We present an investigation into the feasibility of implementing an electronic medical referral application for short-term surgical missions in rural Guatemala, where the local infrastructure does not support the demand for the surgery. An electronic referral application was implemented for Android smartphones and tablets which allowed the input, aggregation, and secure transmission of patient information that is currently collected on paper forms during surgical missions. The user interface and SMS text message-to-database feature allowed case management data to be entered and transmitted in real time. The referral application was piloted over a 3-day period with a collaborating NGO during a short-term surgical mission in rural Guatemala and was compared to the current standard-of-care paper medical record. This study also assessed the cell phone access and use of community attendees to identify the potential for communication with patients in an integrated electronic referral system. Participants in this study included nine medical mission staff members who used the referral application during the pilot, eight of whom took an end-user survey, 53 patients whose medical information was entered into the referral application, and 93 local attendees who participated in a community survey on cell phone usage. Overall, end-users expressed positive opinions of the application, which they found relatively easy to use. Data loss using the application was minimal in comparison to a 17% permanent data loss of paper records, and the electronic medical records had high internal validity. Widespread cell phone use among community attendees suggests an opportunity to expand the referral application to further improve the surgical referral process.


The number of people who, at a certain point during their career, assume responsibilities as a project manager is increasing every year. Yet, we know little about the reasons why people want to become project managers, how they become project managers, and the ways in which they perceive their job once they have become project managers. In the current qualitative study, we conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews, using a multisource approach, from the perspectives of both project managers (n = 31) and direct supervisors of project managers (n = 21) from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Our results indicate that project managers tend to be drawn into the field by their enterprising interests, and mainly "roll into their profession" knowing little about possible career paths, and experience multiple positive and negative aspects of their jobs. Reflections on the outcomes are discussed, and practical implications for individuals considering a career in project management and their working organizations are given.


Every year I lead a group of health care leaders on a study trip of medical and other organisations in Seattle, an American city with a rich and diverse health care economy. This year the trip threw up some interesting comparisons between our two nations' health systems, and helped to shed light on the current situation facing the NHS. Our multinational group – five doctors and a mix of senior NHS leaders – were all looking for ways to apply learning from the exemplar sites in Seattle to their own organisations. On the trip we spent half a day at Group Health, a member-owned, integrated care organisation similar to Kaiser Permanente that successfully commissions and provides services for 600,000 members. We learned how the organisation uses transparency together with strong leadership and support structures to focus on the four 'pillars' of patient experience, staff satisfaction, quality of care and financial balance. Here we learned the value of the daily 'huddle', in which key staff come together for a five minute focus on the goals of the day. This was done every day – and on some wards, every hour. It was amazing to see such a complex organisation manage itself so successfully with very simple routine processes. At the Everett Clinic, which employs more than 300 primary care and specialty care doctors, we explored how to give feedback and manage clinicians' variation in practice. The Clinic's annual appraisal system taught us valuable lessons to take forward with our own GP consortia around feedback to peers. This included peer feedback on working relationships with colleagues, patient satisfaction, and productivity measures based on individual performance and compared to agreed performance targets. It seems that Seattle has embraced the concept of improving productivity and quality through these austere times. At three different medical centres – the Virginia Mason Medical Center (VMI), the Veterans' Affairs, and the Harborview Medical Center – we witnessed lean practices being introduced to reduce tasks or remove steps that do not add value. In each case, frontline staff identified work processes that could be standardised across teams and organisations. For example, in the outpatient clinic at VMI, patients do not sit in waiting rooms, but are greeted by a receptionist, handed a clipboard with the consultation room location and then allowed to walk right in. This approach has enabled the clinic to reduce the time spent taking patients to rooms and to spend more time with the patients who needed treatment. We found it incredibly valuable to experience these health systems first-hand – and we could dive as deep as we wanted into the organisations, allowing us to test our assumptions and thinking. In particular, all the organisations we visited showed just how serious they were in keeping the patient at the centre of everything. It is a lesson we would do well to bring back into the UK.


With a point of departure in fieldwork conducted among Muslims connected with – or inspired by – the Naqshbandiyya Sufi tariqa in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan, this paper focuses on the paradoxes involved in realizing Sufism as virtue ethics. Through a continuous work on the self the Naqshbandis seek to approach God as well as to realize Sufism as this-worldly virtue ethics. What stands out as central in their experience of this process, however, is neither the encounter with the Divine, nor their own ethical perfection. Rather, it is insistent feelings of vulnerability, doubt and imperfection and a sense of being further and further away from the ideals of Sufism the more they seek them or seek to realize them. The paper will focus on these paradoxes – paradoxes which may be general to Sufism as such, or which at least lie as a potential in Sufism as well as other religious traditions which seek to realize transcendent ideals in an imperfect world, but which are accentuated in a context like the post-Soviet one: Here they are tied to the historical experience of loss related with the Soviet years as well as the social upheavals following the breaking up of the Soviet Union.


New data on non-agaricoid wood-inhabiting basidiomycetes collected from dead wood in the Central Forest Nature Reserve are provided. In total, 228 species were recorded during short-term visits in 2009–2015, of which 37 are reported as new to the reserve. An annotated species list is presented including details of associated substrata and, when available, personal fungarium specimen numbers. The paper increases the total number of species reported for the reserve and provides notes on specimens belonging to the genus Phlebiella , which is probably an undescribed species. Records of some rare, or rarely collected species, such as Antrodiella foliaceodentata, Basidiodendron radians, Phlebiella fibrillosa and Tulasnella eichleriana are discussed.


Education is BIG BUSINESS! Stakeholders are many—governments and governors, parents and students, employers and corporations, communities and nations—all with their own agendas, demands and expectations. The business surrounding education is hidden from public view, but is integral to education and student learning. Above and Beyond the Bottom Line:The extraordinary evolution of the education business manager provides insights into the dynamic evolution and exponential expansion of education business and the rise of the education business manager—now an indispensable member of educational leadership teams. No longer is the business manager an invisible back-office employee who balances the books. The role is highly complex and accountable and the scope of the work wide-ranging and changeable. Education business managers are professionals holding knowledge, skills and ideas that increase organisational capacity, viability and provision and enable other educational leaders to focus on learning and teaching. Building on research from around the world, this book fills a huge gap in our understandings about educational leadership in its most comprehensive sense, while discussing current issues and considerations for the future. Above and Beyond the Bottom Line will be an invaluable resource for business managers from all education settings—schools, universities, kindergartens, training colleges—and their professional associations; educational leaders and councillors; education policymakers; advisors and auditors; and scholars and researchers interested in finding out about the extraordinary developments occurring behind the scenes in educational leadership, management and administration.


This study investigates the feasibility of applying state of the art deep learning techniques to detect precancerous stages of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) cancer in real time to address the challenges while diagnosing SCC with subtle appearance changes as well as video processing speed. Two deep learning models are implemented, which are to determine artefact of video frames and to detect, segment and classify those no-artefact frames respectively. For detection of SCC, both mask-RCNN and YOLOv3 architectures are implemented. In addition, in order to ascertain one bounding box being detected for one region of interest instead of multiple duplicated boxes, a faster non-maxima suppression technique (NMS) is applied on top of predictions. As a result, this developed system can process videos at 16-20 frames per second. Three classes are classified, which are 'suspicious', 'high grade' and 'cancer' of SCC. With the resolution of 1920x1080 pixels of videos, the average processing time while apply YOLOv3 is in the range of 0.064-0.101 seconds per frame, i.e. 10-15 frames per second, while running under Windows 10 operating system with 1 GPU (GeForce GTX 1060). The averaged accuracies for classification and detection are 85% and 74% respectively. Since YOLOv3 only provides bounding boxes, to delineate lesioned regions, mask-RCNN is also evaluated. While better detection result is achieved with 77% accuracy, the classification accuracy is similar to that by YOLOYv3 with 84%. However, the processing speed is more than 10 times slower with an average of 1.2 second per frame due to creation of masks. The accuracy of segmentation by mask-RCNN is 63%. These results are based on the date sets of 350 images. Further improvement is hence in need in the future by collecting, annotating or augmenting more datasets.


Recent advances in energy harvesting have been intensified due to urgent need of portable, wireless electronics with extensive life span. The idea of energy harvesting is applicable to sensors that are placed and operated on some entities for a long time, or embedded into structures or human bodies, in which it is troublesome to replace the sensor module batteries. Such sensors are commonly called "self-powered sensors."The idea of energy harvesting is applicable to sensors that are placed and operated on some entities for a long time, or embedded into structures or human bodies, in which it is troublesome or detrimental to replace the sensor module batteries. Such sensors are commonly called" self-powered sensors." The energy harvester devices are capable of capturing environmental energy and supplanting the battery in a stand-alone module, or working along with the battery to extend substantially its life. Vibration is considered one of the most high power and efficient among other ambient energy sources, such as a solar energy and temperature difference. Piezoelectric and electromagnetic devices are mostly used to convert vibration to ac electric power. For vibratory harvesting, a delicately-designed power conditioning circuit is required to store as much as possible of the device-output power into a battery. The design for this power conditioning needs to be consistent with the electric characteristics of the device and battery to achieve maximum power transfer and efficiency. This study offers an overview on various power conditioning electronic circuits designed for vibratory harvester devices and their applications to self powered sensors. Comparative comments are provided in terms of circuit topology differences, conversion efficiencies and applicability to a sensor.


