The utilization of native forests is one of the most contentious and socially-divisive issues in Australia. Much of the recent conflict over the conservation and exploitation of Australia's temperate forests has focussed on the expansion of the reserve system. Even if this aspect of forest conflict is resolved, there will be a number of major changes required before the forest sector can be regarded as having made the transition to ecological sustainability. The expansion of the reserve system must not result in a reduction in off-reserve conservation efforts as most of the nation's forest biodiversity will still occur outside the protected area network. This means that progress toward ecological sustainability will involve an overall reduction in timber and pulpwood production from native forests. There needs to be a concerted research and monitoring effort to better understand forest ecosystems targeted for management. Such efforts must not only provide better knowledge of forest biota, but they should assist foresters to develop more ecologically-sensitive silvicultural systems ? including the partial replacement of traditional cutting methods with new ones. As part of this effort, there is a need for better stand inventory to assist more accurate resource and yield estimates, and the implementation of mechanisms to assess adherence to environmental codes for timber harvesting.


The diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) has been improved and simplified over the past decade thanks to advances in noninvasive and readily accessible technology. With high degrees of sensitivity and specificity, venous ultrasonography is favored as the initial investigation for DVT. To diagnose PE, most clinicians rely on diagnostic algorithms that combine clinical assessment, noninvasive lung studies, and, if necessary, venous ultrasonography of the legs and D-dimer testing. Substantial progress has also occurred in the treatment of acute venous thromboembolism with the introduction of low-molecular-weight heparins. This class of antithrombotic agents has changed initial therapy from an inpatient, intravenous regimen that required laborious monitoring to an outpatient practice using weight-adjusted doses of once-daily subcutaneous injections. In addition, several new anticoagulants with theoretical advantages over existing agents have entered phase III studies. Aspects of thrombosis treatment that remain controversial include vena caval interruption and the indications for thrombolysis and surgical thromboembolectomy.


The exploration of seaweeds for commercial utilization is under extensive investigations since the world is facing the damage of the shortage of conventional food. Similarly the utilization of seaweeds as a potential source of medicine could also contribute significantly in this field. The exploration of seaweeds as a source of medicine is under progress and there are many reports in which different pharmacological properties have been investigated and reported. Pakistan has rich algae flora in the coastal and in shore waters of northern Arabian sea (Shameel and Tanaka, 1992), and several studies have been made on the phytochemistry of seaweeds during last decade (Bano et aI., 1988, Ahmed and Shameel, 1990).

Among important divisions of seaweeds the members of chlorphyte are less extensively investigated and found to have various important products (Amjad and Shameel, 1993). The isolation and 13C NMR spectroscopy of the water soluble polysaccharides from south Arabia Red algae was done. (Furwax and Miller, 1986). Many other types of seaweed are considered as vary good source of some bioactive products and according to Maryama et al., 1972 there may be possible preventive effect of dietary seaweeds as internal radiation injury of the thyroid by radioactive iodine.

Keeping in mind the importance of seaweeds and other marine resources, present study was designed to evaluate the pharmacological activities of some marine sources collected from Karachi coast.

The collection of seaweeds was carried out from Paradise Point and Manora of Karachi. The identification phase was followed after collection. The collected seaweeds were drained of seawater and epiphytes as well as the calcarious deposit were removed. Fresh seaweeds were dried completely and then were soaked in methanol (about 2 lit x 3) for thirty days. After thirty days, the extract was filtered through the filter paper and the residue left was the methanolic extract tested for various pharmacological activities.

The seaweeds, which were collected and identified for the study, are 1. Codium iyengarii (green) 2. Sargassem bindrii (brown] 3. Codium ftabellatum (green) 4. Hypnea musciformis (red) The present study is designed to investigate the effects on hematological and, biochemical and on brain biogenic amines. For this purpose the study is carried out on rabbits (for biochemical and hematological) and on albino mice (for brain biogenic amines).


Currently the case of children pornography addiction has entered a high percentage. According to Indonesian Children Protection Commission, about 65.34 percent of children aged 9 to 19 years in Indonesia access Pornography Via Gadget. The percentage makes Indonesia change its status to a sexual violence emergency. The purpose of this research is to analyze the communication model conducted by parents towards children addicted to pornography. In this research, the researcher uses qualitative approach. Data collection is conducted with in-depth interviews and participant observations. The number of informants in this research consist of three people. The data analysis in this research use the interaction model proposed by Miles and Huberman through the stages after the data was obtained and then in reduced, displayed, and verified. Meanwhile, checking the validity of data is done by triangulation of sources and method. The result of this research is the model used in this research is Permissive Communication Pattern and Militaristic Communication Pattern. Besides by communicating with children, a religious approach is also taken by parents in order to children do not more fall down and addicted to access pornography through internet media.


We review evidence that in the course of reading, the visual system computes abstract letter identities (ALIs): a representation of letters that encodes their identity but that abstracts away from their visual appearance. How could the visual system learn such a seemingly nonvisual representation? We propose that different forms of the same letter tend to appear in similar distributions of contexts (in the same words written in different ways) and that this environmental correlation interacts with correlation-based learning mechanisms in the brain to lead to the formation of ALIs. We review a neural network model that demonstrates the feasibility of this common contexts hypothesis and present two experiments confirming some novel predictions: (a) repeatedly presenting arbitrary visual stimuli in common contexts leads those stimuli to be confusable with each other, and (b) different forms of the same letter are more confusable with each other in word-like contexts than in nonword-like contexts. We then extend the model to use real pictures of letters as input and simulate some of the novel empirical findings from the experiments.


The perceptual information transmitted from a damaged cochlea to the brain is more poorly specified than information from an intact cochlea and requires more processing in working memory before language content can be decoded. In addition to making sounds audible, current hearing aids include several technologies that are intended to facilitate language understanding for persons with hearing-impairment in challenging listening situations. These include directional microphones, noise reduction, and fast-acting amplitude compression systems. However, the processed signal itself may challenge listening to the extent that with specific types of technology, and in certain listening situations, individual differences in cognitive processing resources may determine listening success. Here, current and developing digital hearing aid signal processing schemes are reviewed in the light of individual working memory (WM) differences. It is argued that signal processing designed to improve speech understanding may have both positive and negative consequences, and that these may depend on individual WM capacity.


Mutations of both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)–encoded mitochondrial proteins can cause cardiomyopathy associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. Hence, the cardiac phenotype of nuclear DNA mitochondrial mutations might be modulated by mtDNA variation. We studied a 13-generation Mennonite pedigree with autosomal recessive myopathy and cardiomyopathy due to an SLC25A4 frameshift null mutation (c.523delC, p.Q175RfsX38), which codes for the heart-muscle isoform of the adenine nucleotide translocator–1. Ten homozygous null (adenine nucleotide translocator–1−/−) patients monitored over a median of 6 years had a phenotype of progressive myocardial thickening, hyperalaninemia, lactic acidosis, exercise intolerance, and persistent adrenergic activation. Electrocardiography and echocardiography with velocity vector imaging revealed abnormal contractile mechanics, myocardial repolarization abnormalities, and impaired left ventricular relaxation. End-stage heart disease was characterized by massive, symmetric, concentric cardiac hypertrophy; widespread cardiomyocyte degeneration; overabundant and structurally abnormal mitochondria; extensive subendocardial interstitial fibrosis; and marked hypertrophy of arteriolar smooth muscle. Substantial variability in the progression and severity of heart disease segregated with maternal lineage, and sequencing of mtDNA from five maternal lineages revealed two major European haplogroups, U and H. Patients with the haplogroup U mtDNAs had more rapid and severe cardiomyopathy than those with haplogroup H.


Numerous articles have been published linking consanguineous marriage to an elevated prevalence of congenital heart disease, with ventricular septal defects and atrial septal defects the most commonly cited disorders. While initially persuasive, on closer examination many of these studies have fundamental shortcomings in their design and in the recruitment of study subjects and controls. Improved matching of cases and controls, to include recognition of the long-established community boundaries within which most marriages are contracted, and the assessment of consanguinity within specific levels and types of marital union would improve and help to focus the study outcomes. At the same time, major discrepancies between studies in their reported prevalence and types of congenital heart disease suggest an urgent need for greater standardization in the classification and reporting of these disorders.


Syntactic movement is a pervasive phenomenon in natural language and, as such, has played a key role in syntactic theorizing. Nonetheless, an understanding of the mechanism that allows a constituent to appear to the right of its base-generated position has remained elusive. This groundbreaking research monograph aims to address this gap in our knowledge by expanding the inventory of languages and data sets traditionally considered in the literature. Specifically, Ortega-Santos analyzes the interplay between focus, word order and ellipsis in Spanish. A major finding that emerges from the analysis is that the tension between linearization requirements and rightward movement is diminished by ellipsis. Current debates on the syntax of the VOS order and preverbal subjects in Null-Subject Languages also figure prominently in the discussion, as novel empirical evidence for the existence of null expletives is provided: a non-trivial issue for our understanding of the Extended Projection Principle and subjecthood across languages.


