Watershed-scale hydrologic models require good estimates of spatially distributed snow water equivalent (SWE) at winter's end. Snow on the ground in arctic environments is susceptible to significant wind redistribution, which results in heterogeneous snowpacks. The scarcity and quality of data collected by snow gauges provides a poor indicator of actual snowpack distribution. Snow distribution patterns are similar from year to year because they are largely controlled by the interaction of topography, vegetation, and consistent weather patterns. Consequently, shallow and deep areas of snow tend to be spatially predetermined, resulting in depth (or SWE) differences that may vary as a whole, but not relative to each other. Our aim was to identify snowpack distribution patterns and establish their stability in time and space at a watershed scale. Snow patterns were established by: (1) using numerous field surveys from end-of-winter field campaigns; and (2) differentiating snowpacks that characterize small-scale anomalies (local scale) from snowpacks that represent a large-scale area (regional scale). We concluded that basic snow survey site descriptions could be used to separate survey locations into regional and local-scale representative sites. Removing local-scale influences provides a more accurate representation of the regional snowpack, which will aid in forecasting snowmelt runoff events.


Abstract Maternal mind-mindedness has been described both as a cognitive-behavioural trait and as a relational construct. This study assessed stability over time and consistency across relationships of maternal mind-mindedness in relation to preschool and primary school siblings and compared representational and interactional mind-mindedness. Mothers with two children between 2½ and 10 years were assessed twice, nine months apart (N = 32 at Time 1; N = 30 at Time 2). Representational mind-mindedness for a partner/friend was also assessed twice. Mothers' representational mind-mindedness showed temporal stability but was inconsistent across relationships with two children and a partner/friend. Conversely, mothers' interactional mind-mindedness was stable and highly consistent across relationships with two children. This supports the possibility that mothers' interactional mind-mindedness is trait-like, while findings are equivocal for representational mind-mindedness. Representational mind-mindedness and interactional mind-mindedness were unrelated in this preliminary study, suggesting that these measures of maternal mind-mindedness were not equivalent for this age group.


View and download fact sheets that highlight the health impacts of climate change at different stages of life and for certain populations of concern, as well as communications materials to help strengthen conversations about climate change and health.


Gender is not just a space within which identities are formed; it is also a major criterion for the distribution of valued resources and opportunities in a society, such as economic, social, educational and political resources and opportunities. This assertion is supported by a copious pile of evidence, which points to the existence of gender-based discriminations and inequalities in many societies of the world. In Nigeria, in spite of efforts to improve the socio-economic and political condition of women, very minimal result has been obtained quite contrary to expectation. Based on figures from the outcomes of the 1993, 1999 and 2003 elections in the country, this article raises critical issues about the marginalization of women in Nigerian politics. The paper contends that the political disempowerment of Nigerian women is an outcome a of complex of factors, which constricts the political space and excludes women.


Water level changes resulting from a hydropower regulation have influenced water flow, gradients and sediment processes in the Lake Oyeren delta for about 150 years. They are reflected in the morphology of the islands on the delta plain. Under current regulation practices, water levels during the mean annual flood are maintained at about 1 m lower than during the previous regime prior to 1978. As the channels continue to mature, the recently deposited tongues and levees in the southern part will therefore probably maintain a distinctly lower elevation than that of the older islands. The influence of flood regulation on levee deposits during the extreme 1995 flood was estimated by comparing simulated overbank deposits resulting from different flood regulation schemes. The simulations showed that reduced water levels during floods in the presence of older islands extend the period of in-channel flow and promote the development of levee-like deposits in the lower part of the delta plain. This explains some of the characteristics observed in the morphological development, most notably the increased number of lagoons resulting from a higher number of levees.


The potential of smart living environments to provide a form of independent living for the ageing population is becoming more recognised. These environments are comprised of sensors which are used to assess the state of the environment, some form of information management to process the sensor data and finally a suite of actuators which can be used to change the state of the environment. When providing a form of support which may impinge upon the well being of the end user it is essential that a high degree of reliability can be maintained. Within this paper we present an information management framework to process sensor based data within smart environments. Based on this framework we assess the impact of sensor reliability on the classification of activities of daily living. From this assessment we show how it is possible to identify which sensors within a given set of experiments can be considered to be the most critical and as such consider how this information may be used for managing sensor reliability from a practical point of view.


This paper takes its departure from Michel Henry's criticism of a technological view that "extends its reign to the whole planet, sowing desolation and ruin everywhere" ( I am the Truth , 271). It argues that although Henry's critique of technology is helpful and important, it does not go far enough, inasmuch as it excludes all non-human beings from the Truth of "Life" he advocates against the destructive truths of technology and therefore cannot fully articulate the way in which technology does in fact cause "desolation and ruin" on the entire planet. At the same time I suggest that this strict division between human and non-human life is not essential to Henry's project, which may well have resources for a more environmentally friendly proposal. The first part of the paper lays out Henry's critique of technology in some detail, highlighting the ways in which it contains important insights for our contemporary situation. The second part of the paper explores the stark division Henry draws between human generation from the divine life and the creation of everything else, including his rejection of any identification of humans with "protozoa and honey bees," which would seem to suggest a complete lack of concern for non-human life. The final part of the paper seeks to find a way beyond this dichotomy by showing how non-human life may be included in Henry's proposal in a way that extends his critique of technology in environmentally conscious ways without losing his phenomenological insights about the human condition.


The Audit of Disability Research in Australia (hereafter the Audit) identified research about people with disabilities, including psychosocial disability, and their families and carers living in Australia. The Audit covered both scientific and grey literature published in Australia between the years 2000–2013. Because the National Disability Research and Development Agenda (Disability Policy and Research Working Group, 2011) identified four cohorts that experience particular disadvantage, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, women with disabilities, those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and those living in rural and remote Australia, the Audit included a search based on geography. This paper reports on studies identified in the Audit that address disability and mental illness in the rural and remote context. In the literature unclear and overlapping definitions of mental illness and psychosocial disability were considerable challenges for the reviewers and these difficulties may potentially impact on how psychosocial disability is conceptualised. Of particular concern is the scant research that reflects the experiences of, and issues faced by, people living with disability and mental illness in rural and remote Australia.


Code contributions in Free/Libre and Open Source Software projects are controlled to maintain high-quality of software. Alternatives to patch-based code contribution tools such as mailing lists and issue trackers have been developed with the pull request systems being the most visible and widely available on GitHub. Is the code contribution process more effective with pull request systems? To answer that, we quantify the effectiveness via the rates contributions are accepted and ignored, via the time until the first response and final resolution and via the numbers of contributions. To control for the latent variables, our study includes a project that migrated from an issue tracker to the GitHub pull request system and a comparison between projects using mailing lists and pull request systems. Our results show pull request systems to be associated with reduced review times and larger numbers of contributions. However, not all the comparisons indicate substantially better accept or ignore rates in pull request systems. These variations may be most simply explained by the differences in contribution practices the projects employ and may be less affected by the type of tool. Our results clarify the importance of understanding the role of tools in effective management of the broad network of potential contributors and may lead to strategies and practices making the code contribution more satisfying and efficient from both contributors' and maintainers' perspectives.


The thesis focuses on policy measures between 196A and 1978 to improve performance and growth in U.K.'s private industry. Underlying structural weaknesses and institutional constraints characteristic to U.K.'s company sector are identified and analysed in Part One. This exercise provides the basis for both a definition of the concept of "industrial policy" and a critical assessment in Part Two of its relevance and effectiveness to tackle industry's main difficulties. In discussing policy initiatives to assist companies with public funds for investment finance, industrial reorganisation and the application of new technology, a variety of problems associated with state intervention in private industry are highlighted. The various attempts by policy-makers to overcome shortcomings in the coordination of policy, communication with firms, public monitoring and exercise of control as a result of experience with existing measures and by means of new, more powerful instruments are examined in detail. Industry's growing difficulties and pressure on policy-makers to expand or at least improve public assistance meant that industry policy evolved, despite controversy and policy shifts, with a certain degree of continuity. In the three case-studies which follow, shipbuilding, computers and the NEB, these dynamics are explored in depth.

One useful contribution of this thesis is to explain industrial decline in the U.K. economy in terms of supply-side constraints in the private sector. This approach avoids the methodological shortcomings of currently popular theories which instead concentrate on factors outside private industry, such as the public sector or international trade. The analysis of overall industrial policy since 1$6A and the attempt to develop criteria for assessing its effectiveness contribute to a better understanding of this subject. The case studies cover new areas of research. By linking the analysis of policy-making with theoretical hypotheses concerning industry's main problems the effects of policy measures in private industry can be evaluated to determine both the limitations and the potential of state intervention in private industry.