Silega Expedition™ is a business simulation that places participants in a challenging and inspiring experience of climbing Mount Everest in order to win a prize offered by an eccentric millionaire. Time is crucial; they must reach their goal in just a month. Participants work and compete in teams of 5 or 6. Together they have to make decisions about how to work together, how to use their personal strengths, which route to take, what equipment to use, and what risks to run. This program includes an enhanced multimedia experience with original video footage from the mountain and special effects. Everest has always been the supreme symbol of man's personal struggle to achieve excellence, no matter the conditions. Succeeding on Everest depends totally on spirit, discipline, and will. And as in real life, there are only two possible results: success or failure.


Recent research in Cameroon, Ghana and Tanzania has revealed major drivers of rural livelihood transformations and local development. Thanks to improved connectivity, greater mobility and better rural-city connections, rural people are diversifying their livelihoods and transforming agricultural production systems. This has created rural non-farm labour opportunities, which in turn stimulates positive socioeconomic dynamics in the regions. But it has also triggered challenges. Without government support for large-scale investment in infrastructure and regional planning, not everyone benefits to the same extent. Positive government-led measures could foster local and regional development in sub-Saharan Africa — recognising that livelihood transformation and mobility dynamics are essential not only to individual households but to society at large.


Clemency is an extrajudicial measure intended both to enhance fairness in the administration of justice, and allow for the correction of mistakes. Perhaps nowhere are these goals more important than in the death penalty context. The recent increased use of the death penalty and concurrent decline in the number of defendants removed from death row through clemency call for a better and deeper understanding of clemency authority and its application. Questions about whether clemency decisions are consistently and fairly distributed are particularly apt. This study uses 27 years of death penalty and clemency data to explore the influence of defendant characteristics, political factors, and clemency's structure on clemency decisions. The results suggest that although a defendant's race and ethnicity did not influence clemency, gender did play a role, as women were far more likely than their male counterparts to receive clemency. Analyses of political and structural factors point in different directions. Political factors such as the timing of gubernatorial and presidential elections and a governor's lame-duck status did not systematically influence clemency. However, how states structure clemency authority did make a difference. Clemency grants were more likely in states that vest authority in administrative boards than in states that vest authority in the governor. Regionality and time were also important as clemency grants were less likely in southern states and declined after 1984. Overall, these mixed results contribute to a critique that clemency decisions are arbitrary and inconsistent. Thus, important questions regarding fairness that plague earlier aspects of the death penalty process persist to its final stage.


GLEN ROBINSON'S suggestion' that courts should award damages to persons exposed to toxic substances before any disease occurs and without proof of causation of injury in the traditional sense is not merely an idle theoretical proposal; it is the direction in which the law of "toxic torts" is now moving. To be sure, as yet few courts have been willing openly to jettison traditional causation requirements. Rather, the change is being accomplished indirectly under the guise of damages for "cancerphobia," 2 reimbursement for the costs of future "medical monitoring,"3 judicially stimulated settlements, a and reimbursement for loss of property values.5 Together these trends add up to courts and juries straining to nullify the unrealistic hurdle that allowed victims of toxic substances poisoning to


Objective: To evaluate the role of the oxidant and antioxidant balance in the pathogenesis and prognosis of non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis (non-CF BE) in children. Materials and Methods: Twenty-nine children with non-CF BE were enrolled between June 2009 and October 2010. Thirty healthy children were enrolled as controls. Paraoxonase 1 (PON1), total oxidant status (TOS), and total antioxidant status (TAS) serum levels were measured in controls and in patients when stable and at acute exacerbation. Results: PON1 and TAS levels were lower in patients at acute exacerbation than in controls (P= 0.05 and P= 0.01, respectively). TOS levels indicative of oxidative stress were higher, and TAS/ TOS levels were lower, in immune-deficient patients than control group (P= 0.008 and P= 0.01, respectively). TAS levels and PON1/ TOS ratio were significantly lower in patients with moderate–severe bronchiectasis than in patients with mild bronchiectasis (P= 0.043 and P= 0.03, respectively). Conclusion: Oxidative stress was increased and antioxidant capacity decreased in patients with non-CF BE during the exacerbation period. Antioxidant treatment in patients with non-CF BE, especially in patients with immunodeficiency and/or with moderate–severe bronchiectasis, could be helpful to reduce the frequency and severity of the attacks by reducing oxidative stress-induced damage, ultimately contributing to a better prognosis.


While RFID systems are one of the key enablers helping the prototype of pervasive computer applications, the deployment of RFID technologies also comes with new privacy and security concerns ranging from people tracking and industrial espionage to produ ct cloning and denial of service. Cryptographic solutions to tackle these issues were in general challenged by the limited resources of RFID tags, and by the formalizations of RFID privacy that are believed to be too strong for such constrained devices. It follows that most of the existing RFID-based cryptographic schemes failed at ensuring tag privacy without sacrificing RFID scalability or RFID cost effectiveness. In this thesis, we therefore relax the existing definitions of tag privacy to bridge the gap between RFID privacy in theory and RFID privacy in practice, by assuming that an adversary cannot continuously monitor tags. Under this assumption, we are able to design sec ure and privacy preserving multi-party protocols for RFID-enabled supply chains. Namely, we propose a protocol for tag ownership transfer that features constant-time authentication while tags are only required to compute hash functions. Then, we tackle the problem of product genuineness verification by introducing two protocols for product tracking in the supply chain that rely on storage only tags. Finally, we present a solution for item matching that uses storage only tags and aims at the automation of safety inspections in the supply chain.The protocols presented in this manuscript rely on operations performed in subgroups of elliptic curves that allow for the construction of short encryptions and signatures, resulting in minimal storage requirements for RFID tags. Moreover, the privacy and the security of these protocols are proven under well defined formal models that take into account the computational limitations of RFID technology and the stringent privacy and security requirements of each targeted supply chain application.


U.S. Courts and scholars are debating the existence and scope of a "trademark use" prerequisite for infringement liability, but the discussion has lacked a proper grounding in the common law and the legislative history of the Lanham Act. This article undertakes to fill that gap. The article first evaluates the common law of technical trademark infringement and unfair competition as it existed and developed from the late 1800's to 1946, when the Lanham Act was enacted, and demonstrates that the law imposed a form of "trademark use" limitation on both the technical trademark infringement and the unfair competition (trade name infringement) cause of action. Having identified the trademark use limitation in the common law, the article then considers whether the Lanham Act codified it. Through use of the Lanham Act's legislative history, the article demonstrates three different ways in which the Lanham Act can be understood to have incorporated the common-law trademark use limitation: 1) through the "use in commerce" language in the infringement provisions, coupled with the Lanham Act § 45 definition of "use in commerce;" 2) through the phrase "on or in connection with" in the registered and unregistered mark infringement provisions; and 3) through implicit incorporation of the common law, even without any express statutory language to that effect. Finally, the article discusses how the trademark use requirement should be understood and defined in modern contexts. The article reviews the policy justifications for imposing the trademark use limitation, and discusses the flexibility that courts enjoy in construing and applying statutes that undertake to codify common-law doctrine. It then describes three basic characteristics of a modern trademark use limitation, based on public policy considerations and the doctrine's historic formulation: To make a potentially infringing "trademark use," the infringement defendant must apply the allegedly infringing word or symbol in a manner: 1) that consumers can perceive with their senses; 2) that closely, directly associates the word or symbol with products or services that the defendant is advertising, selling or distributing to consumers; and 3) that is likely to make a separate commercial impression on consumers.


The modelling of welds is desirable to predict the distortion of components during manufacture, the position and magnitude of peak residual stresses and to predict metallurgical effects in specific regions. Welds are a complex modelling problem requiring both thermal and structural solutions. This has lead to the development of several weld-specific simulation packages and codes for finite element analysis packages. This paper describes the application of the newly developed Abaqus 2D Weld Modeller to simulate the residual stress field in ferritic weld test specimens. The specimens were manufactured for an ongoing research programme in conjunction with The University of Manchester and Serco Assurance. The specimens modelled were autogenously welded plates, an eight-pass groove welded plate and a seven-pass ring weld disk. The 2D weld GUI simplified the creation of these models, particularly with its automated selection of surfaces to apply heat transfer equations to and the model change requirements for weld bead deposition. The results are similar to both measured and previously modelled stress distributions. Simulations have been performed using a number of tools including Abaqus and VFT. Measurements have been made by The University of Manchester using neutron diffraction. The results are broadly similar, but there are noticeable differences in the fusion zone/weld bead area due to the lack of phase transformation modelling. Phase transformation introduces compressive stress in the fusion zone due to the crystallographic expansion as the steel grains transform from face-centred cubic to body-centred cubic. This compressive region also creates a balancing tensile stress region in the heat-affected zone.


Intelligent assistants that support human communication need to respect the difficulty of understanding the context surrounding the interchange. Rather than attempting to directly communicate for a user, intelligent assistants should support decision making on the part of the involved parties so that complex social negotiations are preserved. We describe an intelligent assistant that does this for instant messaging called Nomatic*Gaim.


