The Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision in early March of 1857 inflamed the national debate over slavery and deepened the divide that led ultimately to the Civil War. The decision has been analyzed repeatedly by historians and legal scholars, and has created divergent opinions on what was legally decided and what was merely obiter dictum, and on whether the case was influenced more by politics than by law.1 Many historians claim that the decision destroyed the Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney's (1777-1864)2 reputation as a legal scholar and weakened the authority of the Supreme Court in its immediate aftermath. Little noticed in the literature on the case is the debate that took place in the American Catholic community after the decision. Contemporaries and historians alike at times called attention to the fact that Taney was a Maryland Catholic, and some anti-Catholic religious newspaper editors in the North singled out his religious identification as one of the reasons for his ex cathedra decision in favor of slavery. On the whole, though, few contemporaries or historians paid any attention to the divergent American Catholic reactions to the decision, nor to the debate among Catholic journalists and newspaper editors on the wider issue of the relationship of religion and politics that the decision triggered in the Catholic community. This paper focuses upon the religious issue that some Catholics saw in Dred Scott. In 1846 Dred Scott, a slave living in St. Louis, maintained in a Missouri state court that he, his wife, and his two children were legally entitled to their freedom because they had sojourned in a free state (Illinois) and in free territory (Minnesota). In 1854 Scott's suit for freedom was brought before the United States Supreme Court asking for a reversal of a District Court's decision declaring him still a slave. The case was argued and reargued before the Supreme Court in 1856, and, after the March, 1857, inauguration of Democrat James Buchanan as president of the United States, the Court announced its decision. Taney delivered the opinion of the Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford,3 arguing that Scott was not only a slave but that he was also not a citizen of the United States and therefore could not legitimately sue in a federal court of law, that no Negro (free or slave) could be a citizen of the United States, and that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories (and, thus, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional). Two of the nine justices, Justices John McLean and Benjamin R. Curtis, offered extensive and vigorous dissenting opinions. The decision was well received by the majority in the South, the pro-slavery part of the Democratic party, and a few editors of Democratic papers in the North. It was rejected and attacked by the newly organized Republican party, the abolitionists, a significant number of editors of religious newspapers in the North, and by anti-slavery Democrats. The American Catholic community, too, was divided in reacting to the decision. The primary issues for those Catholics who expressed an opinion about the case revolved around the arguments and language Taney used to declare that the Constitution did not intend to include Negroes as citizens of the United States. He based his view upon an historical interpretation of attitudes toward Negroes, arguing that the original intent of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, when interpreted within the context of the times in which they were written, excluded Negroes from citizenship-they were not conceived of by the founding Fathers as part of the"people of the United States." Otherwise, there would be a complete disjunction between what they articulated in those documents and their practices of slavery. Taney asserted that racial attitudes were almost universally present at the time the Constitution was formed. In forceful language he argued: We think they [Negroes] are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word"citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. …


Legislation dealing with consumer default has consistently struggled with an important trade-off: more debt forgiveness directly benefits households but indirectly makes credit more expensive. This dissertation assesses this trade-off in two ways and provides a tool for future research into this and other topics. Specifically, the first chapter analyzes how business cycles affect the positive and normative consequences of eliminating or restricting default, including the default restrictions put in place by the recent Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA). The second chapter examines the implications of eliminating bankruptcy protection while still allowing households access to informal default. Lastly, the third chapter provides a novel tool for computing equilibrium in dynamic heterogeneous-agent economies, such as the economy in the first chapter. There are four main findings. First, accounting for business cycles substantially reduces the welfare benefit of eliminating default. With or without business cycles, eliminating default greatly expands credit availability; however, when a protracted recession is possible, households use less credit unless they have a default option. Second, while business cycles reduce the welfare gain of eliminating default, this is not necessarily true for restricting default: BAPCPA significantly improves welfare whether or not aggregate risk is taken into account. Because the policy makes default more costly only for earnings-rich households, the reform improves credit markets while still preserving most of the insurance value of default. Third, eliminating bankruptcy protection leads to an increase in total defaults, debt, and welfare. Without bankruptcy protection, creditors can collect on defaulted debt to the extent permitted by wage garnishment laws. The elimination lowers the default premium on unsecured debt and permits low-net-worth individuals suffering bad earnings shocks to smooth consumption by borrowing. Last, the proposed computational method is capable of delivering a more accurate solution than the most widely used method and can be as efficient. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Economics First Advisor Dirk Krueger


The management of TB patient in close settings, that guarantee a decrease in transmission risk, an adequate surveillance to treatment, and to opt for social support measures, this one becoming a proposal for the management of MDR TB or XDR TB patients and specially in the management of cases that do not comply with an adequate treatment and/or have social conditions that put in risk their adequate follow up. Some strategies are exposed through this article that have already been used in other countries and that we should value implementing them according to our local reality .


Today, the Mohs scale is used profusely throughout educational systems without any persuasive understanding of the fundamental principles. Why one mineral has a scratch hardness over the next culminating in a scale of 1 (chalk) to 10 (diamond) has no atomistic or structure-sensitive basis that explains this outcome. With modern computationally based atomistic and multiscale models, there is increasing promise of defining the pressure and rate-dependent parameters that will allow a fundamental understanding of the Mohs scale. This study principally addresses the combined fracture and plasticity parameters that qualitatively affect fracture at the nanoscale. A physical model wherein the crack tip under a scratch is shielded by dislocations is supported by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations in both ductile aluminum and brittle silicon carbide. Next, this model is applied to nanoindentation data from the literature to produce a ranking of Mohs minerals based on their fundamental properties. As such, what is presented here is a first step to address the flow and fracture parameters ultimately required to provide a figure of merit for scratch hardness and thus the Mohs scale.


Objective To investigate the association of cigarette smoking at baseline and trajectories of dysmenorrhoea in a large sample of Australian women. Design A prospective cohort study. Setting Australian (population-based survey). Participants A total of 9067 young women, with at least three measures of dysmenorrhoea, randomly sampled from the national Medicare database and followed up from 2000 to 2012. Main outcome measures Trajectories of dysmenorrhoea. Results At baseline, approximately 25% reported dysmenorrhoea and 26% were current smokers. Four trajectory groups were identified for dysmenorrhoea: normative (42%), late onset (11%), recovering (33%) and chronic (14%), with the chronic group showing high probabilities of reporting dysmenorrhoea over time. Compared with never-smokers, a significantly higher odds of being in the chronic group was detected for smokers, with ORs being 1.33 (95% CI 1.05 to 1.68) for ex-smokers and 1.41 (95% CI 1.17 to 1.70) for current smokers, after adjusting for sociodemographic, lifestyle and reproductive factors. An inverse relationship was identified for earlier age of smoking initiation, with the respective ORs of 1.59 (95% CI 1.18 to 2.15), 1.50 (95% CI 1.18 to 1.90) and 1.26 (95% CI 1.03 to 1.55) for initiation of smoking ≤13, 14–15 or ≥16 years. No consistent relationship was evident between smoking behaviour and the odds of being in the other trajectory groups. Conclusions Smoking and early initiation of smoking are associated with increased risk of chronic dysmenorrhoea. The immediate adverse health effects of smoking provide further support for smoking prevention programme to target young women, especially teenagers.


: Projection incompleteness in X-ray computed tomography (CT) often relates to sparse sampling or detector gaps, and leads to degraded reconstructions with severe streak and ring artifacts. To suppress these artifacts, this study develops a new sinogram inpainting strategy based on sinusoid-like curve decomposition and eigenvector-guided interpolation, where each missing sinogram point is considered located within a group of sinusoid-like curves, and estimated from a eigenvector-guided interpolation to preserve the sinogram texture continuity. The proposed approach is evaluated on real 2D fan-beam CT data, for which the projection incompleteness, due to sparse sampling and symmetric detector gaps, is simulated. A Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) -based parallelization is applied on the operations of sinusoid fittings and interpolations to accelerate the algorithm. A comparative study is then conducted to evaluate the proposed approach with two other inpainting methods and with a compressed sensing iterative reconstruction. Qualitative and quantitative performances demonstrate that the proposed approach can lead to efficient artifact-suppression and less structure-blurring.


Objective To assess the performance of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk equations in Indigenous Australians. Methods We conducted an individual participant meta-analysis using longitudinal data of 3618 Indigenous Australians (55% women) aged 30–74 years without CVD from population-based cohorts of the Cardiovascular Risk in IndigenouS People(CRISP) consortium. Predicted risk was calculated using: 1991 and 2008 Framingham Heart Study (FHS), the Pooled Cohorts (PC), GloboRisk and the Central Australian Rural Practitioners Association (CARPA) modification of the FHS equation. Calibration, discrimination and diagnostic accuracy were evaluated. Risks were calculated with and without the use of clinical criteria to identify high-risk individuals. Results When applied without clinical criteria, all equations, except the CARPA-adjusted FHS, underestimated CVD risk (range of percentage difference between observed and predicted CVD risks: −55% to −14%), with underestimation greater in women (−63% to −13%) than men (−47% to −18%) and in younger age groups. Discrimination ranged from 0.66 to 0.72. The CARPA-adjusted FHS equation showed good calibration but overestimated risk in younger people, those without diabetes and those not at high clinical risk. When clinical criteria were used with risk equations, the CARPA-adjusted FHS algorithm scored 64% of those who had CVD events as high risk; corresponding figures for the 1991-FHS were 58% and were 87% for the PC equation for non-Hispanic whites. However, specificity fell. Conclusion The CARPA-adjusted FHS CVD risk equation and clinical criteria performed the best, achieving higher combined sensitivity and specificity than other equations. However, future research should investigate whether modifications to this algorithm combination might lead to improved risk prediction.