The potential effect of ocean acidification on the exudation of organic matter by phytoplankton and, consequently, on the iron redox chemistry is largely unknown. In this study, the cocccolithophorid Emiliania huxleyi was exposed to different pCO2 conditions (225-900 μatm), in order to determine the role of natural organic ligands on the Fe(II) oxidation rate. Oxidation kinetics of Fe(II) were studied as a function of pH (7.75-8.25) and dissolved organic carbon levels produced (0-141.11 μmol C L-1) during the different growth stages. The Fe(II) oxidation rate always decreased in the presence of exudates as compared to that in the exudates-free seawater. The organic ligands present in the coccolithophorid exudates were responsible for this decrease. The oxidation of Fe(II) in artificial seawater was also investigated at nanomolar levels over a range of pH (7.75–8.25) at 25 oC in the presence of different glucuronic acid concentrations. Dissolved uronic acids (DUA) slightly increased the experimental rate compared to control artificial seawater (ASW) which can be ascribed to the stabilization of the oxidized form by chelation. This behavior was a function of the Fe(II):DUA ratio and was a pH dependent process. A kinetic model in ASW, with a single organic ligand, was applied for computing the equilibrium constant (log KFeCHO+ = 3.68 ± 0.81 M-1) and the oxidation rate (log kFeCHO+ = 3.28 ± 0.41 M-1 min-1) for the Fe(II)-DUA complex (FeCHO+), providing an excellent description of data obtained over a wide range of DUA concentrations and pH conditions. Considering the Marcus theory the Fe(III) complexing constant with DUA was limited to between 1013-1016. For the seawater enriched with exudates of E. huxleyi a second kinetic modelling approach was carried out for fitting the Fe(II) speciation, and the contribution of each Fe(II) species to the overall oxidation rate as a function of the pH/pCO2 conditions. The influence of organic ligands in the Fe(II) speciation diminished as pH decreased in solution. During the stationary growth phase, the FeCHO+ complex became the most important contributor to the overall oxidation rate when pH was lower than 7.95. Because CO2 levels modify the composition of excreted organic ligands, the


The theory of the political safeguards of federalism has made a recent comeback, appearing in Supreme Court dissents by Justices Breyer and Souter and in prominent articles by Professor Larry Kramer and Professor Brad Clark. We argue that the idea that the political process can wholly replace judicial review in policing the boundaries between federal and state power is inconsistent with the text, structure, and original understanding of the Constitution. None of these sources allows the federal courts to exercise judicial review while simultaneously excluding entire subject matters from its protections - especially one as central to the constitutional structure as federalism. The political-safeguards theory treats judicial review as purely functional and almost discretionary, while we believe that the constitutional text, structure, and history impose judicial review as a mandatory duty on the courts. We show that political safeguards theory creates severe distortions in the constitutional structure, as does Kramer's provocative theory that the extra-constitutional role of the national political parties can serve as a complete substitute for judicial review of federalism questions. Finally, we show that the original understanding of the Constitution cannot support any theory that insists that the national political process's presence as a possible safeguard permits the exclusion of judicial review over federalism questions.


As more aspects of our daily lives are being computerized, ever larger amounts of data are being produced at ever greater speeds. In this data lies great value, and we need technologies that enable us to extract this value. This thesis is concerned with one type of technology that allows us to do this: Distributed Stream Processing Systems (DSPS) are systems consisting of many computers that jointly process, and hence extract value from, large amounts of data at high speeds.

This dissertation consists of three research projects that investigate two aspects of DSPS: In two projects, different approaches to increase the efficiency of DSPS were studied and in one project, the value of increased efficiency in stream processing was evaluated. All of these projects have been conducted on real computer systems and they are all of quantitative nature. In the first study, a graph partitioning algorithm was leveraged to schedule the workload within a DSPS. This reduced the communication load between hosts, while maintaining or increasing the throughput of the system. The second study was concerned with the auto-configuration of DSPS. We used a probabilistic black-box optimization strategy called Bayesian Optimization to increase throughput performance of DSPSs through configuration. In the third study, we investigated the value of increased efficiency of a DSPS. This was done by building a DSPS based entity ranking system and by evaluating the effect of timely data processing on the quality of the generated rankings.


I Â ntroduction:Â It seems that the rate of deep vein thrombosis in Asia is low. The aim of this study is to investigate the rate of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) among Iranian patients suffering from hip fracture (proximal of femur) and pelvic fracture (acetabulum) and to analyze the risk factors associated with DVT. Materials and Methods:Â This clinical trialstudy was done in the Orthopedy Ward of Shahid Kamiab Hospital of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences during the year 2005. A total of 116 consecutive skeletal fracture patients with a mean age of 59.92 years were investigated. Patients divided into two groups of case (44 patients) and control (72 patients). Patients in the case group were treated using a standardized protocol for DVT prophylaxis (Enaxaparin; 40 mg by subcutaneous injection, once daily) within 24 hours of injury after establishing haemodynamic stability. Control group received no drugs or treatment. Duplex ultrasound was done 9 days and 3-6 weeks after admission. Personal data, previous history of general and heart diseases and radiology results were collected in questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results:Â The mean age of patients with DVT was 63.5 years (standard deviation SD, 11.22 years). The mean age of patients without DVT was 58.64 years (SD, 14.74 years). Four patients (9.1%) showed DVT in spite of chemoprophylaxis. There was significant relation between the both groups (p=0.021). Conclusion:Â Results show that the incidence of DVT after acute hip and pelvic fracture in Iranian traumatized patients was high. So the use of low molecular weight heparin is recommended for above patients.


Present investigation was carried on six chickpea genotypes (tolerant and sensitive) imposed to moisture stress at varied growth stages viz. irrigated as and when required (C), sown with one pre-sowing irrigation (WSVFP), stressed at flower initiation (WSF) and stressed at pod initiation (WSP). The experiment was conducted in the field area of Plant Breeding and Genetics department, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India. Fresh chickpea seeds at 120 DAS, stressed at varied growth stages were used to determine activities of antioxidant enzymes. viz. peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione reductase (GR) in order to find out whether these parameters can be used as selection criteria for moisture stress tolerance in chickpea. Results indicated wide variation in stress tolerance amongst chickpea genotypes at varied growth stages. On the basis of antioxidant activity, genotypes GL28151, RSG963 and PDG3 appeared to be more adapted to moisture stress tolerance. Treatment WSVFP showed maximum level of anti-oxidative enzyme activities, followed by stress treatment WSP and WSF.


Abstract. Evaporation (E) and transpiration (T) respond differently
to ongoing changes in climate, atmospheric composition, and land use. It is
difficult to partition ecosystem-scale evapotranspiration (ET) measurements
into E and T, which makes it difficult to validate satellite data and land
surface models. Here, we review current progress in partitioning E and T and
provide a prospectus for how to improve theory and observations going
forward. Recent advancements in analytical techniques create new
opportunities for partitioning E and T at the ecosystem scale, but their
assumptions have yet to be fully tested. For example, many approaches to
partition E and T rely on the notion that plant canopy conductance and
ecosystem water use efficiency exhibit optimal responses to atmospheric
vapor pressure deficit (D). We use observations from 240 eddy covariance flux
towers to demonstrate that optimal ecosystem response to D is a reasonable
assumption, in agreement with recent studies, but more analysis is necessary
to determine the conditions for which this assumption holds. Another
critical assumption for many partitioning approaches is that ET can be
approximated as T during ideal transpiring conditions, which has been
challenged by observational studies. We demonstrate that T can exceed 95 %
of ET from certain ecosystems, but other ecosystems do not appear to reach
this value, which suggests that this assumption is ecosystem-dependent with
implications for partitioning. It is important to further improve approaches
for partitioning E and T, yet few multi-method comparisons have been
undertaken to date. Advances in our understanding of carbon–water coupling
at the stomatal, leaf, and canopy level open new perspectives on how to
quantify T via its strong coupling with photosynthesis. Photosynthesis can be
constrained at the ecosystem and global scales with emerging data sources
including solar-induced fluorescence, carbonyl sulfide flux measurements,
thermography, and more. Such comparisons would improve our mechanistic
understanding of ecosystem water fluxes and provide the observations
necessary to validate remote sensing algorithms and land surface models to
understand the changing global water cycle.


Abstract Botswana's HIV prevalence is one of the highest in the world at 31.8% in the 15–49 years antenatal population. Being HIV-positive for a woman presents unique challenges with regard to sexuality, child bearing, and partner relations. To ensure optimal sexual and reproductive health (SRH) of HIV-positive women, it is important to understand how health care workers (HCWs) are prepared to address SRH issues such as contraception, fertility desires, and partner violence. This study reports on a knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) questionnaire completed by 98 HCWs from clinics located in and nearby Gaborone and analyzed using descriptive and nonparametric statistics. The majority of participants were nurses (43%), health educators (27%), and lay counselors (19%), 82% female, median age of 35 (Interquartile Range (IQR): 29.25–43.75). General HIV/AIDS knowledge was high with a median score of 8.0/9 (89%) (IQR: 8–9). However, the median SRH knowledge score was much lower at 6.0/10 (60%) (IQR: 4–7). Of the three groups, the SRH knowledge scores of lay counselors were significantly lower than nurses (p=0.024). The attitude scores pertaining to issues such as family planning, sexual violence, the health system's ability to offer SRH services, and personal ability to offer SRH services were moderately positive with a median score of 75% (IQR: 69–81%); although nearly 25% of respondents felt that it is irresponsible for an HIV-positive woman to want to have a child. When presented with a case study of an abused, HIV-positive pregnant woman, most respondents indicated they would offer supportive care without judgment; however 28% of respondents indicated they would express disapproval or disappointment for becoming pregnant when she knows she is HIV-positive. The low SRH knowledge scores together with discriminatory attitudes and practices emphasize the need for increased and ongoing training in SRH issues for all HCWs who provide care for HIV-positive women.


The EMSCB Security Architecture is used as a trustworthy basis for the implementation of secure distributed applications. In this paper we introduce the prototype for a device encryption system based on the EMSCB security kernel. The goal is to provide a strongly isolated hard-disk encryption for Linux, where the secret key information and all related security-critical operations are not under the control of Linux, but under control of an EMSCB application protected and isolated from Linux. We describe the architecture and the prototype implementation of the device encryption system.