Background The diagnosis and management of concussion in sport rely heavily on self-report of symptoms by the athlete. However, many symptoms commonly reported after a concussion (headache, nausea, fatigue, etc.) may be influenced by other factors. Fatigue is a frequent complaint, but may actually be a function of level of physical fitness. Objective To evaluate the role of physical fitness on self-report of concussion symptoms in collegiate athletes and students, during baseline testing. Design Prospective repeated measures. Participants 125 subjects were recruited, including 95 collegiate athletes and 30 undergraduate students (83 males and 42 females). Athletes were screened for medical and psychological conditions. No athlete had a recent history of concussion. Intervention Subjects completed the Standardised Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT1) at three time periods: prior to a Leger (Beep) test, within 10 min of test completion, and within 24 h. The Leger test has established validity and reliability to estimate an athlete's V02 maximum and overall fitness levels. Main outcome measures Estimated V02 max (Leger test) and symptom scores on the SCAT1. Results Subjects were grouped into three levels of fitness according to criteria established by the American College of Sports Medicine (2010). A 3×3 repeated-measures ANOVA was not significant for the overall model but showed a significant interaction between time and fitness level (F (2, 121)=3.50, p=0.02). Post-hoc analysis revealed significant differences in report of symptoms among the three fitness groups at baseline and immediately post-activity, but not at 24 h. Conclusion Results provide evidence of a moderating effect of fitness level on report of concussion symptoms at baseline, even in healthy adults. Specifically, exercise can induce symptom reporting, and may a function of an athlete's level of conditioning. Sport medicine professionals making decisions following concussion need to consider an athlete's level of fitness when evaluating post-concussion symptoms.


South Asians' (SA) under-representation in mental health services is well-documented (Bowl, 2007; Greenwood et al., 2000), the reasons for which are many. Therapist self-disclosure (TSD) could be considered as a potentially significant part of a therapeutic encounter when providing effective therapy in a culturally diverse society. This study will attempt to explore SA participants' subjective experiences of TSD in individual therapy. The study will attempt to discover how the participants make meaning of TSD, how they experience it and the impact it has on them and the TR. The majority of studies exploring TSD have been mainly quantitative in nature; however, a case can be made for using a qualitative approach as it provides a more detailed representation of the experience and allows for an in-depth understanding of the complexity and content of self-disclosure. Six SA participants aged between 24-33 years completed semi-structured interviews which were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Four super-ordinate themes emerged from the interview data: Understanding of therapist self-disclosure, Experience of therapist self-disclosure, Impact of therapist self-disclosure on self, and Impact of therapist self-disclosure on the therapeutic relationship. A compelling 'connection' dimension permeated throughout the accounts and their experience was found to be fundamentally relational in nature. The findings of this study put forward that TSD is but one way of facilitating client self-disclosure, and fostering and maintaining the TR within a cross-cultural counselling context for SA clients. A rich description of the SA client group experience of TSD in individual therapy is therefore presented. It is argued that the study provides insights into this lived experience that may be useful for counselling psychologists when working with this group, and perhaps other BME groups attending therapy. Limitations of the study and recommendations for future research are discussed.


The purpose with this essay is to investigate whether the legal capital can be justified as creditor protection and whether the legal capital prevent entrepreneurship. Historically the legal capital has been justified by means of creditor protection. Nowdays the development within EU rather reduces or abolish the legal capital. Sweden has recently, 1 of April 2010, reduced the legal capital from 100 000 Swedish crowns to 50 000 Swedish crowns. In the preparatory work it has been admitted that the legal capital does not in reality offer creditors much protection. Although the lawmaker decides to retain the legal capital and justifies the legal capitals existence with the argument that involuntary creditors has the need of the legal capital. It is also argued in the preparatory work that a reduction of the legal capital does not necessarily mean that new business creation will increase. Rather, the private limited liability company will instead be more available. I will present different authors views on the legal capital doctrine. The views that are presented are critical to the legal capital doctrine. I will also present different statistics that compares countries legal environment and how it effects entrepreneurship My conclusions are that legal capital can be questioned, especially on efficiency grounds. I also argue that legal capital in fact hinders entrepreneurship and I base my premise on the different statistics that has been presented.


Heavy metals can be toxic to humans. They need to be monitored to ensure environmental levels do not go above dangerous levels. The European Commission has set acceptable maximum levels of metals allowed in food since most metals end up in humans through their diet. But how do metals find their way into our food in the first place? Heavy metals can enter the environment in a number of ways, including through volcanism, fossil fuel burning, and antifouling paint use. The heavy metals bind with biomolecules inside living tissue, and can build up to dangerous levels. One prime example of how such metals end up in the food we eat can be seen in the case of the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris). The octopus is susceptible to accumulating high levels of heavy metals due to its high ingestion rate of benthic fauna. Joshua Gili (supervised by Prof. Victor Axiak) recorded the concentrations of cadmium, copper, lead, and zinc in the common octopus. Specimens were collected from around Malta during summer and winter. The analysis was performed on two of the species' tissues—the tentacles and the digestive glands— which function in a similar way to the human liver. Each tissue was gathered into one pool by site, then homogenised, dried, and acid-treated. Afterwards a technique called polarography was used to determine the levels of each metal. This data helped Gili decide whether metal accumulation in the tissue of octopi is affected by biometry, season, or geography. In Malta, metal levels depended on where the octopus was caught. In general, the concentrations were lower than other Mediterranean regions. The levels of cadmium and lead in the tentacles were below toxic levels as stated by the European Commission, indicating that local octopus is safe to eat.


BACKGROUND
Atrial fibrillation (AF) carries a high risk of stroke and other thromboembolic events. Appropriate use of drugs to prevent thromboembolism in patients with AF involves comparing the patient's risk of stroke to the risk of hemorrhage from medication use.

OBJECTIVES
To quantify risk of stroke, major hemorrhage and death from using medications that have been rigorously evaluated for prevention of thromboembolism in AF.

SEARCH STRATEGY
Articles were identified through the Cochrane Collaboration's CENTRAL database and MEDLINE until December 1999.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Included Randomized controlled trials of drugs to prevent thromboembolism in adults with non-postoperative AF. Excluded RCTS of patients with rheumatic valvular disease.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Data were abstracted by two reviewers. Odds ratios from all qualitatively similar studies were combined, with weighting by study size, to yield aggregate odds ratios for stroke, major hemorrhage, and death for each drug.

MAIN RESULTS
Fourteen articles were included in this review. Warfarin was more efficacious than placebo for primary stroke prevention {aggregate odds ratio (OR) of stroke=0.30 [95% Confidence Interval (C.I.) 0.19,0.48]}, with moderate evidence of more major bleeding { OR= 1.90 [95% C.I. 0.89,4.04].}. Aspirin was inconclusively more efficacious than placebo for stroke prevention {OR=0.68 [95% C.I. 0.29,1.57]}, with inconclusive evidence regarding more major bleeds {OR=0.81[95% C.I. 0.37,1.78]}. For primary prevention, assuming a baseline risk of 45 strokes per 1000 patient-years, warfarin could prevent 30 strokes at the expense of only 6 additional major bleeds. Aspirin could prevent 17 strokes, without increasing major hemorrhage. In direct comparison, there was moderate evidence for fewer strokes among patients on warfarin than on aspirin {aggregate OR=0.64[95% C.I. 0.43,0.96]}, with only suggestive evidence for more major hemorrhage {OR =1.58 [95% C.I. 0.76,3.27]}. However, in younger patients, with a mean age of 65 years, the absolute reduction in stroke rate with warfarin compared to aspirin was low (5.5 per 1000 person-years) compared to an older group (15 per 1000 person-years). Low-dose warfarin or low-dose warfarin with aspirin was less efficacious for stroke prevention than adjusted-dose warfarin.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
The evidence strongly supports warfarin in AF for patients at average or greater risk of stroke, although clearly there is a risk of hemorrhage. Although not definitively supported by the evidence, aspirin may prove to be useful for stroke prevention in sub-groups with a low risk of stroke, with less risk of hemorrhage than with warfarin. Further studies are needed of low- molecular weight heparin and aspirin in lower risk patients.


AN INVESTIGATION OF TRAUMA SYMPTOM REDUCTION IN A CLINICAL SAMPLE OF SEXUALLY ABUSED CHILDREN USING THE TRAUMA SYMPTOM CHECKLIST FOR CHILDREN by Sarah D. Brown School counselors have a duty to formulate strategies that aid in the detection and prevention of child sexual abuse (ASCA, 2003). This may be accomplished in a number of ways, such as designing programs, providing training to teachers regarding recognizing and reporting abuse indicators, and collaborating with child protection and other mental health professionals to provide additional aftercare for sexually abused children in the school setting. Much can be learned about trauma symptomology from a clinical sample of sexually abused children. The Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC; Briere, 1996) is a 54-item self-report instrument for children and adolescents 8-16 years of age which assesses the frequency of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors related to traumatic events they have experienced. To understand better the trauma symptomology of children and adolescents, the author analyzed an existing data set of TSCC protocols from children who received treatment for sexual abuse from a children's advocacy center in a metropolitan area near a large city in the southeastern United States. Although a large number of potential participants were lost to follow up (N = 54), T analyses revealed significant differences between the groups only on the length of time in therapy. A repeated measures analysis of variance was performed on data from children and adolescents who completed therapy (N = 31) to test whether differences on Depression and Posttraumatic Stress scale scores would exist across the course of therapy. Although no statistically significant findings emerged, implications for clinical practice and research became apparent. Specifically, differences in cutoff T-scores on TSCC scales may be more useful to clinicians for treatment and termination planning purposes than statistically significant differences. In addition, assessing clients at intervals measured by session number, rather than by length of time, may provide more generalizable results for withinand between-participants clinical and research comparisons. These implications may aid clinical and school counselors and researchers to recognize and serve the specific needs of sexually abused children in their respective settings. AN INVESTIGATION OF TRAUMA SYMPTOM REDUCTION IN A CLINICAL SAMPLE OF SEXUALLY ABUSED CHILDREN USING THE TRAUMA SYMPTOM CHECKLIST FOR CHILDREN by Sarah D. Brown