To review at 18 years-old the results of surgery and follow-up of children born in our hospital with unilateral cleft lip and palate (uCLP). They were operated at the time by the same surgeon, following the same primary surgical procedure (Malek).
Retrospective cohort study.
Tertiary Children's Hospital.
All children born with uCLP between 1996 and 2001 and operated in our hospital. Syndromic children were excluded.
Results of the primary surgery, ear-nose-throat interventions, maxillo-facial surgery and final phonatory results.
Seventy-nine files of children born with a cleft were reviewed: 34 were taken into consideration for uCLP: 15 right and 19 left. They were operated in two stages, following the inverse Malek procedure. Sixty per cent had a fistula. Eighty-eight percent had grommets. Ninety-seven percent had an alveolar graft at a median age of nine (5-10) and 22% underwent a Le Fort osteotomy. Seven percent were operated for a pharyngeal flap, 29% for a secondary lip surgery at a mean age of 12.8 and 29% for a late rhinoplasty at a mean age of 14.8 years. A median of 5.7 multidisciplinary consultations was realized with a median number of general anesthesia of 7.1 (4-13).
This retrospective study shows that the Malek procedure for children born with uCLP is related to a high risk of fistula but good long-term phonatory results. Twenty percent of children were operated for a Le Fort procedure and one-third for a secondary lip procedure and rhinoplasty.


Techniques for applying graphics processing units (GPU) to the general-purpose non-graphics computations proposed in recent years by the companies ATI (AMD FireStream, 2006) and NVIDIA (CUDA: Compute Unified Device Architecture, 2007) have given an impetus to developing algorithms and software packages for solving problems of diffractive optics with the aid of the GPU. The computations based on the wide-spread Ray Tracing method were among the first to be implemented using the GPU. The method attracted the attention of the CUDA technology architects, who proposed its GPU-based implementation at the conference NVISION08 (2008). The potential of this direction is associated both with the research into the general issues of mapping of the Ray Tracing method onto the GPU architecture (involving the use of various grid domains and trees) and with developing dedicated software packages (RTE and Linzik projects). In this work, a special attention is given to the overview of techniques for the GPU-aided implementation of the FDTD (finite-difference time-domain) method, which offers an instrument for solving problems of micro- and nano-optics using the rigorous electromagnetic theory. The review of the related papers ranges from the initial research (based on the use of textures) to the complete software solutions (like FDTD Software and FastFDTD).


Racial profiling and the disproportionate use of police force are controversial political issues. I argue that racial bias in the use of force increases after relevant events such as the shooting of a police officer by a black suspect. To examine this argument, I design a quasi experiment using data from 3.9 million time and geocoded pedestrian stops in New York City. The findings show that two fatal shootings of police officers by black suspects increased the use of police force against blacks substantially in the days after the shootings. The use of force against whites and Hispanics, however, remained unchanged, and there is no evidence for an effect of two other police murders by a white and Hispanic suspect. Aside from the importance for the debate on racial profiling and police use of force, this research reveals a general set of processes where events create intergroup conflict, foreground stereotypes, and trigger discriminatory responses.


Objective: To assess the interobserver reliability of the main periarticular and intra-articular ultrasonographic pathologies and to establish the principal disagreements on scanning technique and diagnostic criteria between a group of experts in musculoskeletal ultrasonography. Methods: The shoulder, wrist/hand, ankle/foot, or knee of 24 patients with rheumatic diseases were evaluated by 23 musculoskeletal ultrasound experts from different European countries randomly assigned to six groups. The participants did not reach consensus on scanning method or diagnostic criteria before the investigation. They were unaware of the patients' clinical and imaging data. The experts from each group undertook a blinded ultrasound examination of the four anatomical regions. The ultrasound investigation included the presence/absence of joint effusion/synovitis, bony cortex abnormalities, tenosynovitis, tendon lesions, bursitis, and power Doppler signal. Afterwards they compared the ultrasound findings and re-examined the patients together while discussing their results. Results: Overall agreements were 91% for joint effusion/synovitis and tendon lesions, 87% for cortical abnormalities, 84% for tenosynovitis, 83.5% for bursitis, and 83% for power Doppler signal; κ values were good for the wrist/hand and knee (0.61 and 0.60) and fair for the shoulder and ankle/foot (0.50 and 0.54). The principal differences in scanning method and diagnostic criteria between experts were related to dynamic examination, definition of tendon lesions, and pathological v physiological fluid within joints, tendon sheaths, and bursae. Conclusions: Musculoskeletal ultrasound has a moderate to good interobserver reliability. Further consensus on standardisation of scanning technique and diagnostic criteria is necessary to improve musculoskeletal ultrasonography reproducibility.


The wave of free access to law movement hit Zimbabwe leading to the establishment of the Zimbabwe Legal Information Institute (ZimLII). This was started with the help of African Legal Information Institute (AfricanLII) which sourced funds to kick start the project and then held training workshops to equip the people who will be working with the administrator. There is a steering committee which comprises of academics, lawyers, publishers, information technologists and librarians from various organisations. This board is chaired by the Director of Legal Resources Foundation. This led to the creation of a website and content has been uploaded to populate the site. The website is up and running and an administrator was employed to oversee the day to day running of the website and its maintenance. This paper is an account of the opportunities and challenges that has been faced by the institute. The major challenge was the issue of sustainability in terms of non availability of funds to continuously support the project. The ZimLII project can be regarded as one of the successful initiative towards the availability of legal information to the general public since there are plans to make it a one stop shop for those looking for such information.


The Graphical Object Query Language (GOQL) is a graphical query language that complies with the ODMG 3.0 standard and runs on top of the o2 DBMS. GOQL provides users with the User's View (UV) and the Folders Window (FW), which serve as the foundation upon which end-users pose ad-hoc queries. The UV is a graphical representation of any underlying ODMG scheme. Among its advantages is that it hides from end-users most of the perplexing details of the object-oriented database model, such as methods, hierarchies and relationships. To achieve this, the UV does not distinguish between methods, attributes and relationships, it encapsulates the hierarchies and it utilises a number of desktop metaphors whose semantics can be easily understood by end-users. The FW is a condensed version of the UV and provides the starting point for constructing queries. We demonstrate the UV and the FW and discuss GOQL's system architecture, its various components and the way these components interact to generate the UV and the FW and to provide an ad hoc query construction mechanism. We also present the screen interface of the language.


As a follow-up to the discovery of a new family of Fe-based superconductors, namely, the RE4Fe2As2Te1-xO4 (42214) (RE = Pr, Sm, and Gd), we present a detailed ab initio study of these compounds highlighting the role of rare-earth (RE) atoms, external pressure, and Te content on their physical properties. Modifications of the structural, magnetic, and electronic properties of the pure (e.g., x = 0.0) 42214 compounds and their possible correlations with the observed superconducting properties are calculated and discussed. The careful analysis of the results obtained shows that (i) changing the RE atoms allows one to tune the internal pressure acting on the As height with respect to the Fe planes; (ii) similarly to other Fe pnictides, the 42214 pure compounds show an antiferromagnetic-stripe magnetic ground state phase joined by an orthorhombic distortion (not experimentally found yet); (iii) smaller RE atoms increase the magnetic instability of the compounds possibly favoring the onset of the superconducting state; (iv) external pressure induces the vanishing of the magnetic order with a transition to the tetragonal phase and can be a possible experimental route towards higher superconducting critical temperature (T-c); and (v) Te vacancies act on the structural parameters, changing the As height and affecting the stability of the magnetic phase.


Classical reverse-mode automatic differentiation (AD) imposes only a small constant-factor overhead in operation count over the original computation, but has storage requirements that grow, in the worst case, in proportion to the time consumed by the original computation. This storage blowup can be ameliorated by checkpointing, a process that reorders application of classical reverse-mode AD over an execution interval to tradeoff space vs. time. Application of checkpointing in a divide-and-conquer fashion to strategically chosen nested execution intervals can break classical reverse-mode AD into stages which can reduce the worst-case growth in storage from linear to sublinear. Doing this has been fully automated only for computations of particularly simple form, with checkpoints spanning execution intervals resulting from a limited set of program constructs. Here we show how the technique can be automated for arbitrary computations. The essential innovation is to apply the technique at the level of the language implementation itself, thus allowing checkpoints to span any execution interval.


The first results of particle-in-cell simulations of the electrostatic sheath and magnetic pre-sheath of thermionically emitting planar tungsten surfaces in fusion plasmas are presented. Plasma conditions during edge localized modes (ELMs) and during inter-ELM periods have been considered for various inclinations of the magnetic field and for selected surface temperatures. All runs have been performed under two assumptions for the sheath potential drop; fixed or floating. The primary focus lies on the evaluation of the escaping thermionic current and the quantification of the suppression due to the combined effects of space-charge and Larmor gyration. When applicable, the results are compared with the predictions of analytical models. The heat balance in the presence of thermionic emission as well as the contribution of the escaping thermionic current to surface cooling are also investigated. Regimes are identified where emission needs to be considered in the energy budget.


We propose and demonstrate a fiber-based phase-only filtering technique for programmable optical pulse shaping, in which the filtering operation is implemented in the time domain by means of an electro-optical (EO) phase modulator. The technique has been applied for generating customized ultrahigh-repetition-rate optical pulse sequences (>40 GHz) from single input pulses by driving the EO phase modulator with a periodic electronic waveform (RF tone). The generated output pulses are replicas of the input pulse and both the repetition rate and the envelope profile of the generated sequences can be controlled and tuned electronically using this approach.