We conduct computer simulations of the reconstruction of a wave front at a telescope pupil with the phase-diversity method. An instantaneous wave front is reconstructed from focused and defocused specklegrams of a point star. In the wave-front reconstruction we do not fit the wave front to Zernike polynomials but retrieve the phase with a phase-unwrapping procedure. Averaging over many atmospherically perturbed wave fronts leads to the residual phase error, namely, the aberration of the telescope. The scintillation effect, nonuniformity of amplitude on a telescope pupil, is also discussed.


While battery capacity is often insufficient to keep up with the power-demanding features of the latest mobile devices, powering the functional advancement of wireless devices requires a revolution in the concept of battery life and recharge capability. Future handheld devices and wireless networks should be able to recharge themselves automatically from the environment and optimize their energy consumption. Green Mobile Devices and Networks: Energy Optimization and Scavenging Techniques provides insights into the principles and technical challenges behind both automatic optimization of energy consumption and energy gathering from alternative environmental sources. It introduces the basic background, motivation, and principles of various technologies, supplying detailed and integrated coverage of different optimization and energy scavenging techniques. In particular, the book: Examines the technical challenges behind automatic optimization of the energy consumption in dynamic real-time scenarios Considers different types of energy scavenging techniques Describes the various technologies behind harvesting energy through different sourcesincluding solar, acoustics, kinetic, mechanical vibrations, and electromagnetic waves Striking a balance between theory and implementation, the book links different concepts with applications of corresponding schemes and connects them to various standards. It discusses the continuous monitoring of battery life and the automatic adjustment of different functionalitiesincluding data reception, processing and display, complexity of software modules, and perceived video qualityto provide you with a clear understanding of the technical challenges, measurement of energy gain, limitations, and future opportunities.


This volume debates the complex nature of the relationships between globalization, social and economic transformations and growing inequalities. Employing a global, world-historical and comparative perspective, the 16 articles brought together in this volume deal with three central questions: Firstly, the question of the spatio-temporal evolution and variations of growing inequalities, secondly, the relative importance of globalization as compared to other factors explaining growing inequalities and, thirdly, institutional variations of inequality dynamics and globalization impacts. Christian Suter is Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Neuch tel and President of the World Society Foundation, domiciled at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.


The aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of biofield energy treatment on the thermal, spectroscopic, and chemical properties of benzophenone. The study was done using various analytical methods such as gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, and ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy. The benzophenone sample was divided into two parts, one part was subjected to Mr. Trivedi's biofield energy treatment, called as treated and the other part was remained as untreated, called as control. Mass spectra showed the molecular ion peak at m/z = 182 in control and all the treated benzophenone samples with different intensities (treated samples further divided in to three parts, T1, T2, and T3 for GC-MS study). The isotopic abundance ratio of 2H/1H, 13C/12C (PM+1)/PM and in treated sample was decreased by 44.87% in T2 and slightly increased upto 5.79% in case of T1 as compared to the control [where, PM- primary molecule, (PM+1)- isotopic molecule either for 13C or 2H]. Moreover, isotopic abundance ratio of 18O/16O (PM+2)/PM in the treated sample was increased up to 22.64% in T3. The retention time of treated benzophenone was slightly increased (0.88 min) as compared to the control in HPLC chromatogram. The DSC data exhibited that the heat of degradation of treated benzophenone was increased by 674.16% as compared to the control. While, C=O stretching frequency of treated sample was shifted by 6 cm-1 to low energy region in FT-IR spectroscopy. Further, the UV-Vis spectra of control sample showed characteristic absorption peaks at 210 nm and 257 nm that was blue shifted to 205 nm and 252 nm, respectively in the treated sample. These results suggested that biofield treatment has significantly altered the thermal, spectroscopic, and chemical properties of benzophenone, which could make them more useful as reaction intermediate in industrial applications.


We present the results of a search for neutrino point sources using the IceCube data collected between 2008 April and 2011 May with three partially completed configurations of the detector: the 40-, 59-, and 79-string configurations. The live-time of this data set is 1040 days. An unbinned maximum likelihood ratio test was used to search for an excess of neutrinos above the atmospheric background at any given direction in the sky. By adding two more years of data with improved event selection and reconstruction techniques, the sensitivity was improved by a factor of 3.5 or more with respect to the previously published results obtained with the 40-string configuration of IceCube. We performed an all-sky survey and a dedicated search using a catalog of a priori selected objects observed by other telescopes. In both searches, the data are compatible with the background-only hypothesis. In the absence of evidence for a signal, we set upper limits on the flux of muon neutrinos. For an E −2 neutrino spectrum, the observed limits are (0.9–5) × 10−12 TeV−1 cm−2 s−1 for energies between 1 TeV and 1 PeV in the northern sky and (0.9–23.2) × 10−12 TeV−1 cm−2 s−1 for energies between 102 TeV and 102 PeV in the southern sky. We also report upper limits for neutrino emission from groups of sources that were selected according to theoretical models or observational parameters and analyzed with a stacking approach. Some of the limits presented already reach the level necessary to quantitatively test current models of neutrino emission.


We present two solutions to the challenge of radiation loss of slot-lines at terahertz frequencies: using a slot-line in a homogeneous medium, and using a slot-line on a layered substrate. A theoretical analysis of the slot-line in a homogeneous medium as a terahertz transmission line is presented. The absorption coefficient is obtained in terms of the waveguide dimensions using the field distribution of the slot-line. Results show that the slot-line in a homogeneous medium and the slot-line on a layered substrate can be effective transmission lines for terahertz waves with 2 cm(-1) and 3 cm(-1) absorption due to conductor loss. Full-wave numerical simulations using the Finite Element Method (FEM) are applied to validate the theory.


Our perception of the world is driven by input from the sensory nerves. This input arrives encoded as sequences of identical spikes. Much of neural computation involves processing these spike trains. What does it mean to say that a certain set of spikes is the right answer to a computational problem? In what sense does a spike train convey information about the sensory world? Spikes begins by providing precise formulations of these and related questions about the representation of sensory signals in neural spike trains. The answers to these questions are then pursued in experiments on sensory neurons.The authors invite the reader to play the role of a hypothetical observer inside the brain who makes decisions based on the incoming spike trains. Rather than asking how a neuron responds to a given stimulus, the authors ask how the brain could make inferences about an unknown stimulus from a given neural response. The flavor of some problems faced by the organism is captured by analyzing the way in which the observer can make a running reconstruction of the sensory stimulus as it evolves in time. These ideas are illustrated by examples from experiments on several biological systems. Intended for neurobiologists with an interest in mathematical analysis of neural data as well as the growing number of physicists and mathematicians interested in information processing by "real" nervous systems, Spikes provides a self-contained review of relevant concepts in information theory and statistical decision theory. A quantitative framework is used to pose precise questions about the structure of the neural code. These questions in turn influence both the design and analysis of experiments on sensory neurons.


Abstract Non-syndromic cleft lip with or without palate (NSCL/P) is a common congenital malformation worldwide, with complex etiology. It has been proposed that interaction of genes and environmental factors play a role in the predisposition to this disease. Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the association between AXIN2 (axis inhibition protein 2) rs7224837, BMP4 (bone morphogenetic protein 4) rs17563, and IRF6 (interferon regulatory factor 6) rs861019 and 2235371 polymorphisms and NSCL/P in an Iranian population. Material and Methods: This case-control study was carried out on 132 unrelated NSCL/P patients and 156 healthy subjects. The variants were genotyped using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). Results: The findings suggest that BMP4 rs17563 polymorphism significantly decreased the risk of NSCL/P in codominant (OR=0.36, 95%CI=0.17-0.79, p=0.012, CT vs CC and OR=0.11, 95%CI=0.01-0.88, p = 0.019, TT vs CC), dominant (OR=0.30, 95%CI=0.15-0.62, p = 0.0007, CT+TT vs CC), recessive (OR=0.12, 95%CI=0.02-0.99, p = 0.023, TT vs CC+CT), overdominant (OR=0.39, 95%CI = 0.18-0.84, p=0.021, CT vs CC+TT), and allele (OR=0.28, 95%CI=0.15-0.55, p<0.0001, T vs C) inheritance models. Our findings did not support an association between AXIN2 rs7224837 and IRF6 rs861019 polymorphism and risk/protection of NSCL/P. The IRF6 2235371 variant was not polymorphic in our population. Conclusion: The results indicate that the BMP4 rs17563 variant is likely to confer a protective effect against the occurrence of NSCL/P in a sample of the southeast Iranian population.


The cortex and basal ganglia are the major structures of the adult brain derived from the embryonic telencephalon. Two morphologically distinct regions of the basal ganglia are evident within the mature ventral telencephalon, the globus pallidus medially, and the striatum, which is positioned between the globus pallidus and the cortex. Deletion of the Sonic Hedgehog gene in mice indicates that this secreted signaling molecule is vital for the generation of both these ventral telencephalic regions. Previous experiments showed that Sonic Hedgehog induces differentiation of ventral neurons characteristic of the medial ganglionic eminence, the embryonic structure which gives rise to the globus pallidus. In this paper, we show that later in development, Sonic Hedgehog induces ventral neurons with patterns of gene expression characteristic of the lateral ganglionic eminence. This is the embryonic structure from which the striatum is derived. These results suggest that temporally regulated changes in Sonic Hedgehog responsiveness are integral in the sequential induction of basal telencephalic structures.