Abstract. Before radar estimates of the raindrop size distribution (DSD) can be assimilated into numerical weather prediction models, the DSD estimate must also include an uncertainty estimate. Ensemble statistics are based on using the same observations as inputs into several different models with the spread in the outputs providing an uncertainty estimate. In this study, Doppler velocity spectra from collocated vertically pointing profiling radars operating at 50 and 920 MHz were the input data for 42 different DSD retrieval models. The DSD retrieval models were perturbations of seven different DSD models (including exponential and gamma functions), two different inverse modeling methodologies (convolution or deconvolution), and three different cost functions (two spectral and one moment cost functions). Two rain events near Darwin, Australia, were analyzed in this study producing 26 725 independent ensembles of mass-weighted mean raindrop diameter Dm and rain rate R. The mean and the standard deviation (indicated by the symbols and σx) of Dm and R were estimated for each ensemble. For small ranges of or , histograms of σDm and σR were found to be asymmetric, which prevented Gaussian statistics from being used to describe the uncertainties. Therefore, 10, 50, and 90 percentiles of σDm and σR were used to describe the uncertainties for small intervals of or . The smallest Dm uncertainty occurred for between 0.8 and 1.8 mm with the 90th and 50th percentiles being less than 0.15 and 0.11 mm, which correspond to relative errors of less than 20% and 15%, respectively. The uncertainty increased for smaller and larger values. The uncertainty of R increased with . While the 90th percentile uncertainty approached 0.6 mm h−1 for a 2 mm h−1 rain rate (30% relative error), the median uncertainty was less than 0.15 mm h−1 at the same rain rate (less than 8% relative error). This study addresses retrieval error and does not attempt to quantify absolute or representativeness errors.


Elevated CO2 levels predicted to occur by the end of the century can affect the physiology and behaviour of marine fishes. For one important survival mechanism, the response to chemical alarm cues from conspecifics, substantial among-individual variation in the extent of behavioural impairment when exposed to elevated CO2 has been observed in previous studies. Whole brain transcriptomic data has further emphasized the importance of parental phenotypic variation in the response of juvenile fish to elevated CO2. In this study, we investigate the genome-wide proteomic responses of this variation in the brain of 5-week old spiny damselfish, Acanthochromis polyacanthus. We compared the expression of proteins in the brains of juvenile A. polyacanthus from two different parental behavioural phenotypes (sensitive and tolerant) that had been experimentally exposed to short-term, long-term and inter-generational elevated CO2. Our results show differential expression of key proteins related to stress response and epigenetic markers with elevated CO2 exposure. Proteins related to neurological development were also differentially expressed particularly in the long-term developmental treatment, which might be critical for juvenile development. By contrast, exposure to elevated CO2 in the parental generation resulted in only three differentially expressed proteins in the offspring, revealing potential for inter-generational acclimation. Lastly, we found a distinct proteomic pattern in juveniles due to the behavioural sensitivity of parents to elevated CO2, even though the behaviour of the juvenile fish was impaired regardless of parental phenotype. Our data shows that developing juveniles are affected in their brain protein expression by elevated CO2, but the effect varies with the length of exposure as well as due to variation of parental phenotypes in the population.


Background: Necrotizing soft tissue infections (NSTI) are potentially severe infections that have a high morbidity and mortality even with modern medical care. This study examines factors associated with outcomes in patients with NSTI in an academic tertiary care hospital. Design: This is a retrospective cohort study of patients admitted with NSTI between 2003 and 2008. Baseline demographics and comorbid conditions, laboratory and clinical parameters, timing of surgery, and outcomes, including length of stay and mortality, were compared with univariate analysis; significant factors were then analyzed for their effects on mortality using binary logistic regression analysis. Results: Sixty-nine patients with NSTI were analyzed; 61% were men. Diabetes (39%) was the most common comorbid condition. Most infections (55%) were polymicrobial. The most common organism in monomicrobial infections was Staphylococcus aureus , and 50 % of these isolates were methicillin resistant. Nine patients (13%) required amputation. Mortality was 20%, and the most significant predictor of mortality was a higher respiratory rate on admission (p=0.02). Conclusion: Patients in this series frequently had diabetes, usually had polymicrobial infections, and had a 20% mortality rate.


Local autonomy is one of the recent trends in reforms of compulsory education. However, several parallel trends such as individual accountability, performance and visibility challenge professional autonomy. The aim of this article is to explore how accountability and transparency reforms affect teacher autonomy in Norway and Sweden. The authors argue that both individual teacher autonomy at the local workplace and autonomy at the national level embracing teachers as a collective group are important in analysing teachers' professional autonomy. In comparing teachers' professional autonomy they differentiate between processes of individualisation and collectivisation. Their analysis indicates, although intra-national differences, that the difference between Norwegian and Swedish teachers is striking. While the Swedish teachers experience a high degree of individual autonomy, their influence on national policy processes seems weakened. This leads to the assumption that professional autonomy as a result of transparency and accountability reforms, even if the teachers report individual professional autonomy, reduces the authority of the profession at the national policy-making level. The analysis indicates that Norwegian teachers are characterized by old professionalism. The strong input regulations in Norway limit individual teacher autonomy. Even with weakened individual autonomy, teachers still manage to supply conditions for national education policy making. This means that teachers still are autonomous at the collective level. Moreover, the findings indicate that national standards and control in education are accepted as tools for securing professional knowledge and status.


Objective: Anti-double stranded desoxyribonucleic acid (anti-dsDNA) antibodies are considered fairly specific for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and their quantification is useful for the clinical management of SLE patients. We assessed the diagnostic performance of the QUANTA Flash dsDNA chemiluminescent immunoassay (CIA) in comparison to an ELISA, using patients from five participating countries. The main focus was to evaluate the correlation between anti-dsDNA antibody results from the CIA and global SLE disease activity, as measured by the SLE Disease Activity Index 2000 (SLEDAI-2K). Patients and methods: A total of 1431 samples (SLE, n = 843; disease controls, n = 588) from five countries (Canada, USA, Portugal, Sweden and Spain) were tested with QUANTA Flash dsDNA (Inova Diagnostics, San Diego, CA, USA). Data obtained with the QUANTA Lite dsDNA SC ELISA (Inova Diagnostics) were available for samples from three sites (Canada, USA and Sweden, n = 566). The SLEDAI-2K scores were available for 805 SLE patients and a cut-off of > 4 was used to define active disease. Results: QUANTA Flash dsDNA had a sensitivity of 54.3% for the diagnosis of SLE, combined with 89.8% specificity. Anti-dsDNA antibody levels were significantly higher (p < 0.0001) in active SLE (SLEDAI-2K > 4; n = 232; median value 83.0 IU/mL) versus the inactive patients (n = 573; median value 22.3 IU/mL), and the SLEDAI-2K scoring correlated with their dsDNA antibody levels (Spearman's rho = 0.44, p < 0.0001). Similar but less pronounced findings were also found for the ELISA, in relation to disease activity. Conclusions: The QUANTA Flash dsDNA assay showed good clinical performance in a large international multi-center study. Additionally, the strong correlation between anti-dsDNA antibody results and SLEDAI-2K scores supported the potential utility of QUANTA Flash dsDNA for monitoring disease activity.


To predict the response of C-rich soils to external change, models are needed that accurately reflect the conditions of these soils. Estimation of Carbon in Organic Soils—Sequestration and Emissions (ECOSSE) is a model that allows simulations of soil C and N turnover in both mineral and organic soils using only the limited meteorological, land-use and soil data that is available at the national scale. Because it is able to function at field as well as national scales if appropriate input data are used, field-scale evaluations can be used to determine uncertainty in national simulations. Here we present an evaluation of the uncertainty expected in national-scale simulations of Scotland, using data from the National Soil Inventory of Scotland. This data set provides measurements of C change for the range of soils, climates and land-use types found across Scotland. The simulated values show a high degree of association with the measurements in both total C and change in C content of the soil. Over all sites where land-use change occurred, the average deviation between the simulated and measured values of percentage change in soil C was less than the experimental error (11% simulation error, 53% measurement error). This suggests that the uncertainty in the national-scale simulations will be ~11%. Only a small bias in the simulations was observed compared to the measured values, suggesting that a small underestimate of the change in soil C should be expected at the national scale (–4%).


" Food safety and quality have become increasingly important in international fish trade. Stringent conditions imposed by major fish-importing nations in the developed world, which take in 80 percent of global fish exports, give food safety priority over price as the main determinant for market access. Nearly half of fish exports originate from developing countries, which have limited capacity to invest in the rigorous fish safety measures demanded by importing countries... Concerns about the safety of fish from Kenya first arose in November 1997 when Spain and Italy both banned fish imports from Kenya, claiming the presence of Salmonellae.... Kenya faces important challenges in implementing stronger food safety measures, especially in light of its small development budget. It cannot export fish unless it incurs huge costs" from Text


Neuroimaging and psychophysiological techniques have proved to be useful in comprehending the extent to which the visual modality is pervasive in mental imagery, and in comprehending the specificity of images generated through other sensory modalities. Although further research is needed to understand the nature of mental images, data attained by means of these techniques suggest that mental imagery requires at least two distinct processing components.


The colonial architecture of the nineteenth century has much to tell us of the history of colonialism and cultural exchange. Yet, these buildings can be read in many ways. Do they stand as witnesses to the rapacity and self-delusion of empire? Are they monuments to a world of lost glory and forgotten convictions? Do they reveal battles won by indigenous cultures and styles? Or do they simply represent an architectural style made absurdly incongruous in relocation? Empire Building is a study of how and why Western architecture was exported to the Middle East and how Islamic and Byzantine architectural ideas and styles impacted on the West. The book explores how far racial theory and political and religious agendas guided British architects (and how such ideas were resisted when applied), and how Eastern ideas came to influence the West, through writers such as Ruskin and buildings such as the Crystal Palace. Beautifully written and lavishly illustrated, Empire Building takes the reader on an extraordinary postcolonial journey, backwards and forwards, into the heart and to the edge of empire.