A series of α-Fe2O3 nanostructures with different morphologies (hollow ellipsoids, nanocups, and octahedra) have been synthesized through a simple one-pot additive-free liquid–liquid interfacial reaction. The as-synthesized nanostructures were characterized using XRD, TEM, HR-TEM, SAED, N2 adsorption–desorption isotherms and other techniques. The results indicated that the solvent ratio of n-octanol to deionized water, concentration of reactants and reaction temperature play important roles in preparing different α-Fe2O3 sample morphologies. n-Octanol was assumed to have multiple functions: it acted as a solvent and surfactant, and formed a liquid–liquid interface with water. The morphologies, sizes and magnetic properties of the α-Fe2O3 microstructures were researched, and a gas sensor based on the α-Fe2O3 sample with hollow ellipsoids presented a favorable response to acetone.


Compared with single-crystal X-ray diffraction, extracting structural data from X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) seems meaningless for minerals with an available single crystal, such as alkali feldspar. However, alkali feldspar is highly abundant on Earth, and the feldspar structure is important in geology. Thus, the potential of extracting structural parameters from powder diffraction data collected using conventional Bragg–Brentano XRPD (BB-XRPD) with Cu K α radiation is worthy of exploration. BB-XRPD may be the most extensively used instrument in the laboratory and has a major advantage in terms of cost and convenience. Accordingly, by combining the Rietveld method with the General Structure Analysis System (GSAS) of BB-XRPD, a microcline structure in a natural feldspar sample with two minor impurities was refined for the first time. To extract high-quality structural data, a formula related to Si/Al–O bond lengths and Si/Al occupancies in terms of the crystal structure database and a new model are sequentially presented. The reliability of the structural data for such a low-symmetry phase as microcline is discussed and established by comparison with published single-crystal data.


This paper presents some new results on the price discovery process in both the Canadian and U.S. 10-year Government bond markets using high-frequency data not previously analyzed. Using techniques introduced by Hasbrouck (1995) and Gonzalo-Granger (1995), we look at the relative information content of cash and futures prices in the market for Canadian Government bonds using futures market data from the Montreal Exchange and OTC cash market data reflecting the inter-dealer market covered by CanPx. We also analyze similar data from the US market over a somewhat longer period using data on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) futures market as well as the cash market from GovPx in the first part of the sample and subsequently from BrokerTec. In general, we find that relatively more price discovery occurs in the futures markets than the cash markets in both Canada and the U.S. and that the results look remarkably similar across the two countries despite the large differences in the sizes of their markets and in their characteristics, particularly on the cash side. These overall results, however, hide the fact that information shares for the U.S. futures markets declined throughout 2004-05 apparently as a result of improvements in the spot market BrokerTec platform. Day-to-day variation in price discovery information shares is related to bid-ask spreads, trading volumes, and realized volatility in the markets but there remains much unexplained.


Motivated by applications to online advertising and recommender systems, we consider a game-theoretic model with delayed rewards and asynchronous, payoff-based feedback. In contrast to previous work on delayed multi-armed bandits, we focus on multi-player games with continuous action spaces, and we examine the long-run behavior of strategic agents that follow a no-regret learning policy (but are otherwise oblivious to the game being played, the objectives of their opponents, etc.). To account for the lack of a consistent stream of information (for instance, rewards can arrive out of order, with an a priori unbounded delay, etc.), we introduce a gradient-free learning policy where payoff information is placed in a priority queue as it arrives. In this general context, we derive new bounds for the agents' regret; furthermore, under a standard diagonal concavity assumption, we show that the induced sequence of play converges to Nash equilibrium with probability $1$, even if the delay between choosing an action and receiving the corresponding reward is unbounded.


Image stitching allows users to combine multiple regular-sized photographs into a single wide-angle picture, often referred to as a panoramic picture. To create such a panoramic picture, users traditionally first take all the photographs, then upload them to a PC and stitch. During stitching, however, users often discover that the produced panorama contains artifacts or is incomplete. Fixing these flaws requires retaking individual images, which is often difficult by this time. In this paper, we present Panoramic Viewfinder, an interactive system for panorama construction that offers a real-time preview of the panorama while shooting. As the user swipes the camera across the scene, each photo is immediately added to the preview. By making ghosting and stitching failures apparent, the system allows users to immediately retake necessary images. The system also provides a preview of the cropped panorama. When this preview includes all desired scene elements, users know that the panorama will be complete. Unlike earlier work in the field of real-time stitching, this paper focuses on the user interface aspects of real-time stitching. We describe our prototype, individual shooting modes, and an implementation overview.


Mechanically strong hydrogels have attracted much interest as a result of their potential applications as biomaterials. However, it is still a challenge to produce mechanically strong supramolecular hydrogels because of the inherently weak characteristics of non-covalent interactions. A novel polyurethane–urea supramolecular hydrogel with excellent mechanical properties was developed in our laboratory by chance during the preparation of a water-borne dispersion of polyurethane with an excess amount of –NCO groups. Subsequent studies showed that this mechanical strength was because of the slow formation of multi-urea linkages and further chain extension because of the reaction of water with the excess –NCO groups in the isocyanate prepolymer chains or the free diisocyanate, or both. The mechanical properties of the polyurethane–urea supramolecular hydrogels obtained can be adjusted by simply altering the diisocyanate content. The following ranges of properties were obtained: shear modulus, 0.2–0.8 MPa; elongation at breakage, 970–2420%; tensile strength, 3.3–34 MPa; and compression stress, up to 38 MPa. Further analysis showed that the elongation ratio and tensile stress at breakage linearly decreased and increased, respectively, with an increase in the ratio of the hard segment.


We report the use of sum- and difference-frequency generation for two-dimensional upconversion time gating. Using difference-frequency generation, which can provide gain as well as upconversion (as an optical parametric amplifier), we have imaged through a scattering medium with an attenuation of exp(−25), using 1 mJ of energy from a single laser pulse.


This thesis consists of four self-contained essaysEssay 1 (with Nils Gottfries) investigates why unemployment is so persistent in Europe. We formulate an efficiency wage model with on-the-job search where wages depend on turnover and employers may use information on whether the searching worker is employed or unemployed as a hiring criterion. We show theoretically that ranking of job applicants by employment status affects both the level and the persistence of unemployment and numerically that these effects may be substantial. More prevalent ranking in Europe compared to the US (because of more rigid wage structures etc.) could potentially help to explain the high and persistent unemployment in Europe.Essay 2 investigates the consequences of skill loss as a result of unemployment in an efficiency wage model with turnover costs and on-the-job search. Firms are unable to differentiate wages and therefore prefer to hire employed searchers or unemployed workers who have not lost human capital. It is shown that if some fundamental factor in the economy changes, this will result in a lengthy adjustment process with substantial long run unemployment effects. Moreover, the model is capable of generating persistence but the amount depends on the duration of the shock itself.Essay 3 considers the optimal hiring strategy of a firm that is unable to observe the productive abilities of all its applicants. Whom the firm considers as hireable, will depend crucially on the extent to which the firm can use its wage setting to mirror productivity differences. However, when setting its wages the firm has to consider other factors as well, e.g. turnover, that may make it optimal not to set wages that fully reflect productivity differences. Instead, it may be optimal to avoid hiring workers that have certain characteristics; i.e. to use a discriminatory hiring strategy. In the paper it is shown that discrimination based on employment status is an equilibrium hiring strategy even when the firm is free to set different wages for workers with different expected productivities. It is also shown that if all firms use such hiring procedures this will have strong implications for the aggregate economy and welfare.Essay 4 (with Jonas Lagerstrom) investigates whether being unemployed per se reduces the probability to get contacted by a firm. We use Swedish data from the Applicant Database (Sokandebanken), which contains both employed and unemployed workers who search for a new job. The key advantage with this dataset is that we have access to the same information as firms have when they choose whom to contact. Our results indicate that an unemployed worker faces a lower probability to get contacted by a firm and receives fewer contacts over the sample period. These findings support the claim that firms view employment status as an important signal for productivity.


This paper analyzes the rhetoric of a manuscript written in Budapest immediately after the Holocaust to record the personal experiences of the author, Margit K. I examine the text in terms of the role of writing and narration in processing trauma and how these appear in the narrative. In her memoirs, Margit K. had imbued her personal history of persecution with meanings that facilitated their integration into her life history and her self-definition. She chose to narrate her tragic past using euphemistic, mitigating, or ironic language and constructed her stories to have positive outcomes while attempting to write as little of the pain and tragedy of her persecution as possible. The euphemizing narrative methods used in the memoirs disappear entirely in the diary and the themes discussed in the diary are also different, which shows the advantages of constructing a desired past within the genre of the memoirs in contrast to the more strictly defined genre of diary-writing.


This report is a summary of 2008 farm business data collected from 25 fruit farm businesses located in western New York State. Apples are the predominant fruit crop. The data are presented as averages for all 25 farms. The business analysis includes a balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, and several financial and production analyses for the farms. Also included are blank columns for the user to enter his or her own farm data for comparison purposes.


The representations of the symposium in the Greek funerary paintings recall the habit of meeting and being together, practiced also in the colonies of the West. During these moments, that had a strong social and political relevance, the people, linked by friendship and common interests, drank wine in the presence of male or female players.
The figurative themes belong to common representations that were widespread in the ancient Mediterranean. They would seem to refer to happiness after death and to the continuation of life in all its happy and positive aspects. The images are projected beyond death where a serene and youthful humanity prepares to reach a state of happiness in the afterlife. This happiness consists essentially in prolonging the pleasures of the earthly symposium, where the gift of Dionysos joins with the singing and the music.
This imagerie connected with the idea of happiness in the afterlife seems to be the background of the musical scenes represented in the graves of Magna Grecia. It is exceptional evidence of paintings, which helps us to understand how music is the greatest pleasure, even after death.