ABSTRACT The presence of six articulated exoskeletons of late holaspid specimens of the rare harpetid Eoharpes benignensis entombed under a pygidial shield of the large asaphid trilobite Nobiliasaphus repulsus from the Middle Ordovician Dobrotivá Formation of the Prague Basin, Czech Republic is interpreted as a unimodal monotaxic trilobite cluster. The sheltered preservation of the trilobites may be explained as; (1) hiding behavior associated with predation pressure; (2) storm disturbance; or (3) molting associated with feeding. It is herein suggested that these Middle Ordovician holaspid trilobites deliberately entered the restricted space under a large isolated asaphid trilobite pygidial shield to find a refuge and shared the space within restricted shelters with conspecifics. The completeness of all specimens of the rare taxon Eoharpes, combined with the presence of more than one individual in this restricted space, excludes the possibility of transportation by bottom currents. This exceptional find represents an example of "frozen behavior" and provides a new insight in the life strategy of Middle Ordovician benthic trilobites. Attack abatement, e.g., avoidance and dilution effects, is for the first time proposed as a possible explanation for this example of sheltered gregarious behavior in trilobites.


The landscape in which UK policing operates today is a dynamic one, and growing threats such as the proliferation of cyber crime are increasing the demand on police resources. The response to cyber crime by national and regional law enforcement agencies has been robust, with significant investment in mitigating against, and tackling cyber threats. However, at a local level, police forces have to deal with an unknown demand, whilst trying to come to terms with new crime types, terminology and criminal techniques which are far from traditional. This paper looks to identify the demand from cyber crime in one police force in the United Kingdom, and whether there is consistency in the recording of crime. As well as this, it looks to understand whether the force can deal with cyber crime from the point of view of the Police Officers and Police Staff in the organisation.


Materials produced during the negotiation of treaties, commonly called travaux preparatoires, are given formal significance as a 'supplementary means' of treaty interpretation under article 32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties ('VCLT'). Travaux present both risks and opportunities for treaty interpretation, and international adjudicators have differed in how they define the rationale for referring to travaux; how they use these materials, and even more fundamentally, what materials they classify as travaux. This article proposes a methodology to guide the more structured identification and use of travaux. The article uses the interpretation of investment treaties in investor-state arbitration as a case study to illustrate the proposed approach and its utility. The discussion, including the proposed sliding scale approach, is nonetheless equally relevant for interpreting all manner of treaties. Section I illustrates three practical challenges associated with the use of travaux in investment treaty disputes to highlight the advantages and pitfalls associated with using travaux. Section II considers what may constitute 'travaux'. Based on an extensive review of arbitral practice, Section II argues in favour of a sliding scale approach to travaux, whereby treaty interpreters assess the utility of a given material by reference to its precise qualitative features and the context of interpretation. Section III considers how arbitral tribunals have used – and should use – travaux by reference to the interpretive framework established by the VCLT. Section IV considers how investment tribunals have regulated access to and use of travaux through their powers to order document production.


Studies have demonstrated that under conditions of chronic metabolic stress, GLUT1mediated sugar transport is upregulated at the blood-brain barrier by a number of mechanisms. Although acute metabolic stress has also been shown to increase GLUT1mediated transport, the mechanisms underlying this regulation remain unclear. This work attempts to explain how GLUT1-mediated sugar uptake is increased during acute metabolic stress, as well as explore the factors involved in this modulation of sugar transport in blood-brain barrier endothelial cells. Glucose depletion, KCN and FCCP were applied to brain microvascular endothelial cell line bEnd.3 in order to induce acute metabolic stress by ATP depletion. Kinetic sugar uptake measurements in combination with qPCR, whole cell lysate western blots, and cell-surface biotinylation were employed to probe for changes in GLUT1-mediated sugar uptake, GLUT1 expression levels, and GLUT1 localization during metabolic stress. Finally, the role of AMP-activated kinase (AMPK) in the bEnd.3 cell response to acute stress was examined using the specific AMPK activator AICAR and inhibitor Compound C. The data presented in this thesis supports the following two conclusions: 1. GLUT1mediated sugar transport in bEnd.3 cells during acute metabolic stress is increased 3-7 fold due to translocation of intracellular GLUT1 to the plasma membrane, with no change in expression of total GLUT1 protein, and 2. AMPK plays a direct role in modulating increases in GLUT1-mediated sugar transport in bEnd.3 cells during acute metabolic stress by regulating trafficking of GLUT1 to the plasma membrane


Internet and World Wide Web platforms, big data analytics, software, social media and civic technologies allow for the creation of smart ecosystems in which connected intelligence emerges and disruptive social and eco-innovation flourishes. This book focuses on three grand challenges that matter for any territory, no matter where it is located: (i) smart growth, a path that more and more cities, regions and countries are adopting having realised the unlimited potential of growth that is based on knowledge, innovation and digital technologies; (ii) safety and security, which is a pre-requisite for quality of life in a world of intense social, natural and technological threats; and (iii) sustainability, use of renewable energy, protection of living ecosystems, addressing climate change and global warming in a period of rapid urbanisation that makes established sustainability models and planning patterns quickly obsolete. The core argument of the book is that problem-solving and novel solutions to these grand challenges emerge in smart ecosystems through connected intelligence. It is the broadest form of intelligence that combines capabilities from heterogeneous actors (humans, organisations, machines) and propel problem-solving through externalities and resource agglomeration, user engagement and collaboration, awareness and behaviour change. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of urban and regional studies, innovation studies, economic geography and urban planning, as well as urban policy makers.


The tribe Naucleeae has recently been recircumscribed on the basis of both morphological and molecular [rbcL, trnT-F, internal transcribed spacer (ITS)] evidence, and has been found to be the sister group of the tribe Hymenodictyeae Razafim. & B. Bremer. In order to find pollen morphological support for this new classification, the pollen and orbicules of 65 species, representing 23 Naucleeae and the two Hymenodictyeae genera, were investigated by scanning electron and light microscopy. Naucleeae pollen is very small (< 20 µm) to small (20–30 µm) and its shape in equatorial view is suboblate to spheroidal or, more rarely, subprolate. Three compound apertures are present, each comprising a long and narrow ectocolpus, a circular to slightly lolongate mesoporus, and an often H-shaped endoaperture. The sexine ornamentation is perforate, rugulate, or (micro)reticulate, and supratectal elements are always absent. Apart from the variation in sexine ornamentation, the tribe is rather stenopalynous. The pollen of Hymenodictyeae is very similar to that of Naucleeae. The H-shaped endoapertures often observed probably form a synapomorphy for the clade comprising Naucleeae and Hymenodictyeae. Our pollen morphological observations are not in conflict with the widened delimitation of Naucleeae. Unambiguous pollen support for the recent subtribal or generic concepts of Naucleeae could not be found because of a lack of variation of pollen characters within the tribe. Orbicules are invariably present in the ten Naucleeae taxa investigated. They are spheroidal and smooth or irregularly folded.


In this chapter, particle swarm optimization, ant colony optimization, artificial bee colony optimization and cuckoo search optimization are examined in detail. Differences, advantages and disadvantages of these algorithms are emphasized clearly. Performances of the swarm algorithms in terms of computing time, computing complexity and accuracy and convergence behavior are compared each other. As application area, fractional control systems from new attractive topics of control are chosen. In this chapter, the fractional order proportional integral derivative controllers are tuned with the swarm algorithms using objective functions such as integral of absolute error, integral of the squared error, the integral of time multiplied by the absolute error and integral of time multiplied by the squared error. The simulation results can be used to determine which swarm algorithms yield better search performance in the multiobjective and high-dimensional nonlinear constrained optimization problems such as the fractional order control systems.


In this article we discuss barriers for conducting Open Innovation in Public-Private Innovation Partnerships. We argue that inviting private actors to contribute to innovations in the public sector resembles an opening of the innovation process as termed Open Innovation. The connection seems intuitively valuable since public sector innovation may also enjoy the advantages of sourcing new ideas from both inside and outside the organisation. However, based on a literature review, the paper concludes that it is necessary to modify the concept of Open Innovation to make it applicable in Public-Private Innovation Partnerships. This is due to barriers raising from legislations and embedded tensions between public and private partners.


This paper presents gradKCCA, a large-scale sparse non-linear canonical correlation method. Like Kernel Canonical Correlation Analysis (KCCA), our method finds non-linear relations through kernel functions, but it does not rely on a kernel matrix, a known bottleneck for scaling up kernel methods. gradKCCA corresponds to solving KCCA with the additional constraint that the canonical projection directions in the kernel-induced feature space have preimages in the original data space. Firstly, this modification allows us to very efficiently maximize kernel canonical correlation through an alternating projected gradient algorithm working in the original data space. Secondly, we can control the sparsity of the projection directions by constraining the (cid:96) 1 norm of the preimages of the projection directions, facili-tating the interpretation of the discovered patterns, which is not available through KCCA. Our empir-ical experiments demonstrate that gradKCCA outperforms state-of-the-art CCA methods in terms of speed and robustness to noise both in simulated and real-world datasets.


In the spring of 1973, a Guide to the Macroscopic Estuarine and
Marine Invertebrates of the Delaware Bay Region was published by the
College of Marine Studies, University of Delaware, as Volume 5 of the
Delaware Bay Report Series. The purpose of the guide was to facilitate
the study of macroscopic estuarine and marine invertebrates of the
Delaware Bay region with particular emphasis on benthic organisms. It
contained a section on the Phylum Mollusca. Since the guide was published,
our ecological studies have considerably increased the collecting areas
of the former guide. As a result, we considered this a good opportunity
to refine and amend the original version of the Mollusca while including
species recently added to our collection.