After two strangers have briefly interacted with one another, both believe that they like their partner more than their partner likes them. A plausible explanation for this liking gap is that people are constantly worrying about how others are evaluating them. If so, one would expect the liking gap to emerge in young children as they become more concerned with their reputations and the impression they make on other people. The current study (N = 241 U.S. children; age range = 4–11 years) supported this hypothesis, showing a liking gap beginning when children were 5 years old, the age at which they first become concerned with other people's evaluations of them. Moreover, the liking gap became more pronounced as children got older. These findings provide the first developmental description of the liking gap and support the hypothesis that this phenomenon is related to individuals' concerns for how others evaluate them.


Subject of the paper is the realisation of a model based efficiency control system for PV generators using a simulation model. A standard 2-diodes model of PV generator is base of the ColSim model, which is implemented in ANSI C code for flexible code exporting. The algorithm is based on discretisized U-I characteristics, which allows the calculation of string topologies witch parallel and serial PV cells and modules. Shadowing effects can be modelled down to cell configuration using polar horizon definitions. The simulation model was ported to a real time environment, to calculate the efficiency of a PV system. Embedded System technology allows the networked operation and the integration of standard I/O devices. Futher work focus on the adaption of shadowing routine, which will be adapted to get the environment conditions from the real operation.


The new generation of scholars differs in many ways from its predecessor of just a few decades ago. Academia once consisted largely of men in traditional single-earner families. Today, men and women fill the doctoral student ranks in nearly equal numbers and most will experience both the benefits and challenges of living in dual-income households. This generation also has new expectations and values, notably the desire for flexibility and balance between careers and other life goals. However, changes to the structure and culture of academia have not kept pace with young scholars desires for work-family balance."Do Babies Matter?" is the first comprehensive examination of the relationship between family formation and the academic careers of men and women. The book begins with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, moves on to early and mid-career years, and ends with retirement. Individual chapters examine graduate school, how recent PhD recipients get into the academic game, the tenure process, and life after tenure. The authors explore the family sacrifices women often have to make to get ahead in academia and consider how gender and family interact to affect promotion to full professor, salaries, and retirement. Concrete strategies are suggested for transforming the university into a family-friendly environment at every career stage. The book draws on over a decade of research using unprecedented data resources, including the Survey of Doctorate Recipients, a nationally representative panel survey of PhDs in America, and multiple surveys of faculty and graduate students at the ten-campus University of California system.."


Glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) play major roles in the protection of plants from biotic and abiotic stresses through the detoxification of xenobiotics and toxic endogenous products. This report describes additional complexity in the regulation of the well characterized stress-responsive Arabidopsis thaliana GSTF8 promoter. This complexity results from the use of multiple transcription start sites (TSS) to give rise to alternate GSTF8 transcripts with the potential to produce two in-frame proteins differing only in their N-terminal sequence. In addition to the originally mapped TSS (Chen, W., Chao, G., and Singh, K. B. (1996) Plant J. 10, 955-966), a further nine TSS have been identified, with the majority clustered into a distinct group. The most 3′ TSS gives rise to the major message (GSTF8-S) and the shorter form of the protein, whereas those originating from upstream TSS (GSTF8-L) are more weakly expressed and encode for the larger form of the protein. Differential tissue-specific and stress-responsive expression patterns were observed (e.g. GSTF8-L is more highly expressed in leaves compared with roots, whereas GSTF8-S expression has the opposite pattern and is much more stress-responsive). Analysis of GSTF8-L and GSTF8-S proteins demonstrated that GSTF8-L is solely targeted to plastids, whereas GSTF8-S is cytoplasmic. In silico analysis revealed potential conservation of GSTF8-S across a wide range of plants; in contrast, conservation of GSTF8-L was confined to the Brassicaceae. These studies demonstrate that alternate TSS of the GSTF8 promoter are used to confer differential tissue-specific and stress-responsive expression patterns as well as to target the same protein to two different subcellular localizations.


Sugar binding proteins of the thermoacidophile Sulfolobus solfataricus function together with ABC transporters in the uptake of sugars. They are synthesized as, precursors with a class III signal peptide that are normally found in archaeal flagellins and bacterial type IV pilins. The functional expression of sugar binding proteins at the cell surface is dependent on the Bindosome assembly system (Bas) that is homologous to bacterial type IV pilin assembly systems. The Bas system consists of an assembly ATPase, BasE; a membrane anchoring protein, BasF; and three small class III signal peptide containing proteins BasABC. Expression of BasEF in a S. solfataricus ΔbasEF strain restored the uptake of glucose, while an ATPase mutant of BasE was unable to complement. BasEF was detergent-extracted from S. solfataricus membranes as a stable protein complex. Solute binding proteins can be extracted from the cell surface as two high molecular mass complexes of 700 and 500 kDa, wherein the largest complex also contains the main S-layer protein SlaA. Electron microscopic analysis of the cell surface of the wild-type and ΔbasEF strain indicates that the absence of the BasEF complex causes an alteration in cell morphology and the corrugation of the S-layer pattern. These results suggest an intimate interaction between the S-layer and the sugar binding proteins that contribute to cell shape.


Over the past decade the large use of genomic approaches has resulted in the impressive generation of complete genomic sequences for over 800 bacterial species. However, the use of different bioinformatic approaches to determine the presence of a gene or open reading frame (ORF) in those genomes cause divergent gene annotations, even for data generated from the same genomic sequences. The use of a correct dataset for protein identification is a key step in many fields as phylogenetics, protein expression experiments, and has an impact on the identification capacity of a proteomic workflow. In this review, we describe successful attempts performed by proteomic groups to improve gene annotation in bacteria using different bioinformatic and mass spectrometry technologies. The review emphasizes the most recent ad- vances in high resolution MS technology, which has increased the sequence coverage and peptide identification reliability by several fold. The capacity to perform deeper and more complete catalogations allows correction of several known genes, plus the discovery of protein products of regions of the genome not yet predicted to be coding areas. Recent results from our group show how such technology can be used as a guide to correct mistakes in transcriptional starting site (TSS) choices of proteins of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium leprae, as well as to identify N-terminal peptides resulting from signal peptidase cleavages.


Abstract The Liziyuan goldfield is located along the northern margin of the western part of the Qinling Orogen (WQO). The goldfield consists of five gold-only deposits hosted by metavolcanic rocks, and one polymetallic (Au–Ag–Pb) deposit hosted by the Tianzishan Monzogranite. As the Liziyuan goldfield appears to be spatially and temporally related to the Jiancaowan Porphyry, the study of the deposit provides a crucial insight into the relationship between tectonic-magmatic events and gold metallogenesis in the WQO. In this paper, we present whole-rock major and trace element geochemistry, and in situ zircon U–Pb and Lu–Hf isotopic data from the Tianzishan Monzogranite and Jiancaowan Porphyry. The two granitic plutons are enriched in LILEs and LREEs, depleted in HFSEs and have zircon εHf(t) values between −14.1 and −5.1 for the Tianzishan Monzogranite and between −21.0 and −8.4 for the Jiancaowan Porphyry. These characteristics indicate that the granites are derived from the crust. The Tianzishan Monzogranite has LA-ICP-MS zircon U–Pb ages of 256.1 ± 3.7 to 260.0 ± 2.1 Ma, which suggests that it was emplaced in the WQO during the convergence of the North and South (Yangtze) China cratons in the early stage of the Qinling Orogeny. In contrast, the porphyry has a LA-ICP-MS zircon U–Pb age of 229.2 ± 1.2 Ma, which is younger than the peak collision age, but corresponds to the widespread Late Triassic post-collisional granitic plutons in the WQO. The Tianzishan Monzogranite has somewhat higher Sr contents (196–631 ppm), lower Y (2.23–19.6 ppm) and Yb (0.20–2.01 ppm) contents, and a positive Eu/Eu* averaging 1.15. These characteristics suggest the pluton was derived from partial melting of the thickened crust. In contrast, the relatively higher MgO content (0.85–2.08 wt%) and Mg no. (43.4–58.2) of the Jiancaowan Porphyry indicates that insignificant amounts of subcontinental lithospheric mantle-derived mafic melts were involved in the generation of the magma. The Liziyuan goldfield is hosted by faults in greenschist-facies metamorphic rocks. Fluid inclusion studies suggest that gold was precipitated from CO2-rich, low-salinity and medium temperature fluids. This feature is consistent with the other orogenic gold deposits throughout the world. The field relationships and zircon U–Pb ages of the two granitic plutons suggest that gold mineralization is coeval with or slightly younger than the emplacement of the Jiancaowan Porphyry. Therefore, both the porphyry and deposit formed during the post-collisional stage of the Qinling Orogen.