[eng] Pseudo-panel methods are an alternative to using panel data for estimating fixed effects models when only independent repeated cross-sectional data are available. They are widely used to estimate price or income elasticities and carry out life-cycle analyses, for which long-term data are required, but panel data have limits in terms of availability over time and attrition. Pseudo-panels observe cohorts, i.e. stable groups of individuals, rather than individuals over time. Individual variables are replaced by their intra-cohort means. Due to the linearity of this transformation, the linear model with individual fixed effect corresponds to its pseudo-panel data counterpart. The individual fixed effect is replaced by a cohort effect and the model is particularly simple to estimate if the cohort effect can be itself considered as a fixed effect. The criteria for forming the cohorts must therefore take into account a number of requirements. It must obviously be observable for all the individuals and form a partition of the population (each individual is classified into exactly one cohort); beyond this, it must correspond to a characteristic of the individuals that will not change over time (e.g. year of birth). Finally, the size of the cohorts results from a trade-off between bias and variance. It must be large enough to limit the extent of measurement error on intra-cohort variable means, that generates bias and imprecise estimators of the model parameters. However, increasing the size of the cohorts decreases the number of cohorts observed, which makes estimators less precise. The extension to non-linear models is not direct and only introduced here. Finally, the article provides an application to the French Household Wealth Survey (enquete Patrimoine).


This journal article considers an evolutionary creationist process for the origin of humanity. In doing so, the essay explores a number of broadly interrelated issues in an integrated and synthesized manner. The key supposition is that a fundamental congruity exists between what God has revealed in nature and in scripture. Accordingly, the endeavour involves taking seriously the scientific data, as well as engaging scripture in its historical, cultural, and sociological contexts. The resulting outcome is a theologically informed harmonization of evolutionary theory with creationist teachings found in the Judeo-Christian scriptures about the genesis of Homo sapiens.


This book first discusses traditional concepts and ideas related to language testing and evaluation. This is followed
by an exploration into more recent notions about testing, emphasizing the qualitative and social rather than psychometric aspects of tests. Each chapter presents a brief discussion of important concepts, terminology and issues related to these two perspectives. This book is intended as a bridge between the more traditional concepts of testing and measurement in teaching English as a second language to one that is more contemporary and compatible with modern views of language learning and education. It hopes to address important and relevant issues that can help
the reader better understand the demands and challenges of testing and evaluation in TESL especially in Malaysia. While the book is intended for the undergraduate testing course in the TESL programme at Universiti Putra Malaysia, it is also relevant to the needs of language teachers especially in Malaysia schools.


Contactin is a neural cell adhesion molecular that is tethered to the cell surface through a glycosyl phosphatidylinositol (GPI)-linked anchor. Although it has been reported to be in a complex with the intracellular tyrosine kinase fyn, the nature of this interaction has not been clear. Zeng et al. propose that a receptor-type protein tyrosine phosphatase, PTPα, could be an intermediate component in this complex. The authors show that endogenous contactin and PTPα in chick brain can be isolated in a complex. The two proteins also colocalized when overexpressed in cultured cells. Because this interaction was not detected when cells expressing either protein were cultured together, the authors suggest that interaction occurs as a receptor complex within the same cell. The finding suggests possible signaling through a contactin-PTPα complex, as PTPα is also thought to signal through fyn in developing neural tissue. A tripartite complex of contactin, PTPα, and fyn, as well as the physiological significance of this interaction, has yet to be determined. Zeng, L., D'Alessandri, L., Kalousek, M.B., Vaughan, L., and Pallen, C.J. (1999) Protein tyrosine phosphataseα (PTPα) and contactin form a novel neuronal receptor complex linked to the intracellular tyrosine kinase fyn. J. Cell Biol. 147: 707-714. [Abstract] [Full Text]


1. Animal experiments have suggested that the renal effects of atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) are dependent on dopaminergic activation, predominantly of the DA1-receptor. In man, there is evidence of dependence on the DA2-receptor for the natriuresis produced by central blood volume expansion. 2. Six normal volunteers underwent infusions of alpha-human ANP preceded by domperidone (a DA2-antagonist) or placebo. Eight volunteers underwent a 3 h period of 10 degrees head-down tilt also preceded by domperidone or placebo. 3. Both the ANP infusion and head-down tilt produced a significant diuresis and natriuresis, neither of which was antagonized by the presence of domperidone. 4. The ANP infusion significantly reduced diastolic blood pressure and produced significant increases in the Doppler-measured aortic blood velocity variables of peak velocity and maximal acceleration. Domperidone had an independent effect of increasing blood pressure but did not appear to have a specific interaction with the haemodynamic effects of ANP. 5. Head-down tilt reduced mean arterial pressure and heart rate and increased maximal acceleration. Again, an independent effect of domperidone was seen on blood pressure. Heart rate and maximal acceleration showed similar changes in the presence of domperidone. 6. Domperidone does not antagonize the renal or haemodynamic effects of ANP and if dopaminergic activation is necessary for the renal action of ANP it is unlikely to be mediated by the DA2-receptor.


In the early 1990s, Sweden experienced state policy reforms, which opened the way for new, private actors to run publicly funded independent schools. In 2010 the independent schools recruited almost a quarter of the upper secondary students. More than eight of the ten schools were managed by limited companies. Against this backdrop, and drawing on Ball (2007) and Whitfield (2006) who focus on policy trends of the transfer of public education (and other public services) to the private sector, this article explores and analyses current commercial trends in Swedish upper secondary education. The aims are to identify expansion trends inside and outside Sweden, including new trends of business formations. In the study four large actors were identified on the basis of official data, company reports, school and company websites and national and international media. The study indicates that the upper secondary education in Sweden has today become "big business", or "edu-business" (Ball 2007:67)


Within the framework of a global French program oriented towards the development of renewable energies, Martinique Island (Lesser Antilles, France) has been extensively investigated (from 2012 to 2013) through an integrated multi-methods approach, with the aim to define precisely the potential geothermal ressources, previously highlighted (Sanjuan et al., 2003). Amongst the common investigation methods deployed, we carried out three magnetotelluric (MT) surveys located above three of the most promising geothermal fields of Martinique, namely the Anses d'Arlet, the Montagne Pel{\'e}e and the Pitons du Carbet prospects. A total of about 100 MT stations were acquired showing single or multi-dimensional behaviors and static shift effects. After processing data with remote reference, 3-D MT inversions of the four complex elements of MT impedance tensor without pre-static-shift correction, have been performed for each sector, providing three 3-D resistivity models down to about 12 to 30 km depth. The sea coast effect has been taken into account in the 3-D inversion through generation of a 3-D resistivity model including the bathymetry around Martinique from the coast up to a distance of 200 km. The forward response of the model is used to calculate coast effect coefficients that are applied to the calculated MT response during the 3-D inversion process for comparison with the observed data. 3-D resistivity models of each sector, which are inherited from different geological history, show 3-D resistivity distribution and specificities related to its volcanological history. In particular, the geothermal field related to the Montagne Pel{\'e}e strato-volcano, is characterized by a quasi ubiquitous conductive layer and quite monotonic typical resistivity distribution making interpretation difficult in terms of geothermal targets. At the opposite, the resistivity distribution of Anse d'Arlet area is radically different and geothermal target is thought to be connected to a not so deep resistive intrusion elongated along a main structural axis. Beside these interesting deep structures, we demonstrate, after analyzing the results of the recent heliborne TEM survey covering the whole Martinique, that surface resistivity distribution obtained from 3-D inversion reproduce faithfully the resistivity distribution observed by TEM. In spite of a very different sampling scale, this comparison illustrates the ability of 3-D MT inversion to take into account and reproduce static shift effects in the sub-surface resistivity distribution.


Storage is a central part of computing. Driven by exponentially increasing content generation rate and a widening performance gap between memory and secondary storage, researchers are in the perennial quest to push for further innovation. This has resulted in novel ways to "squeeze" more capacity and performance out of current and emerging storage technology. Adding intelligence and leveraging new types of storage devices has opened the door to a whole new class of optimizations to save cost, improve performance, and reduce energy consumption.
In this dissertation, we first develop, analyze, and evaluate three storage extensions. Our first extension tracks application access patterns and writes data in the way individual applications most commonly access it to benefit from the sequential throughput of disks. Our second extension uses a lower power flash device as a cache to save energy and turn off the disk during idle periods. Our third extension is designed to leverage the characteristics of both disks and solid state devices by placing data in the most appropriate device to improve performance and save power.
In developing these systems, we learned that extending the storage stack is a complex process. Implementing new ideas incurs a prolonged and cumbersome development process and requires developers to have advanced knowledge of the entire system to ensure that extensions accomplish their goal without compromising data recoverability. Futhermore, storage administrators are often reluctant to deploy specific storage extensions without understanding how they interact with other extensions and if the extension ultimately achieves the intended goal. We address these challenges by using a combination of approaches. First, we simplify the storage extension development process with system-level infrastructure that implements core functionality commonly needed for storage extension development. Second, we develop a formal theory to assist administrators deploy storage extensions while guaranteeing that the given high level goals are satisfied. There are, however, some cases for which our theory is inconclusive. For such scenarios we present an experimental methodology that allows administrators to pick an extension that performs best for a given workload. Our evaluation demostrates the benefits of both the infrastructure and the formal theory.