Abstract. A fully coupled meteorology-chemistry model (WRF-Chem, the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with chemistry) has been configured to conduct quasi-global simulation for 5 years (2010–2014) and evaluated with multiple observation data sets for the first time. The evaluation focuses on the simulation over the trans-Pacific transport region using various reanalysis and observational data sets for meteorological fields and aerosol properties. The simulation generally captures the overall spatial and seasonal variability of satellite retrieved aerosol optical depth (AOD) and absorbing AOD (AAOD) over the Pacific that is determined by the outflow of pollutants and dust and the emissions of marine aerosols. The assessment of simulated extinction Angstrom exponent (EAE) indicates that the model generally reproduces the variability of aerosol size distributions as seen by satellites. In addition, the vertical profile of aerosol extinction and its seasonality over the Pacific are also well simulated. The difference between the simulation and satellite retrievals can be mainly attributed to model biases in estimating marine aerosol emissions as well as the satellite sampling and retrieval uncertainties. Compared with the surface measurements over the western USA, the model reasonably simulates the observed magnitude and seasonality of dust, sulfate, and nitrate surface concentrations, but significantly underestimates the peak surface concentrations of carbonaceous aerosol likely due to model biases in the spatial and temporal variability of biomass burning emissions and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) production. A sensitivity simulation shows that the trans-Pacific transported dust, sulfate, and nitrate can make significant contribution to surface concentrations over the rural areas of the western USA, while the peaks of carbonaceous aerosol surface concentrations are dominated by the North American emissions. Both the retrievals and simulation show small interannual variability of aerosol characteristics for 2010–2014 averaged over three Pacific sub-regions. The evaluation in this study demonstrates that the WRF-Chem quasi-global simulation can be used for investigating trans-Pacific transport of aerosols and providing reasonable inflow chemical boundaries for the western USA, allowing one to further understand the impact of transported pollutants on the regional air quality and climate with high-resolution nested regional modeling.


The leap in performance in state-of-the-art computer vision methods is attributed to the development of deep neural networks. However it often comes at a computational price which may hinder their deployment. To alleviate this limitation, structured pruning is a well known technique which consists in removing channels, neurons or filters, and is commonly applied in order to produce more compact models. In most cases, the computations to remove are selected based on a relative importance criterion. At the same time, the need for explainable predictive models has risen tremendously and motivated the development of robust attribution methods that highlight the relative importance of pixels of an input image or feature map. In this work, we discuss the limitations of existing pruning heuristics, among which magnitude and gradient-based methods. We draw inspiration from attribution methods to design a novel integrated gradient pruning criterion, in which the relevance of each neuron is defined as the integral of the gradient variation on a path towards this neuron removal. Furthermore, we propose an entwined DNN pruning and fine-tuning flowchart to better preserve DNN accuracy while removing parameters. We show through extensive validation on several datasets, architectures as well as pruning scenarios that the proposed method, dubbed SInGE, significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art DNN pruning methods.


Much of the interpretive scholarship on Paul Robeson has tended to focus on his art as it relates to politics, an imperative related no doubt as much to the social turn in the humanities as to the singer's own activist credentials. This article shifts the focus to art matters with the goal of gaining additional perspective on Robeson's early singing career in the 1920s by examining the contemporary practices of concert singing. The analysis focuses on three domains of practice pertaining to singing spirituals at concerts: the programming of spirituals in recital; arranging them for performance; and their vocal performance. I include a study of how Robeson's concert practice is indebted to that of the tenor Roland Hayes, proposing that a close listening to Hayes's singing sheds new light on the assessment of Robeson's early concert career and representations of the singer as racial subject.


Legal education is gradually moving away from the teaching of national law towards a more European, transnational, or even "global" way of teaching. This paper seeks to explain why an international legal education is to be preferred to a national curriculum and what this means for how law is taught and how law schools are ideally organised. The arguments for an international legal education lie in the increasing plurality of legal sources, the desire to attract students from a larger pool, and the need not only to give students a specialised professional training but also to prepare them for global citizenship. It is claimed students should be exposed to alternative ways of achieving justice, thus creating a dialogue with otherness. This can be done by a focus on the arguments behind the choices made by the relevant authorities and not on the doctrinal intricacies of national legal systems. This type of international curriculum, in which competing conceptions of justice are at the centre of attention, requires a specific teaching method. Two methods seem best suited to allow students to construct their own understanding of legal problems: problem-based learning (PBL) and the Socratic method. In addition, teaching law in an international setting forces us to think through the sequence in which the various jurisdictions come to the fore, the assessment of students and the use of teaching materials and language of instruction. Also discussed are the challenges for the law school as a whole, such as the relationship between teaching and research, the recruitment of faculty and the decreasing relevance of the traditional departmental structure.


Purpose
The vocalizations of young infants often sound nasalized, suggesting that the velopharynx is open during the 1st few months of life. Whereas acoustic and perceptual studies seemed to support the idea that the velopharynx closes for vocalization by about 4 months of age, an aeromechanical study contradicted this (Thom, Hoit, Hixon, & Smith, 2006). Thus, the current large-scale investigation was undertaken to determine when the velopharynx closes for speech production by following infants during their first 2 years of life.

Method
This longitudinal study used nasal ram pressure to determine the status of the velopharynx (open or closed) during spontaneous speech production in 92 participants (46 male, 46 female) studied monthly from age 4 to 24 months.

Results
The velopharynx was closed during at least 90% of the utterances by 19 months, though there was substantial variability across participants. When considered by sound category, the velopharynx was closed from most to least often during production of oral obstruents, approximants, vowels (only), and glottal obstruents. No sex effects were observed.

Conclusion
Velopharyngeal closure for spontaneous speech production can be considered complete by 19 months, but closure occurs earlier for speech sounds with higher oral pressure demands.


Continuous-Time Models in Corporate Finance synthesizes four decades of research to show how stochastic calculus can be used in corporate finance. Combining mathematical rigor with economic intuition, Santiago Moreno-Bromberg and Jean-Charles Rochet analyze corporate decisions such as dividend distribution, the issuance of securities, and capital structure and default. They pay particular attention to financial intermediaries, including banks and insurance companies.

 The authors begin by recalling the ways that option-pricing techniques can be employed for the pricing of corporate debt and equity. They then present the dynamic model of the trade-off between taxes and bankruptcy costs and derive implications for optimal capital structure. The core chapter introduces the workhorse liquidity-management model—where liquidity and risk management decisions are made in order to minimize the costs of external finance. This model is used to study corporate finance decisions and specific features of banks and insurance companies. The book concludes by presenting the dynamic agency model, where financial frictions stem from the lack of interest alignment between a firm's manager and its financiers. The appendix contains an overview of the main mathematical tools used throughout the book.

 Requiring some familiarity with stochastic calculus methods, Continuous-Time Models in Corporate Finance will be useful for students, researchers, and professionals who want to develop dynamic models of firms' financial decisions.


The present document formed the basis for a presentation by the author to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development of the House of Commons of Canada during a March 9, 2011, hearing on the situation in Honduras. After referencing the June 28, 2009, coup d' etat in Honduras, the author describes how the post-coup political situation led to the creation of two commissions – a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comision de la Verdad y de Reconciliacion, or CVR) given its mandate to investigate the "crisis" of June 28, 2009, by the current holder of the Honduran Presidency, Porfirio (Pepe) Lobo, and a Truth Commission (Comision de Verdad, or CV) given a mandate centred on both the coup and the post-coup human rights environment by a coalition of six Honduran human rights organizations. From his perspective as one of nine commissioners on Honduras' civil-society Truth Commission, the work of that commission is outlined in terms of the approach being taken to its research and analysis. Three central messages are then conveyed. First, the situation in Honduras since the coup has been one of human rights peril and, surprisingly as it may seem to some external observers, the situation may be getting worse in significant respects since the de facto, post-coup regime gave way in January 2010 to a President who emerged from an electoral process six months after the coup. Second, Honduras, other states, and the Organization of American States should think of the truth-seeking mandates of the two commissions in terms of a certain complementarity, as a result of which all actors should have the benefit of the reports of both commissions in order to allow broader, more informed, and more inclusive national and international deliberations on ways forward for Honduras. Third, each commission has its work cut out for it with respect to understanding the multiple ways in which the compromised state of the rule of law in Honduras is central to the problems of Honduras and in which transformation of that situation is central to any meaningful way forward for Honduras. Appendices include: a document tabled by Craig Scott in advance of the Standing Committee hearing, being a distillation into some 10 pages of an October 2010 6'2page report prepared by Reina Rivera Joya for the Dutch NGO, HIVOS/ Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation (Impunity in Honduras [Post Coup d'Etat June 28, 2009]: General Guidelines for Engagement ); and a document tabled by another hearing witness, Bertha Oliva of COFADEH / Comite de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos de Honduras, being another 1'2page distillation of a longer report just released by COFADEH in March 2011 (Report on the Human Right Situation in Honduras - January 2010 to January 2011). Both original documents were in Spanish and the English versions in Appendices 4 and 5 were translated by the translation services of the Parliament of Canada.


The regulation of the use and utilization of the outermost small islands in Indonesia has not been well ordered. The development of outermost small islands of inhabitant has not been fully adapted to the island's characteristics, namely the ecological conditions and the island's resources. The outermost small islands which are generally controlled by customary law or traditional community from generation to generation as inhabitant require recognition and determination of land rights by the Government. The Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning has established regulations on Land Arrangement in Coastal Areas and Small Islands , based on customary law of the structure of autonomous community/traditional community which was appointed as the basis of approach in arranging the granting of land rights on small islands. Land rights may be granted under customary law on the Tenure and Ownership of Small Islands by customary law/Traditional community, in the form of Communal Right and/or confirmed as Hak ulayat. Land rights (Communal Right or Hak Ulayat) are the basis for the authority of autonomous community/traditional community and local community as islander to use and utilize the island's land and its surrounding waters. The land rights of outermost small islands can be undertaken as the basis for establishing a business that can be registered, and can be contracted with investors in the use and utilization of their land rights with due regard to the carrying capacity of the environment and the sustainability of its natural resources. Keywords : characteristics, land rights of islanders, foreign investment.