During recent years, new software engineering paradigms like component-based software engineering and COTS-based development have emerged. Both paradigms are concerned with reuse and customisation of existing components. The use of COTS software has become more and more important in state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice software and system development. Using COTS software promises faster time-to-market, which can yield substantial advantages over competitors with regards to earlier placement of a new product on a market. At the same time, COTS software introduces risks such as unknown quality properties of the COTS software in use that can inject harmful side effects into the final product. In this paper, we present a brief comparison of well-known COTS evaluation methods. Our work is focused on identifying the main goals and features of the methods in order to extend their uses on evaluating COTS products as well as COTS development processes.


We examine the question of when and how parametric models are most useful in reinforcement learning. In particular, we look at commonalities and differences between parametric models and experience replay. Replay-based learning algorithms share important traits with model-based approaches, including the ability to plan: to use more computation without additional data to improve predictions and behaviour. We discuss when to expect benefits from either approach, and interpret prior work in this context. We hypothesise that, under suitable conditions, replay-based algorithms should be competitive to or better than model-based algorithms if the model is used only to generate fictional transitions from observed states for an update rule that is otherwise model-free. We validated this hypothesis on Atari 2600 video games. The replay-based algorithm attained state-of-the-art data efficiency, improving over prior results with parametric models.


Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist, humorist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor, and in a 72-year career he illustrated a staggering, record number of cartoons--50,000. Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) was the most famous cartoonist and humorist of his time, possibly of all time. He worked in just about every medium, starting out as a vaudeville entertainer, hosting his own radio show, his own television program, created his own animated cartoons, wrote screenplays, short stories, poems and a novel. Known primarily for his cartoon inventions which were syndicated in daily newspapers throughout the world, Rube described his machines as a "symbol of man's capacity for exerting maximum effort to achieve minimal results," and believed most people went about things the hard way rather than using a more simple and direct path to accomplish their goals. The Art of Rube Goldberg is being created with complete access to the vast archives held at the Library of Congress, the Bancroft Library in the University of California, Berkeley and the Estate, and includes an overview of his entire career, from his very first drawing at age twelve to his later sculptures, as well as his iconic inventions and Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoons. Also included are rare photographs, letters, memorabilia and patents, many reproduced here for the first time. Rube Goldberg also wrote multiple autobiographical essays throughout his career and was extensively interviewed in the press and on radio and television. The Art of Rube Goldberg will include copious extracts from these primary sources so we can read about Rube in his own words. Also included are essays by noted comic historians, each with a unique take on Rube Goldberg and each writing about a different aspect of his varied career. Brilliantly designed and packaged to capture the inventiveness of Rube Goldberg's work, The Art of Rube Goldberg is a coffee table book for die-hard fans, casual fans and fans of all ages.


The Eurozone crisis has constituted one of the most dramatic events in the history of the European Union (EU), and has been the reason for an extensive overhaul of the EU operating framework (particularly for the Eurozone). The first Eurozone Member State to resort to the then ad hoc EU-IMF financial assistance cooperation was Greece, opening the door of the Eurozone to the IMF and, simultaneously, to the further integration of the Economic and Monetary Union. Today, of the five Eurozone Member States that eventually requested EU-IMF financial assistance (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Cyprus), Greece is the only one still receiving assistance. Despite the importance of the case of Greece, further contributions can be offered to the existing scholarship in relation to the specifics and modalities of the assistance programs and their transference within the Greek ordre public, something otherwise mostly absent from the field. The aim of this article is to provide a detailed analysis of the Greek crisis from its beginning in late-2009 until today, and investigate how exactly the measures assumed in the context of financial assistance unfolded.


: Competitive interactions may affect distribution and abundance of mobile organisms, such as the intertidal herbivorous gastropods Littorina littorea and L. obtusata , in areas of resource overlap. We examined intra-and interspecific competition between US New England populations by measuring effects of snail density and food availability on growth rates and abundances. We investigated mechanisms of interference, including resistance (phlorotannin) induction of fucoid algae, and impacts of snail presence, waterborne cues, and mucus on herbivory. L. obtusata density increased significantly within fucoid canopies following repeated (every 12 h for 3 d) removal of L. littorea at both study sites. In the laboratory, L. obtusata growth rate was lower in the presence of L. littorea , but not in the presence of conspecifics. In contrast, L. littorea abundances were not strongly affected by its congener, and growth rates were similar under varying L. obtusata densities and food supply. Instead, L. littorea demonstrated intraspecific effects under limited food and higher snail densities. While herbivory by L. littorea was not diminished on Fucus vesiculosus grazed by L. obtusata , fronds of F. vesiculosus and Ascophyllum nodosum grazed by L. littorea were less palatable to L. obtusata , indicative of asymmetric competition. Reduced herbivory by L. obtusata in the presence of L. littorea or its waterborne cues indicate that these forms of interference negatively influence L. obtusata . Coexistence of these species may be due to re new ability of resources and the ability to change location, allowing the competitively inferior L. obtusata to maintain modest abundances within perennial fucoid canopies.


The development of heart pulse instruments rapidly fast in market since 21st century. However, the heart pulse detector is expensive due to the complicated system and it is used widely only in hospitals and clinics. The project is targeting to develop a significant photosensor to the medical fields that is easy to use and monitor their health by the user everywhere. The other target is to develop a comfortable instrument, reliable, accurate result to develop of heart pulse using low cost photosensors. This project involved both hardware and software with related to signal processing, mathematical, computational, formalisms, modeling techniques for transforming, transmitting and also for analogue or digital signal. This project also used Peripheral Interface Controller (PIC) 16F877A microcontroller as the main function to control other elements. Result showed this project functioned smoothly and successfully with overall objectives were achieved. Apart from that, this project give good services for people to monitor their heart condition form time to time. In the future, wireless connection e.g. Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and Zigbee would be developed to make the system more reliable to the current world. Furthermore, the system should be compatible to various environments such as Android based OS so that it can be controlled away from the original location.


Despite the relevance of trade credit as a source of business financing, the topic is far from being considered exhausted, especially because there is no general and integrated theory explaining the causes and consequences of trade credit. Our research aims to contribute towards the literature that studies the determinants for granting and receiving trade credit. In this sequence, the present study seeks to empirically test some theories about the reasons why companies grant and receive commercial credit. For this purpose we apply a fixed effect model to a panel of 11 040 Portuguese industrial companies, of which 360 are large companies and the majority 10 680 are Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) for the period between 2003 and 2009. We conclude that large companies (with greater access to credit market) serve as financial intermediaries to their clients with less access to finance. In addition, it was observed that the supplier companies use trade credit as a legal means of price discrimination. Finally, financially constrained enterprises, especially in times of financial crisis, use commercial credit as an alternative source of funding, endorsing the hypothesis of substitution between trade credit and bank credit.


Forests account for about one-third of the total land area of the world (FAO 2010). They are essential for human wellbeing and have an important role in mitigating and adapting to climate change and ensuring the provision of crucial ecosystem services. While considerable attention has been devoted to advancing sustainable forest management (SFM) and forest conservation, deforestation and forest degradation continue in many locations and pressures on forestlands increase threatening the provision of forest-based goods and services. The sustainable management of forests is vital for achieving sustainable development and it is a critical element in advancing forest-related local development and poverty reduction in rural areas.


Tracing the birth of Denver and its sister cities Colorado Springs and Pueblo, this book recounts an important chapter in the transformation of the United States from a nation of traditional agricultural communities to a modern, urban, industrial society. Standing at the intersection of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains, Denver shaped the regional economy that grew out of the discovery of gold in 1858. As Denver grew, Colorado Springs and Pueblo developed economic niches to complement the metropolis. Challenging the idea that front-range entrepreneurs acted as conduits for outside dollars, Kathleen Brosnan explores the sources of their capital and how they invested it across the region, showing how they remained independent of the outside economy for over forty years. Market values influenced the region, but farmers, miners, state officials, and others created regulatory schemes and other quasi-legal systems to advance the interests of local communities vis-a-vis larger corporate interests. By linking widely separated ecosystems in the urban-based economy of the Front Range, Brosnan notes, entrepreneurs created irrevocable environmental change and restructured the relations of the region's inhabitants with the land and with each other. Hispanic and Native American people who had lived in Colorado since long before the gold rush found themselves marginalised or displaced, foreshadowing the subsequent surrender of regional industries to the Goulds, Guggenheims, and Rockefellers by the early twentieth century.


Law enforcement in England and the United States are facing unique challenges. Racial inequality creates complex social problems that are not totally understood by either the police or the public they serve. The needs of marginalized communities are being met with unique responses from both countries that need to be analyzed for their impact especially on public opinion. Additionally, lack of scholarly work discussing local-level law enforcement such as Sheriff's departments in America and rural officers in England is creating a hole in academic understanding of the entire law enforcement picture. The public's perception of professionalism and crime safety in rural areas is not well explored.


E-government applications have to archive data or documents for long retention periods of 100 years or more. This requires to store digital data on stable media, and to ensure that the file formats can be read by available software. Both applications as well as media technology have only short life spans. Thus, data has to be migrated at frequent intervals onto new data carriers and to new file formats. However, original file versions usually need to be retained permanently. In terms of cost, stability and technology independence, microfilm storage offers a promising solution for off-line storage. This paper reports on a feasibility study analysing encoding techniques that allow digital data to be saved onto microfilm, testing data recovery as well as cost issues.