Poster presented at the 2018 Defence and Security Doctoral Symposium.Polymer Bonded Explosives (PBXs) are composite materials which consist of high explosive crystals bound in a polymer matrix. During manufacture, the crystals are dispersed throughout a liquid prepolymer, which is then cured into a crosslinked elastomeric solid. Dispersion can be achieved with Resonant Acoustic Mixing (RAM), a novel mixing technique which uses a vibrating platform to create longitudinal acoustic pressure waves which agitate the mixture. This work describes the outcomes of a comparison between the effects of different mixing vessel surfaces on process efficiency, and a way in which RAM equipment can be modified to mix PBX samples 'in-situ', in their end-use cases.


Objective To determine whether the topical application of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) promotes healing in experimentally-induced full-thickness skin wounds in animals, a systematic review and meta-analysis will be performed. Methods Web of Science, Cochrane Library, PubMed, Research Gate, Cochrane Wounds Group, and Veterinary Information Network will be searched to identify randomised and not randomised controlled clinical trials comparing PRP with placebo or with other treatments in animals. Primary outcome: reduction of open wound area; secondary outcomes: healing time and number of healed cases. Effect sizes: Hedges' g; odds ratio.


Relatively few details of hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) nesting ecology exist within the Arabian Gulf. Moreover, little is known about how their nesting dynamics compare to nesting populations throughout the rest of the world. Due to the extreme environmental setting, nesting ecology of hawksbills in the Arabian Gulf is of significant interest to researchers and conservationists. The current research reports on a long-term tagging and monitoring program undertaken at Fuwairit beach, Qatar. To investigate nesting behavior, site surveys and tagging were employed from 2010 to 2016. Presence of nests and clutch sizes were confirmed by excavation. Over the entire study period, nesting hawksbills had a mean curved carapace length of 70.8 cm (SD±2.8). A total 187 nests were confirmed, which contained a mean 78.9 eggs per clutch (SD±17.1), over an annual nesting season that lasted an average of 52.2 days (SD±6.3) from the start of April to the start of June. Meta-analysis with other global regions showed these characteristics to be significantly reduced when compared to nesting hawksbills from other populations. Meteorological data analysis showed air temperatures in the Arabian Gulf to increase on average 13.2°C (SD±0.26) from start to the end of nesting annually, which is significantly greater than other global nesting regions. Their smaller body size and reduced fecundity coupled with the extreme change in ambient air temperatures support the hypothesis that hawksbills in the region are more at risk than the already critically endangered hawksbill populations elsewhere in the world.


: Ethnographers working in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been at the forefront of the struggle against the identitarianism that dominates scholarship and policymaking regarding the country. Tirelessly foregrounding patterns of life that exceed, contradict, complicate or are oblivious to questions thus framed, we have—unsurprisingly—paid a price for this contribution: explorations of the appeal of nationalism are left mostly to others. This article identifies an emic and etic politics/people paradigm that facilitates our timidity to register the ways in which "ordinary people" may enact nationalist subjectivity. Seeking to retain the paradigm's strengths, I call for a recalibration of how we understand it to function and explore conceptual tools to make this work. Starting from two cases of "foot soldier narratives," I suggest that hegemony theory can help us trace not only how people are subjected to nationalization but also how they may seek subjectification through it.


Using focus groups and government finance data, we explore three areas of US state rescaling at the subnational level: revenue tools, expenditure responsibilities and policy authority. Expenditure responsibilities, especially social welfare, have been devolved to the subnational level, while local revenue tools and policy authority are preempted. This decoupling of responsibility and power is cracking the foundations of fiscal federalism. At the behest of corporate-legislative coalitions, subnational state governments are shrinking local capacity and authority to govern. This is not state shrinkage; it is a fundamental reshaping of the subnational state to the detriment of democracy and the social contract.


Autosomal recessive chorioretinopathy-microcephaly syndrome is a rare neuro-opthalmological disease characterized by severe microcephaly of prenatal onset (with diminutive anterior fontanelle and sutural ridging), growth retardation, global developmental delay and intellectual disability (ranging from mild to profound), dysmorphic features (sloping forehead, micro/retrognathia, prominent ears) and visual impairments (including microphthalmia to anophtalmia, generalized retinopathy or multiple punched-out retinal lesions, retinal folds with retinal detachment, optic nerve hypoplasia, strabismus, nystagmus). Brain MRI may show reduced cortical size, cerebral hemispheres, corpus callosum, pachygyria, symplified gyral folding or normal pattern. Other associated features include epilepsy and neurological deficits.


Kidney transplant recipients often experience a significant amount of weight gain in the first year post-transplantation. While demographic factors such as age, race, and sex have been associated with weight gain in this population, these factors do not explain all of the variability seen. A number of studies have suggested that genetics also plays a critical role in weight changes. Recently, alterations in the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine have been associated with weight change, and gene expression studies in kidney transplant recipients have supported this association. The purpose of this pilot study is to first examine the feasibility and methodology, and then to examine the associations of age, race, sex, and genotype for 13 SNPs and 3 VNTRs in 9 dopaminergic pathway genes (ANKK1, DRD2, DRD3, DRD4, SLC6A3/DAT1, MAOA, MAOB, COMT, CPE) for associations with percent weight change at 12 months post-transplantation. Seventy kidney transplant recipients had demographic and clinical data collected as a part of a larger observational study. DNA was extracted from repository buffy coat samples taken at the time of transplant, and genotyped using Taqman and PCR based methods. Three SNPs were independently associated with percent weight change: ANKK1 rs1800497 (r = -0.28, p = 0.05), SLC6A3/DAT1 rs6347 (p = 0.046), and CPE rs1946816 (p = 0.028). Stepwise regression modelling confirmed the combined associations of age (p = 0.0021), DRD4 VNTR 4/5 genotype (p = 0.0074), and SLC6A3/DAT1 rs6347 CC genotype (p = 0.0009) and TT genotype (p = 0.0004) with percent weight change in a smaller sample (n = 35) of these kidney transplant recipients that had complete genotyping. These associations indicate that there may be a genetic, and an age component to weight changes post transplantation.


OBJECTIVE
To report history, physical examination findings, clinicopathologic abnormalities, treatments, and outcomes of dogs with confirmed α-amanitin toxicosis resulting from ingestion of α-amanitin-containing mushrooms, and to report whether any differences were significant between survivors and nonsurvivors.

ANIMALS
59 dogs.

PROCEDURES
Medical records of all dogs with confirmed α-amanitin toxicosis presented to a northern California emergency and specialty veterinary hospital between January 2006 and July 2019 were reviewed for signalment; body weight; history; physical examination findings including rectal temperature at presentation; results of serum biochemical analyses, coagulation tests, and a test for the detection of α-amanitin in urine; treatments; and outcomes. Differences for each were compared between survivors and nonsurvivors.

RESULTS
Among the 59 dogs, 36 were < 1 year of age; 56 had variable clinical signs that included vomiting, diarrhea, anorexia, and weakness or lethargy; and 22 had rectal temperatures > 39.2°C (102.5°F) at presentation. Cases were seen throughout the calendar year. At presentation, alanine aminotransferase activity was mildly to markedly increased in 97% of dogs, hypoglycemia was noted in 78%, and coagulation times were prolonged in 91%. Most dogs that rapidly decompensated died; however, 13 dogs survived to hospital discharge and completely recovered.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Ability to recognize dogs with α-amanitin toxicosis on the basis of clinical signs, physical examination findings, and clinicopathologic test results is essential because mushroom ingestion is rarely observed and immediate treatment is necessary. Dogs that have marked hypoglycemia or coagulopathy may have a poor prognosis.


Because political campaigns in the United States are privately funded, America's political system is heavily biased toward the interests of wealthy campaign contributors. As a result, government policies have largely ignored the growth in income inequality caused by technological change and economic globalization. This omission has been tolerated because most Americans do not support interventionist government policies. They believe that the government serves the interests of the campaign donors rather than the public. This skepticism concerning the public sector's fairness must be overcome before effective programs to offset mounting inequality can be implemented. Though in recent years legislation to reform the financing of political campaigns has been adopted, private wealth continues to dominate the political process. Political cynicism therefore persists. A voluntary system of public funding of candidates for office is required to generate the trust in the public sector necessary to reverse the trend toward inequality.


The Hanshin Expressway Public Corporation, Osaka, Japan has been operating its traffic control system since the beginning of EXPO '70, that is, March 15, 1970 on its entire expressway systems in Osaka and Kobe. The total length of the Hanshin Expressway is now 79.6 KM and is expected to become 128 KM by 1975. This report presents some features of the control system with emphasis on its hardware system. This system at present has a digital computer, FACOM 270-30, with 65 KW core memory, various peripherals, more than 200 detectors, more than 70 variable information indication devices along the expressway and TV monitoring systems. The control system on Hanshin Expressway is designed to permit future expansions and modifications.


In its first two editions by the late Alex L. Parks, this work achieved a worldwide reputation as the authority on the maritime laws that relate to the towing industry and pilotage. The current editor has continued in that fine tradition. Nowhere has the law related to marine transportation of goods by tug and tow and harbor towage and pilotage been treated in greater depth. The citations are presented in a useful form, giving precedence to the AMC cites most commonly used by the admiralty practitioner; the essence of the holdings of cases is enclosed in parentheses following the citation. Providing the professional practitioner with a ready source of reference to this area of the maritime world, the book treats the concepts of the field by tracing their derivation in admiralty law. Also included with the analysis of each topic is a thorough survey of case law. In this edition new case citations have been added, updating the law where there have been changes and reflecting the inevitable evolution of the law that is its lifeblood. The case update is generally through the 1992 AMC.