Little is known about the healthcare experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) young adults (ages 18-24) and even less is known about LGB college students (ages 18-24). Helping LGB college students effectively access appropriate, sensitive healthcare has the potential to reduce negative long-term health consequences. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to describe the healthcare experiences of LGB college students (ages 18-24) in the local college community using community-based participatory research (CBPR). Three online synchronous focus groups and one online individual interview were conducted with 19 LGB college students between January and February 2011. The focus groups were segmented into lesbian (n = 7), gay (n = 7), and female bisexual (n = 4) groups. One male bisexual was interviewed individually. The mean age of the sample was 20.7 years (SD = 1.2, range = 19-24). The sample was predominately White non-Hispanic (85%). Qualitative content analysis was used to describe the healthcare experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual college students in the local community. One overarching theme (not all the same), one main theme (comfort during the clinical encounter), three sub themes (personalizing the clinical encounter, deciding to disclose and social stigma, and seeking support of selfidentified sexual orientation) and one preliminary sub theme (perceived confidentiality) emerged from the analysis. One major action emerged from the analysis and supported the development of the social network site (on Facebook) entitled: College Alliance Towards Community Health (CATCH). The mission of CATCH is to provide LGB college students in the local community with a comfortable forum to learn about various healthcare concerns of lesbian, gay, and bisexual college students. Additional implications for nursing practice and implications for further research in the LGB college community are addressed.


A highway stormwater runoff pollutant loading model has been developed based on results from composite sampling of approximately 600 storms at nine locations in the State of Washington over five years. The model expresses total suspended solids (TSS) loading in proportion to the product of highway segment length, average runoff coefficient, and vehicles traveling during storm periods. It was demonstrated that loadings of contaminants such as chemical oxygen demand, nutrients and trace metals could be estimated from TSS loadings using ratios derived from the data. The model described was developed and validated for assessing total loadings over a time span encompassing a number of storms (monthly or annually). To predict pollutant concentrations and loadings in runoff from a given storm, cumulative distributions were plotted and analyzed to determine the probability of exceeding specific concentration and loading values in a given case. Bioassay studies using highway runoff indicated toxicity to aquatic life when elevated metals deposition from high traffic volumes (in excess of 10,000 - 20,000 vehicles per day) or high metals concentrations in rainfall caused runoff concentrations to exceed lethal levels. Draining highway runoff through grass channels 60 meters in length greatly reduced TSS and metals concentrations and the consequent toxic effects. The major product of this research is a guide to assessing and mitigating the impacts of highway runoff to receiving waters.


The article is devoted to the research and development of quality evaluation methods of agro-industrial enterprises activity in the regional economy with the use of the ecological approach. The hypothesis of the study is that the activity of the economic entities (as well as of agribusiness) must be assessed not only in the context of economic efficiency and effectiveness, but also in the context of environmental ethics and environmental aggression. As the initial data, we have used the indicators of economic statistics of Russian agrarian-oriented regions, as well as the data received from management reporting on the sample of enterprises of three regions (the Belgorod and Moscow regions, Krasnodar Territory). The article offers the economic and mathematical approach for measuring the level of the environmental responsibility of agro-industrial enterprises on the basic formula of the Mandelbrot set and statistical indicator of Hurst. Our scientific contribution is the development of a modified methodology for assessing the quality of the activity of agro-industrial enterprises using the parameter characterizing the level of environmental ethics and environmental aggression of these entities. The main result of the study is the approbation of the method, which has shown its practical applicability and relative coherence with certain indicators of regional ecological statistics. The proposed method is characterized by the integration of the different mathematical approaches and as an adaptive assessment tool that can be used to assess the quality of the activity of both agro-industrial enterprises and enterprises of other industries and fields of the economy. In the further works, the authors plan to develop methodological approaches to the assessment of the quality of agro-industrial products. At the same time, the main attention will be paid to the ecological and social component of the quality


A 12-week study was carried out to determine the effect of dietary levels of discarded undefatted cashew kernel (DUCK) meal on feed digestibility and egg laying performance of layer chickens. The cashew kernel was toasted for about 10 minutes in hot iron pot. After toasting, it was allowed to cool and then milled into gritty floor, bagged and labelled DUCK meal. The DUCK meal was incorporated in layer concentrate-based diets at 4 levels (0, 50, 75 and 100 g/kg). In the digestibility trial, 12 hens were randomly assigned to the 4 dietary treatments with 3 replicates per treatment.  Known quantities of the experimental diets were weighed and supplied to the hens daily for 5 days. The faeces were collected in plastic sheet placed under the wire-mesh floor of the cages using the Total Collection Method. Samples of the experimental diets and faeces were subjected to proximate analysis and subsequently used for computing the nutrient digestibility. At 29 weeks of age, 120 ISA Brown layers were divided into 4 groups with 3 replicates per group comprising 10 hens per replicate in a Completely Randomized Design during the feeding trial. Feed and water were given ad libitum from 30 to 41 weeks of age. Data collected on nutrient digestibility, egg production and physical egg characteristics were subjected to ANOVA in GenStat.  Dry matter digestibility reduced (P 0.05), fat and ash digestibility improved with increasing levels of DUCK meal in the diet.  There was no significant (P>0.05) difference in all egg production parameters measured except for hen-day egg production. Birds fed diets containing 0 and 50 g/kg DUCK meal were similar (P>0.05) but higher (P 0.05) among treatment groups. The study concluded that DUCK meal in diets of laying chickens had no adverse effects on protein digestibility, improved fat and ash digestibility and had adverse effect on egg production beyond 50 g/kg dietary inclusion. Keywords:  cashew kernel, egg production, toasting, undefatted


We argue that the characterization of the financial turmoil in the European Monetary Union as merely a sovereign debt crisis is inaccurate insofar as the deterioration of public finances represents the culmination of a process: legal and institutional flaws laid the ground for a public debt crisis. The institutional failure was the embedding of a unified monetary policy accompanied by a failure to introduce a coordinated fiscal and labor policy. The latent consequences of these flaws were brought into full view with the onset of the Global Financial Crisis. There was a lack of real convergence between the countries of the core (Germany) and the periphery (especially Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, the so-called GIIPS.) This was exacerbated by the "one-size-fits-all" monetary policy, distorted fiscal policy, and the lack of a common approach to wage determination. In sum, instead of fostering learning and convergence, the asymmetric EMU design catapulted the GIIPS and Germany onto divergent growth paths, which ultimately translated into "destabilizing macroeconomic imbalances." This analysis will draw upon knowledge-production systems and learning theories in order to contribute to a deeper understanding of the EMU crisis. In particular, we take a contextualized approach by examining the path-dependent evolution of the EMU and how institutional failures have turned the GFC into a sovereign debt crisis.


This study examines the effect of cost of living (COL) on employee wages in the hotel industry. Although prior research clearly indicates that COL and wages are positively related, there is a lack of research explicitly considering the specific nature of the relationship between COL and wages, and potential moderators to the relationship. Using a dataset containing information on 97 jobs over 67 cities, our study shows that while there is a positive effect of COL on wages, the adjustment is not equal in magnitude to the difference that the COL levels would indicate. Furthermore, the effect of COL decreases as the average wage for the given job increases. We also show differences in COL's effects for full-service versus limited-service hotels. We illustrate the implications of our findings by showing predicted wage rates for four jobs in five different cities, at both full-service and limit-service hotels. The study has implications for research, particularly for future work on COL and compensation. The findings also have important implications for practice, and may be particularly useful when managers need to set pay levels when local market data are unavailable.


Nowadays, there has been an increasing application of pruning robots for planted forests due to the growing concern on the efficiency and safety issues. Power consumption and working time of agricultural machines have become important issues due to the high value of energy in modern world. In this study, different multi-layer back-propagation networks were utilized for mapping the complex and highly interactive of pruning process parameters and to predict power consumption and cutting time of a force control equipped robotic pruning machine by knowing input parameters such as: rotation speed, stalk diameter, and sensitivity coefficient. Results showed significant effects of all input parameters on output parameters except rotational speed on cutting time. Therefore, for reducing the wear of cutting system, a less rotational speed in every sensitivity coefficient should be selected.


Bletchley Park is the historic site of secret British codebreaking activities during World War II and birthplace of the modern computer. The work carried out there is said to have shortened WWII by two years saving possibly 22 million lives. The Park is now a museum, with a 26 acre site, many exhibitions and working rebuilds of machines such as the Colossus, a forerunner of today's computers, invented to mechanize codebreaking. The museum is staffed by a 75% volunteer workforce and is grossly underfunded compared to its historical importance. After a visit by Sue Black to Bletchley Park in July 2008 a campaign was launched to save it. A letter to the UK broadsheet newspaper The Times signed by 97 eminent UK computer scientists was published and highlighted in a BBC news broadcast. Following on from traditional media coverage a blog was established and then social media, particularly Twitter, which have been used to great effect to raise awareness and support for the campaign. Other Web 2.0 technologies including Facebook have also been used as part of the campaign. This paper explores the effectiveness of this approach, using statistical evidence as appropriate, highlighting how the use of social media has contributed greatly to campaign success. Since the Saving Bletchley Park campaign started, visitor numbers have increased along with public awareness of the contribution of the site to world heritage and the history of the computer. Campaign efforts have received national coverage on television, radio, and in the press and have contributed to the Park recently receiving £460K funding and potential further £4 million funding from the UK Heritage Lottery Fund.


