This paper updates estimates of fossil fuel subsidies, defined as fuel consumption times the gap between existing and efficient prices (i.e., prices warranted by supply costs, environmental costs, and revenue considerations), for 191 countries. Globally, subsidies remained large at $4.7 trillion (6.3 percent of global GDP) in 2015 and are projected at $5.2 trillion (6.5 percent of GDP) in 2017. The largest subsidizers in 2015 were China ($1.4 trillion), United States ($649 billion), Russia ($551 billion), European Union ($289 billion), and India ($209 billion). About three quarters of global subsidies are due to domestic factors—energy pricing reform thus remains largely in countries' own national interest—while coal and petroleum together account for 85 percent of global subsidies. Efficient fossil fuel pricing in 2015 would have lowered global carbon emissions by 28 percent and fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46 percent, and increased government revenue by 3.8 percent of GDP.


1. The development of ecosystem approaches to environmental management implies the need to account for multiple pressures on ecosystems. Trends in multiple metrics that respond differently to changes in major environmental pressures need to be combined to evaluate the impacts of fishing and environmental changes on fish communities. 2. An exploited fish community is viewed as a three-level food chain in which the two upper levels, or functional groups, are targeted by fishing fleets, while the lowest level is subject to environmental variation. Qualitative modelling is used to predict changes at the two upper levels, that is, top-down vs. bottom-up perturbations. Abundance and length metrics are calculated from survey data for 14 Mediterranean and East-Atlantic groundfish shelf communities at both population and functional group levels. The joint likelihood of time trends in metrics is used to evaluate the evidence for different causes of changes. 3. A wide diversity of impacts is found to have equal evidence at the population level within each community. Consistency between the impacts identified and changes in pressures known from independent information is found at the functional group and community level. The results suggest that there is some compensation between species within functional groups. 4. Synthesis and applications. The method can be used to conduct an integrated assessment of community dynamics subject to multiple pressures. Joint trends in metrics provide evidence of which known pressures are having an impact on the community, and thus, which management actions should be taken to mitigate these changes.


Impact experiment of a set of steel/RC composite beams was conducted. To consider the influence of local impact residual deformation, transient response was investigated using elastic-plastic contact law. Experiments show that the main failure mode is related to the value of potential energy of impacter and energy dissipation capacity of sand cushion. Each theoretical analysis result is slightly less than its corresponding experimental value. Experimental values and elastic-plastic contact analysis results present that the maximum displacement and the maximum steel strain on the lower layer at midspan increase with the thickness of sand cushion and the height of impacter.


The ionization yield of ion tracks in polymers and biomolecular systems reaches a maximum, known as the Bragg peak, close to the end of the ion trajectories. Along the path of the ions through the materials, many electrons are generated, which produce a cascade of further ionizations and, consequently, a shower of secondary electrons. Among these, very low energy secondary electrons can produce damage in the biomolecules by dissociative electron attachment. This work deals with the calculation of the energy distribution of electrons produced by protons in a sample of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), a material that is used as a phantom for living tissues in hadron therapy. PMMA is also of relevance for microelectronics in CMOS technologies and as a photoresist mask in electron beam lithography. We present a Monte Carlo code that, starting from a realistic description of the energy distribution of the electrons ejected by protons moving through PMMA, simulates the entire cascade of generated secondary electrons. By following in detail the motion of all these electrons, we find the radial distribution of the energy that they deposit in PMMA for several initial proton energies characteristic of the Bragg peak. Keywords—Monte Carlo method, secondary electrons, energetic ions, ion-beam cancer therapy, ionization cross section, polymethylmethacrylate, proton beams, secondary electrons, radial energy distribution.


The growing competition pressure in the building industry increases the demands on the design and construction processes in respect to economical, technical and time aspects. These demands require efficient improvements of the value-added chain, which can be realized mainly with the usage of innovative information- and communication-technologies. To support the collaboration of all participants involved in a certain building project the Workflow-Management-System "BauKom-Online" has been developed. In the focus of the system is to support the coordination of the participants and their information exchange. Such a software-method is well suited to ensure a high quality planning process. The modelling of business-processes enables a better self-comprehension of the participants work and helps to enhance the project performance. The system architecture of BauKom-Online contains two basic components: the processmodelling tool and the workflow-engine. The process-model contains of activities and states of the planning and construction processes and their relations. These connected processes compose the workflow. Such a process-model for engineering purposes has to satisfy several needs, e.g., the consideration of planning and building alternatives, dynamic changes of the model during execution of the project and the linkage to further technical objects like costs, building structure, specifications and documentmanagement. Furthermore, the scheduling of the project can be done within the process-model and can be visualized as a Gantt-diagram. By the workflow-engine the modelled processes are enacted and their execution is supervised during the realization of the actual project. The participants interact with a task-list, which is derived from the running process-model instance and works like familiar email-clients. The currently executed workflow and its status can also be visualized in a web-browser. Another important feature of the workflow-engine is the case-based exception handling.


A fundamental task in pervasive computing is reliable acquisition of contexts from sensor data. This is crucial to the operation of smart pervasive systems and services so that they might behave efficiently and appropriately upon a given context. Simple forms of context can often be extracted directly from raw data. Equally important, or more, is the hidden context and pattern buried inside the data, which is more challenging to discover. Most of existing approaches borrow methods and techniques from machine learning, dominantly employ parametric unsupervised learning and clustering techniques. Being parametric, a severe drawback of these methods is the requirement to specify the number of latent patterns in advance. In this paper, we explore the use of Bayesian nonparametric methods, a recent data modelling framework in machine learning, to infer latent patterns from sensor data acquired in a pervasive setting. Under this formalism, nonparametric prior distributions are used for data generative process, and thus, they allow the number of latent patterns to be learned automatically and grow with the data - as more data comes in, the model complexity can grow to explain new and unseen patterns. In particular, we make use of the hierarchical Dirichlet processes (HDP) to infer atomic activities and interaction patterns from honest signals collected from sociometric badges. We show how data from these sensors can be represented and learned with HDP. We illustrate insights into atomic patterns learned by the model and use them to achieve high-performance clustering. We also demonstrate the framework on the popular Reality Mining dataset, illustrating the ability of the model to automatically infer typical social groups in this dataset. Finally, our framework is generic and applicable to a much wider range of problems in pervasive computing where one needs to infer high-level, latent patterns and contexts from sensor data.


Almost all machine learning algorithms--be they for regression, classification or density estimation--seek hypotheses that optimize a score on training data. In most interesting cases, however, full global optimization is not feasible and local search techniques are used to discover reasonable solutions. Unfortunately, the quality of the local maxima reached depends on initialization and is often weaker than the global maximum. In this paper, we present a simple approach for combining global search with local optimization to discover improved hypotheses in general machine learning problems. The main idea is to escape local maxima by perturbing the training data to create plausible new ascent directions, rather than perturbing hypotheses directly. Specifically, we consider example-reweighting strategies that are reminiscent of boosting and other ensemble learning methods, but applied in a different way with a different goal: to produce a single hypothesis that achieves a good score on training and test data. To evaluate the performance of our algorithms we consider a number of problems in learning Bayesian networks from data, including discrete training problems (structure search), continuous training problems (parametric EM, non-linear logistic regression), and mixed training problems (Structural EM)- on both synthetic and real-world data. In each case, we obtain state of the art performance on both training and test data.


ABSTRACT Late Jurassic ultramafic lamprophyre (UML) sills and dikes occur as 3 km-long intrusions within the allochthonous Whara Formation of the Batain nappes, eastern Oman. The sills and dikes comprise macrocrystic phlogopite and spinel-bearing aillikite and damtjernite. Aillikite is a light grey, massive fine-grained tuffaceous rock with euhedral laths of mica, while damtjernite is a dark grey, medium- to coarse-grained rock with abundant pelletal lapilli and globular segregationary textures. Both lithologies are composed of calcite, phlogopite, apatite, magnetite, spinel, diopside, and richterite. Orthoclase occurs only within damtjernite. The rocks are strongly silica undersaturated (17.6–33.7 wt.% SiO2), with low MgO (4.7–10.2 wt. %) and high Al2O3 (3.5–8.6 wt.%). The aillikites are distinguished from the damtjernites by their lower SiO2, Al2O3, and Na2O abundances, and their higher MgO, CaO, and P2O5 contents. The rare earth element (REE) patterns of both rock types are similar and show strong light REE (LREE) enrichment. Both are enriched in Ba, Th, U, Nb, and Ta, with normalized concentrations of up to 1000 times those of primitive mantle. Relative depletions are apparent for high REE (HREE), K, Rb, Pb, Sr, P, Zr, and Hf. The rocks have initial 87Sr/86Sr ratios of 0.70435–0.70646, whereas initial 143Nd/144Nd ratios vary between 0 · 512603 and 0 · 512716 (εNdi 2.6–3.2). Pb isotopic ratios are more varied among the aillikites and damtjernites: 208Pb/204Pbi = 38.97–39.39 and 207Pb/204Pbi = 15.35–15.58, 206Pb/204Pbi = 18.08–18.96. The abundance of phlogopite, apatite, and rutile and enrichment in LREEs, Ba, Th, U, Nb, and Ta in the Sal UMLs suggest metasomatic enrichment of these rocks following a low degree of partial melting of a depleted source region. Ar–Ar age dating of phlogopite macrocrysts from the aillikites and damtjernites (154 and162 Ma, respectively) correlates with large-scale tectonic events recorded in the proto-Indian Ocean at 140–160 Ma.