The existing structures in society are interrelated. Ritual art is the objective manifestation of culture, religious ideologies and popular beliefs of the social activist. Takaya architecture is a mirror of the Shiite artist's traditions of thought, speech and action in relation to "time and place". Ritual architecture is an art mixed with culture, hence, the art of Takaya is a native architecture and the manifestation of history, race, art, climate, Shiite religion, tradition, identity and culture of the people of Mazandaran. Analyzing the criteria of culture and the importance of ritual art, in addition to expressing the values of Takaya architecture, can provide design guidelines for designers to create a higher quality space. Using the richness of ecology and cultural geography of Mazandaran, the present study has dealt with the interaction of ritual culture and art to narrate the sufferings of Imam Hussein (PBUH), his family, his companions and the mourning rituals of Ashura in the Takaya architecture. This research is of qualitative type which has been accomplished by the means of a historical-interpretive method and information is gathered in the form of documents and field analysis; moreover descriptive-analytical and comparative methods have been used in data analysis. The statistical population of the study is a number of nine participants from Amol city. The results show that the criteria of culture (power structure, social status, kinship edifice, endowment, vows, age and gender of the user of space) and the local rituals of the people of Mazandaran (Divan, paddy field, Zan Shahi, Barf Chal, Vavarun, Shilan) and artistic ceremonies that include ritual painting (Saqanfar paintings), ritual architecture (Takaya) and ritual representation (Taziyeh) have had a reciprocal effect on reviving, perpetuating, adapting and promoting each other. Culture has had a great impact on architecture and in return, architecture has been one of the influential factors on culture. Research aims: 1. Recognition of ritual art and cultural standards in the native architecture of Takaya Mazandaran. 2. Investigation of the effect of ritual culture and art on the arrangement of elements of Takaya ritual architecture. Research questions: 1. What are the effective criteria of culture on the architecture of Takaya Mazandaran? 2. What is the relationship between ritual culture and architecture, ceremonial representation and ritual painting?


We present the classification of 197 point sources observed with the Infrared Spectrograph in the SAGE-Spec Legacy programme on the Spitzer Space Telescope . We introduce a decision-tree method of object classification based on infrared spectral features, continuum and spectral energy distribution shape, bolometric luminosity, cluster membership and variability information, which is used to classify the SAGE-Spec sample of point sources. The decision tree has a broad application to mid-infrared spectroscopic surveys, where supporting photometry and variability information are available. We use these classifications to make deductions about the stellar populations of the Large Magellanic Cloud and the success of photometric classification methods. We find 90 asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, 29 young stellar objects, 23 post-AGB objects, 19 red supergiants, eight stellar photospheres, seven background galaxies, seven planetary nebulae, two H II regions and 12 other objects, seven of which remain unclassified.


Progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been hindered by a lack of data on key environmental and socioeconomic indicators, which historically have come from ground surveys with sparse temporal and spatial coverage. Recent advances in machine learning have made it possible to utilize abundant, frequently-updated, and globally available data, such as from satellites or social media, to provide insights into progress toward SDGs. Despite promising early results, approaches to using such data for SDG measurement thus far have largely evaluated on different datasets or used inconsistent evaluation metrics, making it hard to understand whether performance is improving and where additional research would be most fruitful. Furthermore, processing satellite and ground survey data requires domain knowledge that many in the machine learning community lack. In this paper, we introduce SustainBench, a collection of 15 benchmark tasks across 7 SDGs, including tasks related to economic development, agriculture, health, education, water and sanitation, climate action, and life on land. Datasets for 11 of the 15 tasks are released publicly for the first time. Our goals for SustainBench are to (1) lower the barriers to entry for the machine learning community to contribute to measuring and achieving the SDGs; (2) provide standard benchmarks for evaluating machine learning models on tasks across a variety of SDGs; and (3) encourage the development of novel machine learning methods where improved model performance facilitates progress towards the SDGs.


Abstract Information on population connectivity throughout the annual cycle has become more crucial, because populations of many migratory birds are in decline. One such species is the American Woodcock (Scolopax minor), which inhabits early-successional forests in eastern North America. Although band recoveries have proved useful for dividing populations of this game bird species into an Eastern Region and Central Region for management purposes, these data do not provide enough detail to determine the breeding population of origin of birds recovered on stopover and wintering areas. To obtain more fine-scale data, we undertook a phylogeographic study of American Woodcock populations throughout their primary breeding range in the eastern United States and Canada using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from the hypervariable control region I (CRI) and ND6 gene. Despite high haplotype diversity, nucleotide diversity was low and there was no phylogeographic structure among American Woodcock populations across the species range, with birds from many states and provinces in both management regions sharing identical haplotypes. Results suggest recent or ongoing gene flow among populations, with asymmetric movement of birds between migration flyways. As has been demonstrated for several other avian species in North America, American Woodcock appear to have undergone a rapid population expansion following the late Pleistocene glacial retreat. Thus, a combination of historical demographic factors and recent or ongoing gene flow mask any population structure based on mtDNA that might accrue from philopatry to breeding areas observed in studies of marked birds. Phylogéographie de Scolopax minor: Est-ce que les Unités de Gestion Basées sur les Données de Retour de Bagues Reflètent les Unités de Gestion Basées sur la Génétique?


We investigate the implication of uncertainties in the unintegrated gluon distribution for the predictions for central exclusive production of scalars at hadron colliders. We use parameterizations of the k(perpendicular to)-unintegrated gluon density obtained from the Linked Dipole Chain model, applying different options for the treatment of non-leading terms. We find that the luminosity function for central exclusive production is very sensitive to details of the transverse momentum distribution of the gluon which, contrary to the k(perpendicular to)-integrated distribution, is not very well constrained experimentally.


Title of dissertation: ESSAYS ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF PUBLICLY PROVIDED PRESCRIPTION DRUG INSURANCE Abby Elizabeth Alpert, Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Dissertation directed by: Professor Mark G. Duggan Professor Judith K. Hellerstein Department of Economics Chapter 1: The Anticipatory Effects of Medicare Part D on Drug Utilization This paper quantifies the anticipatory effects of the passage of Medicare Part D on prescription drug utilization. Part D expanded Medicare to include insurance coverage for prescription drugs for the first time. While the program was implemented in 2006, it had been signed into law two years earlier in December 2003 as part of the widely publicized Medicare Modernization Act. The advance announcement of this permanent future price reduction may have induced forward-looking individuals to change their drug spending before Part D took effect. In a life-cycle demand framework, this pre-reform utilization response is theoretically ambiguous due to opposing income and intertemporal substitution effects. In this paper, I estimate the causal utilization response to the announcement of Part D in 2003 using data from the MCBS and MEPS. This contrasts with previous evaluations of Part D, and of drug co-insurance changes more broadly, which have estimated only contemporaneous utilization effects, thus implicitly assuming a myopic policy response. My main empirical strategy exploits the predicted differential responses of chronic and acute drugs to anticipated future prices. Given that acute drugs treat illnesses that are largely unpredictable and short in duration, their demand is more likely to respond to only current prices, whereas chronic drug use may respond negatively or positively to anticipated future price reductions. I find evidence of an overall decline in drug use for Medicare beneficiaries between 2003 and 2005. As predicted, this pre-reform decline is differentially driven by reductions in chronic drug use, while acute drugs are responsive to only price changes at the time of program implementation. The effect is also concentrated among the youngest Medicare beneficiaries, for whom the health costs of delaying treatment are lowest, and for those with below-median incomes. After accounting for this negative anticipatory response, I find a total treatment effect on utilization in the first year of the program that is substantially smaller than if anticipation effects are ignored. Chapter 2: Perverse Reverse Price Competition: Average Wholesale Prices and Medicaid Pharmaceutical Spending (with Mark Duggan and Judith Hellerstein Generic drugs comprise an increasing share of total prescriptions dispensed in the U.S., rising from nearly 50 percent in 1999 to 75 percent in 2009. The generic drug market has typically been viewed as a mostly competitive market with price approaching marginal costs. However, the large presence of third party payers as final purchasers may distort prices and market shares relative to what a standard model of price competition would predict. In this paper, we investigate how generic drug producers compete in the presence of the procurement rules of the Medicaid program. Medicaid reimbursement to pharmacies, like that of other payers, is based on a benchmark price called the average wholesale price (AWP), which is published in several pricing catalogues. This list price is reported by generic producers themselves, and until recently has been subject to essentially no independent verification. As a result, generic producers have had an incentive to compete for pharmacy market share by reporting AWPs that are much greater than actual average prices, as this spread leads to larger pharmacy profits. In 2000, after a federal government audit of actual wholesale prices of generic products, states were advised to reduce Medicaid reimbursement by as much as 95% for about 400 generic and off-patent injectable, infusion, and inhalation drug products. We use variation induced by the timing of this policy along with its differential impact on drug products to identify the impact of this exogenous price change on the market share of affected products. Our findings indicate that pharmacies respond to the perverse incentives of the Medicaid program by stocking products with the highest AWPs. ESSAYS ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF PUBLICLY PROVIDED PRESCRIPTION DRUG INSURANCE


Work presented here consists of two parts: the first part, presented before as a separate paper (Niemczynowicz 1984b), described studies performed on conceptual catchment, the second part presented here describes studies made on real catchments in the city of Lund. The scope of the paper is to use previously calculated statistical characteristics of rainfall movement in Lund for quantitative description of the influence of storm movement on runoff modeled on real catchments in Lund. The relations between rainfall characteristics and the magnitude of directional bias are shown. The special interest in this study is to locate the combination of factors which maximize the effect of directional bias. Finally, by combination of rainfall movement statistics with modeled runoff, the probability distribution of directional bias for differently oriented catchments in Lund is given. The most important conclusion is that the maximal directional bias observed for real catchments is much smaller than for the conceptual catchment, but still can reach significant values. The maximal bias occurs when the rainfall movement is parallel to direction to conduits and when rain velocity is close to average flow velocity. The highest values of directional bias occur for storms with short durations which give low peak flow discharge without practical importance. Still, the phenomenon of the directional bias can be one of the reasons why frequency of the rainfall does not follow frequency of runoff.


