corral. At the edge, nano-slits allow for the transport of nutrients into the device while keeping the bacteria from escaping. After a period of time in which the bacteria increase their cell density in this perimeter region, they are then able to defeat the physical constrains of the funnels by launching back-propagating collective waves. We present the basic data and some nonlinear modeling which can explain how bacterial population waves propagate through a physical funnel, and discuss possible biological implications.


Two species of dynastine scarab beetles are reported for the first time on the island of Hawaii: the Pasadena masked chafer, Cyclocephala pasadenae (Casey) (Scarabaeidae: Dynastinae: Cyclocephalini) from North America and Temnorhynchus retusus (Fabricius) (Scarabaeidae: Dynastinae: Pentodontini) from Africa. The Pasadena masked chafer is established on the island of Hawaii, is a recognized pest of turf grass, and is a concern for agriculture and native Hawaiian arthropod species. Temnorhynchus retusus is not known to be an agricultural pest, but its spread on the islands could pose a problem for Hawaiian native species. We provide an overview of each species, characteristics for recognition of these species, and comments on their introduction to the islands.


textabstractThe cerebellum helps fine-tuning movements by evaluating disparities between intention and action, in order to adjust the execution of movements 'online', and to keep movements calibrated in the long term. The cerebellar capacity to store information, which provides the 'memory' needed for the recalibration of movements, the learning of new motor skills, and associative learning, is provided by modifications in the strength of synaptic couplings between neurons in the cerebellar circuitry ('synaptic plasticity').
Cerebellar coordination and motor learning can be affected by degenerative processes, such as paraneoplastic cerebellar ataxia (PCA). This is a severe side effect of certain forms of cancer, usually characterized by the degeneration of Purkinje cells, which provide the sole output of the cerebellar cortex. PCA is associated with the expression of antineuronal autoantibodies. In chapters 2 and 3 we describe two patients with Hodgkin's disease and PCA associated with a previously undescribed autoantibody against the metabotropic glutamate receptor type 1 (mGluR1). This autoantibody directly interferes with receptor function in vitro, affecting synaptic transmission and spontaneous Purkinje neuronal firing behavior, as well as inhibiting the induction of long-term depression of the parallel fiber to Purkinje cell synapse (PF-LTD), a form of synaptic plasticity widely associated with motor learning. Infusion of these anti-mGluR1 autoantibodies into the cerebellum of mice causes severe, reversible ataxia, indicating that PCA autoantibodies can directly affect Purkinje neuronal function by blocking receptors. Post-mortem analysis of one mGluR1-PCA patient's cerebellum reveals a reduction in the number of Purkinje cells after chronic exposition to anti-mGluR1 autoantibodies. Together these results indicate that the anti-mGluR1 autoantibodies can cause ataxia by acutely interfering with neuronal function and synaptic plasticity, as well as through a chronic degenerative effect on cerebellar Purkinje cells.
The block of PF-LTD by the anti-mGluR1 autoantibodies was also shown to affect the patients' ability to recalibrate motor output. Cerebellar motor learning in the patients was assessed using a saccade adaptation paradigm, in which the amplitude of voluntary fast eye movements ('saccades') is gradually changed by systematically displacing a target during a series of consecutive saccades. Although their saccade performance was within the normal range, the capability to gradually adapt saccade amplitude was impaired in the patients with anti-mGluR1 autoantibodies, adding to the body of evidence that PF-LTD underlies forms of motor learning. In chapter 4, further analysis of saccade adaptation characteristics in humans indicates that this form of motor learning conforms to learning rules similar to those of cerebellar synaptic plasticity processes. The time course of induction and the error-based character of saccade adaptation are in line with the properties of cerebellar synaptic plasticity forms, such as PF-LTD.
In chapters 5 and 6, the cellular mechanisms putatively underlying cerebellar motor learning were further explored by studying synaptic plasticity in vitro. PF-LTD can be induced by coactivation of parallel fiber (PF) and climbing fiber (CF) input at low frequencies, and is expressed as a reduction in AMPA glutamate receptors on the postsynaptic membrane. This selectively decreases the effect of glutamate released by the PFs that were concurrently active with the CF. In order to prevent synapse saturation and to allow reversal of motor learning, this reduction of PF-Purkinje cell synaptic strength must be counterbalanced by a form of potentiation that is also expressed postsynaptically. This modification, called long-term potentiation of the PF – Purkinje cell synapse (PF-LTP), can be induced by tetanizing only the PF at low frequencies. CF¬evoked calcium transients into the Purkinje cell are shown to be the polarity switch factor making the difference between PF-LTD and PF-LTP induction. Long-term depression of synaptic strength can also be induced at the CF – Purkinje cell synapse (CF-LTD), by high-frequent CF activity. CF-LTD reduces the amplitude of the CF¬evoked calcium transient, which is shown to inhibit the induction of PF-LTD. The concept arises that the cerebellar circuitry uses multiple interacting mechanisms to calibrate its output.