Does access to electricity from hydroelectricity plants affect the health of a population? The aim of this thesis is to analyze the health effects from hydroelectricity at a time when electrification was more or less synonymous with gaining access to electric light from simple light bulbs. Exploiting data on health and the roll out of hydroelectricity plants in Norway in the period from 1900 to 1921, we assess the relationship between electrification and three health variables: infant mortality, tuberculosis and diarrhea. Utilizing a staggered differences-in-differences approach, we find a positive effect of electrification on health. This implies that access to even simple electric appliances has positive consequences for health standards. The findings are interesting in two regards. Firstly, they contribute to the existing literature on the modernization and industrialization of Norway, as well as to the previous literature on health effects from electrification. Secondly, they are interesting in a contemporary policy perspective, as about 15 percent of the world population lack access to electricity today. Our findings are consistent with the previous literature, although the estimated effect is smaller in magnitude. Partly, this can be explained by the simplicity of the appliances resulting from electrification at the time. Also, our estimated effects are intention-to-treat effects averaged across the entire population, whereas the actual effect in treated households is likely to be larger in magnitude.


ABSTRACT In Europe, well-being in the workplace has increasing prominence in the policy and research agenda, and education is a key context in which the challenge of occupational stress has been reported. Traditionally, the ethos in school settings could be said to be shaped by the vocational motivation of employees; that is, a commitment to a social benefit through the development, support and improvement of the pupils, and this commitment used to override workplace challenges and help teachers deal with stress. This article argues that teachers' commitment is being eroded by the impact of bureaucratic changes at management level, such as the setting of performance targets, increased workload, increased accountability and changes in the curriculum. This in turn impacts on their professional identity and can negatively affect their mental health and well-being. The current article describes a qualitative study undertaken among 39 teachers and 6 school leaders across England and Wales in which we sought to understand, through interviews, the contextual workplace experiences of teachers who experienced work-related stress. Policy developments in education and management implementation of these developments and the consequent erosion of teacher autonomy dominated the narratives. We examine how managerialism can relate to a loss of commitment, professional identity, self-confidence and vulnerability to stress, anxiety and depression. This article proposes that educational reforms, and the rigidly prescribed organisational and management structures that accompany them, need to be weighed against their impacts on professional identity and personal well-being.


Anti-tumour necrosis factor (TNF) monoclonal antibodies have become an invaluable treatment against chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, due to increased risk of opportunistic infections, patients receiving anti-TNF therapy should be closely monitored for serious infections. Here, we describe a case of acute Salmonella_enteritidis infection of a joint arthroplasty that previously was functioning well, in a patient receiving infliximab treatment for RA. After prolonged antimicrobial chemotherapy and interrupted infliximab treatment, reimplantation of a new prosthesis was successfully performed two years after Salmonella septic arthritis. Therefore, because of the possibility of extraintestinal salmonellosis, screening for fecal colonization could be advisable in patients undergoing anti-TNF treatment. Moreover we emphasize the importance of appropriate counselling of these patients concerning food hygiene.


The rise of antibiotic resistance, coupled with increased expectations for mobility in later life, is creating a need for biofilm inhibitors and delivery systems that will reduce surgical implant infection. A limitation of some of these existing delivery approaches is toxicity exhibited toward host cells. Here, we report the application of a novel inhibitor of the enzyme, methylthioadenosine nucleosidase (MTAN), a key enzyme in bacterial metabolic pathways, which include S-adenosylmethionine catabolism and purine nucleotide recycling, in combination with a poly(vinyl alcohol)-tyramine-based (PVA-Tyr) hydrogel delivery system. We demonstrate that a lead MTAN inhibitor, selected from a screened library of 34 candidates, (2S)-2-(4-amino-5H-pyrrolo3,2-dpyrimidin-7-ylmethyl)aminoundecan-1-ol (31), showed a minimum biofilm inhibitory concentration of 2.2 ± 0.4 μM against a clinical staphylococcal species isolated from an infected implant. We observed that extracellular DNA, a key constituent of biofilms, is significantly reduced when treated with 10 μM compound 31, along with a decrease in biofilm thickness. Compound 31 was incorporated into a hydrolytically degradable photo-cross-linked PVA-Tyr hydrogel and the release profile was evaluated by HPLC studies. Compound 31 released from the PVA-hydrogel system significantly reduced biofilm formation (77.2 ± 8.4% biofilm inhibition). Finally, compound 31 released from PVA-Tyr showed no negative impact on human bone marrow stromal cell (MSC) viability, proliferation, or morphology. The results demonstrate the potential utility of MTAN inhibitors in treating infections caused by Gram-positive bacteria, and the development of a nontoxic release system that has potential for tunability for time scale of delivery.


Fruits and other agriculture products are valued by their appearance, which is a major factor in the judgment of quality. The human eye, for example, has historically
judged quality via appearances. External features and properties such as colour,texture, shape, and size are good indicators for parameters like ripeness and defects.
 Grading varies among graders and is often inconsistent. The adaptation of human eye to small changes in colour and the effect of the background on the perceived colour
and intensity are the main sources of error. Hence, grading system technologies offer a solution to these problems. The grading systems in general utilized improved engineering designs with image processing techniques to ensure the quality of the product. In this research, a real time oil palm grading system was built and an image processing techniques algorithm was developed based on the external features of oil palm fresh fruit bunches (FFB) such as colour, texture, and thorns. The purpose of which was to investigate the relationship between the external features and ripeness of different oil palm FFB types as well as to test and validate the implementation of oil palm grading system methods and techniques. Special grading system with
specific methods and techniques was built with fast, accurate, and objective ripeness classification to work with the parameters and properties of oil palm FFB, which is important for the farmers to have an objective classifier before selling their product as well as the oil palm companies to classify correctly the quality of oil palm fruit bunches due to the variations in different oil palm qualities.
 Image processing approaches, such as acquisition, pre-processing, segmentation,feature extraction, and classification as well as expert rule-based system, were
developed to automate the ripeness grading for oil palm fruit bunches. Feature extraction for oil palm FFB colour, texture, and thorns was implemented by using statistical colour features, colour histogram, grey-level co-occurrence matrices (GLCM), basic grey level aura matrix technique (BGLAM), and Gabor wavelet techniques on the three different regions of interest (ROIs), namely, ROI1, ROI2,
and ROI3. These ROIs were based on the training and the testing of the ANN, KNN, and SVM supervised machine-learning classifiers. Statistical measurements, such as the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC), are used to evaluate classifier performance.
 The performance results showed that BGLAM, which was based on the ANN classifier and applied on the ROI3, was the optimal technique for grading oil palm FFB types with 93% performance accuracy and a 0.44 second processing speed.
 Furthermore, the grading system graded the oil palm FFB ripeness based on three different models. First, a significant 93% performance accuracy and a 1.6 second
processing speed were achieved by combining the colour histogram and the ANN classifier applied on ROI3 based on the Nigrescens and Oleifera colour model. A 1.4 second processing time was achieved when the combination was applied on ROI2 for the Virescens colour model. Second, BGLAM and ANN applied on ROI3 achieved 92% accuracy and a 0.43 second processing time for the Nigrescens texture
model. BGLAM and ANN achieved 93% accuracy applied on the ROI2 with a 0.40 second processing time for the Oleifera and Virescens texture models, which are the optimal results based on the texture model. Third, GLCM and ANN applied on
the ROI1 achieved 87% accuracy and a 3.7 second processing time for the Nigrescens thorns model, whereas BGLAM applied on the ROI3 based on SVM achieved 91% accuracy and a 1.20 second processing time for the Oleifera thorns model as well as 88% accuracy and a 0.83 second processing time for the Virescens colour model. These results are optimal based on the thorns model. A new approach was developed using expert rules-based system. This system is based on three
different ROIs that showed the best rule-based results, and were selected for further testing stages. For example, the rule-based ROIs for statistical color feature extraction with KNN classifier at 94% were chosen. The ROIs that indicated results higher than the rule-based outcome, such as the ROIs of statistical color feature extraction with ANN classifier at 94%, were used for further FFB ripeness testing.
 The results show that the texture models gives the best alogrithm result for oil palm FFB types and ripeness classification, where the BGLAM based on ANN with ROI3
 gives a high accuracy 93% with shorter image processing time 0.44 (s) for FFB type recognition, whereas the alogrithm of BGLAM based on ANN and ROI3 with accuracy 92% and short processing time 0.43 (s) for Nigrescens, as well as the alogrithm of BGLAM based on ANN and ROI2 with accuracy 93% and short processing time 0.40 (s) for Oleifera and Virescens. The best rule-based and ROIs
results were selected for further testing stages. This research has achieved its stated goal of developing a real time oil palm grading system for automated FFB types and
ripeness classification. This system will be useful to the oil palm plantations in Malaysia and the rest of the oil-palm growing world. The results will benefit oil palm
engineers, mills, managers, small holders, and enforcement agencies.