The offers of a latest type of smartphone is abundant in the market. The decision to buy new or to change to new smartphone has been an act that no need hard effort from the buyers perspective, especially the youngsters. However the motive behind buyer decision to change his or her smartphone or to change to smartphone is not clearly uncovered. This study is aimed to uncover factors that influence the decision of buying new smartphone as a replacement to the old one. The study uses the main construct of innovation adoption, Modified UTAUT2, proposed by Venkatesh. The factors of Modified UTAUT2 further moderated by unconscious intentionally or irrationality factors of Dan Ariely that exists in every person. The study sample is drawn conveniently from Java Island student population who is using or interested in using Samsung Galaxy. The methods of data collection was conducted through questionnaires with Google Form application and sent to 250 smartphone users samples. Data process is performed by using SPSS 20 and SmartPLS 2.0. The results of this study shows a significant influence of variables : social influence, hedonic motivation, habits, and social influence moderated by irrationality to purchase intention behavior. Keywords: Smartphone Samsung, Purchase Intention, Irrationality, SmartPLS 2.0 , Modified UTAUT 2


Compressible and incompressible flow calculations were made of the combustor total-pressure-loss coefficient and liner airflow distribution for tubular turbojet combustors having constant annulus and liner cross-sectional areas along the combustor axis. Information on static and total pressure distribution and liner air-jet entrance angles along the length of the combustor was obtained as an intermediate step in the calculations. The calculations include the effects of heat release, annulus wall friction, and variation in discharge coefficients of the liner wall openings along the combustor. The combustor total-pressure-loss coefficient and liner air-flow distribution are presented graphically in terms of the following dimensionless parameters: (1) combustor reference Mach number, (2) ratio of combustor-exit to inlet total temperature, (3) fraction of total airflow passing through the liner dome, (4) ratio of total open hole area in liner wall to total combustor cross-sectional area, and (5) ratio of liner cross-sectional area to total combustor cross-sectional area.


The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development starts from the premise that global development depends equally on domestic policy action as on international cooperation. The EU strongly pushed for such a 'universal' agenda and called for reviewing the alignment of existing policies to the new agenda in reference to its legal commitment to promoting Policy Coherence for Development (PCD). This article analyses key trends in development evaluation since the 1980s, operationalizes the concept of PCD for evaluation purposes, and assesses the EU's evaluation performance. The findings show a discrepancy between the Union's ambitious 2030 Agenda position and its sub-optimal performance in evaluating PCD. Instrumental use of PCD in international negotiations to push for burden-sharing in development cooperation, an evaluation function focused on defending spending, diverging Member State support, as well as sheer methodological challenges explain this discontinuity that affects the EU's credibility as a norm maker.


Signal transduction by transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) cytokines is mediated by an evolutionarily conserved mechanism that depends on the Smad proteins to transduce an extracellular stimulus into the nucleus. In the unstimulated state, Smads spontaneously shuttle across the nuclear envelope and distribute throughout the cell. Upon TGF-β or bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) stimulation, the receptor-activated Smads are phosphorylated, assemble into complexes with Smad4, and become mostly localized in the nucleus. Such signal-induced nuclear translocation of activated Smads is essential for TGF-β–dependent gene regulation that is critical for embryonic development and homeostasis. The molecular machinery responsible for this process, especially how the activated Smads are imported as complexes, is not entirely clear. Thus, I became interested in investigating the molecular requirements for nuclear targeting of Smads upon stimulation. Recently, whole-genome RNAi screening offers a complementary cell-based approach to functionally identify molecules that mediate nuclear accumulation of Smads in response to TGF-β. In the first part of this dissertation, I performed a genome-wide RNAi screen that uncovered the importin moleskin (Msk) required in nuclear import of Dpp-activated MAD. Both genetic and biochemical studies further confirmed this finding. I also investigated Smad interactions with the Msk mammalian orthologues, Importin7 and 8 and validated that Smads are bona fide cargos of Imp7/8. Besides the importin Msk, the screen also uncovered a subset of nucleoporins as required factors in signal-induced nuclear accumulation of MAD. Thus in the second part of this thesis, I focused on how the NPC mediates this Msk-dependent nuclear import of activated MAD. Most of these nucleoporins, including Sec13, Nup75, Nup93 and Nup205, were thought to be structural nucleoporins without known cargo-specific functions. We, however, demonstrated that this subset of nucleoporins was specifically used in the Msk-dependent nuclear import of activated MAD but not the constitutive import of cargos containing a classic nuclear localization signal (cNLS). I also uncovered novel pathway-specific functions of Sec13 and Nup93. Regulation of TGF-β signaling can be achieved not only by modulating Smad nuclear translocation but also by modifying Smad phosphorylation status. Previously we identified a kinase, Misshapen (Msn), that caused the linker phosphorylation of MAD, resulting in negative regulation of Dpp signaling ( Drosophila BMP). In the third part of this thesis, I investigated the biological relevance of Msn kinase to Dpp signaling in Drosophila wings. Both over-expression and RNAi studies suggest that Msn is a negative regulator of the Dpp/MAD pathway in vivo . As a whole, my findings delineated two critical requirements for MAD nuclear import: the importin Msk and a unique subset of nucleoporins. For the first time, structural Nups are implicated in the direct involvement of…


Seamounts, deep-sea corals and fisheries - an ubiquitous ocean floor feature, a key marine ecosystem, and an important human activity: together they have created one of the most critical ocean issues. The report reveals the global scale of the vulnerability of habitat-forming stony corals on seamounts, and that of associated marine biodiversity and assemblages, to the impacts of trawling, especially in areas beyond national jurisdiction. It provides some of the best scientific evidence to date to support the call for concerted and urgent action on the high seas to protect seamount communities and their associated resources from the adverse effects of deep-water fishing. The report describes the results of data analyses that were used to understand the global distribution of deep-sea corals on seamounts, to model the distribution of suitable habitat for stony corals, and to appreciate the extent of the trawl fisheries on seamounts in areas beyond national jurisdiction. These results were combined, along with knowledge of the effects of trawling on corals and other seamount species, to identify the main areas at risk from the impact of current and future trawling on the high seas. In particular, seamount ecosystems in the Indian, North and South Atlantic, and the South Pacific Oceans, are threatened by the expansion of alfonsino (250-750 metres) and orange roughy (750-1200 metres) fisheries.;


Let us assume that you are entrusted by UNESCO with an important task. You are asked to devise a universal logical language, a Begriffsschrift in Frege's sense, which is to serve the purposes of science, business and everyday life. What requirements should such a "conceptual notation" satisfy? There are undoubtedly many relevant desiderata, but here I am focusing on one unmistakable one. In order to be a viable lingua universalis, your language must in any case be capable of representing any possible configuration of dependence and independence between different variables. For if such a configuration is possible in principle, there is no guarantee that it might not one day show up among the natural, human or social phenomena we have to study. But how are dependencies and independencies between variables expressed in our familiar logical notation? Every logician worth his or her truth-table knows the answer. Dependencies between two variables are expressed by dependencies between the quantifiers to which they are bound. For instance, in the variable y depends on x, while in z depends on x but not on y, while u depends on both x and y. But how is the dependence of a quantifier on another one expressed in familiar logical languages? Obviously by occurring in its scope, indicated by the pair of parentheses following it (cf. here Hintikka [1997]). But the nesting of scopes is a transitive and antisymmetrical relation which allows branching only in one direction. Hence other kinds of structures of dependence and independence between variables are not representable in the received logical notation. Such previously inexpressible structures form the subject matter of what has been referred to as independence-friendly (IF) logic.


In an early attempt to combat market abuse in the South African financial markets, legislation such as the Companies Act, the Financial Markets Control Act and the Stock Exchanges Control Act were enacted. However, these Acts failed to effectively curb market abuse activities that were allegedly rife in the financial markets. Consequently, the Insider Trading Act was enacted and came into effect on 17 January 1999. While the introduction of the Insider Trading Act brought some confidence in the financial markets, market abuse activities were still not extinguished. The provisions of the Insider Trading Act were to some extent inadequate and ineffectively implemented. Eventually, the Securities Services Act was enacted to repeal all the flawed provisions of the Insider Trading Act. Notwithstanding these efforts on the part of the legislature, more may still need to be done to increase the number of convictions and settlements in cases involving market abuse in South Africa. It is against this background that a historical overview analysis of the regulation of market abuse is carried out in this article to expose the flaws that were previously embedded in the South African market abuse laws prior to 2004. This is done to raise awareness of the situation on the part of the relevant stakeholders, as they consider whether such flaws were adequately resolved or subsequently re-introduced under the Securities Services Act and the Financial Markets Act. To this end, the article firstly discusses the historical development and regulation of market manipulation prior to 2004. Secondly, the regulation and enforcement of insider trading legislation prior to 2004 are examined. Moreover, where possible, certain flaws of the previous market abuse laws that were re-incorporated into the current South African market abuse legislation are isolated and recommendations are made in that regard.


Recent improvements in the area of Internet of Things (IoT) has led to extensive utilization of embedded devices and sensors. Hence, along with utilization the need for safety and security of these devices also increases proportionately. In the last two decades, the side-channel attack (SCA) has become a massive threat to the interrelated embedded devices. Moreover, extensive research has led to the development of many different forms of SCA for extracting the secret key by utilizing the various leakage information. Lately, machine learning (ML) based models have been more effective in breaking complex encryption systems than the other types of SCA models. However, these ML or DL models require a lot of data for training that cannot be collected while attacking a device in a real-world situation. Thus, in this thesis, we try to solve this issue by proposing the new technique of leakage conversion. In this technique, we try to convert the high signal to noise ratio (SNR) power traces to low SNR averaged electromagnetic traces. In addition to that, we also show how artificial neural networks (ANN) can learn various non-linear dependencies of features in leakage information, which cannot be done by adaptive digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms. Initially, we successfully convert traces in the time interval of 80 to 200 as the cryptographic operations occur in that time frame. Next, we show the successful conversion of traces lying in any time frame as well as having a random key and plain text values. Finally, to validate our leakage conversion technique and the generated traces we successfully implement correlation electromagnetic analysis (CEMA) with an approximate minimum traces to disclosure (MTD) of 480.