The pace of global recovery remains weak. More than twelve months since the G-20 summit in Los Cabos, G-20 members are laboring their way towards "Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth" in a clouded world economic outlook, with the eurozone in a state of recession, a combination of policy stalemate and across the board fiscal consolidation constraining growth in the U.S., and emerging markets and developing countries experiencing a clear slowdown compared to their rapid pre-crisis expansion. A durable recovery that creates good jobs, which G-20 leaders agreed to cooperate for in September 2009, proves to be an elusive objective. Fiscal consolidation acts as a drag on economic recovery and the G-20's capacity to deliver on the growth and jobs agenda is questioned by its citizens. This calls for the G-20 members' commitment to a balanced and coordinated mix of policies and instruments, reflective of the state of their economies, which would gradually strengthen economic growth and promote macroeconomic stability. Responding to global and domestic priorities, Russia has placed growth and jobs at the core of the G-20 agenda within the fundamental question of what should be the main macroeconomic and financial policy requirements for growth.


Objectives: Social identity theory suggests that individuals strive for membership in positive groups. If the group's evaluation by others is particularly unfavourable, an individual may try to leave the group and join one which enjoys a more positive evaluation. However, recent studies show that football fans may be relatively impervious to external evaluations of their team. The present study was thus designed to investigate perceptions of social mobility to another team among highly identified fans.

Design: An online questionnaire was developed in which participants answered questions about team and group identity, changing allegiance to another team, and the circumstances in which they think this is acceptable.

Method: 256 participants were recruited by placing links to an internet questionnaire on supporters' websites and message boards. The questionnaire contained 86 items, most of which were answered on a 1-7 Likert-format scale.

Results: The results suggested that fans with high group identification rated fans who changed team allegiance significantly less trustworthy and reasonable, and more self-centred, than fans who were lower in group identity. Fans with high group identification also rated their partner, children, career and money significantly less important, whilst their football team was rated significantly more important.

Conclusions: Football fans' identification with their fellow group of fans may become so incorporated into self identity that supporters may not have the option of abandoning their team, but instead are creative in evaluating their fellow set of fans in a more positive light.


Mass-transport events are virtually ubiquitous on the modern continental slope and are also frequent in the stratigraphic record, but the potential they create for stratigraphic trapping within the sea-floor topography is not generally appreciated. Given the abundance of mass-transport deposits (MTDs), we should expect that many turbidite systems are so affected. The MTDs may be very large (volumes > 103 km3 [∼250 mi3], areas > 104 km2 [∼6250 mi2], thicknesses > 102 m [∼330 ft]), and they extensively remold sea-floor topography on the continental slope and rise. Turbidity currents are highly sensitive to topography; thus, turbidite reservoir distribution and geometry on the slope and rise are often significantly affected by subjacent MTDs or their slide scars. Turbidites may be captured within slide scars and on the trailing edges, margins, and rugose upper surfaces of MTDs; developed in accommodation when the mass movement comes to rest; or subsequently resulting from compaction or creep. The filling of such accommodation depends on the properties of the turbidity currents, their depositional gradient, and how they interact with basin floor topography. The scale of accommodation on top of MTDs is determined largely by the dynamics of the initial mass flow and internal structure of the final deposit, and it typically has a limited range of length scales. We present interpretations of a range of previously published and original case studies to illustrate the range of accommodation styles associated with MTD-related topography within the evacuated space of the slide scar, around and on top of the deposits themselves. In fact, several well-known deep-water outcrops probably represent examples of sedimentation influenced by MTDs. Hydrocarbon reservoirs in many slope settings may be controlled by the accommodation related to MTD topography. At the exploration scale, entire shelf margin and slope depositional systems may be contained within the scars evacuated on the upper slope by mass failure, whereas at the production scale, the rugosity on the top of MTDs creates widespread potential for stratigraphic trapping. The location, geometry, and property distribution of such reservoirs are closely controlled by the interaction of turbidity currents with the topography; thus, an understanding of these processes and their impact on slope stratigraphy is vital to reservoir prediction.


Montale in English. Edited by Harry Thomas. New York: Handsel Books, 2005. 247pp. $17 Eugenic Montale once wrote that what interested him most in art was its "second life," by which he meant the moment of "common consumption and misunderstanding" when a poem, painting, or piece of music unmoors itself from its formal aesthetic reception and heads "back into the streets" to become a part of life. On these terms we might think of translation as a particular and peculiar mode of the second life of art, a sort of halfway house between the ballroom and the bar. It is our good fortune that the second life of Montale's poetry in English has been nearly as long and as happy as its first life in Italian. In 1928, just three years after Montale's Ossi di Seppia appeared in Italy, T.S. Eliot published translations by Mario Praz in the Criterion. (Montale returned the favor by translating three of Eliot's poems for an Italian journal.) In the following decades, his poetry would find important friends in Irma Brandeis, James Merrill, and Bernard Wall, but it was Robert Lowell's inclusion of ten poems in his Imitations (1962) that secured Montale's place in the Anglophone imagination as the Italian poet of the twentieth century, the greatest since Leopardi, if not Petrarch. In the forty-odd years since Imitations, the efforts of a dedicated and distinguished coterie of Montaliste-William Arrowsmith, Jonathan Galassi, G. Singh, and Charles Wright at their head-have brought nearly the whole of Montale's oeuvre into English. Montale in English, a new anthology of Montale translations brilliantly conceived and executed by Harry Thomas, serves as both a catalogue of these efforts and an object lesson in the art and craft of translation. Montale in English includes poems from the whole of Montale's career. The poems of the so-called "High Season," which spans Ossi di Seppia (1925), Le occasioni (1939), and La bufera e altro (1956), comprise a whole literature unto themselves. Mythic in scope and metaphysical in concern, these poems never leave behind the low walls, salt air, and harsh sun of the Ligurian coastline. They are addressed throughout to a persistent and enigmatic other, often named Clizia (after Clitie, the forlorn of Apollo), whom critics have identified with Brandeis in life and Beatrice in art; other times, as here, she is simply called "you": You know: I have to give you up again and I can't. Each action, every shout jars me like a perfect shot, even the salt breeze that floods the wharves, and breeds the lightless spring of Sottoripa. Thomas has also wisely included a number of examples from among the retrobottega, the series of "back of the shop" poems that began, after a 15-year poetic silence, with Satura in 1971 and that continued to the poet's death ten years later. These are the poems-invariably described by critics as dry, ironic, and disillusioned-that Mentale liked to compare to a famous Italian magician's act, at the end of which the audience was invited backstage to see how the tricks were accomplished. Thomas claims as his principle to "let the reader see much of what there is to see" and this extends to his selection of translators as well as poems. Moniale in English brings together fifty-six poet-translators ranging from Edith Farnsworth and Samuel Beckett to Jeremy Reed and Jorie Graham, proving that if politics makes strange bedfellows, poetry makes them stranger still. And with a diversity of translators comes a diversity of styles. Thomas writes, "I have wanted to represent the range of kinds of poetic translation," and so he has given us everything from lineated trots to Lowell's imitations to Edwin Morgan's inspired Scots rendition of "Upupa": Peeweet, ye're a blithe-like birdie! …


Reconciliation between incest perpetrator and victim is rarely noted in the literature. The authors report their work with an uncle and niece who were able to reconcile many years after the incest had occurred. The niece entered treatment and initiated the confrontation and eventual reconciliation with her uncle. Only because he acknowledged the incest and his responsibility for it was reconciliation possible. Case histories, therapeutic issues, legal and ethical ramifications, and case management factors are presented. The authors offer this case history with the hope that their collaboration may generate some new ideas for others working toward reconciliation between victim and perpetrator.


Penzes et al. investigated the role of the EphB2 receptor, which has been implicated in synaptic plasticity and dendritic spine formation, and discovered a transynaptic pathway linking ephrinB to spine morphogenesis through the guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) kalirin. Dendritic spines, small protrusions that permit compartmentalization of input from excitatory synapses, show dynamic changes during development and in adulthood. In adults, changes in spine number, size, and shape have been associated with synaptic plasticity, learning, and aging. Kalirin can modulate Rac-1 regulation of the actin cytoskeleton and thus changes in spine morphology. The signals regulating kalirin activity, however, have remained unclear. Penzes et al. visualized cultured hippocampal neurons and showed that clustered ephrinB1 triggered the formation of spines, which made contacts with presynaptic terminals. The authors used Western analysis on kalirin immunoprecipitates in combination with immunocytochemical analysis to show that ephrinB1 stimulated kalirin phosphorylation and recruitment of kalirin clusters to synapses. The effects of ephrinB1 on spine morphology and kalirin clustering were inhibited by a dominant-negative mutant EphB2, which lacks kinase activity. Similarly, a GEF-inactive kalirin-7 mutant and a dominant-negative Rac-1 mutant both inhibited the effects of ephrinB1 on spine morphology. EphrinB1 treatment lead to activation (autophosphorylation) of the Rac-1 effector p21-activated kinase (PAK) and to clustering of phosphorylated PAK at synapses. Inhibiting PAK eliminated the effects of ephrinB1 on spine morphogenesis. These data suggest that clustering of presynaptic ephrinB leads to clustering and activation of postsynaptic EphB, kalirin recruitment, and rearrangement of the cytoskeleton mediated by Rac-1 and PAK. P. Penzes, A. Beeser, J. Chernoff, M. R. Schiller, B. A. Eipper, R. E. Mains, R. L. Huganir, Rapid induction of dendritic spine morphogenesis by trans-synaptic ephrinB-EphB receptor activation of the Rho-GEF kalirin. Neuron 37, 263-274 (2003). [Online Journal]