ABSTRACT Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) is a major challenge in low-income countries and gut microbiota (GM) dysbiosis may play a role in its etiology. Here, we determined the GM evolution during rehabilitation from SAM and the impact of probiotics (Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG and Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis BB-12) supplementation. The GM (16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing) of children admitted to hospital with SAM showed distinct composition over admission (e.g. Klebsiella spp., and Enterobacteriaceae spp.), discharge (e.g. Clostridiaceae spp., Veilonella dispar) and follow-up (e.g. Lactobacillus ruminis, Blautia spp., Faecalibacterium prausnitzii), reaching similar β- and α-diversity as healthy individuals. Children with diarrhea had reduced distribution of Bacteroidaceae, Lachnospiraceae, increased Enterobacteriaceae and Moraxellaceae, and lower α-diversity. Children suffering from edematous SAM had diminished proportion of Prevotellaceae, Lachnospiraceae, Ruminoccaceae and a higher α-diversity when compared to non-edematous SAM. Supplementation of probiotics did not influence β-diversity upon discharge or follow-up, but it increased (p < .05) the number of observed species [SE: > 4.5]. Children where the probiotic species were detected had lower cumulative incidence (p < .001) of diarrhea during the follow-up period compared to children receiving placebo and children receiving probiotics, but where the probiotics were not detected. The GM of children with non-edematous and edematous SAM differ in composition, which might have implications for future GM targeted treatments. Probiotics treatment reduced the cumulative incidence of diarrhea during the outpatient phase, with the strongest effect in children where the administered probiotics could be detected in the GM.


OBJECTIVES
Given the national interest in progressive dementia, we estimated expenditures incurred in caring for dementia patients who live at home.

METHODS
Primary caregivers of 264 patients from a university-based memory disorders clinic were interviewed at baseline and asked to keep service use diaries for 6 months; 141 caregivers who returned the diaries are the focus of this report. We examined both formal and informal services (distinguished by whether money was exchanged) and associated expenditures.

RESULTS
Neither caregivers returning diaries nor their patients differed at baseline from those not returning diaries and their patients. Expenditures incurred over 6 months were extensive for both formal ($6986) and informal ($786) services. Out-of-pocket expenditures were high (e.g., in-home companion or sitter, adult day care, visiting nurse). Multivariable analyses indicated that patients with more severe symptoms of dementia and families with higher incomes reported significantly higher expenditures.

CONCLUSIONS
The expense of caring for patients with progressive dementia living at home may be higher than previously estimated and frequently involves expenses paid directly by patients and their families.


This study examined the optimal combination of enterprises in livestock industry in South-West Nigeria. Stratified random sampling technique was employed in collecting data from 360 livestock farmers. Descriptive statistics, budgetary technique and linear programming model were employed for data analysis. Six livestock enterprises, non-integrated poultry, piggery and fishery and horizontally integrated poultry/fishery, poultry/piggery and poultry/piggery/fishery were identified. Livestock farmers in the area are aged with low level of education and large household size do not operate at optimal level based on the available resources. The budgetary analysis shows that the most profitable enterprise combination is integrated poultry and piggery while the enterprise that yielded the least net farm income is non-integrated poultry enterprise. The profitability of integrated and non-integrated livestock enterprises is limited by high cost of production in which the feed cost constitutes the lion's share. The optimal enterprise combinations are the integrated poultry and fishery and integrated poultry/piggery enterprise with poultry/piggery combination being the most efficient. The policy implication from this study requires that both farmers and government must team up to find a means of reducing feed cost by financing livestock research centers and state agricultural development programmes to develop genetically improved breeds of livestock which efficiently converts feed. Labour as a resource was the most limited in the area, there is therefore the need for research to focus critically on indigenously automated livestock equipment that can perform tasks like feeding, vaccination, etc. Farmers in South-West Nigeria and by extension, Nigeria as a whole should concentrate and intensify their livestock combination practices especially that of poultry/piggery, which is the optimal combination enterprise and that of poultry/fishery enterprise combination because of their high profitability levels.


We have been working on two different KDD systems for scientific data. One system involves comparative genomics, where the database contains more than 60,000 plant gene and protein sequences plus results extracted from similarity searches against public sequence databases. The second system supports a several-decades long longitudinal field study of chimpanzee behavior. Both systems have components for the storing of raw data and for cleaning data before querying begins and for displaying data extractions. Both systems use a relational DBMS. In this paper we report on a) the extensions we made to the DBMS to support our analysis of the data, and b) the way that we used those extensions as, with users, we developed a thought from an initial idea to a richer analysis. We have found that as a user's initial thought develops, he or she makes finer distinctions and looks to explain anomalies seen in coarse calculations. In the queries to accomplish those explorations we have found it valuable to move pieces of SQL commands into attribute values, and to accomplish several smaller queries all at once via a command relation. Thus there is a blurring of the distinction between command and data. This blurring allowed us to formulate and accomplish more sophisticated analyses than we had been doing previously.


This essay examines three recent historical approaches to the political economy of Latin America's relative economic backwardness. All three locate the origins of contemporary underdevelopment in defective colonial institutions linked to inequality. The contrasting view offered here affirms the significance of institutional constraints, but argues that they did not arise from colonial inequalities, but from the adaptation of Iberian practices to the American colonies under conditions of imperial weakness. Colonial inequality varied across the Americas; while it was not correlated with colonial economic performance, it mattered because it determined the extent of elite resistance to institutional modernisation after independence. The onset of economic growth in the mid to late nineteenth century brought economic elites to political power, but excluding majorities as inequality increased restrained the region's twentieth-century growth rates and prevented convergence.


Generalizing information is a common method of reducing the quantity of data that must be considered during analysis. This fact has been plainly illustrated in relation to static data flow analysis where previous research has described algorithms that can be used to generalize data flow information. These generalizations have helped support more optimal data flow analysis in certain situations. In the same vein, this paper describes a process that can be employed to generalize and persist data flow information along multiple generalization tiers. Each generalization tier is meant to describe the data flow behaviors of a conceptual software element such as an instruction, a basic block, a procedure, a data type, and so on. This process makes use of algorithms described in previous literature to support the generalization of data flow information. To illustrate the usefulness of the generalization process, this paper also presents an algorithm that can be used to determine reachability at each generalization tier. The algorithm determines reachability starting from the least specific generalization tier and uses the set of reachable paths found to progressively qualify data flow information for each successive generalization tier. This helps to constrain the amount of data flow information that must be considered to a minimal subset.


Nearly all school-age children in the United States attend kindergarten, and approximately three-quarters of kindergarten students are in full-day classrooms. While there have been dramatic increases in provision of and participation in full-day kindergarten, there is little evidence on the impact and cost-effectiveness of such programs and policies, particularly as compared to other types of investments in early childhood. Employing data from districts assigning students to kindergarten settings by lottery, I test the impact of full- versus half-day assignment on students' literacy skills at the end of the kindergarten year, generating the first evidence based on random assignment of children to kindergarten type. The results indicate that full-day assignment has a substantial, positive effect (0.31 standard deviations) when comparing students across treatment conditions within the same school. In particular, I find that Hispanic students realize large full-day kindergarten effects (0.70 s.d.), and notably this impact is statistically different than that experienced by students who are not Hispanic. Students who enter kindergarten with low literacy skills also experience particularly large gains. These heterogeneous treatment effects have implications for narrowing or closing the achievement gap early in formal schooling, and in fact the impact for Hispanic students constitutes approximately 70 percent of the control group's end-of-kindergarten ethnicity gap. Using rough cost measures, a simple cost-effectiveness analysis suggests a range of effect sizes from 0.07–0.20 s.d. per thousand dollars of spending, which exceeds similar calculations from experimental evidence on other early investments. Given the positive evidence on program effects, I discuss implications of the study design and findings for policy, including targeted versus universal provision of full-day kindergarten. EdPolicyWorks


An automated method was applied to identify magnetotail flux rope encounters in MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) magnetometer data. The method identified significant deflections of the north‐south component of the magnetic field coincident with enhancements in the total field or dawn‐dusk component. Two hundred forty‐eight flux ropes are identified that possess well‐defined minimum variance analysis (MVA) coordinate systems, with clear rotations of the field. Approximately 30% can be well approximated by the cylindrically symmetric, linearly force‐free model. Flux ropes are most common moving planetward, in the postmidnight sector. Observations are intermittent, with the majority (61%) of plasma sheet passages yielding no flux ropes; however, the peak rate of flux ropes during a reconnection episode is ∼5 min−1. Overall, the peak postmidnight rate is ∼0.25 min−1. Only 25% of flux ropes are observed in isolation. The radius of flux ropes is comparable to the ion inertial length within Mercury's magnetotail plasma sheet. No clear statistical separation is observed between tailward and planetward moving flux ropes, suggesting the near‐Mercury neutral line (NMNL) is highly variable. Flux ropes are more likely to be observed if the preceding lobe field is enhanced over background levels. A very weak correlation is observed between the flux rope core field and the preceding lobe field orientation; a stronger relationship is found with the orientation of the field within the plasma sheet. The core field strength measured is ∼6 times stronger than the local dawn‐dusk plasma sheet magnetic field.


Rotating machines are widely used in various industrial fields. Hence, an unexpected stoppage due to, for example, bad operating conditions or manufacturing error, has safety implications along with economic considerations. In this research, a fault detection system for a pulley-belt rotating system is developed and then different faults simulated in a test rig are investigated. Vibration signal monitoring is utilized since it represents a reliable approach for fault recognition in rotating machinery. Time-domain signal analysis technique is applied to extract some indicative features, such as root mean square, kurtosis and skewness. An artificial neural network (ANN) model is developed to detect the simulated faults. However, in addition to the machine healthy condition five fault types, such as unbalance in the driving pulley, wear in the belt and pulleys misalignment, have been simulated in the test rig. Two MEMS accelerometers (ADXL335), interfaced to Arduino MEGA 2560 as a data acquisition device, are used for vibration amplitude measurement. LabVIEW, which is a graphical programming software, is utilized to develop a signal capturing, analysis and feature extraction system. The result showed the effectiveness of the developed system in detection of different fault types in the pulley-belt system.