Biodiesel is a fatty acid ester derived from fats and oils obtained from biological material. One of the major sources of biodiesel is oils produced from oilseeds such as soya bean and sunflower. The CSIR is conducting an extensive research programme in partnership with the Department of Science and Technology to develop new processes and applications for the soya oilcake - a high-protein by-product stream produced after removal of the oil. The by-product stream typically comprises 60-80% of the total weight of an oilseed, thereby making its sales value critical to ensure the economic viability of such processing plants.


In Situ Hybridization, with or Without Tyramide Signal Amplification, in Evaluation of Human Papillomavirus Status Inearly Stage Cervical Carcinoma Conventional in situ hybridization (CISH) can be used for detection of human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA, enabling preservation of the tissue morphology and assessment of the physical state of viral DNA, but has low sensitivity. This study compared the sensitivity and efficiency of in situ hybridization with tyramide signal amplification (ISH TSA) with those of CISH. The HPV status of 77 cases with early stage cervical carcinoma was evaluated with CISH, using biotinylated probes for HPV types 6/11, 16/18 and 31/33/51, and with ISH TSA using probes for HPV types 6/11, 16/18 and 31/33 or 31/33/51. The HPV DNA was detected in 26 (33.8%) cases using CISH, and in 45 (58.4%) cases using ISH TSA. By adding the TSA step, the sensitivity of CISH was enhanced by 24.7%, thus enabling detection of 20 new HPV-positive cases. Multiple HPV infections were detected in four cases. A dot signal pattern was present in 68.9% (31/45) and more than five positive nuclei per sample were found in 82.2% (37/45) of the cases. We found that the ISH TSA system is a fast and simple method for detection of HPV DNA in cervical carcinoma compared to CISH, and is more sensitive and efficient in the detection and typing of HPV, assessment of HPV DNA physical state and evaluation of the number of positive cells than CISH.


This paper addresses the issue of accessible design in the context of dementia. It is not difficult to design buildings and outside spaces for people with dementia but you do have to follow clear design principles and values. However, unlike other disabilities, accessible dementia design is still viewed as an added extra and not a vital component of facilitating citizenship. In 2015, the World Health Organisation published guidance on human rights and dementia. People living with dementia are frequently denied their human rights even when regulations are in place to uphold them. This paper will focus on accessible design from a human rights perspective using the PANEL principles. PANEL stands for Participation, Accountability, Non-Discrimination and Equality, Empowerment and Legality. We will then conclude with recommendations for policy, practice and research to ensure that accessible design for people living with dementia does not continue to be a neglected space in the equality debate.


ABSTRACT Samples from a linear transect of borings in the shallow marine waters offshore of Al Jubayl, Saudi Arabia, represent dolomitic deposits (dolomitic facies) overlain by low-magnesium calcitic deposits (calcitic facies) and topped by a veneer of aragonitic sediments (aragonitic facies). The dolomitic fades, with its associated evaporites, accumulated and was diagenetically altered as part of Pleistocene sabkha complexes. The calcitic facies is composed of a wide variety of shallow marine Pleistocene carbonates and is petrographically indicative of diagenesis in a meteoric phreatic realm. The aragonitic sediments are Holocene and have undergone only minor shallow marine diagenetic alteration. Whole-rock stable-isotope data (26 aragonitic and 112 calcitic samples) show that the calcitic deposits have undergone two distinct episodes of diagenesis. (1) During Pleistocene sea-level lowstand(s), diagenesis in the meteoric vadose realm altered these originally aragonitic and high-magnesium calcitic sediments, with estimated mean 18O and 13C values of 0.0 and 3.3 PDB, respectively, to low-magnesium calcites, with mean 18O and 13C values of -3.5 and 2.0 PDB, respectively. (2) Under the present sedimentological regime, sabkha-derived evaporative waters, with relatively high 18O values, descended from the modern coast, mixed with the regional groundwater, and flowed laterally gulfward within a confined phreatic aquifer (i.e, the calcitic facies) beneath the marine waters of the Arabian Gulf. Although the calcitic samples display diagenetic trends because of the descent and concomitant lateral migration of waters beneath an exposure surface, these trends differ from those recognized in similar studies. The subsequent diagenetic overprinting by the sabkha-derived surface waters has increased the 18O values as much as 4. Additionally, an overprint of the waters' path can be recognized to the seaward end of the sample transect, almost 10 km from the shoreline, by a gradual decrease gulfward in the mean whole-rock 18O values within the calcitic facies. In contrast to analogous studies, diagenesis of the Al Jubayl carbonates due to the sabkha-derived waters resulted in 18O values that are widely distributed, whereas the 13C values are narrowly distributed, and the sediments show the highest 18O values where the water had the greatest influence in the water-rock interaction; these trends are opposite to those of most other diagenetic sequences.


All images are flawed, no matter how good your lenses, mirrors etc. are. Especially in the hard X-ray regime it is challenging to manufacture high quality optics due to the weak interaction of multi-keV photons with matter. This is a tremendous challenge for obtaining high resolution quantitative X-ray microscopy images. In recent years lensless phase contrast imaging has become an alternative to classical absorption-based imaging methods. Without any optics, the image is formed only by the free space propagation of the wave field. The actual image has to be formed posteriori by numerical reconstruction methods. Advanced phasing methods enable the experimentalist to recover a complex valued specimen from a single or a set of intensity measurement. This would be the ideal case - reality teaches us that there are no ideal imaging conditions. Describing, understanding and circumventing these non ideal imaging conditions and their effects on X-ray near-field holographic (NFH) imaging are the leitmotifs for this thesis. In NFH the non ideal conditions manifest themselves in the illuminating wave field or probe. The probe generally does not satisfy the canonical assumptions of fully coherent and monochromatic radiation emitted by a point source.

The main results of this thesis are compiled as a collection of publications. An approach is shown to reconstruct the probe of a X-ray nano-focus setup by a series of measurements of the probe at varied Fresnel number. The following chapter presents a study concerning the reconstruction efficiency in terms of resolution for near- and far-field based lensless imaging. In the following, the reconstruction scheme for the probe is extended to incorporate the effects of partial coherence in the near field. This enables the recovery of the modal structure of the probe which yields a full description of its coherence properties.
Giving up the assumption of temporal stability due to the stochastic pulses, delivered by X-ray free electron lasers, the reconstruction of probe and specimen must be achieved from a single shot. A suitable scheme for this purpose is proposed in this work.


Singapore has a similar population to Ireland and gross domestic products (GDPs) for both countries are comparable. However, culturally and in other respects, the two republics are very different. Unemployment in Ireland is six times higher than in Singapore where GDP has almost doubled since 2007 but has fallen by nearly 11% in Ireland in the same time-span. One aspect of life in both countries transcending cultural differences is the importance placed on tertiary education. The Irish and Singaporean people share a deep commitment to education and the imperative of building and maintaining a knowledge economy is central to both societies. Employment in higher education in Singapore is more tenuous than in Ireland and it is common for a lecturer who is considered to have underperformed to not have a contract renewed. Irish higher education adheres closely to European policies and practices, particularly in adoption of quality assurance procedures. Consequently, it is expected that similar bachelor degree programmes in Ireland, for example in Mechanical Engineering or Physics, will be quality assured to a consistent standard across the higher education system. Quality assurance both states. For instance, QA in the National University of Singapore is typically managed by internal committees, augmented by 'Visiting Committees'. The multitude of courses offered by private colleges in partnership with UK universities are subject to the QA procedures of the respective universities and hence are regulated by the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA). However, an internal tertiary programme may or may not follow a strict QA procedure. If it does, the QA policies are drafted by the institution's staff and are based on the requirements of Singapore's Council of Private Education (CPE). Hence it is possible that the standard set may be inconsistent with the standard demanded by overseas QA regulations. In cases where QA procedures are not implemented, there can be little confidence among stakeholders in respect of the quality of the programme and standards may be arbitrary. Quality assurance of Irish higher education is coordinated through Qualifications and Quality Ireland (QQI), a state body responsible for the review of institutions who usually operate their own quality assurance systems. In some cases, QQI takes direct responsibility for quality assurance within smaller institutions, while also taking direct responsibility in other education sectors, such as the further education sector. There is a widely held perception amongst stakeholders in higher education in Singapore that internal programmes in tertiary education offer lower quality than the external tertiary programmes which are affiliated to well-established, mainly British, universities. Many factors have influenced this view, leading to its reinforcement and wide acceptance. These factors are discussed here and a simple but telling case study is offered. The practices of private colleges running their own internal Diploma and Advanced Diploma programmes are evaluated by observing specific situations. Comparisons are made with similar practices of colleges that run external Diploma and Advanced Diploma programmes under the auspices of UK universities and practices followed in private colleges and institutes of technology in Ireland. In conclusion, the need for uniform quality procedures across the Singaporean higher education system is highlighted and some necessary steps in achieving this requirement are advanced.


Reading Latin poses many difficulties for English speakers, because they are accustomed to relying on word order to determine the roles of words in a sentence. In Latin, the grammatical form of a word, and not its position, is responsible for determining the word's function in a sentence. It has proven challenging to develop pedagogical techniques that successfully draw students' attention to the grammar of Latin and that students find engaging enough to use. Building on some of the most promising prior work in Latin instruction-the Michigan Latin approach--and on the insights underlying block-based programming languages used to teach children the basics of computer science, we developed Ingenium. Ingenium uses abstract puzzle blocks to communicate grammatical concepts. Engaging students in grammatical reflection, Ingenium succeeds when students are able to effectively decipher the meaning of Latin sentences. We adapted Ingenium to be used for two standard classroom activities: sentence translations and fill-in-the-blank exercises. We evaluated Ingenium with 67 novice Latin students in universities across the USA. When using Ingenium, participants opted to perform more optional exercises, completed translation exercises with significantly fewer errors related to word order and errors overall, as well as reported higher levels of engagement and attention to grammar than when using a traditional text-based interface.