: This publication analyses opportunities for development of Bulgarian industrial manufacturing in conditions of dynamic self-changing competitive environment during the period 2015 – 2018. A comparative analysis is done for different industrial sectors with purpose to determine the trends in their development and to identify the opportunities for improvement of their production activity. Actual statistical data are used and different methods for the existing information analysis. The specific of development in the leading sectors in Bulgarian economy are identified. In addition, a comparative analysis is implemented as well as a classification of different industrial sectors on the base of Index of industrial production is created. The results show that the realized production of Bulgarian industrial enterprises during the considered period increase. This is a reason to search favourable opportunities for their further sustainable development and competitive location on the internal and external markets. Some fundamental problems and barriers in the industrial enterprises are considered, that obstruct the fast temps of their developments and are presented some appropriate decisions. The current publication put the beginning of a more depth investigation of the effectiveness of the industrial enterprises, their capacity utilization, as well as the development and introduction of different types of innovation decisions that will be implemented during the next two years in the range of a doctoral thesis in the field of the same problematics and researching analogical problems in the more comprehensive aspect..


Several proposals for component-based development methods have started to appear. However, the emphasis is still very much on the development of components as opposed to the development with components. The main focus is on how to generate ideal reusable components not on how to plug existing components and specify their interactions and connections. The concept of a coordination contract (Andrade and Fiadeiro 1999; Andrade and Fiadeiro 2001; Andrade, Fiadeiro et al. 2001) has been proposed to specify a mechanism of interaction between objects based on the separation between structure, what is stable, and interaction, what is changeable. This separation supports better any change of requirements, as contracts can be replaced, added or removed dynamically, i.e. in run-time, without having to interfere with the components that they coordinate. A coordination contract corresponds to an expressive architectural connector that can be used to plug existing components. In this paper we integrate the concept of a coordination contract with component-based development and show how coordination contracts can be used to specify the connectors between components.


Study Design: Only research studies published in peer-reviewed journals in the last two decades and published in the English language were included. Studies centered on surgical or pharmacological interventions were not included. To examine the strengths and weaknesses of these studies, the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) scale and Sackett's levels of evidence were used. Objectives: The aim of this paper is to analyze literature published in the past two decades, which explores the effects of stretching when used to reduce spasticity and increase range of motion in children with spastic cerebral palsy (CP), as well as to address the effects of manual versus positional stretching as provided by physical therapists. Background: Physical therapists believe we can decrease joint degradation due to abnormal posture, as well as increase mobility and independence with a focus on the reduction of spasticity during posture and gait. A consensus in current literature seems to be that passive stretching is used widely to reduce spasticity in children with CP, but without scientific evidence to provide a justification for its use or to dictate the conditions in which to administer this treatment. Methods and Measures: The literature search for stretching in children with CP was conducted using the following key words: stretching, positioning, serial casting, spasticity, range of motion, cerebral palsy, and children. The following databases were used: Academic Search Complete, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, PEDro, Pubmed, ScienceDirect, SCOPUS, and SPORTDiscus. Results: A total of 13 articles on stretching in children with cerebral palsy were found from the years 1990 to 2011. Two individual studies were found in which manual stretching was the intervention. Nine individual studies were found in which positional stretching was the intervention, four of which serial casting was the intervention. Two systematic reviews exist in the last two decades that explore the effect of stretching in children with CP, however, neither encompass all of the studies reviewed in this paper nor do they discuss serial casting as a form of positional stretching. Conclusion: Taken together, the individual studies using positional stretching and the small randomized controlled trial using electrical stimulation in addition to manual stretching led to better outcomes for reducing spasticity and increasing passive range of motion compared to manual stretching alone.


Background In 2011 the NGO "AntiAIDS-Siberia" estimated the cost-effectiveness of the complex HIV programme among the IDU in Barnaul. Tasks: to assess the prevalence of HIV, HCV, related risk behaviour among the PP clients and comparison group; to assess and compare the cost of PP, ART and HCV treatment. Methods descriptive and analytical method of epidemiological analysis of HIV sickness rate; bio-behavioural survey among the IDU in Barnaul, 2011; mathematical analysis of HIV treatment costs in compliance with the standards. Results Different preventive components such as voluntary counselling and testing, social and medical support of the IDU, condom and injecting equipment distribution and safe skills building have been implemented in Barnaul. The average cost of HIV-prevention programme among the IDU in Barnaul is $35000 per year. At the average 1500 IDU are covered by PP per year, so the average expenditure for PP is $23 per 1 client. Average annual cost of ART per patient is $11356, cost of HCV treatment (Pegasys + Ribavirin) - $19000. According to the results of bio-behavioural survey 3 out of 150 PP clients are HIV positive (2%), 121 (80.7%) have HCV. In comparison group 31 out of 150 have HIV (20.7%), 130 (86.7%) have HCV. If we extrapolate from the data to all IDU covered by PP in 2011, we can conclude that PP help to prevent 280 IDU from infecting HIV and HCV. It saves $3000000 per year in the budget, which are needed to provide ART and HC treatment. At an average 1 HIV IDU infects 4 partners during a year. Prevention of 1120 cases saves $3000000 per year in the budget which is needed to provide ART. Conclusion Preventive programmes cost the government much lower than HIV and HCV treatment and can be considered rather effective.


By introducing a compactness lemma and considering a constrained variational problem, we obtain a set of steady waves for Hasegawa-Mima equation, which describes the motion of drift waves in plasma. Moreover, we prove that is a stable set for the initial value problem of the equation, in the sense that a solution which starts near will remain near it for all time.


Wind-blown sand flow is the basic phenomena that have profound influences on the environment, and the experimental study on the velocity distribution of the sand particles is very important for the understanding of this phenomena. Among the various experimental techniques, particle tracking velocimetry (PTV for short) is one that attracts more and more attentions. In this paper, an algorithm based on the Self-Organizing Maps network is established for PTV in a wind-blown sand flow, and the processing results by the algorithm prove its ability to capture the characteristics of the concerning flow field.


The purpose of this research was to obtain knowledge about volunteers' conceptions of developing intercultural communication competence in an intercultural learning context in East Africa. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with volunteers both face-to-face and virtually on the Internet. The material was processed according to the second order perspective in a phenomenographic research approach. Based on the volunteer's conceptions three qualitatively different categories of description emerged illustrating that development of ICC is promoted by intercultural encounters wherefore intercultural and socio-cultural dimensions should be taken into consideration. The theoretical framing constitutes the base for the interpretation of the result and is discussed further in relation to previous research in the area of ICC. The volunteers' conception of the phenomenon reveals that the development of ICC occurs through interaction and is a life-long learning process influenced consciously and unconsciously by experience, personal development and communicative skills.