This is a review of previous and more recent observations on the prevalence and manifestations of diabetes in aboriginal populations of the New World. Rates of diabetes have now been measured or estimated in more than eighty of these groups in the Americas, Greenland, Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. Diabetes was probably uncommon in all these native populations prior to 1940. It is now rife in many of these groups, but still rare in many. Among certain of these populations, rates of diabetes in adults still differ more than tenfold. Among groups of diabetics there are probably significant intertribal differences in the susceptibility to certain manifestations and complications such as retinopathy and coronary disease. There appear to be peculiarities in the insulin secretion patterns of certain of these tribes. The available evidence does not rule out the possibility that genetic factors play an important role in determining inter-tribal differences in prevalence and manifestations. But it is also clear that environmental factors exert powerful effects. Low rates of diabetes have been observed in Athapascan tribes and in some Shoshonean tribes. Diabetes was also rare prior to 1940 in Athapascan and Shoshonean Indians of Oklahoma. But diabetes has recently become common in these Oklahoma tribes. They were formerly lean and are now fat. The status of the many Oklahoma tribes is of particular interest because they represent seven of the eight major linguistic groups of North American Indians, having originated in very diverse parts of the Continent. Rates are now high in all Oklahoma tribes for which evidence is adequate to permit an estimate of prevalence. This includes fifteen tribes drawn from seven different linguistic groups. In seven additional Oklahoma tribes preliminary evidence, although less complete, suggests the probability that rates are also high. Studies of the dramatic emergence of diabetes and its manifestations in these aboriginal groups has considerable potential for gaining a better understanding of the genetic and environmental factors which influence risk and pathophysiology of diabetes and its complications.


This paper records the presence of Middle Miocene terrestrial and marine vertebrates in sedimentary deposits on Pemba Island in the Indian Ocean, offshore Tanzania. Although the fossil assemblage is restricted, the affinities of the terrestrial mammals are typical of African continental faunas of basal Middle Miocene age, c. 16.5 million years ago. The Pemba Series has been reported to be of Lower-Middle Miocene age on the basis of marine invertebrates, in agreement with the age estimates based on a mandible of Libycochoerus massai from the deposits. The discovery is important because it provides a potential means of checking correlations between marine and continental biochronological time scales in a part of the world that has previously yielded no evidence of terrestrial palaeontology.


This study compares the electricity supply costs in the Philippines with that in three ASEAN member countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The study presents seven recommendations pertaining to the Philippines' electricity supply chain, ranging from fuel supply to electricity distribution.Recommendations to 'shift back to market-based load dispatch', 'adopt thermal efficiency standards for power generation', and 'create good business environment to reduce WACC' are identified with larger effects on cost reduction than the other recommendations. Thus, it is suggested that promotions should focus on the most impactful policy recommendations.


[1] The formation of crescentic bars from self-organization of an initially straight shore-parallel bar for shore-normal incident waves is simulated with a two-dimensional horizontal morphodynamical model. The aim is to investigate the mechanisms behind the saturation process defined as the transition between the linear regime (maximum and constant growth of the crescentic pattern) and the saturated state (negligible growth). The global properties of the morphodynamical patterns over the whole computational domain are studied ("global analysis"). In particular, consideration of the balance of the potential energy of the emerging bar gives its growth rate from the difference between a production term (related to the positive feedback leading to the instability) and a damping term (from the gravity-driven downslope transport). The production is approximately proportional to the average over the domain of the cross-shore flow velocity times the bed level perturbation. The damping is essential for the onset of the saturation, but it remains constant while the production decreases. Thus, it is notable that the saturation occurs because of a weakening of the instability mechanism rather than an increase of the damping. A reason for the saturation of the crescentic bar growth is the change in bar shape from its initial stage rather than the growth in amplitude itself. This change is mainly characterized by the narrowing of the rip channels, the onshore migration of the crests, and the change in the mean beach profile due to alongshore variability. These properties agree with observations of mature rip channel systems in nature.


Worldwide, First Nations women are among the most vulnerable to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV); and yet, their lived experiences of violence are lacking in the literature. Using Photovoice methodology and a community-based, participatory action approach, this project addresses multiple questions pertaining to First Nations mothers' experiences of IPV, including: What are the health and social consequences of IPV and how do the social determinants of Aboriginal peoples' health shape the capacities of women survivors to manage and overcome IPV? Drawing on decolonization theory, a social determinants of Aboriginal peoples' health framework, and aspects of feminist theory, this project was designed to empower First Nations mothers to work toward a vision of quality care in Kettle & Stony Point First Nation; specifically, a system of health care that better meets the needs of IPV-affected community members. With the foundation provided by cultural principles and resources, such as spirituality and an ethic of responsibility, women survivors managed the severest of IPV experiences and are free of violence, and many of them thriving. This project's process and outcomes point directly to resilience, or resistance to colonial conditions that generate and support ill health. Its main recommendation is that intervention with respect to IPV and its correlates restore and support community strengths and re-position resilient women in the centre of renewal. The women survivors who participated in this project effectively managed marginalization. And as grandmothers and mothers, they are invested in and dedicated to the health of our First Nations communities.


This paper discusses the two types of adverbial clauses extensively analysed in Haegeman's works – central and peripheral clauses – in relation to the properties of the Bulgarian non-past verbal form. I propose that this form is the core instantiation of subjunctive mood and that while absence of temporal specification is the core ingredient of all subjunctive forms the modal shades often associated with subjunctives are an additional ingredient to anchor the nondeictic forms. I argue that the distribution of the bare non-past form is a strong argument in favour of the distinction between central and peripheral clauses. Additionally, I show, on the basis of the Bulgarian data, that peripheral clauses can be subdivided into two subgroups – premise and adversative clauses.


Abstract Kant's account of space as an infinite given magnitude in the Critique of Pure Reason is paradoxical, since infinite magnitudes go beyond the limits of possible experience. Michael Friedman's and Charles Parsons's accounts make sense of geometrical construction, but I argue that they do not resolve the paradox. I argue that metaphysical space is based on the ability of the subject to generate distinctly oriented spatial magnitudes of invariant scalar quantity through translation or rotation. The set of determinately oriented, constructed geometrical spaces is a proper subset of metaphysical space, thus, metaphysical space is infinite. Kant's paradoxical doctrine of metaphysical space is necessary to reconcile his empiricism with his transcendental idealism.


Background: Total knee Replacement (TKR) is successful and reliable in relieving pain and improving joint function. Despite substantial advances in primary TKR, a lot of studies suggest only 82% to 89% of primary TKA patients are satisfied. Methods: The data of 80 patients who underwent primary TKR for late-stage osteoarthritis of the knee between 2010 to 2013 were obtained. The Oxford Knee Scores (OKS) were used to assess the patients before the surgery, and we used 6 questions to assess the patient's satisfaction after the surgery. Results: Among 80 patients 75 patients (93.8%, P-value <0.001) were satisfied and 5 (6.3%) were unsatisfied in general. Regarding pain, the surgery has shown significant effects in decreasing pain for 73 out of the 80 subjects (91.3%, P-value<0.001). Also, there was a significant improvement in the patient ability to participate in leisure activities 49 out of 80 (61.3%, P-value <0.001), when scores were compared before and after the surgery. Conclusion: Patient satisfaction is an important outcome measure and should be assessed in addition to traditional outcome scores post TKR. In the present study, there is a strong correlation between improvement in pain and functional activity and patient satisfaction.


Abstract We use transfer entropy to quantify information flows between financial markets and propose a suitable bootstrap procedure for statistical inference. Transfer entropy is a model-free measure designed as the Kullback-Leibler distance of transition probabilities. Our approach allows to determine, measure and test for information transfer without being restricted to linear dynamics. In our empirical application, we examine the importance of the credit default swap market relative to the corporate bond market for the pricing of credit risk. We also analyze the dynamic relation between market risk and credit risk proxied by the VIX and the iTraxx Europe, respectively. We conduct the analyses for pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis periods.


This study examines the internal dynamics of white collar trade union branches in the public sector. The effects of a number of internal and external factors on branch patterns of action are evaluated. For the purposes of the study branch action is taken to be the approach to issues of job regulation, as expressed along the five dimensions of dependence on the outside trade union, focus in issues adopted, initiation of issues, intensity of action in issue pursuit and representativeness. The setting chosen for the study is four branches drawn from the same geographical area of the National and Local Government Officers Association. Branches were selected to give a variety in industry settings while controlling for the potentially influential variables of branch size, density of trade union membership and possession of exclusive representational rights in the employing organisation. Identical methods of data collection were used for each branch. The principal findings of the study are that the framework of national agreements and industry collective bargaining structures are strongly related to the industrial relations climate in the employing organisation and the structures of representation within the branch. Where agreements and collective bargaining structures formally restrict branch job regulation roles, there is a degree of devolution of bargaining authority from branch level negotiators to autonomous shop stewards at workplace level. In these circumstances industrial relations climate is characterised by a degree of informality in relationships between management and trade union activists. In turn, industrial relations climate and representative structures together with actor attitudes, have strong effects on all dimensions of approach to issues of job regulation.