In a security-bid auction, the stochastic revenue of the project being auctioned is used as an asset to securitize the winner's payment to the seller. De Marzo et al. (2005) show that in an environment with risk-neutral seller and bidders, steeper securities increase the seller's expected revenue but do not affect the efficiency of the auction. We introduce risk-averse bidders to analyze the insurance role of steepness and its implications for revenue, efficiency and bidders' endogenous participation. Steeper securities provide more insurance because they allow bidders to smooth payoffs across realizations: asking for lower payments when revenue realizations are low and for higher payments when realizations are high. We show that such insurance levels the field for more risk-averse bidders, inducing them to bid more aggressively and improving the revenue and the allocative efficiency of the auction. In addition, we present two results that are novel to the auction literature. We show that if bidders are homogeneously and sufficiently risk-averse (i) a call option is the only security that guarantees Pareto efficiency; and (ii) steeper securities attract more entry when bidders do not know their signals and entry is costly. <br>


This paper will review recent technological advancements in on-site manufacturing and machining capabilities which have been developed for the proper installation of new hydro turbines. It will emphasize the capabilities presently available and investigate the cost effectiveness of on-site rehabilitation of hydro turbine/generator components as it compares to factory refurbishment. Due to the aging of the majority of hydro installations throughout North America many units will require rehabilitation during this decade. It is common to rehabilitate the rotating and completion components of hydro turbine/generator units. The decision to bring the embedded parts back to original equipment manufacturer (O.E.M.) specifications should also be seriously considered. The desire to obtain high efficiencies of hydro generating units require tight tolerances for both new and rehabilitated units. Installation procedures are changing. In addition, it has become difficult to adequately control the thermal growth and concrete displacement problems associated with the installation of embedded parts of new units, as well as the concrete growth and settling problems associated with existing plants.


Background:  The debate on the influence of gender on small and medium-sized entities' (SMEs) access to finance from a demand-side perspective is still ongoing. This study seeks to contribute to the debate from an emerging economy (South Africa) perspective. Aim:  The study investigated whether there is a gender gap in SME access to venture capital, a distinct source of finance. Setting:  SMEs play a significant role in South Africa's economy. Despite the importance of SMEs, access to finance is one of the major constraints affecting their success rate. Globally, to enhance the probability of SME survival, small business practitioners and governments are in search of relevant support measures. One of those measures could be adequate access to venture capital. However, it is sad to note that SMEs seldom use this distinct source of finance. Methods:  The study made use of the quantitative method of research and is descriptive by design. Self-administered questionnaires were emailed to respondents for the purposes of gathering primary data. The  t -test was used to statistically analyse primary data. Results:  The results reveal that there is a statistically significant difference in the accessibility of venture capital between male- and female-owned SMEs. Conclusion:  The article concludes that a gender gap in access to venture capital exists owing to differences in business approach between female entrepreneurs and their male counterparts. Female entrepreneurs are cautious about the level of risk they are willing to take and the amount of control they wish to exercise in firm ownership.


The main aim of this article is to analyze compatibilities for linking of two independent emissions trading schemes: European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Given the fact that both schemes are based on a cap-and-trade principle, they offer tangible cases for a comparison. The major issues under investigation include the allocation of the credits, their exchange and the commitment periods that each of the schemes has. In this paper I show evidence that proves that the two schemes could provide a foundation for a global solution to trading emissions. The favoring features are as follows: a strong interest in auctioning the allowances, a relative openness of both schemes to other mechanisms, possible reductions to administration costs and various similarities in governance structures within the mechanisms. It is argued as well that both EU ETS and RGGI are still in the formation state, their principles are in constant flux and their structures are being remodeled, which offers possibilities of extension/linkage.


Levees break in New Orleans. Iraq descends into chaos. The housing market teeters on the brink of collapse. Americans of all political stripes are heading into the 2008 election with the sense that something has gone terribly wrong with American politics. But what exactly? Democrats blame Republicans and Republicans blame Democrats. Greedy corporate executives, rogue journalists, faulty voting machines, irresponsible defense contractors-we blame them, too. The only thing everyone seems to agree on, in fact, is that the American people are entirely blameless. In Just How Stupid Are We?, best-selling historian and renowned myth-buster Rick Shenkman takes aim at our great national piety: the wisdom of the American people. The hard truth is that American democracy is more direct than ever-but voters are misusing, abusing, and abdicating their political power. Americans are paying less and less attention to politics at a time when they need to pay much more: Television has dumbed politics down to the basest possible level, while the real workings of politics have become vastly more complicated. Shenkman offers concrete proposals for reforming our institutions-the government, the media, civic organizations, political parties-to make them work better for the American people. But first, Shenkman argues, we must reform ourselves.


This document reports on research conducted at the University of Maryland for the Korean/English Machine Translation (MT) project. The translation approach adopted here is interlingual i.e., a single underlying representation called Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS) is used for both Korean and English. The primary focus of this investigation concerns the notion of`parameterization' i.e., a mechanism that accounts for both syntactic and lexical-semantic distinctions between Korean and English. We present our assumptions about the syntactic structure of Korean-type languages vs. English-type languages and describe our investigation of syntactic parameterization for distinguishing between these two types of languages. We also present the details of the LCS structure and describe how this representation is parameterized so that it accommodates both languages. We address critical issues concerning interlingual machine translation such as locative postpositions and the dividing line between the interlingua and the knowledge representation. Diiculties in translation and transliteration of Korean are discussed and complex morphological properties of Korean are presented. Finally, we describe recent work on lexical acquisition and conclude with a discussion about two hypotheses concerning semantic classiication that are currently being tested.


The global financial crisis and the bubbles preceding it pose mounting issues for a central bank. The Bank of Japan was the first central bank among advanced countries to confront those issues in the postwar period. Japan's experience intellectually stimulated academics and policymakers overseas, which led to the Bank being flooded with policy proposals, including highly experimental ones. With the exception of just a few cases, however, the low growth in Japan following the bursting of a bubble was often simply interpreted as a unique episode caused by a failure to implement bold policy measures in a prompt manner. As many of you may recall, there was an oft-quoted paper coauthored by a number of Federal Reserve economists entitled "Preventing Deflation: Lessons from Japan's Experience in the 1990s" that was released in 2002. This paper argued as follows: [O]ur sense is that much of the failure of monetary loosening to support asset prices and to boost the economy owed to offsetting shocks rather than to a genuine breakdown of the monetary transmission mechanism. ... There is little evidence that the transmission channels of monetary policy were so diminished as to have obviated the benefits of faster and sharper monetary easing in the 1991-95 period. At that time, I found that such a view on the effectiveness of monetary policy was too sanguine [...]


All of us, at one time or another, find ourselves inexplicably drawn to the sea. For some, it's a place for reflection or romance. For others, it's the thrill of watching surf crash against a sandy white beach or studying the kaleidoscope of life among a tropical coral reef. This ability of the ocean to change our lives, to inspire us and to fascinate us is what led us to create "Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover's Soul," a collection of stories from around the world that celebrate the magic of our ocean planet. The sea, from the beginning of time, has inspired great art and amazing stories. Our relationship with the ocean lies deep within our consciousness and, in fact, is in each of us. "Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover's Soul" has captured some of these great stories to warm your heart and touch your soul. This book has amazing stories of swimming eye to eye with great whales, sharks and manatees, as well as legends of dolphins saving man. So get ready to dive in with Jack, Mark and Wyland, the world's most acclaimed marine-life artist, as they guide you on a journey of discovery and stories that will lift your spirit and awaken your senses like the healing sea itself. At last, a "Chicken Soup for the Soul" book for ocean lovers like you!


2D Digital Mammography - An Update on Vendor-Recommended QC Tests Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) are especially important in mammography, where achieving high image quality within reasonable dose limits is vitally important for a number of reasons including the following: 1. Early and accurate detection profoundly improves the prognosis for the patient with breast cancer 2. Population screening delivers radiation to a large number of asymptomatic women 3. Optimization of image quality and minimization of radiation dose is essential to accomplish the goals of mammography screening The requirements for QC in mammography are also significant in that they are the first to be defined and regulated by a federal law, i.e. the Food and Drug Administration's Mammography Quality Standards Act (MQSA). Under current FDA MQSA regulations, manufacturers must define a QC program for each mammography imaging system offered, and this program must be followed in detail by both physicists testing the device and other clinical users performing routine QA functions on a daily basis. In this lecture the QC testing programs currently specified by all digital mammography vendors will be summarized. Recent advances in the automation of QC measurements by manufacturers will be highlighted and potential future developments will be presented.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Attendees will gain an understanding of the general requirements for mammography QC 2. Attendees will gain an understanding of the QC programs currently specified by mammography vendors 3. Attendees will become aware of potential future universal QC requirements in mammography Stereotactic Breast Imaging System QC The performance of the eleven specified physics tests on a Stereotactic Breast Biopsy (SBB) System required for accreditation by the American College of Radiology (ACR) will be covered in this presentation, for systems both with and without Automatic Exposure Control (AEC) devices, and for both prone biopsy tables and add-on SBB units for digital FFDM units. Image Quality, expected values for Half-Value-Layer (HVL) measurements and typical patient doses for each matrix size available on SBB systems will be discussed. Clinical advantages/disadvantages of both types of systems will be covered relative to approach methods and areas available for sampling. The importance of testing the location of the biopsy needle or tissue sampling device for reproducibility and accuracy will be discussed relative to various phantoms that may be used to verify this location accuracy. Quality Control (QC) tests to be performed by the mammography technologist will be covered in addition to the required physics tests. Requirements for training and education of the staff (physician, physicist, and technologist) required to achieve ACR accreditation will be reviewed in light of the additional requirement for SBB units to be accredited for those breast imaging centers wishing to obtain the ACR designation of a Breast Imaging Center of Excellence.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Attendees will be aware of the required physics tests to be performed annually and for acceptance of Stereotactic Breast Biopsy (SBB) System. 2. Attendees will be aware of the expected values of Half-Value Layer and patient doses for SBB systems for common matrix sizes available on these units. 3. Attendees will be aware of the requirements for personnel performing SBB exams or physics evaluations in both Continuing Education and Continuing Experience for accreditation by the American College of Radiology. 4. Attendees will be aware of the required Quality Control Tests to be performed by both the technologist and physicist on SBB units.