Background Descriptions of the sequelae of ABO-incompatible (ABOi) kidney transplantation are limited to single-center reports, which may lack power to detect important effects. Methods We examined U.S. Renal Data System registry data to study associations of ABOi live-donor kidney transplantation with clinical complications in a national cohort. Among 14,041 Medicare-insured transplants in 2000 to 2007, 119 non–donor-A2 ABOi transplants were identified. A2-incompatible (n=35) transplants were categorized separately. Infection and hemorrhage events were identified by diagnosis codes on billing claims. Associations of ABO incompatibility with complications were assessed by multivariate Cox regression. Results Recipients of ABOi transplants experienced significantly (P<0.05) higher incidence of wound infections (12.7% vs. 7.3%), pneumonia (7.6% vs. 3.8%), and urinary tract infections (UTIs) or pyelonephritis (24.5% vs. 15.3%) in the first 90 days compared with ABO-compatible recipients. In adjusted models, ABO incompatibility was associated with twice the risk of pneumonia (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 2.22; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.14–4.33) and 56% higher risk of UTIs or pyelonephritis (aHR, 1.56; 95% CI, 1.05–2.30) in the first 90 posttransplantation days, and 3.5 times the relative risk of wound infections in days 91 to 365 (aHR, 3.55; 95% CI, 1.92–6.57). ABOi recipients, 19% of whom underwent pre- or peritransplant splenectomy, experienced twice the adjusted risk of early hemorrhage (aHR, 1.96; 95% CI, 1.19–3.24). A2-incompatible transplantation was associated only with early risk of UTIs or pyelonephritis. Conclusion ABOi transplantation offers patients with potential live donors an additional transplant option but with higher risks of infectious and hemorrhagic complications. Awareness of these complications may help improve protocols for the management of ABOi transplantation.


This paper informs the literature on the business value of information technology by conceptualizing a path from IT assets-that is, commodity-like or off-the-shelf information technologies-to sustainable competitive advantage. This path suggests that IT assets can play a strategic role when they are combined with organizational resources to create IT-enabled resources. To the extent that relationships between IT assets and organizational resources are synergistic, the ensuing IT-enabled resources are capable of positively affecting firms' sustainable competitive advantage via their

improved strategic potential. This is an important contribution since IT-related organizational benefits have been hard to demonstrate despite attempts to study them through a variety of methods and theoretical lenses. This paper synthesizes systems theory and the resource-based view of the firm to build a unified conceptual model linking IT assets with firm-level benefits. Several propositions are derived from the model and their implications for IS research and practice are discussed.


Abstract The Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) received royal assent on 9 November 1998 and came into force ten years ago on 2 October 2000. The government rhetoric surrounding the introduction of the HRA included a commitment to 'bring rights home' and develop a 'rights culture' for the benefit of all people, including prisoners. Yet in terms of providing an impetus for a culture of rights in state institutions such as the prison, the HRA has proved to be somewhat of a damp squib. When we ask the question 'why didn't prisoner rights come home' at least part of the answer can found through the recognition that from the start the HRA was shackled within a wider context of responsibilisation and minimalism. Evidence of its historically restrictive interpretation by the Prison Service can be indentified in two main ways: (1) assessment of existing policies and the level of training available prior to implementation and (2) the reassuring messages sent to staff via official discourse.