Variation of canopy properties between different forest types is seldom taken into account in hydrological and climate models, and consideration of variation inside a forest is normally omitted. In this work, three data sets on near surface energy balance terms (incoming shortwave and longwave radiation; air and snow–soil interface temperatures) were collected in the southern boreal coniferous zone in Finland during three winters below different types of forest canopies. The aim was to evaluate the ability of a snow mass and energy balance model with a canopy module to reproduce the observed differences in below-canopy incoming radiations and snow–soil interface temperature. Clear differences were seen between pine and spruce forest sites (higher snow–soil interface temperatures and incoming shortwave fluxes, and lower incoming longwave fluxes at the pine site). Differences were also observed between the sparse and dense pine canopy locations. Canopy parameter values had a great effect on the quality of the model simulations. The combination of optically obtained leaf area index (LAI) values with a needle clumping correction and either optical or empirical sky view fraction (SVF) values as a canopy parameterization gave better correspondence to observations than the use of uncorrected effective LAI and any SVF.


Context. The Gaia satellite will observe about one billion stars and other point-like sources. The astrometric core solution will determine the astrometric parameters (position, parallax, and proper motion) for a subset of these sources, using a global solution approach which must also include a large number of parameters for the satellite attitude and optical instrument. The accurate and efficient implementation of this solution is an extremely demanding task, but crucial for the outcome of the mission. Aims. We aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the mathematical and physical models applicable to this solution, as well as its numerical and algorithmic framework. Methods. The astrometric core solution is a simultaneous least-squares estimation of about half a billion parameters, including the astrometric parameters for some 100 million well-behaved so-called primary sources. The global nature of the solution requires an iterative approach, which can be broken down into a small number of distinct processing blocks (source, attitude, calibration and global updating) and auxiliary processes (including the frame rotator and selection of primary sources). We describe each of these processes in some detail, formulate the underlying models, from which the observation equations are derived, and outline the adopted numerical solution methods with due consideration of robustness and the structure of the resulting system of equations. Appendices provide brief introductions to some important mathematical tools (quaternions and B-splines for the attitude representation, and a modified Cholesky algorithm for positive semidefinite problems) and discuss some complications expected in the real mission data. Results. A complete software system called AGIS (Astrometric Global Iterative Solution) is being built according to the methods described in the paper. Based on simulated data for 2 million primary sources we present some initial results, demonstrating the basic mathematical and numerical validity of the approach and, by a reasonable extrapolation, its practical feasibility in terms of data management and computations for the real mission. (Less)


The aim of this study was to examine whether yeast derivate (YD) based on whole brewery yeast added to the creep feed of suckling and newly weaned piglets or to the creep feed of the piglets and the sow's diet prevented post weaning diarrhoea (PWD) or affected performance. Thirty sows and their litters were randomly allocated to three treatment groups: PSP (1.5 g/kg of YD to the sows' feed from 1 wk before expected farrowing to weaning; 3 g/kg or 2 g/kg of YD added to the piglets' creep feed from 2 wk of age until 2 wk post weaning (PW) and from wk 2 to 5 PW, respectively); PP (YD added to the piglets' creep feed as in PSP); or C (control, no YD added). At weaning (4 wk of age) 2 individually housed piglets from all litters were subjected to either experimental Escherichia coli (E. coli) challenge or placebo treatment on d 1 to 3 PW, whereas performance was measured on 3 group-housed piglets from each litter. In individually housed piglets the faecal consistency score (FCS) was affected by an interaction between days PW, treatment group, and challenge group (P=0.005). In general, FCS was lower in placebo than in E. coli-challenged piglets and in PSP and PP piglets than in C piglets. The PSP and PP piglets had lower risk of PWD, defined as FCS > 3, on d 2 to 6 PW compared to C piglets (P=0.014 and P=0.001, respectively). This effect was evident in both placebo and E. coli-challenged PP piglets (P=0.010 and P=0.038, respectively), whereas PSP piglets only differed from C in E. coli-challenged piglets (P=0.030). In E. coli-challenged piglets faecal shedding of haemolytic E. coli was lower in PP than in C piglets (P=0.026). In placebo piglets the latency time to first observation of PWD was longer in PP than in PSP and C piglets (P=0.048 and P=0.017, respectively). The specific antibody titre in piglets or sows was not affected by YD. In group-housed piglets the medical treatment against PWD tended to occur in fewer PP than PSP and C pens within the first 3 wk PW (P=0.078). The average daily gain did not differ between treatments, but PSP piglets had an improved gain to feed ratio (G:F) in wk 0 to 5 PW (P<0.01). In conclusion, YD may prevent PWD at weaning at 4 wk of age if added to the creep feed 2 wk before weaning and PW. Adding YD to the sow as well may, however, antagonize the effect on PWD at a low pathogenic E. coli load, but may improve the G:F compared to no YD supplementation. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Abbreviations: ADFI, average daily feed intake; ADG, average daily gain; ADWI, average daily water intake; BA, blood agar plates; CFU, Colony Forming nits; E. coli, Escherichia coli; FCS, faecal consistency score; G:F, gain-to-feed ratio; MMA, Mastitis Metritis and Agalacti; PW, post weaning; PWD, post eaning diarrhoea; YD, yeast derivate based on Saccharomyces cerevisiae. ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +45 8715 7954; fax: +45 8715 4249. E-mail address: email@example.com (K.H. Jensen). 1 Present address: Novozymes A/S, Krogshoejvej 36, DK-2880 Bagsvaerd, Denmark. 377-8401/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anifeedsci.2013.03.004 30 K.H. Jensen et al. / Animal Feed Science and Technology 183 (2013) 29– 39


Technology change is modeled as the result of decisions of individuals and groups of individuals to adopt more advanced technologies. The structure is calibrated to the U.S. and postwar Japan growth experiences. Using this calibrated structure we explore how large the disparity in the effective tax rates on the returns to adopting technologies must be to account for the huge observed disparity in per capita income across countries. We find that this disparity is not implausibly large.


This thesis explores the National Action Plans of Sweden and Austria concerning the UN adopted Resolution 1325 about Women, Peace and Security.The increase of the number of women in the armed forces has for a long time been a prioritised topic for the Swedish Armed Forces. This thesis investigates how the Swedish and the Austrian NAPs are dealing with this question.The NAPs are written with the purpose of making the implementation of Resolution 1325 easier and faster, in a national context. In this thesis, the parts concerning increasing the number of women in the armed forces and in peacekeeping operations are the ones investigated. A qualitative methodology is used in the thesis and a comparison is conducted between the National Action Plans to see what Sweden and Austria can learn from each other.The results show that the Austrian National Action Plan does not consist of any particular part that concerns how to make more women work in the armed forces. However, there is a section concerning the importance of raising the number of women in peacekeeping operations. This section is within the Swedish National Action Plan as is the part which is concerned with having more women employed in the Swedish Armed Forces.The Austrian National Action Plan would benefit if how to get a higher per cent of women in the armed forces was included. It is a prioritised topic in Austria, as well as in Sweden, to increase the number of women in the armed forces. This is also an issue that goes hand in hand with the implementation of Resolution 1325, which makes it an important element in the NAP.Key words: Resolution 1325, National Action Plan, Sweden, Austria, Gender, Implementing Resolution 1325, Swedish Armed Forces, Austrian Armed Forces, Peacekeeping Operations, increasing women in armed forces.


A simple and sensitive stability indicating HPLC method is developed for the quantification of rivaroxaban in bulk and tablet dosage form. Chromatographic separation was achieved on an ACE-Ciano column (250 mm x 4.6 mm, 5 μm particle size). The mobile phase consists of 0.1M sodium acetate and methanol (60:40 v/v) and was delivered at a flow rate of 1 mL/min. A UV detector was used for the detection. The rivaroxaban was subjected to stress conditions for the assessment of the stability-indicating nature of the method. The method was validated as per ICH guidelines. The linearity is obtained in the range of 1-120 μg/mL. The limit of detection and quantification values is 0.194 μg/mL and 0.648 μg/mL respectively. The intra and inter-day %RSD values were below 1%. Intra and inter-day accuracies were within 100.10% and 100.40%, respectively. Degradation products resulting from the stress studies have no interfere with the detection of rivaroxaban. The average recovery of rivaroxaban in tablet dosage form was 99.74% with %RSD of 0.421%. The developed method was proved adequate for quantitative determination of rivaroxiban in presence of its degradation products.


Multimedia real-time collaborative applications or groupware real-time applications require participants to exchange real-time audio and video information over a communication network. This flow of information must preserve the causal dependency even though part of the information can be lost or can be discarded if it violates the tinting constraints imposed by a real-time interaction. In this paper we propose a communication abstraction to cope with unreliable communication networks with real-time delivery constraints: messages have a lifetime, /spl Delta/, after which their contents can no longer be used, moreover some of them can be lost. This new abstraction, called /spl Delta/-causal order, requires to deliver as much messages as possible within their lifetime in such a way that these deliveries respect causal order. An efficient protocol is proposed in the case of one-to-one communications. A variation of this protocol weld suited to broadcast communications is also shown.