Purpose To identify genetic risk factors contributing to central corneal thickness (CCT) in individuals from South India, a population with a high prevalence of ocular disorders. Methods One hundred ninety-five individuals from 15 large South Indian pedigrees were genotyped using the Omni2.5 bead array. Family-based association for CCT was conducted using the score test in MERLIN. Results Genome-wide association study (GWAS) identified strongest association for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the first intron of WNT7B and CCT (top SNP rs9330813; β = −0.57, 95% confidence interval [CI]: −0.78 to −0.36; P = 1.7 × 10−7). We further investigated rs9330813 in a Latino cohort and four independent European cohorts. A meta-analysis of these data sets demonstrated statistically significant association between rs9330813 and CCT (β = −3.94, 95% CI: −5.23 to −2.66; P = 1.7 × 10−9). WNT7B SNPs located in the same genomic region that includes rs9330813 have previously been associated with CCT in Latinos but with other ocular quantitative traits related to myopia (corneal curvature and axial length) in a Japanese population (rs10453441 and rs200329677). To evaluate the specificity of the observed WNT7B association with CCT in the South Indian families, we completed an ocular phenome-wide association study (PheWAS) for the top WNT7B SNPs using 45 ocular traits measured in these same families including corneal curvature and axial length. The ocular PheWAS results indicate that in the South Indian families WNT7B SNPs are primarily associated with CCT. Conclusions The results indicate robust evidence for association between WNT7B SNPs and CCT in South Indian pedigrees, and suggest that WNT7B SNPs can have population-specific effects on ocular quantitative traits.


Abstract This paper evaluates the contribution of Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit to the development of economic theory in the 20th century. Our argument in this paper is twofold. First, we contend that this book embodied what had been the common knowledge of early neoclassical economics prior to World War II (WWII). Second, we also argue that embryonic to Knight's account of economics were two divergent approaches to economic thought that emerged after WWII. The first approach, what has come to be known as microeconomics, is characterized by utility maximization under fixed price, income, and institutional parameters that approximate equilibrium. This first approach is distinct from a second approach, referred to as price theory, in which prices are not sufficient statistics, as in microeconomics, but operate as guides to consumption and production decisions under alternative institutional arrangements. This second approach not only represented the continuation of the mainline1 of economic thought from its classical and early neoclassical roots. It also embodies the basis for Knight's understanding of uncertainty, profit and entrepreneurship, as well as its implications for economic organization and social progress.


ABSTRACT The United Nations 2030 Agenda is a global framework for sustainable development. This article sheds light on the engagement of parliaments to control the implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs). For this purpose, institutional and non-institutional measures from a wide range of parliaments were evaluated and a general assessment framework has been developed, leading to the determination of a set of basic types of dedicated parliamentary bodies that handle SDG related issues and the nature of their cooperation with extra-parliamentary stakeholders. In this context, the Post-Legislative Scrutiny concept, which assesses both legal and impact dimensions of the implementation of law, has been studied, in order to prove whether it constitutes a viable long-term contribution in accelerating the achievement of the SDGs. Based on examples of good practice, the article presents tangible recommendations and urges parliaments to upscale action related to improving efficiency in the achievement of the SDGs.


This paper provides an explicit cobrant resolution of the operad encoding Batalin{Vilkovisky algebras. Thus it denes the notion of homotopy Batalin{Vilkovisky algebras with the required homotopy properties. To dene this resolution, we extend the theory of Koszul duality to operads and properads that are dened by quadratic and linear relations. The operad encoding Batalin{Vilkovisky algebras is shown to be Koszul in this sense. This allows us to prove a Poincar e{Birkho{Witt Theorem for such an operad and to give an explicit small quasi-free resolution for it. This particular resolution enables us to describe the deformation theory and homotopy theory of BV-algebras and of homotopy BV-algebras. We show that any topological conformal eld theory carries a homotopy BV- algebra structure which lifts the BV-algebra structure on homology. The same result is proved for the singular chain complex of the double loop space of a topological space endowed with an action of the circle. We also prove the cyclic Deligne conjecture with this cobrant resolution of the operad BV . We develop the general obstruction theory for algebras over the Koszul resolution of a properad and apply it to extend a conjecture of Lian{Zuckerman, showing that certain vertex algebras have an explicit homotopy BV-algebra structure.


Trying to build political dimensions into evaluation has blurred the distinction between policy analysis and policy evaluation. We do not dispute the importance of political context and values for evaluation or policy analysis, but we argue that evaluation and policy analysis are indeed different by definition, function and methodology. These differences are widely known but increasingly disregarded, especially at the stage of the presentation of findings. Evaluation tends to adopt the stance of the analyst in that it is being urged to make recommendations on policy choices within the narrow scope of answers based on evaluation questions, without the benefit of additional contextual information. The article compares policy evaluation and policy analysis in terms of conceptualization, research methods, problem definition and data presentation and argumentation. In presenting the differences between evaluation and analysis, we point to the dangers inherent in a lack of awareness of where the boundaries lie and what purpose they serve.


The increase on smartphone usage has brought the burden of data traffic with it. Operators are looking for cost-effective solutions to overcome the problem of 3G infrastructure for high contention traffic scenarios. Several schemes were offered to save the moment, and they brought some extra costs including deploying femtocell or WiMax, LTE, LTE-Advanced systems along with their expensive equipment. On the other hand, operators are expanding their networks with 802.11 technologies such that they can exploit the free-band communication. Meaning the data traffic can handover between WLAN and UMTS interchangeably. By using NS-2 simulator, we implemented IEEE 802.21 WG's Media Independent Handover (MIH) module by combining with Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) values collected from user equipment (UE) and observed a recovered throughput for both medium. We found that there is a tradeoff among energy efficiency, delay tolerance and cost. Furthermore, in this study, we integrated a Quality of Experience (QoE) metric during real-time handover decision process so that with this type of collaborative solution, an operator will be unique in terms of user happiness and heterogeneous network management.


South African universities share a common purpose to make sport and recreation accessible to students at higher education institutions, including students with disabilities. Therefore, integrating students with disabilities into the daily activities of any university institution is important as it may be beneficial for them to participate in recreational activities on campus. This study focuses on the experiences and perceptions of students with disabilities regarding recreational sport whilst at university. A qualitative methodological framework was employed. A sample of five students with disabilities was purposefully selected and face-to-face interviews as well as follow-up telephonic interviews were arranged. A list of cue questions guided the interview to ensure it flowed logically. Interviews were tape recorded (with written consent from participants) and transcribed verbatim. The data from the interviews were analysed using thematic data analysis. Physical, social and managerial constraints are not the only forms of inaccessibility, experience and perceptions, also play a role towards recreational sport participation for students with disabilities. The findings of this study indicated that the benefits of active participation lead to increased cognitive awareness and expression of internal motivation to pursue recreational sport on campus. The findings also denote that being coerced into sports and skill level leading to intimidation are factors that inhibit the pursuit for active leisure participation. This study lends itself to a fresh understanding of how to better cater for recreational sporting needs of university students with disabilities.


The genetic factors associated with multiple sclerosis in Kazakhstan are not well understood. The aim of the study was to determine a major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genotype pattern and its clinical correlations in pediatric demyelinating diseases of multiple sclerosis (MS) spectrum in Kazakh population. For that a complex clinical, neuroimaging and immunogenetic examination was performed in 19 children (11 girls, 8 boys) with central nervous system (CNS) demyelination aged from 4 to 18 years. Clinically, 4 out of 19 children had leukoencephalitis (21%), and in 15 of 19 patients had MS (79%) including 6 presented with a clinically isolated syndrome. We found that presence of gene allele DRB1*15(02) and the associated alleles, combined in the haplotype DRB1*15(02)∼DQA1*01:02∼DQB1*06:02 point out a significantly higher risk of MS development, i.e. 7.7 fold in children and adolescents of the Kazakh ethnicity and a 3.12 fold risk for children of Russian ethnicity. We observed that presence of both DRB1*15 alleles (homozygotes) and of one DRB1*15 allele in combination with DRB1*03 in female teenagers presented with more aggressive "classical" MS; this aspect requires more profound clinical observations in a bigger cohort.