Due to the prolonged symbol duration of OFDM frequency-selective channels are utilized for high-data-rate transmission easily. Unfortunately, OFDM becomes vulnerable to large Doppler spread, since subcarriers lose their orthogonality giving rise for so-called intercarrier interference. Among previous proposals to cope with this problem was the use of multiple receive antennas. These are positioned in the moving direction of the receiver such that the individual antennas are receiving delayed replica of the transmit signal via identical paths. By means of interpolation this enables to fabric virtual non-moving antennas which seemingly experience no Doppler spread. However, knowledge of the temporal channel autocorrelation function is required to perform this interpolation. This paper presents a method to estimate the autocorrelation function in time domain based on the cylic OFDM signaling structure.


This paper provides a schematic, systematic and structured approach todeveloping Bayesian belief networks to assess risks in contexts dened by activities.The method ameliorates elicitation, specication and validation of expert knowledgeby reusing a schematic structures based on reasoning of risks based on the temporal motivationaltheory. The method is based on earlier work that took a rst signicant steptowards reducing the complexity of development of Bayesian belief networks by clusteringand classifying variables in Bayesian belief networks as well as associating the processwith human deciions making. It may be possible to reduce the role of a facilitiatoror even remove the facilitator altogether by using this method. The method is partiallyvalidated and further work is required on this topic.


An extensive finite element analysis was performed to study the settlement behavior of vertically loaded piles entirely embedded in non-homogeneous rock. To avoid utilizing interrelated parameters, pile-rock relative stiffness was expressed as a function of the elastic modulus of rock mass near the pile head that does not depend on pile length. Cases of pile-rock stiffness ratios that are typical for reinforced concrete piles bored in sedimentary rocks were investigated. Charts were developed to predict the elastic settlement of vertically loaded piles in non-homogeneous media. An equation was also introduced to incorporate the effect of rock non-homogeneity in estimating the depth at which settlement becomes insensitive to the increase of pile length.


Article history: Received July 25, 2012 Received in Revised form August, 26, 2012 Accepted 10 September 2012 Available online 13 September 2012 This paper presents an investigation on existing challenges in developing aviation industry in Iran. The proposed study designs and distributes a questionnaire among all specialists who are involved with design, production and distribution of aviation industry in Iran. Our interview has revealed that there were approximately 200 potential experts as population of our survey. The designed questionnaire consists of six parts in Likert scale in terms of linguistic terms. All six parts of the survey was designed based on four segments of aviation industry in Iran. Based on the results of this survey, appropriate structure for the legislative, availability of sufficient funds for purchasing private planes, public access to the airports and airport services and availability of supply chain management and technical service centers are the most important challenges in this industry. In addition, availability of various infrastructures such as runways, hangars and maintenance centers to access the industrial towns and insufficient support from relevant organizations such as the ministry of commerce, industry and mining, civil aviation organization and other organizations in the manufacturing and aircraft are among other most important challenges in developing this industry in Iran. © 2012 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.


Abstract Seafloor and passive margins gradually subside as a result of thermal contraction of the underlying lithosphere. Thermal subsidence is also an attractive mechanism for the Michigan basin. For subsidence to occur within this previously stable continental region, some mechanism is needed to heat the lithosphere and to reduce the buoyancy of the continental crust. Mechanical stretching of the lithosphere along with its crust does both at the same time. The ponding of plume material beneath the crust supplies heat, but does not directly thin the crust. The British Isles and the Congo basin provide analogies to the Michigan basin. Continental stretching before subsidence is evident within the British Isles and the Congo basin. Stretching is not obvious in Michigan, but undetected rifts extending from the Iapetus break-up margin may exist. A closed region of thin lithosphere beneath the Irish Sea may have trapped hot buoyant material from the Iceland plume; the Michigan basin may have trapped material from an Iapetus age plume near Montreal. Cratonic basins provide information on the tail of the subsidence curve, unlike more ephemeral oceanic crust and passive margins. The poorly resolved tails in the Michigan and the Congo basins are consistent with the time subsidence constant, c. 280 myr predicted by stagnant lid convection formalism.