The crystal structures of benzobis(thiadiazole) (BBT)-based organic semiconductors with high electron mobilities were revealed using single-crystal X-ray analyses, followed by density functional theory and hopping modeling to estimate the charge carrier mobility levels. The crystal packings and intermolecular interactions were found to be similar regardless of trifluoromethyl and trifluoromethoxy groups for the corresponding para-substituted or meta-substituted derivatives. Although a compound with ortho-trifluoromethyl groups showed a molecule with a twisted conformation, the ortho-trifluoromethoxy derivative had nearly planar conformation. Since the ortho-trifluoromethyl groups prevent effective intermolecular interactions through short heteroatom contacts between BBT rings, molecules have a one-dimensional charge carrier transport path, resulting in lower overall charge carrier mobility in transistor devices. On the other hand, the ortho-trifluoromethoxy derivative exhibits a herringbone packing with large diffusion coefficients. The para and meta-derivatives showed an unusually large diffusion coefficient between the molecules located in the co-planar and the standard π–π stacking directions. The formation of a two-dimensional structure afforded high electron mobilities in actual organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) devices using these BBT-based materials.


In this work we study locality and compositionality in the context of learning representations for Zero Shot Learning (ZSL). In order to well-isolate the importance of these properties in learned representations, we impose the additional constraint that, differently from most recent work in ZSL, no pre-training on different datasets (e.g. ImageNet) is performed. The results of our experiments show how locality, in terms of small parts of the input, and compositionality, i.e. how well can the learned representations be expressed as a function of a smaller vocabulary, are both deeply related to generalization and motivate the focus on more local-aware models in future research directions for representation learning.


With the increasing number of users of mobile computing devices (e.g. personal digital assistants) and the advent of third generation mobile phones, wireless communications are becoming increasingly important. Many applications rely on the device maintaining a replica of a data-structure which is stored on a server, for example news databases, calendars and e-mail. In this paper we explore the question of the optimal strategy for synchronising such replicas. We utilise probabilistic models to represent how the data-structures evolve and to model user behaviour. We then formulate objective functions which can be minimised with respect to the synchronisation timings. We demonstrate, using two real world data-sets, that a user can obtain more up-to-date information using our approach.


In this paper, we present our experience based on a reengineering project. The software project is to re-engineer the original system of a company to answer the new requirements and changed business functions. Reengineering is a process that involves not only the software system, but also underlying business model. Particularly, the new business model is designed along with new technologies to support the new system. This paper presents our experience that applies with software product line approach to develop the new system supporting original business functions and new ones.


Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have been in existence for over 2 decades yet businesses are still losing billions of dollars annually in the implementation of software designed to reduce costs and increase profitability. The inability to manage risks is an area that contributes to these losses, specifically due to uncertain outcomes when dealing with an interconnected construct such as risk, and a research gap at the tactical and operational levels between risks and controls. A comparative case study approach, encompassing 12 different organisations was adopted to explore emerging patterns at the project implementation level, and from this three contributions emerged. After observing risks behaving in a hierarchical fashion with predictable results, Hierarchy of Risk models representing different implementation stages were constructed. Although these models are still in their formative stages, it may prove useful in furthering our understanding of the close inter-relationship between different risks, where they occur in ERP implementations and the implications of managerial choice when determining risk prioritisation. A second finding is that no direct linear relationship appears to exist between risks and controls. Rather, this counter-intuitive finding suggests that it is additional factors including risk categories, implementation stages, prior control decision making and the hierarchical flow-on effect of impacts as a consequence of identified risks. Finally, by combining the Hierarchy of Risk models and the risk-to-impact-to-control relationship, a method of reverse engineering portfolios of control was discovered. This potentially offers an explanation as to how portfolios of control can be constructed, and why they are essential in ERP implementations.


An acid-sensitive channel in the brain promotes fear responses to CO2. Exposure of animals to increased concentrations of CO2 induces fear responses, perhaps because it signals the possibility of suffocation. In humans, such exposure to CO2 can induce panic attacks in people with anxiety disorders. The brain region known as the amygdala processes neuronal signals associated with fear behaviors. Ziemann et al. now report that the amygdala itself may be the chemosensor that directly senses CO2 concentrations. Dissolved CO2 causes a decrease in the pH of the blood. Some of the authors had previously shown that the acid-sensing ion channel 1a (ASIC1a), a channel that is activated by extracellular acidosis, is expressed in abundance in the amygdala and other fear circuits in the brain. They therefore tested whether activation of ASIC1a channels in the amygdala might mediate fear responses to inhalation of CO2. Indeed, in four models of fear behavior in mice, knockout animals not expressing ASIC1a showed decreased fear responses to increased concentrations of CO2. Ziemann et al. found that increased concentrations of inhaled CO2 decreased the pH in the amygdala and that exposure of cultured neurons from the amygdala from wild-type mice (but not those of ASIC1a–/– mice) to increased concentrations of CO2 caused increased conductance of ASIC1a. Finally, the authors concluded that expression of ASIC1a in the amygdala is sufficient to promote CO2-induced fear behaviors because injections of adeno-associated virus encoding ASIC1a into the amygdala could restore CO2-induced fear responses in the knockout mice. The authors propose that ASIC1a channels may also have a more general role in fear signaling because fear responses to other stimuli were also blunted in the knockout animals. Furthermore, they suggest that the ASIC1a channel may provide a therapeutic target for treatment of anxiety disorders. A. E. Ziemann, J. E. Allen, N. S. Dahdaleh, I. I. Drebot, M. W. Coryell, A. M. Wunsch, C. M. Lynch, F. M. Faraci, M. A. Howard III, M. J. Welsh, J. A. Wemmie, The amygdala is a chemosensor that detects carbon dioxide and acidosis to elicit fear behavior. Cell 139, 1012–1021 (2009). [PubMed]


Attributed graphs are increasingly more common in many application domains such as chemistry, biology and text processing. A central issue in graph mining is how to collect informative subgraph patterns for a given learning task. We propose an iterative mining method based on partial least squares regression (PLS). To apply PLS to graph data, a sparse version of PLS is developed first and then it is combined with a weighted pattern mining algorithm. The mining algorithm is iteratively called with different weight vectors, creating one latent component per one mining call. Our method, graph PLS, is efficient and easy to implement, because the weight vector is updated with elementary matrix calculations. In experiments, our graph PLS algorithm showed competitive prediction accuracies in many chemical datasets and its efficiency was significantly superior to graph boosting (gBoost) and the naive method based on frequent graph mining.


This article discusses the rationale and evolution of U.S. defense exports to the People's Republic of China (PRC) during the final decade of the Cold War. The article is based on a large body of primary sources, including newly declassified documents, congressional hearings, and interviews with key officials. It shows that, contrary to what is often assumed in the literature, U.S. officials' assessments of the optimal degree of defense cooperation with Beijing did not result solely from the objective of using the "China card" against the Soviet Union. A broader range of national security considerations shaped U.S. military cooperation with the PRC, including a desire not to enhance China's offensive capabilities vis-à-vis the United States and its Asia-Pacific friends and allies, the impact of defense transfers to China on U.S.-Soviet diplomatic relations, and the willingness of China to cooperate on nuclear proliferation. Faced with conflicting national security interests, the United States had to make delicate trade-offs in its military relationship with the PRC.


This volume presents both an analysis of how identities are built, represented and negotiated in narrative, as well as a theoretical reflection on the links between narrative discourse and identity construction. The data for the book are Mexican immigrants' personal experience narratives and chronicles of their border crossings into the United States. Embracing a view of identity as a construct firmly grounded in discourse and interaction, the author examines and illustrates the multiple threads that connect the local expression and negotiation of identity to the wider social contexts that frame the experience of migration, from material conditions of life in the United States to mainstream discourses about race and color. The analysis reveals how identities emerge in discourse through the interplay of different levels of expression, from implicit adherence to narrative styles and ways of telling, to explicit negotiation of membership categories.


Information is now abundantly available with a click of a button. Access to more information imaginable can be obtained instantly. Unfortunately, not all of this information is backed by scientifically researched facts. This is causing problems for the healthcare industry, especially in the area of vaccinations. Scientifically sound information provided by the healthcare providers is being challenged by information parents are finding that is provided by the anti-vaccination movement. This information is found on websites, shared on social media, and is spreading rapidly. This research investigates this conflicting information between healthcare providers and the anti-vaccination movement. It is designed to determine if information found on the Internet and Social Media sites has a bigger influence on the parent's vaccination decision than that provided by government agencies and healthcare providers. Internet and Social Media 3


Fasting and postprandial plasma glucose, free fatty acid (FFA), lactate, and insulin concentrations were measured at hourly intervals for 24 h in 27 nonobese individuals—9 with normal glucose tolerance, 9 with mild non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM, fasting plasma glucose < 175 mg/dl), and 9 with severe NIDDM (fasting plasma glucose > 250 mg/dl). In addition, hepatic glucose production (HGP) was measured from midnight to 0800 in normal individuals and patients with severe NIDDM. Plasma glucose concentration was highest in patients with severe NIDDM, lowest in those with normal glucose tolerance, and intermediate in those with mild NIDDM (two-way ANOVA, P < .001). Variations in plasma FFA and lactate levels of the three groups were qualitatively similar, with lowest concentrations seen in normal individuals, intermediate levels in the group with mild NIDDM, and the highest concentration in those with severe NIDDM (two-way ANOVA, P < .001). Of particular interest was the observation that plasma FFA concentrations were dramatically elevated from midnight to 0800 in patients with severe NIDDM. The 24-h insulin response was significantly increased in patients with mild NIDDM, with comparable values seen in the other two groups. Values for HGP fell progressively throughout the night in normal individuals and patients with severe NIDDM, despite a concomitant decline in plasma glucose and insulin levels. Although the magnitude of the fall in HGP was greater in NIDDM, the absolute value was significantly (P < .001) greater than normal throughout the period of observation. These results demonstrate that there are differences in substrate level between individuals with normal glucose tolerance and patients with NIDDM and differing degrees of glucose intolerance, unrelated to ambient insulin level, and these changes persist over 24 h.