The widely varying experiences of players of digital games challenge the notions that there is only one correct way to play a game. Some players routinely use cheat codes, consult strategy guides, or buy and sell in-game accounts, while others consider any or all of these practices off limits. Meanwhile, the game industry works to constrain certain readings or activities and promote certain ways of playing. In Cheating, Mia Consalvo investigates how players choose to play games, and what happens when they can't always play the way they'd like. She explores a broad range of player behavior, including cheating (alone and in groups), examines the varying ways that players and industry define cheating, describes how the game industry itself has helped systematize cheating, and studies online cheating in context in an online ethnography of Final Fantasy XI. She develops the concept of "gaming capital" as a key way to understand individuals' interaction with games, information about games, the game industry, and other players. Consalvo provides a cultural history of cheating in videogames, looking at how the packaging and selling of such cheat-enablers as cheat books, GameSharks, and mod chips created a cheat industry. She investigates how players themselves define cheating and how their playing choices can be understood, with particular attention to online cheating. Finally, she examines the growth of the peripheral game industries that produce information about games rather than actual games. Digital games are spaces for play and experimentation; the way we use and think about digital games, Consalvo argues, is crucially important and reflects ethical choices in gameplay and elsewhere.


The goal of this study was to assess effectiveness of a short collective stress inoculation training (SIT) conducted according to the methodology of the Virtual Reality Medical Center of San Diego (Training of Physiological Control Exposure to Virtual Stressor while Maintaining Physiological Control). The results obtained indicate a short-term effectiveness of the training as a method of tension reduction. However, in the long-term perspective these results are ambiguous and they suggest a need of further research. In order to extend the analysis effects of temperamental factors on training effectiveness was presented.


The article defines a class of architectures for pipeline reconfigurable FPGAs by parameterizing a generic model. This class of architecture is sufficiently general to allow exploration of the most important design trade-offs. The parameters include the word size and LUT size, the number of global busses and registers associated with each logic block, and the horizontal interconnect within each stripe. We have developed an area model for the architecture that allows us to quickly estimate the area of an instance of the architectural class as a function of the parameter values. We compare the estimates generated by this model to one instance of the architecture that we have designed and fabricated.


"Shook over Hell": Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War. Eric T. Dean, Jr. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. At a time when political, public, and popular debate have become preoccupied with trauma and, particularly, with the intersection of public events and private experience, a revisionist historical work like Eric Dean's Shook over Hell is more than timely. With meticulous attention to his primary sources (which include the committal records of a sample of sorely tried Indiana Civil War veterans), Dean tests popular wisdom about the figure of the traumatized Vietnam "vet." Dean's argument is challenging in a whole set of ways. Some of these challenges are overt, and some understated. By refuting the popular notion that the conflict in Vietnam was distinctive in both the numbers of traumatized veterans it produced and the quality and depth (the complex etiology) of their symptoms, Dean-almost despite himself-is putting a spotlight on what Mark Seltzer has called the "Wound Culture" of the contemporary United States. And not just a spotlight on the rightly much criticized "therapy" culture in which confession increasingly becomes either a pay-by-the-half-hour private affair, or the 3 to 15 minutes of fame in talk-show ritual release. Dean's critique of the privileged status of the Vietnam veteran asks particularly pointed questions about the inequitable distribution of welfare and medical services in a time of increasingly complex demographics of poverty. Dean also puts some hard methodological questions to military historians who, in line with the lively resurgence of various forms of revisionist social history, have turned from the study of great strategists and warriors, and the dissection of military campaigns, to a careful examination of the lived experience of both combatants and implicated non-combatants. This concentration on the stories of soldiers has produced, post-Vietnam, an unprecedented popular awareness of the personal, social, and, of course, political penalties of that war (and, perhaps, of war in general). Dean concludes, in fact, that the figure of the "betrayed" Vietnam veteran has become so persuasive, so heroically pitiful, that the public (and, indeed, the Pentagon) will no longer tolerate "excessive (defined as anything over several hundred) American casualties in any future war" (216). Dean's work, however, is designed to excavate the historical forms of a concept of "casualty" that embraces not just the dead but also those psychically and physically demolished by war. Of course, the century separating the Civil War and Vietnam produced profoundly different cultural contexts and psychological models within which the various traumatic ailments of veterans would be weighed. Colloquial and therapeutic languages both changed, as did the cultures that produced them. The traumatized Civil War veteran was described by fellows and family as "played out," "homesick," "rattled," "much depressed," having "the blues," "half crazy," "mean," or having "spells"; by those in the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, these words bubbled descriptively beneath the popular diagnostic typologies for nineteenth-century mental disorders: "mania," "melancholia," and "dementia. …


Mesoporous SiO2/C hollow spheres have been successfully synthesized via a one-step template process and carbonization of a mesoporous SiO2/poly(ethylene oxide)/phenolic formaldehyde resin hollow nanocomposite, and then evaluated as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries. The continuous carbon framework significantly led the SiO2/C hollow spheres to reach a high conductivity (3.9 × 10−4 S cm−1) compared with the SiO2 hollow spheres (<10−9 S cm−1), furthermore, the unique hollow nanostructure with a large volume interior and numerous mesopores plugged with carbon in the silica shell, could accommodate the volume variation and improve the structural strain for Li ion conduction, as well as allow rapid access of Li ions during charge–discharge cycling. For battery applications, at 100 mA g−1 charge/discharge rates, the reversible capacity of this mesoporous SiO2/C anode (624 mA h g−1) is over ten times higher than that of the SiO2 anode (61 mA h g−1). More specifically, even under the high discharge rate of 3000 mA g−1, this SiO2/C hollow nanostructure exhibits a specific capacity of 582 mA h g−1, featuring a high retention of more than 90% of its low discharge rate of 100 mA g−1. This demonstrates that the effective conduction of electrons through the continuous carbon network and the fast transport of Li ions through the nanoscale SiO2 shell significantly contribute to the high-rate performance.


'To me life and art are one and the same, for the key lies in one's knowledge of people and life. In art one is trying to express it in the simplest imaginative way, as in the art of past civilizations, for beauty and truth are the only two things which live timeless and ageless' - Mine Okubo. This is the first book-length critical examination of the life and work of Mine Okubo (1912-2001), a pioneering Nisei artist, writer, and social activist who repeatedly defied conventional role expectations for women and for Japanese Americans over her seventy-year career. Okubo's landmark "Citizen 13660" (first published in 1946) is the first and arguably best-known autobiographical narrative of the wartime Japanese American relocation and confinement experience. An instant classic, the book has been in print for over fifty years and has been translated into numerous languages.Born in Riverside, California, Okubo was incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II, first at the Tanforan Assembly Center in California and later at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah. There she taught art and directed the production of a literary and art magazine.While in camp, Okubo documented her confinement experience by making hundreds of paintings and pen-and-ink sketches. These provided the material for Citizen 13660. Word of her talent spread to Fortune magazine, which hired her as an illustrator. Under the magazine's auspices, she was able to leave the camp and relocate to New York City, where she pursued her art over the next half century.This lovely and inviting book, lavishly illustrated with both colour and halftone images, many of which have never before been reproduced, introduces readers to Okubo's oeuvre through a selection of her paintings, drawings, illustrations, and writings from different periods of her life. In addition, it contains tributes and essays on Okubo's career and legacy by specialists in the fields of art history, education, women's studies, literature, American political history, and ethnic studies, essays that illuminate the importance of her contributions to American arts and letters.In addition to tracing the artist's career, Mine Okubo expands the sparse critical literature on Asian American women, as well as that on the Asian American experience in the eastern United States. It also serves as an excellent companion to Citizen 13660, providing critical tools and background to place Okubo's work in its historical and literary contexts. Greg Robinson is professor of history at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal. Elena Tajima Creef is associate professor of women's studies at Wellesley College. Other contributors are Laura Card, Fay Chiang, Vivian Fumiko Chin, Mary Curtin, Heather Fryer, Masumi Hayashi, Sohei Hohri, Lynne Horiuchi, Clemens Kalischer, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, James Masao Mitsui, Stella Oh, Kimberley L. Phillips, and Irene Poon.


Part of the University of California, Davis Law Review's 2016 symposium, Disjointed Regulation: State Efforts to Legalize Marijuana, this article injects race into the discussion of the state trend to legalize marijuana by detailing the salience of race in the last 100-year life cycle of U.S. marijuana prohibition. Race has driven marijuana regulation from the initial criminalization by the states prompted by derogatory racial stereotypes, through the ongoing racialized enforcement of marijuana and other drugs in the criminal justice system. The article adds how, despite the legalization of recreational (and medical) marijuana in some states, the fruits of legalization thus far are enjoyed primarily by white entrepreneurs who dominate the industry, while racial minorities remain disproportionately vulnerable to criminal enforcement in the vestiges of enforcement that survive legalization - consumption by youths or in public places, driving while under the influence, and the ongoing black market given high taxation rates and infrastructure costs of legal sales.


In the framework of spine traumatology, burst fractures are severe and are often caused by car accidents or by falls. The vertebra breaks under the traumatic compression and pieces of it are shattered in all directions. This type of fracture is often treated by spinal fusion using a posterior sytem with rods and pedicular screws. By decompressing the traumatic region, the fracture is allowed to heal and to restore to a physiological geometry. However, a progressive kyphosis (flexion of the spine) is clinically observed arising from the rotation of the pedicular screws in the vertebra. The correction is therefore lost and proper healing compromised. This semester project (12 credits) consists of analysing and optimizing the stress around the pedicular screws under compressive loading of a posterior spinal fusion system


Distracted driving is a major problem that leads to unnecessary accidents and human casualties everywhere in the world. The ubiquity of mobile phones is one cause of distracted driving. In United States alone, operating mobile phones while driving has been cited as a factor in crashes that have led to 995 deaths and 24,000 injuries in 2009. To mitigate the problem of distracted driving caused by mobile phones, we propose using context-awareness to implement burden-shifting, time-shifting, and activity-based sharing. Although the first two concepts have been introduced before in the research literature and the latter two are novel, none of these concepts have yet been explored in the context of mobile phones and driving. We present our initial interaction designs for these concepts on the Android platform.