Preface. List of Contributors. SECTION I CANCER SYSTEMS. 1 A Path to Knowledge: from Data to Complex Systems Models of Cancer (Sylvia Nagl). 1.1 Conceptual foundations: biological complexity. 1.2 A taxonomy of cancer complexity. 1.3 Modelling and simulation of cancer systems. 1.4 Data standards and integration. 1.5 Concluding remarks. 2 Theory of Cancer Robustness (Hiroaki Kitano). 2.1 Robustness: the fundamental organizational principle of biological systems. 2.2 Underlying mechanisms for robustness. 2.3 Intrinsic features of robust systems: evolvability and trade-offs. 2.4 Cancer as a robust system. 2.5 Therapy strategies. 2.6 A proper index of treatment efficacy. 2.7 Computational tools. 2.8 Conclusion. 3 Developing an Integrated Informatics Platform for Cancer Research (Richard Begent). 3.1 Background. 3.2 The challenge. 3.3 The UK National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) informatics platform. 3.4 Developing the informatics platform. 3.5 Benefits of the platform. 3.6 Conclusions. SECTION II In silico MODELS. 4 Mathematical Models of Cancer (Manish Patel and Sylvia Nagl). 4.1 Growth models. 4.2 A very brief tour of cellular automata. 4.3 Angiogenesis models. 4.4 Treatment response models. 4.5 Dynamic pathways models. 4.6 Other models. 4.7 Simulations of complex biological systems. 4.8 Concluding remarks. 5 Some Mathematical Modelling Challenges and Approaches in Cancer (Philip Maini and Robert A. Gatenby). 5.1 Introduction. 5.2 Multiscale modelling. 5.3 Tumour vascular modelling. 5.4 Population models. 5.5 Conclusion. 6 Computer Simulation of Tumour Response to Therapy (Georgios S. Stamatakos and Nikolaos Uzunoglu). 6.1 Introduction. 6.2 Tumour growth simulation. 6.3 Radiotherapy response simulation. 6.4 Chemotherapy response simulation. 6.5 Simulation of tumour response to other therapeutic modalities. 6.6 Simulation of normal tissue response to antineoplastic interventions. 6.7 Integration of molecular networks into tumour behaviour simulations. 6.8 Future directions. 7 Structural Bioinformatics in Cancer (Stephen Neidle). 7.1 Introduction. 7.2 Macromolecular crystallography. 7.3 Molecular modelling. 7.4 Conclusions. SECTION III In vivo MODELS. 8 The Mouse Tumour Biology Database: an Online Resource for Mouse Models of Human Cancer (Carol J. Bult, Debra M. Krupke, Matthew J. Vincent, Theresa Allio, John P. Sundberg, Igor Mikaelian and Janan T. Eppig). 8.1 Introduction. 8.2 Background. 8.3 Database content. 8.4 Data acquisition. 8.5 Using the MTB database. 8.6 Connecting the MTB database with related databases. 8.7 Summary. 9 Bioinformatics Approaches to Integrate Cancer Models and Human Cancer Research (Cheryl L. Marks and Sue Dubman). 9.1 Background. 9.2 The MMHCC Informatics at the outset of the programme. 9.3 Initial NCI bioinformatics infrastructure development. 9.4 Future directions for informatics support. 9.5 Summary. SECTION IV DATA. 10 The FAPESP/LICR Human Cancer Genome Project: Perspectives on Integration (Ricardo Brentani, Anamaria A. Camargo, Helena Brentani and Sandro J. De Souza). 10.1 Introduction. 10.2 The FAPESP/LICR Human Cancer Genome Project. 10.3 An integrated view of the tumour transcriptome. 10.4 Summary. 11 Today's Science, Tomorrow's Patient: the Pivotal Role of Tissue, Clinical Data and Informatics in Modern Drug Development (Kirstine Knox, Amanda Taylor and David J. Kerr). 11.1 Introduction. 11.2 A new national strategy for the provision of tissue annotated with clinical information to meet current and future needs of academic researchers and industry. 11.3 The NCRI National Cancer Tissue Resource for cancer biology and treatment development. 11.4 A potential future world-class resource integrating research and health service information systems and bioinformatics for cancer diagnosis and treatment. 11.5 A proposed information system architecture that will meet the challenges and deliver the required functionality: an overview. 11.6 Consent and confidentiality: ensuring that the NCTR is embedded in the UK's legal and ethical framework. 11.7 Concluding remarks: future challenges and opportunities. SECTION V ETHICS. 12 Software Design Ethics for Biomedicine (Don Gotterbarn and Simon Rogerson). 12.1 The problem: software and research. 12.2 Risk identification. 12.3 Biomedical software example. 12.4 Is an ethical risk analysis required? 12.5 Details of SoDIS. 12.6 A SoDIS analysis of the biomedical software example. 12.7 Conclusion. 13 Ethical Issues of Electronic Patient Data and Informatics in Clinical Trial Settings (Dipak Kalra and David Ingram). 13.1 Introduction. 13.2 Ethical aspects of using patient-identifiable health data. 13.3 Legislation and policies pertaining to patient-identifiable health data. 13.4 Using anonymized and pseudonymized data. 13.5 Protecting personal health data. 14 Pharmacogenomics and Cancer: Ethical, Legal and Social Issues (Mary Anderlik Majumder and Mark Rothstein). 14.1 Introduction. 14.2 Getting pharmacogenomic tests and drugs to market. 14.3 Cost and coverage issues. 14.4 Ethical challenges of pharmacogenomics. 14.5 Conclusion. Index


Praise for Engage! "It's no longer an era of business as usual. Executives and entrepreneurs must embrace new media in order to not only compete for the future, but for mind share, market share, and, ultimately, relevance. This book helps you engage. Without it, you're competing for second place." Mark Cuban, owner, Dallas Mavericks; investor; entrepreneur; and Chairman, HDNet "Affinity is personal and emotional. Without personifying the company and what it symbolizes, it's difficult for customers to connect with your brand. The concepts from this book can help your brand engage in a way that inspires communities to extend your message, promise, and reach." Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com "The power of the top-down, A-list influencer is winding down. Now brands must engage on a direct-to-many basis. Social media makes this possible, and Solis makes this happen. Read his book or be left in the dust." Guy Kawasaki, cofounder, Alltop "Social media is changing everything about the way people relate socially, in commerce, and in politics. Engage! gets you up to date regarding current trends and technology, and shows you how to build a serious social media strategy. It's the real deal." Craig Newmark, founder, Craigslist.com "Before Solis, I was cluelessly competing in the attention economy of the twenty-first century. Solis's Engage! provides me with the intellectual capital to build relevancy amidst our cacophonous culture. This book is worth its weight in attentionthe digital gold of the twenty-first century." Andrew Keen, author of the international hit Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture


Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) are popular multi-class classification algorithms. Prototypes in an LVQ system represent the typical features of classes in the data. Frequently multiple prototypes are employed for a class to improve the representation of variations within the class and the generalization ability. In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of LVQ in an exact mathematical way, aiming at understanding the influence of the number of prototypes and their assignment to classes. The theory of on-line learning allows a mathematical description of the learning dynamics in model situations. We demonstrate using a system of three prototypes the different behaviors of LVQ systems of multiple prototype and single prototype class representation.


What can we learn from those passionate adolescent friendships that unite couples of youths, their turmoil serving as a thread for stories of which they are the heroes ? In analysis, as in life, the friend is, in adolescence, the indispensable partner in the encounter that the other makes with sex and with the perspective of death. Thus it is inscribed within a treatment as an important figure of the transference.


Using Complex Master-Slave Interferometry, we demonstrate extended axial range optical coherence tomography for two commercially available swept sources, well beyond the limit imposed by their k-clocks. This is achieved without k-domain re-sampling and without engaging any additional Mach-Zehnder interferometer providing a k-clock signal to the digitizer. An axial imaging range exceeding 17 mm with an attenuation of less than 30 dB is reported using two commercially available swept sources operating at 1050 nm and a 100 kHz repetition rate. This procedure has more than trebled the range achievable using the k-clock signal provided by the manufacturers. An analysis is presented on the impact that the digitization has on the axial range and resolution of the system. © 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement


In the case of Zr-2.5%Nb pressure tube material, certain tramp elements (Cl, P, and C) have a deleterious effect on the fracture properties. In order to dramatically reduce the amount of these impurities, vacuum arc re-melting is adopted. The effect of the melting practice (double or quadruple) on the fracture properties of this material has been previously studied in detail. However, in these studies, the micro-mechanisms of fracture and the role of the trace impurities on crack initiation and propagation in the sub-critical regime were not investigated in detail. In the present study, the mechanisms operating during the three stages of crack growth, i.e., initiation, propagation and fracture, in the case of low toughness double melted material, are proposed based on a detailed study. In our observation, the tramp elements segregate in the form of fine stringers. In the regions away from the segregation, the material is found to be very ductile with the appearance of ligaments with high local plastic deformation before fracture. The presence of such ligaments on the fracture surface is an indication of fracture occurring in a transition zone (ductile to brittle). In the case of the failure in this transition region, both cleavage and ductile mechanisms can occur in the same specimen. In the transition region, near the upper shelf region, the initiation of the crack occurs by cleavage at a local discontinuity, but the toughness increases rapidly and crack propagation occurs in ductile manner by formation of microvoids. The crack front propagates finding the local discontinuities, leaving behind the unbroken regions with high toughness (ligaments). As the crack propagation continues and the crack face opens, the ligaments left well behind the crack tip rupture after the crack front moves further. The electron micro-beam analysis and X-ray mapping show a build-up of Cl concentration at the stringer sites. In the present analysis, the fracture behavior of double and quadruple melted Zr-2.5%Nb material is compared using a "tearing instability" criterion. Using this approach, an attempt is made to assess the enhanced safety margins, in terms of critical crack length, achieved by modification in the melting practice. First, an estimate from the small specimen J-R data was obtained. However, to obtain a realistic estimate for fracture under burst condition an appropriate scaling factor was applied.


The War of the Cities was a series of five air raids, missile attacks, and artillery shelling on major cities and urban areas during the Iran-Iraq war lasting from September 1980 to August 1988. This series of five systematic air raids was conducted over eight years. The last time was extreme and expanded into more areas.
After striking Grand Bazaar of Tehran in 1988, the National Library of Iran which was located nearby decided to protect its resources by moving them to a safe place. After searching to find the right place, at least 12000 manuscripts, 12000 lithographic and rare books, a part of the periodicals collection and some paintings and calligraphies were moved to the Banknotes Repository of Central Bank of Iran in sealed special banknotes boxes from March 7 to April 9, 1988.
There are 28 photos that show the library staff in a line passing the books from stocks upstairs to the door downstairs to place in boxes. Windows of the building are covered with sandbags and the record number of the manuscript which had taken off the shelves is shown on the boxes. As has been mentioned in interviews and correspondences the trucks carried the books with a police escort. After the war the manuscripts were returned to the National Library but they were placed in the building which was previously the Cultural Office of Farah Pahlavi, called Niavaran Building. That building was in safer circumstances and belonged to the National Library of Iran in those days. Other resources were returned to the main building of National Library in 30 Tir Street until the new library building was generated in 2005.
The interviews outlined in the paper imply that although not many things can be done without official relations, finding a solution in the time of crisis mostly rely on the sympathy of people who act together even if they are staff of different institutions with different organizational goals. The background of an organization remains in the minds of its staff and it seems to affect their behaviour and sense of appreciation and protection. Goals and dreams of an organization are other factors which made a commitment for its staff. That is why they were there even though they had lots of stress about their family members at home. Generally the atmosphere of the library was in such a way that the staff did not feel any gap between themselves and others, especially the faculty members. There was a strong sense of commitment and faith in work is evident in all interviewees.