Administrative Law is a vast topic, and teaching it in a manner students can easily comprehend is difficult. Active learning teaching techniques can help, but are harder to implement in a large class. The use of wikis - software designed to support collaborative writing - can help to involve students more actively in their learning. This article describes two different uses of wikis in the teaching of Administrative Law. First, it describes how students used a wiki to collaboratively create the outline for the course, which - along with the textbook - was all they could take into the final exam. Second, it describes how in groups of five, students used the wiki to prepare research sites on 11 federal agencies, which they presented to the class (one per week). This brief article describes how the use of wikis in these two ways led to increased student engagement in what is traditionally considered a less than exciting course.


Quality written communication is necessary in school and in society. Writing needs to be emphasized across the curriculum. Mathematics can make its many contributions in improving written work. Diagnosis of problems, here, need to be detected with stress being placed upon students achieving desired objectives in writing. Transfer values from one academic area to the next must be in evidence. The mathematics teacher needs to model, provide appropriate student practice in contextual situations, motivate, and encourage good writing habits among pupils. Pupils learn to write as well as write to learn in mathematics. ********** Students do need to become proficient writers. Writing should be emphasized across the curriculum. Mathematics, as one curriculum area, can and does make a plethora of contributions toward writing proficiency. The teachers need to observe the kinds of errors students make in written work. These may be recorded on a check sheet so that the teacher knows which goals need to be stressed in ongoing mathematics lessons. Lessons should not stress drill in written work, but rather contextually, as needed, students should be assisted to write well. To start out with suggestions for writing in mathematics, students need to form each numeral legibly. If a numeral is written in reverse form by a young learner, for example, then assistance must be given to write each correctly. Having students write how many are pictured on a series of cards, such as in each set of cats pupils may do this. When diagnosing student daily work, the teacher needs to assist where reversals are made or a lack of clarity is involved. Help given needs to be specific be it in students not knowing the basic facts or not understanding borrowing/carrying in performing a mathematical operation. Criteria to Use In Mathematics Writing Learning needs to be meaningful. The student then needs to make sense out of what is being learned. He/she needs to think of when they personally, for example, counted something real, such as a set of coins, a place setting for visitors at a dinner table, pet fish in a bowl, and newborn kittens. Journal writing is important here, in that a student may record what was learned and what is left to learn. Needed assistance in writing might be provided by the teacher or peer. Journal writing assists students to reflect upon what was learned. It may provide necessary insight in what was not understood so that the student is increasingly successful in future learnings. Thinking about mathematical experiences helps students to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate what has transpired in order to grow in mathematics achievement. Interest is a powerful factor in learning. The mathematics teacher needs to provide for the interests of learners. Student choice in activities may well promote interest in learning. An enrichment center in the classroom can provide those choices. Each task at the interest center needs to stimulate students in mathematics achievement. A hands-on approach should also be stressed at the interest center. For example, students may measure, weigh, and find the volume of different containers and record their findings. Thus, students may ascertain how many pints in a quart by actually using these containers to find out. Hands on experiences meet the personal styles of many students to achieve well in mathematics. Thus, concrete experiences may become a part, as well as within numerous other learning activities for all in the classroom. Concrete activities assist in making [earnings meaningful for students. Students should perceive purpose in written experiences in mathematics. Writing then should not be done for the sake of doing so, but rather to achieve a definite goal. Thus to increase experiences in doing and understanding word problems, students may be challenged to write these kinds of story problems which might well challenge other learners to complete. …


Sixty-two (N=62) boys between the age of 10 and 15 years from two different farm schools in the Potchefstroom district were subjected to a Talent Search testing protocol. Potentially talented athletes (n=21), with a mean age of 12.0 ± 1.67 years, at one of the farm schools were randomly assigned to the experimental group. A control group was selected in the same way consisting of equally talented boys from the other farm school, with an average age of 12.1 ± 1.26 years. The talented children in both groups then underwent a specific test battery designed for sprinting and long jump. Maturity was determined by means of a maturity questionnaire. The development programme contributed statistically significant to the improvement in flexibility, muscle endurance, 0-40 meter speed and long-jump ability. Explosive power, reaction time, speed endurance, acceleration and stride length did not improve. The results revealed that a development programme of 10 weeks had a positive effect on the conditioning of motor and physical abilities and skills for sprinting and long-jump in talented 10 to 15 year old boys, regardless of poor socioeconomic circumstances and a restricted environment.


Research background: Despite a widely acknowledged importance of intangible capital as the main driver of value creation, papers discussing corporate intangible investments tend to focus only on multinational companies, i.e. on headquarters (HQ). There are few papers scrutinising the specific attributes of intangible investments at manufacturing subsidiary level. This is, however, an important topic to investigate, since intangible investments can boost subsidiary upgrading. Intangible investments contribute to subsidiaries' acquiring capabilities that allow them to enhance the scope of their responsibilities and specialise in increasingly high-value activities. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the features of intangible investment at MNCs' manufacturing subsidiaries, on the example of Hungary. Research questions ad-dressed are as follows. a) What exactly do local manufacturing subsidiaries invest in, when they implement intangible investments? b) Is there a difference between the role of intangible investments at MNC level and at manufacturing subsidiary level? c) What is the association between subsidiary-level intangible investments and upgrading? Methodology: We analyse a sample of 44 manufacturing subsidiaries in the Hungarian automotive and electronics industries. We carry out a qualitative content analysis of sample companies' notes to their financial statements, complemented with other sources of corporate information. Findings: We find that intangible investments are aligned with subsidiaries' functional specialisation: with operations. Their main role is to contribute to subsidiaries' absorption of the headquarters' technology transfer and enhance the productivity of the local core activities. This is sharply different from their traditional, MNC-level role: support to non-price competitiveness. We find support for the argument that subsidiary-level intangible investments and subsidiary upgrading are associated in a self-reinforcing virtuous circle.


Mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect has its origins in the USA, where model statutes for laws designed to introduce this process were first drafted in the early 1960s. Indeed, every state and the District of Columbia passed a child abuse reporting law between 1963 and 1967. Some 10 years later, in 1977, New South Wales was the first Australian state to pass comparable legislation. Mandatory reporting of suspected cases of child abuse and neglect is now in place in all Australian states and territories, with the exception of Western Australia. The question considered in this paper is: 'What evidence is there that children are abused and neglected less in jurisdictions where mandatory reporting exists by comparison with jurisdictions where it does not exist?' This question is examined by way of a comparison between two states, New South Wales and Western Australia. This paper also raises questions about the cost of mandatory reporting and the extent to which it diverts financial resources away from support services for families. There is also a question about the new New South Wales child protection legislation that extends mandatory reporting and possible negative consequences for ordinary families. The final question is about the role assigned to health care and education professionals under this legislation.


In this unique book on education, Shor develops teaching theory side-by-side with a political analysis of schooling. Drawing on the work of Paulo Freire, he offers the first practical and theoretical guide to Freirean methods for American classrooms. Central to his method is a commitment to learning through dialogue and to exploring themes from everyday life. He poses alienation and mass culture as key obstacles to learning, and establishes critical literacy as a foundation for studying any subject.


Due to increasing human activities in cities, occurrences widely known as pollution, residential inadequacy, congestion and related challenges like slums, deplorable neighborhoods impinge directly or indirectly on people's quality of life and wellbeing. Nonetheless, the range of the influences of urban geography on citizen's health and wellbeing remains largely unexplored. This paper is aimed at reconnoitering the bearings of urban geography on city dweller's health and wellbeing. With the backdrop of UN forecast that 75% of the world's population will reside in cities by year 2050. Ibadan, a provincial capital and commercial hub was selected as a culturally rich conurbation in Southwest Nigeria with historical antecedents in its evolution as a metropolis with over 3 million aggregate inhabitants. The highlights of a qualitative and exploratory technique of evaluation on the old city centers of Beere, Oje and Mapo are elucidated. This morphological investigation showed that except for demographic and territorial expansion in the last sixty years, Ibadan remains a predominantly 'rural city' characterized by the kaleidoscopic rustybrown tin roof unique to this urban landscape affected by British colonial heritage. Contrary to predictions, the historical-cultural inclination and antecedents of this municipal seem not give credence to the UN conception of cities as the major or viable settlements for urbanite's well-being in future. The study advocates that planning professionals and stakeholders should pay attention to people-oriented urban geographical concerns supported by architectural planning inventiveness with cultural inclinations in promoting the health and well-being of urban communities.


This study presents a new process using inductively a coupled plasma dry etching method to manufacture a long-period fiber grating filter with exact period, vertical sidewalls, and smooth etched surfaces, and the filter is thus named a perfectly notched long-period fiber grating (NLPFG). This process can dramatically reduce production time, and thereby provide higher volume production. The fabricated NLPFG has periods of 640 μm, resonant-attenuation wavelengths of 1518 nm, and maximum resonance-attenuation of 21.79 dB. A force induced loss-tunable calibration of the NLPFG filter was implemented, and a monotonically increasing quadratic fitting was observed. The results demonstrated that the proposed NLPFG has a much better period precision compared to corrugated LPFG, and it has great potential for a loss-tunable filter and force transducer applications.