Greedy search is commonly used in an attempt to generate solutions quickly at the expense of completeness and optimality. In this work, we consider learning sets of weighted action-selection rules for guiding greedy search with application to automated planning. We make two primary contributions over prior work on learning for greedy search. First, we introduce weighted sets of action-selection rules as a new form of control knowledge for greedy search. Prior work has shown the utility of action-selection rules for greedy search, but has treated the rules as hard constraints, resulting in brittleness. Our weighted rule sets allow multiple rules to vote, helping to improve robustness to noisy rules. Second, we give a new iterative learning algorithm for learning weighted rule sets based on RankBoost, an efficient boosting algorithm for ranking. Each iteration considers the actual performance of the current rule set and directs learning based on the observed search errors. This is in contrast to most prior approaches, which learn control knowledge independently of the search process. Our empirical results have shown significant promise for this approach in a number of domains.


Horse racing is a weight category sport and jockeys must chronically maintain a low body mass, necessary to attain the stipulated competition riding weights, whilst maintaining a sufficient level of physical conditioning in order to compete, possibly on a daily basis, in several races each day, over the protracted racing season. The purpose of this study was to further investigate the acute and chronic effects of the common weight loss practices used to rapidly reduce body mass in preparation for racing, building on the existing knowledge and subsequently attempting to improve the health, well-being and overall performance of jockeys throughout their racing career and beyond.

Methods: The primary aim was achieved through the completion of 3 independent, though related studies. Study One: The effects of acute body mass loss in preparation for racing on cognitive function, balance and anaerobic performance were assessed in a group of jockeys in a simulated and competitive racing environment. Study Two: The potential long term health impact associated with the prolonged use of rapid weight loss strategies and an energy restricted lifestyle was established in a group of retired jockeys. Study Three: The physiological demands and energy requirements of training, racing and other daily activities were determined.

Results: Study one showed that rapid reductions in body mass resulted in no significant impairments in cognitive function, balance or anaerobic performance however large individual variability in responses were apparent which is worrying in terms of the safety and welfare of all surrounding jockeys on the track. Study two suggests a life of chronic weight restriction and reliance on unhealthy weight making practices may have some long term health effects particularly in relation to gain in body mass since retirement, reduced resting metabolic rate and bone health. Study three suggests competitive horse racing requires both aerobic and anaerobic fitness and it further reports that the total estimated energy expenditure on a non-racing day is higher than that on a racing day and as a result the deleterious effects of living in a state of low energy availability may be further exacerbated.

Conclusion: Results from this study suggest horse racing is a physically demanding sport and that making weight may result in many individual adverse responses both acutely and chronically. Ideally jockeys should be tracked longitudinally with information and support systems readily available to jockeys to encourage the adoption of healthier making weight strategies, assisting jockeys in enhancing their health, wellbeing and overall performance throughout their sporting career, and beyond.


The Fe2O3 and CoFe2O4 nanoparticle-based Langmuir-Blodgett lms for sensingof nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and acetone vapours have been explored. Both the sensitivity of thechemiresistors and dynamic properties, such as the response/recovery time, have been probed independence of the number of nanoparticle monolayers and working temperatures. The responseof 23 at the NO2 concentration of 1 ppm has been monitored suggesting the pertinent sensitivityin the deep sub-ppm range, i.e. approaching the canine detection limit, and likewise implyingthe supposable detection of nitrate-based explosives.


We study the conformational landscape of the C-terminal fragment of the Amyloid protein Aβ30–35 in water using well-tempered metadynamics simulations and find that it resembles an intrinsically disordered protein. The conformational fluctuations of the protein are facilitated by a collective reorganization of both protein and water hydrogen bond networks, combined with electrostatic interactions between termini as well as hydrophobic interactions of the side chains. The stabilization of hydrophobic interactions in one of the conformers involves a collective collapse of the sidechains along with a squeeze out of water sandwiched in between. The charged N and C termini play a critical role in stabilizing different types of protein conformations including those involving contact ion salt-bridges as well as solvent mediated interactions of the termini and amide backbone. We examine this by probing the distribution of directed water wires forming the hydrogen bond network enveloping the polypeptide. Water wires and their fluctuations form an integral part of structural signature of the protein conformation.


Two studies of stakeholders in university education for accounting professionals in Australia provide evidence of a decline in the quality of accounting education as perceived by accounting academics. This decline may be linked to increasing enrolments of international students with poor English language skills. Some university lecturers indicate that the quality of students entering their courses has declined, as has the quality of those graduating. In an environment increasingly dominated by the need to publish or perish, assessment tasks such as essays, case studies, and research reports, designed to improve the English language and communications skills of graduates, may have been compromised. This may contribute to the fact that many employers of graduates are concerned about the low levels of English language and communication skills displayed by accounting graduates, particularly international students.


Serotonin (5-HT) and orexin/hypocretin (Ox) systems are known to have a bi-directional relationship. Using immunofluorescence staining on Ox-enhanced green fluorescent protein (Ox-EGFP) transgenic mice brains, we have previously successfully mapped out the direct and indirect connections between the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN, a source of 5-HT) and the lateral hypothalamus (LHA, a source of Ox). We have found that direct connection from DRN to Ox neurons in LHA consists of fast ligand-gated 5-HT3A receptors and slower non-5-HT3 (e.g. 5-HT1A, 5-HT1B, 5-HT2A, and 5-HT2C) receptors. We also found 5-HT3A and 5-HT1A receptors on GABAergic inhibitory neurons in the LHA. Other experimental work has further demonstrated Ox1 and Ox2 receptor-mediated excitation on 5-HT and GABAergic inhibitory neurons in the DRN. Self-regulation of 5-HT (Ox) activity within the DRN (LHA) arises from the inhibitory feedback of their local inhibitory neurons, and additionally, inhibitory autoreceptors for 5-HT neurons (Ox autoreceptors are excitatory). We incorporate these findings into a neuronal circuit model of the DRN-LHA system consisting of 5-HT, Ox and inhibitory neuronal populations to elucidate its possible neural circuit dynamics, which has till now remains unknown. By constraining the relative connection strengths and relative baseline activities of the model to experimental data, our model demonstrates that the system's baseline activities are more stable with respect to connection strength changes if the DRN's 5-HT to LHA's GABAergic neurons connection is excitatory as compared to inhibitory. If 5-HT inhibits LHA's GABAergic neurons, the system's baseline activities can vary substantially with its increasing connection strength, and can even lead to slow oscillations. Furthermore, a faster phasic influence of 5-HT on Ox neurons (e.g. fast 5-HT3A as compared to slow 5-HT1A receptors) can lead to a larger effect on Ox activity. Overall, our experimental and computational approaches provide insights towards a more complete understanding of the complex relationship between 5-HT in the DRN and Ox in the LHA. Current work includes investigating how this neuronal circuit and behaviour can be altered in stress-induced mouse model of depression.


A number of behaviours influence health in a non-monotonic way. Physical activity and alcohol consumption, for instance, may be beneficial to one's health in moderate but detrimental in large quantities. We develop a demand-for-health framework that incorporates the feature of a physiologically optimal level. An individual may still choose a physiologically non-optimal level, because of the trade-off in his or her preferences for health versus other utility-affecting commodities. However, any deviation from the physiologically optimal level will be punished with respect to health. A set of steady-state comparative statics is derived regarding the effects on the demand for health and health-related behaviour, indicating that individuals react differently to exogenous changes, depending on the amount of the health-related behaviour they demand. We also show (a) that a steady-state equilibrium is a saddle-point and (b) that the physiologically optimal level may be a steady-state equilibrium for the individual. Our analysis suggests that general public-health policies may, to some extent, be counterproductive due to the responses induced in part of the population.


Imprinted genes are expressed in a parent-of-origin manner and are located in clusters throughout the genome. Aberrations in the expression of imprinted genes on human Chromosome 7 have been suggested to play a role in the etiologies of Russell-Silver Syndrome and autism. We describe the imprinting of KLF14, an intronless member of the Krüppel-like family of transcription factors located at Chromosome 7q32. We show that it has monoallelic maternal expression in all embryonic and extra-embryonic tissues studied, in both human and mouse. We examine epigenetic modifications in the KLF14 CpG island in both species and find this region to be hypomethylated. In addition, we perform chromatin immunoprecipitation and find that the murine Klf14 CpG island lacks allele-specific histone modifications. Despite the absence of these defining features, our analysis of Klf14 in offspring from DNA methyltransferase 3a conditional knockout mice reveals that the gene's expression is dependent upon a maternally methylated region. Due to the intronless nature of Klf14 and its homology to Klf16, we suggest that the gene is an ancient retrotransposed copy of Klf16. By sequence analysis of numerous species, we place the timing of this event after the divergence of Marsupialia, yet prior to the divergence of the Xenarthra superclade. We identify a large number of sequence variants in KLF14 and, using several measures of diversity, we determine that there is greater variability in the human lineage with a significantly increased number of nonsynonymous changes, suggesting human-specific accelerated evolution. Thus, KLF14 may be the first example of an imprinted transcript undergoing accelerated evolution in the human lineage.