The objective of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of the anesthetic combination "Hellabrunne mixture" ("HM" = approximately 125mg xylazine/ml and 100mg ketamine/ml) on hamadryas baboons, as well as the influence of various drugs over the time it took the baboons to wake up (their "waking up phase") under practical conditions.
In order to remobilize the baboons, comparative studies were conducted using:
alpha2-specific antagonists atipamezole and yohimbine as well as the circulation stimulating drug etilefrine.
The "HM" proved to be a very safe and effective anesthetic, even when given in doses that were too low or when overdosed. None of the examined animals had any life threatening incidents. All of the measured physiological parameters were normal and remained stabile during anesthesia.
The three assayed accelerators used to remobilize the baboons (atipamezole, yohimbine, etilefrine) showed substantial differences in their effects.
Atipamezole caused the baboons to regain consciousness significantly faster than the other drugs. However, some of the animals that were administered atipamezole had catalepsis cramps during their waking up phase. These side effects can be explained most likely, by the fact that atipamezole only antagonizes the xylazine component of the "HM" which causes a relative overdose of ketamine.
Examining the effects of yohimbine administered i.m. (in contrast to the usual i.v. administration) yielded no substantial acceleration of remobilization. The same side effects were observed after administering atipamezole.
Similar to atipamezole, etilefrine also shortened the waking up phase significantly, but to a lesser extent than atipamezole. In contrast to atipamezole and yohimbine, no side effects were observed after administering etilefrine.
In summary, the i.m. administration of atipamezole and etilefrine proved to be suitable to shorten the waking up phase of hamadryas baboons after using "HM".
In contrast, yohimbine cannot be recommended, as noticeable side effects were evident and no significant acceleration of remobilization was observed.


[First paragraphs]
Eucalyptus L'Herit. is one of Australia's largest genera, with over 700 species (Brooker & Kleinig 1994).
Despite its importance in the Australian flora and in the Australian economy, numerous questions of systematic
relationships within the genus remain to be addressed.

The series Viminales (subgenus Symphyomyrtus)
contains about 40 species, is
characterised by markedly different
adult and juvenile foliage, and includes
Australia's most important temperate
hardwood plantation species (E. nitens,
E. globulus). Despite numerous morphological
studies and some chemical studies, the delimitation and subdivision of species within the series Viminales
remain problematic (Chappill & Ladiges
1996).

In cases where morphology has not
effectively resolved phylogenetic relationships
among taxa, chloroplast DNA
has frequently proved to be highly
informative at the species level and
above. By cutting the DNA with specific
enzymes, a 'fingerprint' of the cpDNA
can be constructed. A particular chloroplast
DNA 'fingerprint' is often referred
to as a 'haplotype' (a haploid genotype).


The finite response time of the turbocharger is the most notable effect oftransient operation on a turbocharged diesel engine. To fulfil future emission requirements high amounts of transient EGR will be required. This impliesthat advanced turbocharger systems have to be introduced to enable high boost pressures with improved or at least maintained response time. The increased amount of tunable parameters from the more advanced turbocharging system will make it difficult to optimise the engine experimentally. Therefore the wish is to optimise the engine numerically, however this is a difficult task which demands more knowledge within the field of modelling the gas exchange system and its components, which is the aim of the present work. Engine simulations have been performed in the 1-dimensional fluid dynamic code GT-Power for transient operation and validated with engine measurements. The turbine was modelled according to the state of the art which is via look-up tables with measured turbine performance data from a steady-flow rig and used under the assumption that the turbine behaves in a quasi-steady manner. Turbine performance data was also obtained via the semi-empirical turbine design software, Rital for comparison. A heavy-duty diesel engine has been modelled with two different gas exchange system configurations. The standard configuration with a single twin-entry turbine and a rebuilt gas exchange system including a two-stage turbocharging system and high pressure loop for EGR. The results shows that it is difficult to predict the performance of the gas exchange system and its components, especially the turbine performance. When trying to predict turbine performance under transient operation the difficulties added, compared to stationary operation are long scale transients as wall temperature gradients in the cylinder and the exhaust manifold which directly influences the amount of isentropic energy to the turbine. This makes it even more difficult to predict the isentropic exhaust gas energy content compared to stationary operation, which is difficult to measure and therefore to state how well the turbine model actually performs. However, even though it is difficult to predict engine performance in detail the models have proved to be useful for concept studies as a help in engine design.


Received: 1 June 2016 Abstract Accepted: 15 July 2016 Aligning resource choice and operations decision in the value chain (input-process-output) is one of the most important functions of a firm not only to make its operations to be competitively distinct but also very important for the firm's growth and survival. However, the role of competitively distinct operations in maintaining better performance in dynamic and changing business environment has remained unclear. Therefore, this paper examined the relationship between competitively distinct operations, high efficiency operations and operational performance (research model one). In the similar manner the relationship between turbulent business environments, operational performance and financial performance were also examined (research model two). The study was conducted considering survey responses from 61 small and medium size enterprises from Finland. Correlation test and structural path modelling was used to test and validate the proposed hypothesis and research model. The results showed that competitively distinct operation enables high efficiency operations, which influences operational performance positively and significantly. In the similar manner, operational performance influences financial performance positively and significantly. Likewise, turbulent business environment was found to have a negative impact on operational and financial performance. The research findings are found to be adequate enough to highlight the importance of aligning resource choice and operations decisions in reducing the impact of turbulent business environment on organizational performance.


Biofilms, i.e. multicellular microbial communities, are widely accepted as the predominating mode of prokaryotes living in nature. However, knowledge about this lifestyle is still limited, especially in Archaea. The present work focuses on the formation of archaeal biofilms by the extremely halophilic archaeon Halobacterium salinarum R1.

Surface adhesion of Hbt. salinarum R1 was monitored by phase contrast microscopy and quantified in a fluorescence-based adhesion assay, and demonstrated that abiotic surfaces were successively colonized by the cells. The formation of complex three-dimensional cell clusters with tower-like structures up to 25 µm in height was observed within 15 days by scanning electron microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy. Extracellular polymeric substances, i.e. a complex biofilm matrix containing extracellular DNA and glycosidic residues, was detected using suitable molecular probes, as well as a high viability of the biofilm cells. The sequence of events observed during the biofilm formation consisted of adhesion, accumulation and maturation. Adherent cells contained different types of cell surface structures, since filaments with two predominant diameters (7-8 and 10 nm) were observed. One of the diameters belongs to the archaellum, whereas the smaller one belongs to pili involved in adhesion.
The Hbt. salinarum R1 genome was searched for genes potentially associated with the synthesis of cell surface structures by bioinformatical analyses. Two gene loci, pil-1 and pil-2, putatively encoding type IV pilus-like structures were identified. It was demonstrated by RT-PCR that both loci were transciptionally active and cotranscribed. Moreover, qRT-PCR yielded 5.2- and 8.5-fold induction of the respective ATPase genes, pilB1 and pilB2, in adherent cells compared to planktonic cells. Deletion of the archaella ATPase gene, flaI, resulted in cells lacking the 10 nm filaments. These cells were non-motile but still showed the 7-8 nm appendages and strong adhesion. An additional deletion of pilB1 in a ΔflaI/ΔpilB1 mutant severely impaired the ability of the cells to adhere, which was reduced to 20% compared to the parental strain. In contrast, an additional deletion of pilB2 did not have further effects on adhesion. A search for genes encoding the filament subunits, i.e. pilins, yielded more than 30 candidates. Transcriptional analyses of the most likely candidates demonstrated differential expression of the genes in planktonic and adherent samples, with the genes pilA5, pilA6 and pilA7 showing 2.5- to 7.1-fold induction in initial biofilms.
A proteome analysis of the biofilm formation was performed investigating planktonic as well as initial and mature biofilm cells of Hbt. salinarum R1. A molecular differentiation of the protein pattern was already observed by SDS-PAGE in samples derived from biofilms after one day compared to planktonic cells. Employing label-free mass spectrometric SWATH-LC/MS/MS analysis a high coverage of the predicted proteome was achieved, reflected by 1629 different proteins identified and 1464 proteins quantified (63.2% and 56.8% of the total proteome, respectively). A relative quantification was performed, showing between 55 and 245 proteins strongly altered (> 2-fold) when two of the cellular states were compared. 882 proteins showed statistically significant abundance changes, correspoding to 60.8% of the quantified proteins and 34.2% of the total proteome, respectivly, reflecting the high diversity of the processes affected. The relative changes detected ranged between 195-fold increase of an uncharacterized glutamine-rich alkaline protein (OE3542R) and 22.8-fold decrease of ribonucleoside-diphosphate reductase subunit beta (NrdB1). The most striking effects were observed with proteins involved in energy conversion, as well as proteins acting in nucleotide-, amino acid- and lipid metabolism. In addition, proteins associated with protein biosynthesis and cellular processes like cell motility and signal transduction were strongly affected. The proteomic data of selected proteins was validated by qRT-PCR transcriptional analyses.

This work represents the first comprehensive description of haloarchaeal biofilm formation using the example of Hbt. salinarum R1.