Abstract Aim : The objectives of this study are to determine the level of bacterial contamination of the mobile phones of dental personnel involved in direct patient care. Objective: Mobile phones are a valuable feature of communication within hospitals, and since they are frequently handled by healthcare personnel, while providing treatment for the patients, there may be a potential for contamination with various pathogens. The objective of this study was to determine the contamination of mobile phones (hospital issued and personal) carried by dental personnel. Background: Transmission of microbes may happen by two ways - direct contact or indirect contact. Mobile phones come in close contact with the body and serve as a ready surface for colonisation. This may cause infections in the individual as well as there might be cross-infection. The saliva also serves as the index to the microbes present in the body. Reason: Mobile phones have become a basic need for everyday living. The mobile phones not only come into contact with the facial skin but also get contaminated by saliva and the touchscreen are handled multiple times a day which gives way for contamination of microbes from the hand. The health care professionals use their mobile phones during treatment of patients. This leads to contamination of mobile phones by the patient saliva and blood. This may pose as a severe threat for spread of infectious pathogens in the hospital environment.


The ability of fresh and fermented beetroot juice to limit chemical mutations has been studied using the Ames test and the strains of Salmonella typhimurium TA98 and TA100. Beetroot juice was fermented in either spontaneous or controlled fermentation, with the use of selected cultures of lactic acid bacteria, three Lactobacillus paracasei strains designated as 0916, 0920, 0923, and one Lactobacillus brevis strain 0944. N-methyl-N'-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine (MNNG) was used as a standard mutagen for the induction of His revertants in mutations of Salmonella typhimurium TA98 and TA100. The ability to reduce mutations was studied using the Ames test and the doses of beetroot juice of 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 5.0 and 10.0 mL per plate. The study showed that the fermented beetroot juice (10 mL/plate) reduced the level of MNNG-induced mutations by 64 % in Salmonella typhimurium TA98 and by 65 % in Salmonella typhimurium TA100. The beetroot juice obtained by spontaneous fermentation retained only 24–25 % of initial antimutagenic activity (in Salmonella strain and at the highest tested dose of the juice, i.e. 10 mL/plate). The doses of 10 mL/plate of the beetroot juice fermented by three L. paracasei cultures (0916, 0920 and 0923) decreased the intensity of mutations induced by MNNG by 61, 50 and 56 % in Salmonella typhimurium TA98 and by 65, 56 and 49 % in Salmonella typhimurium TA100, respectively. The juice (10 mL/plate) fermented by L. brevis 0944 strain reduced the number of mutations by 58 % in Salmonella typhimurium TA98 and by 55 % in Salmonella typhimurium TA100. Thus, the controlled lactic acid fermentation of beetroot juice conducted by selected Lactobacillus strains maintains its antimutagenic activity.


Free time should be part of the day that all kids look forward to. But for many children on the autism spectrum, it is a painfully unstructured part of the day defined by anxiety and fear. This book provides comprehensive, structured strategies to help adults introduce meaningful activities to ASD children, which they can practice at school or at home. The first half of the book provides forms and charts that will help adults assess the child's sensory needs, select age-appropriate activities, and then determine level of interest in specific activities. The second half provides numerous 'Activity Cards' for going to the park, playing games, listening to music, and many more!


Summary

An aim of government and the international community is to respond to global processes and crises through a range of policy and practical approaches that help limit damage from shocks and stresses. Three approaches to vulnerability reduction that have become particularly prominent in recent years are social protection (SP), disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA). Although these approaches have much in common, they have developed separately over the last two decades. However, given the increasingly complex and interlinked array of risks that poor and vulnerable people face, it is likely that they will not be sufficient in the long run if they continue to be applied in isolation from one another.

In recognition of this challenge, the concept of Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) has been developed. ASP refers to a series of measures which aims to build resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable people to climate change by combining elements of SP, DRR and CCA in programmes and projects. The aim of this paper is to provide an initial assessment of the ways in which these elements are being brought together in development policy and practice. It does this by conducting a meta-analysis of 124 agricultural programmes implemented in five countries in south Asia. These are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan.

The findings show that full integration of SP, DRR and CCA is relatively limited in south Asia, although there has been significant progress in combining SP and DRR in the last ten years. Projects that combine elements of SP, DRR and CCA tend to emphasise broad poverty and vulnerability reduction goals relative to those that do not. Such approaches can provide valuable lessons and insights for the promotion of climate resilient livelihoods amongst policymakers and practitioners.


ABSTRACT There were two, not one, amnesty laws passed in relation to the 6 October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University and coup in Thailand. The first amnesty law, passed on 24 December 1976, legalized the coup and prevented those who created the conditions for the coup and seized power on the evening of 6 October from being held to account. The second amnesty law, passed on 16 September 1978, freed eighteen student activists still undergoing criminal prosecution and dismissed the charges against them. Although neither amnesty mentioned the massacre, the urgency of producing and then safeguarding impunity for the state and para-state actors behind the violence at Thammasat was the absent presence in both laws. Combining a close reading of both laws with examination of archival documents about the drafting of the first amnesty law and court and other records related to the second, this article uncovers the hidden transcripts of both amnesty laws as a point of departure for examining questions about impunity, law, and history. First, what are the legal mechanics through which violent actors escape accountability? Second, what are the legal and political functions of amnesty when no crime has been committed? Third and finally, might accountability for past violence be possible, and if so, under what conditions? The answers to these questions illuminate how impunity was produced in the specific case of the 6 October 1976 massacre in Thailand as well as address broader concerns about impunity's role in state formation.


Risk assessors attempting to use probabilistic approaches to describe uncertainty often find themselves in a data-sparse situation: available data are only partially relevant to the parameter of interest, so one needs to adjust empirical distributions, use explicit judgmental distributions, or collect new data. In determining whether or not to collect additional data, whether by measurement or by elicitation of experts, it is useful to consider the expected value of the additional information. The expected value of information depends on the prior distribution used to represent current information; if the prior distribution is too narrow, in many risk-analytic cases the calculated expected value of information will be biased downward. The well-documented tendency toward overconfidence, including the neglect of potential surprise, suggests this bias may be substantial. We examine the expected value of information, including the role of surprise, test for bias in estimating the expected value of information, and suggest procedures to guard against overconfidence and underestimation of the expected value of information when developing prior distributions and when combining distributions obtained from multiple experts. The methods are illustrated with applications to potential carcinogens in food, commercial energy demand, and global climate change.


The course of legal education is changing. Many law schools are downsizing, accepting classes with lower entering credentials, and encountering a new demographic of law student. A product of standardized federal education policies like the No Child Left Behind Act and the Common Core State Standards Initiative, this student has fewer or less refined critical thinking skills than most first-year law professors have come to expect. Part I of this Article explores the landscape of this "new normal" in legal education, examining the effects of new law school admissions policies, changes in K-12 and undergraduate education, and the link between law student entering credentials and critical thinking skills. Part II suggests ways in which law schools might change gears to ensure the success of these new law students and of the law schools themselves. Among other things, it emphasizes the importance of addressing both the current economic structure of law schools and the need for major curricular reform that creates more opportunities for student assessment. Part III explores the positive outcomes likely to result from a timely, smooth shift to this new approach in legal education.


Background: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are developmental disorders affecting 1:88 children, and which appear to be associated with a variety of complex immune dysregulations including autoimmunity. The enzyme, alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase (Nagalase) deglycosylates serum Gc protein (vitamin D 3 – binding protein) rendering it incapable of activating macrophage defenses. Increased Nagalase activity has been associated with a variety of malignancies, immune disorders and viral infections. Macrophage activating factor (GcMAF) has been repeatedly published as an intervention to lower serum Nagalase activity for a variety of cancer and HIV patients. GcMAF is a naturally occurring protein with well-established safety and therapeutic benefit(s) supported by numerous human studies. Methods: Initially, parents of 40 individuals with ASD sought testing for Nagalase serum activity as part of an evaluation of immune dysregulation. Nagalase enzyme activity measurement was performed by the European Laboratory of Nutrients (ELN), Bunnik, the Netherlands, using an end-point enzymatic assay of a chromogenic substrate. Some parents of patients with elevated Nagalase activity opted for weekly GcMAF injections provided by Immuno Biotech Ltd., Guernsey UK (www.gcmaf.eu). GcMAF is purified from human serum obtained from the American Red Cross using 25-hydroxyvitamin D3-Sepharose high affinity chromatography. The pro tein is then further diluted to obtain therapeutically appropriate levels for patients based on their clinical presentations. Results: Individuals with ASD (32 males and 8 females, n = 40, ages: 1 year 4 months - 21 years 2 months) had initial and post treatment assessment of Nagalase activity. Dosing of GcMAF was recommended based on previously reported response curves adjusted by the treating clinician for age, weight, and Nagalase levels. The average pre-treatment Nagalase activity of the autism group was 1.93 nmol/min/mg of substrate. This was well above the laboratory reported normal range of ,0.95 nmol/min/mg. For the ASD group the average level at the time of second testing was 1.03 nmol/min/mg, reflecting an average reduction of 0.90 nmol/min/mg ( P , 0.0001). Apart from the likely immunological benefits of lowering the Nagalase activity of these individuals, uncontrolled observations of GcMAF therapy indicated sub stantial improvements in language, socialization and cognition. No significant side-effects were reported during the course of injections. Conclusions: In this first report of Nagalase activity in patients with autism, it appears that most individuals have substantially higher levels than the expected healthy ranges. Although Nagalase is a nonspecific marker of immune dysregulation, its observed levels in autism may have both etiological and therapeutic significance. Importantly, this is also the first report of reduction of Nagalase activity in an autism population with GcMAF injections.