This research examines differences in the antecedents and consequences of work—family conflict — a form of interrole conflict that occurs when the demands of work and family are mutually incompatible in some respect — for two groups of career‐oriented men: those with a homemaker wife (called traditional‐career men) and those with a spouse in a career‐oriented job (labelled dual‐career men). Using a model built on the work of Kopelman, Greenhaus and Connolly (1983), the responses from 136 dual‐career men and 137 traditional‐career men were compared. The primary conclusion of this research is that maternal career employment has a significant effect on the antecedents of work — family conflict. Dual‐career men appear to experience a significant negative spillover from their work domain. We suggest that this spillover is due to a lack of structural flexibility in the workplace, outdated organizational policies that operate on the myth of separate worlds' and a lack of social support for the male dual‐career role which contradicts societal norms. Copyright


Abstract Background/Aims:Background/Aims: Practice education is integral to health professional curricula. There is emerging evidence that student generational attributes may be impacting on practice education. Students born between 1982 and 2000, termed 'Generation Y', are said to have a different outlook on learning to those students from other generational groups. However, there is little research from student perspectives to investigate these claims. This study aimed to identify 'Generation Y' occupational therapy students' preferred teaching and learning approaches in practice education. Methods:Methods: Using a qualitative descriptive approach and purposive sampling, 22 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with third and fourth year 'Generation Y' occupational therapy students from one Australian university. Interview transcripts were analysed thematically. Findings:Findings: Four themes emerged from the data: developing practice skills and confidence; essential communication; valued educational approaches; and the supervisory relationship and the team. Conclusion:Conclusion: Findings relate to 'Generation Y' characteristics. Practice educators may need to consider that these students have unique learning preferences. Students prefer 'doing' to observing, they want to be given clear expectations and responsibility for their own work tasks, they want to work in a team, they prefer to self-evaluate prior to feedback and access to the internet is essential for their learning. ABSTRACT Background/Aims: Practice education is integral to health professional curricula. There is emerging evidence that student generational attributes may be impacting on practice education. Students born between 1982 and 2000, termed 'Generation Y', are said to have a different outlook on learning to those students from other generational groups. However, there is little research from student perspectives to investigate these claims. This study aimed to identify 'Generation Y' occupational therapy students' preferred teaching and learning approaches in practice education. Methods: Using a qualitative descriptive approach and purposive sampling, 22 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 3 rd and 4 th year 'Generation Y' occupational therapy students from one Australian University. Interview transcripts were analysed thematically . Findings: Four themes emerged from the data: 1. Developing practice skills and confidence; 2. Essential communication; 3. Valued educational approaches; and 4. The supervisory relationship and the team. Conclusion: Findings relate to 'Generation Y' characteristics. Practice educators may need to consider that these students have unique learning preferences. Students prefer 'doing' to observing, they want to be given clear expectations and responsibility for their own work tasks, they want to work in a team, they prefer to self-evaluate prior to feedback and access to the internet is essential for their learning.


Patient education in mental health care is a conventional intervention to increase patients' knowledge about their illness and treatment. A provider-centered focus in patient education may put patients in a passive role, which can counteract their processes of recovery. There is an increasing emphasis on recovery-oriented practice, an approach that is aligned with the service user perspective, but little is known about health care staff's perspectives on person-centered mental health care. A qualitative approach was used to describe staff's experiences of being group leaders in a person-centered health education intervention in municipal services for persons with a persistent mental illness. The analysis of staff experiences revealed three core categories: (1) implications of the division of responsibility among local authorities, (2) awareness of facilitating factors of growth, and (3) the meaning of dialogue. These formed the theme Preconditions for Person-Centered Care. Further research is required to explore larger economic, political, and social structures as backdrops to person-centered mental health care, from the perspective of service users, families, health professionals, and the community at large.


This paper introduces a new resource virtualization framework, Zorua, that decouples the programmer-specified resource usage of a GPU application from the actual allocation in the on-chip hardware resources. Zorua enables this decoupling by virtualizing each resource transparently to the programmer. The virtualization provided by Zorua builds on two key concepts - dynamic allocation of the on-chip resources and their oversubscription using a swap space in memory. Zorua provides a holistic GPU resource virtualization strategy, designed to (i) adaptively control the extent of oversubscription, and (ii) coordinate the dynamic management of multiple on-chip resources (i.e., registers, scratchpad memory, and thread slots), to maximize the effectiveness of virtualization. Zorua employs a hardware-software code-sign, comprising the compiler, a runtime system and hardware-based virtualization support. The runtime system leverages information from the compiler regarding resource requirements of each program phase to (i) dynamically allocate/deallocate the different resources in the physically available on-chip resources or their swap space, and (ii) manage the tradeoffbetween higher thread-level parallelism due to virtualization versus the latency and capacity overheads of swap space usage. We demonstrate that by providing the illusion of more resources than physically available via controlled and coordinated virtualization, Zorua offers several important benefits: (i) Programming Ease. Zorua eases the burden on the programmer to provide code that is tuned to efficiently utilize the physically available on-chip resources. (ii) Portability. Zorua alleviates the necessity of re-tuning an application's resource usage when porting the application across GPU generations. (iii) Performance. By dynamically allocating resources and carefully oversubscribing them when necessary, Zorua improves or retains the performance of applications that are already highly tuned to best utilize the hardware resources. The holistic virtualization provided by Zorua can also enable other uses, including fine-grained resource sharing among multiple kernels and low-latency preemption of GPU programs.


Scientific authorship has become a contested terrain in contemporary science. Based on a survey of authors across fields, we measure the likelihood of specialist authors (sometimes called "guest" authors): people who only made specialized contributions, such as data, materials, or funding; and "nonauthor collaborators" (sometimes referred to as "ghost" authors): those who did significant work on the project but do not appear as authors, across different research contexts, including field, size of the project team, commercial orientation, impact of publication, and organization of the collaboration. We find that guest and ghost authors are common, with about one-third of publications having at least one specialist author and over half having at least one nonauthor collaborator. We see significant cross-field variations in both overall rates and types of specialist authors and nonauthor collaborators. We find there are generally fewer specialist authors among highly cited papers and more graduate student nonauthor collaborators in single location projects. The results suggest authorship practices vary across fields, and by project characteristics, complicating the use of authorship lists as a basis for evaluation (especially when comparing across fields or types of projects). We discuss implications of these findings for interpreting author lists in the context of science policy.


The workshop is devoted to model-based testing of both software and hardware. Model-based testing uses models describing the required behavior of the system under consideration to guide such efforts as test selection and test results evaluation. Testing validates the real system behavior against models and checks that the implementation conforms to them, but is capable also to find errors in the models themselves. The intent of this workshop is to bring together researchers and users of model-based testing techniques and tools to discuss the state of the art in theory, applications, tools, and industrialization of model-based testing and related domains.


Federated learning (FL) is a promising framework for privacy-preserving and distributed training with decentralized clients. However, there exists a large divergence between the collected local updates and the expected global update, which is known as the client drift and mainly caused by heterogeneous data distribution among clients, multiple local training steps, and partial client participation training. Most existing works tackle this challenge based on the empirical risk minimization (ERM) rule, while less attention has been paid to the relationship between the global loss landscape and the generalization ability. In this work, we propose FedGAMMA, a novel FL algorithm with Global sharpness-Aware MiniMizAtion to seek a global flat landscape with high performance. Specifically, in contrast to FedSAM which only seeks the local flatness and still suffers from performance degradation when facing the client-drift issue, we adopt a local varieties control technique to better align each client's local updates to alleviate the client drift and make each client heading toward the global flatness together. Finally, extensive experiments demonstrate that FedGAMMA can substantially outperform several existing FL baselines on various datasets, and it can well address the client-drift issue and simultaneously seek a smoother and flatter global landscape.


This chapter analyses the delineation of what counts as a critical period for action and intervention in improving maternal health. Using ethnographic interviews alongside descriptive data from the Nepal Demographic and Health Survey, it analyses two critical junctures for maternal health, the antepartum and postpartum periods, in the context of a particular peri-urban community of Nepal. The postpartum period is socially recognized as sutkeri for Hindu Nepalis, a forty-day period in which a woman who gave birth is considered ritually polluted, but also particularly susceptible to long-term health problems if proper care is not taken for her body in its vulnerable state. This perception of bodily vulnerability and mandated care while sutkeri exists in stark contrast to the absence of such notions and protective practices for the period of pregnancy. Pregnancy, an outwardly visible sign of sexual activity, is a state that one should hide or minimize in order to maintain one's reputation and honour as a woman. Women worked to conceal their pregnancies, and typically no or little extra care was provided to women to meet their nutritional needs or to enable them to avoid hard physical labour. However, intersecting statuses, such as caste and class, and contexts, such as agricultural households and multi-generational households, crosscut any simple characterizations of the pregnancy and postpartum periods—even within the confines of a subgroup of the Nepali population (Parbatiya) in a single community and place.


It has often been stated or implied that John Calvin and the Reformers in general were indifferent to or even against mission. The aim of this study is to point out that this understanding is not a true version of the facts. A thorough examination of the theology and actions of John Calvin, evaluated against the background of his times and world, reveals that he was firmly committed to spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Lord. Also the theological insights of Calvin and the Reformers not only provided the crucial theological basis to support the future massive missionary expansion of Protestant churches, but necessitate for all times Church mission as a sure consequence of their theology. Calvin's theology can indeed be described as an 'essentially missionary theology'. In the heart of Calvin's theological thinking clearly features the doctrine of justification - because medieval man's concern for salvation needed to be answered.