Pasteurized milk, according to the definition of the Secretary of Agriculture, is milk that has been heated below the boiling point, but sufficiently to kill most of the active organisms present, and immediately cooled to 50 F. or lower. The process of pasteurization as we know it to-day is employed either to prevent communication of disease through milk to the consumer or to avoid "disease of milk." The process was first worked out by Pasteur to preserve wine and beer and had no reference to diseases of man. Soxhlet in 1886 devised tubes and methods for sterilizing milk so that it would keep. These methods were introduced into the United States by Caille 1 in 1888, who, in an article on the subject, states that some thirteen years before Jacobi had recommended sterilization of milk. These methods all had as their object the preservation of milk and it was not


Maize is the most widely grown cereal crop worldwide, and is the most important staple crop in sub-Sahara Africa. The spotted stemborer, Chilo partellus (Swinhoe) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) is considered among the most important pests of maize and the damage it causes may result in yield losses of up to 88%. Previous studies showed that plants damaged by herbivores release huge amounts of volatile compounds, known as herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) into the environment, which serve as attractant to natural enemies and repellent to herbivores. In addition, emitted HlPVs affect the defence responses of neighbouring plants. Previous studies reported that the non-host molasses grass, Melinis minutiflora P. Beauv. repels C. partellus moths and increases larval parasitism by Cotesia sesamiae Cameron (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) when intercropped with maize. However, the potential role of plant signalling between molasses grass and maize, and any subsequent effect on C. partellus and C. sesamiae behaviour remained unknown. Moreover, it was not known for how long the maize plant retained the information after removal from exposure to the emitter plant. Experiments were conducted by exposing plants of two maize landraces, "Nyamula" and "Jowi-red", and two hybrid maize varieties "WS505" and "PH4" to molasses grass volatiles for certain periods of time. In two-choice oviposition bioassays, gravid C. partellus moths preferred non-exposed maize landraces for oviposition compared to those exposed to molasses grass volatiles. Additionally, volatile samples collected from landrace maize plants were significantly more attractive to C. sesamiae compared to non-exposed maize plants in four-arm olfactometer bioassays. Similarly, maize plants previously exposed to molasses grass and removed for certain periods of time then infested by C. partellus larvae were not preferred for ovipostion by C. partellus moths, and headspace samples collected were more attractive to C. sesamiae comparared to non-exposed infested plants. Headspace samples were analysed using Gas Chromatography (GC), Coupled Gas ChromatographyMass Spectrometry (GC-MS) and Gas Chromatography-Electroantennography (GC-EAG). GC-EAG analysis with attractive headspace samples from exposed maize landraces revealed that C. sesamiae was responsive to certain compounds, namely, myrcene, (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol acetate, (E)-ocimene, (~)-ocimene, (R)-linanool, (E)-4,8-dimethyl-l ,3, 7-nonatriene (DMNT), decanal, (£)-caryophyllene and (£,E)-4,8,12-trimethyl-1,3,7,11-tridecatetraene (TMTT). Notably, with the commercial maize hybrids, there was no significant difference in the number of eggs laid by C. partellus moths on exposed and non-exposed plants. Similarly, there was no significant difference in C. sesamiae attraction towards volatiles obtained from exposed and non exposed hybrid maize plants. These findings suggest that volatile organic compounds released by molasses grass have the ability to induce defence responses in neighbouring maize landraces, a trait that the commercial hybrid varieties seem to lack, and demonstrate the potential of plant signalling as a component of management approaches for stemborer pests in subsistence farming in Africa.