Francois Jacobus van Zyl, professor 1960-1978 Professor Francois Jacobus van Zyl (6th May 1913-) served as head of the Department of Science of Religion and Missiology, Faculty of Theology (Sec A), University of Pretoria, during the period 1960-1978. This article (compiled from two previously published articles) contains a short biography, a discussion of his views on theology, Science of Religion, Philosophy of Religion, and Missiology. He is portrayed as a theologian with Barthian convictions. He worked from a broad theological base which can be described as 'theology of the Word'. His primary audience was the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk and his theological activities (especially in the period 1960-1983) must be seen in relation to his influential role in the same church.


From establishments of state religions to bans on headscarves, religious minorities experience discrimination. In the post-September 11, 2001, world, Muslim women in particular have faced harsh forms of discrimination and stereotyping; this stigma has only been worsened with the recent influx of immigrants into Europe. With increasing numbers of immigrants, some countries have attempted to assimilate minority religious groups by banning the religious use of headscarves. EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc., a case from the United States Supreme Court, was a break for Muslim women. This case, which involved a Muslim plaintiff, held that religious practices are to be given favored treatment by employers in the workplace. This Note reads the Abercrombie case against the background of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and globalization. Given the widespread discrimination that Muslim women currently face across the globe, this Note considers what steps the international community might take next to protect not only Muslim women but also other religious minorities in the workplace.


Alternative agricultural systems that ecological and community resilience provide a bridge between traditional agriculture ( . broad scale mono-cropping rotations) and natural resource management ( . maintaining pristine environments). These can be referred to as -ecological systems and include systems such as Organic Agriculture, , Community Supported Agriculture (CSA's), , Farmers Markets and Community Gardens. Government agencies, private industries (and to some extent Universities) primarily focus on traditional agricultural systems. Where sustainability and community health issues are considered, the usual emphasis is on how these traditional systems might be adapted or managed to reduce environmental or health impacts (within the current economic and production paradigm). Communities however, are taking the lead in developing -ecological systems that address today's environmental and social justice imperatives. These approaches often require more systemic change, as well as a shift from an economic paradigm to an ecological one. emphasise eg eg agri Biodynamics Permaculture agri This paper reports on current research by the author to explore a range of alternative approaches to agriculture and how they contribute to more resilient agri-ecological systems and communities. For example, resiliency can be seen as a systems ability to adapt and respond to external impacts on a system, and farmers markets show resiliency to sudden market changes (such as price or consumer preferences toward organics, through direct sale and the involvement of a range of consumers and producers offering a broad range of organic produce). More specifically, this paper reviews these alternative approaches to agriculture in relation to key concepts from ecological systems thinking, such as ecological resilience, biodiversity and holism. In addition, the paper explores how these systems contribute to more sustainable and resilient communities, through community development processes such as relationship building, genuine participation, inclusiveness, resource mobilization and creating space for knowledge sharing. The paper concludes comparing ecological systems models to alternative agri-ecological systems, and suggests how ecological systems theories and concepts might contribute to thinking about the future of community-based agro-ecological resilience.


Executive summary:
The overall aim of this study was to develop new methods to detect and characterise plant viruses. Generic methods for detection of virus proteins and nucleic acids were developed to detect two plant viruses, Pelargonium zonate spot virus (PZSV) and Cycas necrotic stunt virus (CNSV), neither of which were previously detected in Australia. Two new approaches, peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) and next-generation nucleotide sequencing (NGS) were developed to detect novel or unexpected viruses without the need for previous knowledge of virus sequence or study. In this work, PZSV was found for the first time in Australia and also in a new host Cakile maritima using one dimensional electrophoresis and PMF. The second new virus in Australia, CNSV, was first described in Japan and then in New Zealand. In this work it was detected and characterised as a new strain in Australia using NGS analysis and was found in a lily plant (Lilium. longiflorum) with symptoms. Patterns of infection of a native virus Hardenbergia mosaic virus (HarMV) and the introduced virus Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) were studied in natural and recent host plants using real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. For different virus isolates and symptoms, the virus concentration in plants varied and interaction between two co-infected viruses (such as HarMV and CMV) altered the accumulations of both viruses. Field studies were done to measure the potential impact of natural infection by HarMV on an economically-important legume crop plant, Lupinus 4
angustifolius (narrow-leafed lupin). In field studies, HarMV was spread by naturally occurring aphids, with up to 31% of the lupin plants infected. Grain yield of affected lupin plants was substantially reduced, but seed-borne infection of HarMV was not detected.

Summary
Peptide mass fingerprint (PMF) analysis of plant viruses
A generic assay to detect and partially characterise viruses from plants was developed. Proteins extracted from virus-infected and uninfected plants were separated by one dimensional SDS polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Expressed coat protein bands not presented in uninfected plants were eluted after trypsin digestion and resulting peptide fragments separated according to their masses by matrix-assisted laser-desorption ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry (MS). Resulting PMFs were compared with those present or predicted in protein databases. This assay strategy was used to identify four known viruses: the potyviruses Zucchini yellow mosaic virus (ZYMV) and Turnip mosaic virus (TuMV), an alfamovirus Alfalfa mosaic virus (AMV), and a cucumovirus (CMV). It was also used to identify a virus that manifested symptoms in wild C. maritima plants, tentatively identified as PZSV (genus Anulavirus) by its PMF, which was subsequently confirmed by Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and nucleotide sequencing. The detection of PZSV constitutes a first record of this virus in Australia and in this host. It is proposed that this simplified assay is a useful approach for analysis of plant samples known to harbour viruses, particularly for viruses which cannot be identified readily using antisera or nucleic acid-based assays. Although five viruses from different families and genera were identified successfully by this method, it was not a high-throughput and low cost 5 technique for sample screening, since protein extraction procedures were time-consuming, and protein identification based on PMF requires access to a high quality MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer. Nevertheless, this assay is a valuable complementary detection technique to support the identification of unexpected viruses to the species level, with further characterisation by other methods.

Detection and characterisation of CNSV by NGS
A lily plant (L. longiflorum), growing locally in Perth, Western Australia, with symptoms of chlorosis and streaking of leaves, was collected. Total RNA was extracted and sequenced using Illumina GA IIx technology. After assembly of reads, contigs representing the partial genome of CNSV RNA 1 and RNA2 were identified using Blastn and Blastx software. This virus was also found in bulb tissues of infected lily plants by RT-PCR and nucleotide sequencing (primers designed from the NGS sequences). This indicates that the virus can be transmitted through vegetatively propagated plant materials. Phylogenetic analysis suggested that the virus was a new strain of CNSV (family Secoviridae, genus Nepovirus). Comparison of the sequences of this virus to the CNSV (cycas strain) showed homology with identity of 88% and 96% at the nucleotide and amino acid levels, respectively, and to CNSV (gladiolus strain) of 88% and 94%, respectively; also provided in this work is a new strain of CNSV (lily strain). Another ten lily plants and nineteen cycas plants were tested for the virus by RT-PCR but none appeared to be infected. This virus has been recorded to be transmitted by seeds, nematodes and vegetative propagation, and has a very wide host range in ornamental and crop plants. This result is the 6 first record of this virus in Australia, which indicates that screening for CNSV and other nepoviruses in imported ornamental plants is essential to protect the Australian horticulture industry from incursion of new non-indigenous viruses.

Natural spread of HarMV to narrow-leafed lupin
Two field experiments were undertaken to study the potential threat of the Australian indigenous potyvirus, HarMV, to spread from its natural host, Hardenbergia comptoniana into narrow-leafed lupin (L. angustifolius) crops. Plants were grown in field conditions in two different years. Field plots of narrow-leafed lupin were established and interplanted with H. comptoniana plants infected with HarMV. Wild aphids were allowed to colonise the plots and spread the virus. Plants were monitored for aphids and symptoms of virus infection. Infection was confirmed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), RT-PCR and nucleotide sequencing. The first year established a pilot study, and this showed that HarMV spread naturally to 4.7% of L. angustifolius plants in the field. All infected lupin plants died within 20 days after virus symptoms became visible. In the second year a full field experiment was undertaken, and 30.7% of lupins became infected with HarMV. The majority of infected plants remained alive during this growing season, but showed symptoms of stunting, necrotic stem streaking and tip wilting. Three species of aphids were identified on plants during the experiment, including Myzus persicae (green peach aphid), Acyrthosiphon kondoi (bluegreen aphid) and Rhopalosiphon padi (oat aphid). A total of 761 seeds collected from infected plants were sown, and seedlings were tested for virus infection by ELISA. However, none of them were 7 found to be infected with HarMV, indicating that the virus was possibly not seed-borne in L. angustifolius. This aspect should be verified further by testing more seeds for HarMV from infected plants. The conclusion is that HarMV, a virus confined largely to a single native wild host, is capable of naturally extending its host range to an introduced grain legume under field conditions. Since adaption to an alternative host, as the case of HarMV invading lupin crops, is likely to be a driver of virus evolution, this pathosystem represents an ideal opportunity to study evolution of this virus in real time as it encounters new hosts, at the interface between an ancient ecosystem and a recent agroecosystem.

Virus quantification using real-time quantitative PCR
In this study, virus quantification by real-time quantitative PCR was used to titrate HarMV (isolate WHP-1, WHP-2 and MU-4) and CMV (Sn strain, subgroup II) expression in host L. angustifolius, H. comptoniana and Nicotiana benthamiana. A glasshouse experiment was done that showed HarMV isolate WHP-1 induced a non-necrotic (NN) response, while WHP-2 induced systemic necrosis (N) on lupin plants. Lupin cv Belara infected with WHP-2 isolate harboured a virus at a concentration of 1.34×108 copies/μl, approximately 18% higher than WHP-1 (1.13×108 copies /μl). Although typical symptoms caused by HarMV on wild H. comptoniana include: chlorosis, leaf mosaic, leaf distortion, yellow spots and blotches, the symptom severity is variable on different plants, and even different branches of the same plant show inconsistent symptoms. Their within-plant titres varied, and the highest concentration (1.75×108 copies /μl) was more than 19-fold that of the lowest (9.16×106 copies /μl). The interaction between two co-infecting viruses (HarMV and CMV) infecting N. benthamiana plants was studied. In doubly-infected N. benthamiana plants there was a strong synergistic increase in symptoms, with severe yellowing, stunting and chlorosis, and a higher overall virus titre (2.24×108 copies/μl) than for single virus infected plants (at 6.89×107 copies/μl for HarMV single infection and 4.05×107 copies/μl for CMV single infection). Compared to the single infection, CMV accumulation was enhanced (at 2.18×108 copies/μl in doubly-infected plants and 4.05×107 copies/μl in single-infected plants four weeks after inoculation), while HarMV was suppressed (at 5.66×106 copies/μl in doubly-infected plants and 6.89×107 copies/μl in single-infected plants four weeks after inoculation) in mixed infection. This study used real-time quantitative PCR to investigate the virus within-plant titre, and showed that the virus concentrations were variable in hosts depending on the virus isolate, symptoms and interaction with co-infected viruses.


VIM-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates are usually associated with high MICs to carbapenems. Preclinical studies investigating the pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) characteristics of carbapenems against these isolates are lacking. The in vitro antibacterial activity of meropenem against one WT and three VIM-producing K. pneumoniae clinical isolates (median MICs 0.031, 8, 16 and 128 mg l- 1) was studied in a dialysis-diffusion PK-PD model and verified in a thigh infection neutropenic animal model by testing selected strains and exposures. The in vitro PK-PD target associated with bactericidal activity was estimated and the target attainment for different dosing regimens was calculated with Monte Carlo analysis. The in vitro model was correlated with the in vivo data, with log10CFU/ml reduction of < 1 for the VIM-producing (MIC 16 mg l- 1) and >2 for the WT (MIC 0.031 mg l- 1) isolates, with %f T >MIC 25 and 100%, respectively. The in vitro bactericidal activity for all isolates was associated with 40 % f T>MIC and attained in >90% of cases with the standard 1 g q8 0.5 h infusion dosing regimen only for isolates with MICs up to 1 mg l- 1. For isolates with MICs of 2-8 mg l- 1, prolonged infusion regimens (4 h infusion q8 or 2 h infusion q4) of standard (1 g) and higher (2 g) doses or continuous infusion regimens (3-6 g) are required. For isolates with a MIC of 16 mg l- 1 the unconventional dosing regimen of 2 g as 2 h infusion q4 or 12 g continuous infusion will be required. Prolonged and continuous infusion regimens of meropenem may increase efficacy against VIM-producing K. pneumoniae isolates.


ABSTRACT. This study examined the outcomes of Early Pathways (EP), an in-home parent–child therapy program with 447 at-risk children younger than 5 years of age who were referred for severe behavior and emotional problems, such as aggression, oppositional behavior, and separation anxiety. EP emphasized parent-directed training of child behavior strategies including psychoeducation regarding child development, child-led play, and cognitive-behavioral techniques. Outcomes were assessed using a unique 2-dimensional definition of treatment completion, which consisted of treatment duration and an assessment of reliable change for the primary outcome measure of child behavior problems. Results showed that the majority of children (63.4%) met or exceeded treatment completion. In addition, repeated-measures multivariate analyses of variance at pretest, posttest, and follow-up revealed increased child prosocial behaviors, reduced child behavior problems, improved caregiver nurturing, an increase in parents' developmentally appropriate expectations of children, improved parent–child relationships, and a decrease in clinical diagnoses following treatment. This study offers guidance for developing effective early-intervention services for families in poverty to enhance outcomes for their young children. Along with its existing large-scale, community-based effectiveness studies, future research should establish additional statistical support including a randomized, waitlist control design of EP.


We analyze the SDSS Lyα forest PF(k, z) measurement to determine the linear theory power spectrum. Our analysis is based on fully hydrodynamic simulations, extended using hydro-particle-mesh simulations. We account for the effect of absorbers with damping wings, which leads to an increase in the slope of the linear power spectrum. We break the degeneracy between the mean level of absorption and the linear power spectrum without significant use of external constraints. We infer linear theory power spectrum amplitude Δ(kp = 0.009 s km-1, zp = 3.0) = 0.452 and slope neff(kp, zp) = -2.321 (possible systematic errors are included through nuisance parameters in the fit: a factor ≳5 smaller errors would be obtained on both parameters if we ignored modeling uncertainties). The errors are correlated and not perfectly Gaussian, so we provide a χ2 table to accurately describe the results. The result corresponds to σ8 = 0.85, n = 0.94 for a ΛCDM model with Ωm = 0.3, Ωb = 0.04, and h = 0.7 but is most useful in a combined fit with the CMB. The inferred curvature of the linear power spectrum and the evolution of its amplitude and slope with redshift are consistent with expectations for ΛCDM models, with the evolution of the slope, in particular, being tightly constrained. We use this information to constrain systematic contamination, e.g., fluctuations in the UV background. This paper should serve as a starting point for more work to refine the analysis, including technical improvements such as increasing the size and number of the hydrodynamic simulations and improvements in the treatment of the various forms of feedback from galaxies and quasars.


Background and aims: Adaptive changes in fatty acid metabolism, liver and muscle fat content and adipocyte-derived cytokines may potentially explain the beneficial effects of exercise on insulin action. We investigated this in sedentary men before and after 6 weeks of supervised exercise. Materials and methods: Thirteen sedentary overweight male subjects (age 50 ± 304yr, BMI 28.2 ± 0.5) were recruited, seven were randomised to a 6 week exercise programme and six remained sedentary. After completion of the baseline (0 weeks) metabolic study and body composition measurements subjects who were allocated to the exercise group started the exercise programme. Subjects exercised at 60-85% ofV02 max for a minimum of 20 minutes at least 3 times a week for 6 weeks. Insulin sensitivity of fatty acid (NEFA) production rate (Ra), glycerol Ra, glucose Ra and glucose disposal rate (Rd) were measured with stable isotopes of palmitic acid, glycerol and glucose at 0 and 6 weeks with a 2 step hyperinsulinaemic euglycaemic clamp (step 1, 0.3 (low dose); step 2, 1.5 (high dose) mU. kg-I. min-I). Intrahepatocellular lipid (IHCL) and intramyocellular lipid (IMCL) were measured by magnetic resonance spectroscopy and visceral fat by cross-sectional CT scanning. Results: In the exercise group V02 max increased by 20 ± 5% after 6 weeks (p<O.Ol) but there was no significant change in the control group. There was no significant change in body weight or BMI in either group. After 6 weeks, the decrease in glucose Ra following low dose insulin was greater than at 0 week in the exercise group (3.8 ± 0.5 vs 2.8 ± O.5llmol.kg-l.min-t, 0 week vs 6 weeks, p<0.05) with no change in the control group (3.2 ± 0.7 vs 3.2±004llmol.kg-l.min-I). After 6 weeks the increase in the area under the curve for glucose Rd following high dose insulin was greater than at 0 week in the exercise group (5404 ± 7351lmol!kg vs 6508 ± 581llmol!kg, p<O.Ol) with no change in the control group (4664 ± 5381lffiol!kg vs 4628 ± 415 Ilmol!kg). In the exercise group there was a decrease in fasting NEFA concentration (0.81 ±0.04 vs 0.62 ± 0.05 mmol!l, 0 week vs 6 weeks, respectively, p<O.Ol), fasting glycerol concentration (75 ± 8.3 vs 58 ± 6.6Ilffiol!l, p<0.03), fasting glycerol Ra (3.3±0.8 vs 2.5±0.6Ilmol· kg-I. min-l ,p<0.02) and fasting NEFA Ra (4.5 ± 0.3 vs 3.7 ± 0.51lmol . kg-I . min-I, p<0.04), visceral fat content (186 ± 13 cm2 vs 152 ± 10 cm2, p<0.04) and fasting adiponectin (7.0 ± 0.91lglml vs 5.8 ± 0.9Ilg/ml, p<0.05) but no change in the control group. There was no change in IMCL in either group. The improved insulin sensitivity of glucose Ra in the exercise group correlated with a decrease in IHCL (p<0.05). Conclusion: The improvement in the insulin sensitivity of lipolysis, results in decreased availability of circulating NEFA which in some subjects may lead to a reduction in IHCL content. This may contribute to the observed improvement in the insulin sensitivity of glucose Ra with exercise.


The Congressional Budget Office's analyses of the long-term effects of changes in federal fiscal policy include the effects of changes in federal budget deficits on aggregate output and income. Those effects depend on the responses of private saving and net inflows of foreign capital to changes in deficits. This paper reviews empirical estimates of those two effects and explains how changes in private saving and net inflows of foreign capital can offset some of the effects of changes in deficits on national saving and private domestic investment. In its analyses, CBO uses a range of estimates to reflect the high degree of uncertainty surrounding the magnitude of those offsets. On the basis of results published in the empirical literature, CBO concludes that for each dollar's increase in the federal deficit, the effect on investment ranges from a decrease of 15 cents to a decrease of 50 cents, with a central estimate of a decrease of 33 cents.