Kappa functions have long been used in the analysis and modeling of suprathermal particles in various space plasmas. In situ observations of the supersonic solar wind show its distribution contains a cold ion core and power-law tail, which is well-represented by a kappa function. In situ plasma observations by Voyager, as well as observations of energetic neutral atom (ENA) spectra by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), showed that the compressed and heated inner heliosheath (IHS) plasma beyond the termination shock can also be represented by a kappa function. IBEX exposes the IHS plasma properties through the detection of ENAs generated by charge-exchange in the IHS. However, charge-exchange modifies the plasma as it flows through the IHS, and makes it difficult to ascertain the parent proton distribution. In this paper we investigate the evolution of proton distributions, initially represented by a kappa function, that experience losses due to charge-exchange in the IHS. In the absence of other processes, it is no longer representable by a single kappa function due to the energy-dependent, charge-exchange process. While one can still fit a kappa function to the evolving proton distribution over limited energy ranges, this yields fitting parameters (pseudo-density, pseudo-temperature, pseudo-kappa index) that depend on the energy range of the fit. We discuss the effects of fitting a kappa function to the IHS proton distribution over limited energy ranges, its dependence on the initial proton distribution properties at the termination shock, and implications for understanding the observations.


M.N. Srinivas's personal writings have the flavour of a novelist's imagination and the insight of a social scientist.

The first three essays are autobiographical accounts of how he became a social anthropologist, of his job as the first professor of sociology at Maharaja Sayajirao University at Baroda in 1951, and about Bangalore to which he moved from Mysore to make it his home. 'Bangalore As I see It' is interesting both for its content and for the fact that it is Srinivas's only ethnographic account of a city. The next seven essays are based on his work in Rampura in Mysore. These cover subjects such as village disputes, social change, the quality of social relations, and religion. In the last essay, 'farewell' the author describes how he had to wrench himself from his village and fieldwork to return to the formal atmosphere of the University of Oxford.


This study was designed with the purpose of providing organized instructions on how to improve the psychological, medical, and social circumstances of street children with concurrent substance use disorders. Due to the special vulnerabilities of these children, customized guidelines are required in order to maximize the treatment outcomes. Systemic review of literature was applied on a large number of national and international journal articles available on the phenomenon of substance use among street children. The literature review was followed by a qualitative study using in-depth interviews in order to record and analyze the experience of experts working in this field. The preliminary draft was reviewed by the experts and final modifications were applied. The ultimate guideline presents practical recommendations for different stages of providing service for the target population including case finding, motivational interventions, assessment, care and intervention planning, and follow-ups. Street children face various physical, psychological, and social complications. Substance use disorders can exacerbate their circumstances and add to the complexity of their problems. The current guideline is an initial step to better understanding and treating street children who use drugs. Further research is required to investigate the effectiveness and long term results of this guideline .considering the fact that Iran is one of the many countries dealing with this phenomenon, adjustments should be made for application in different cultures.


Contrasting with conventional approaches to crossover, Multiple Crossover Per Couple (MCPC) is an alternative, recently proposed [1], approach under which more than one crossover operation for each mating pair is allowed. In genetic algorithms, Proportional Selection (PS) is a popular method to select individuals for mating based on their fitness values. The Fitness Proportional Couple Selection (FPCS) approach, is a new selection method which creates an intermediate population of couples from where, subsequently, couples are selected for crossing-over based on couple fitness. This paper proposes the combined use of MCPC and FPCS. Outstanding performance was achieved by joining both methods when optimising hard testing multimodal and unimodal functions. Some of these results and their comparison against results from conventional approaches are shown.


Volume XIV of this widely acclaimed series takes us to the third session of Congress in December 1790, when for the first time under the new Constitution Congress took up quarters at Philadelphia. House and Senate met in cramped Congress Hall, which, in tacit comment on the fragility of the new federal government, the nearby Pennsylvania State House overshadowed. During this session Congress debated the federal courts, state militias and the U.S. military, the postal system, navigation bills, and other issues fundamental to the new order-which had already begun to raise suspicions. The Virginia delegation denounced federal assumption of state debts. Congress heatedly discussed Alexander Hamilton's proposed national bank-including whether the Constitution implied federal authority to establish one. Congress followed the secretary of the treasury in placing an excise tax on distilled spirits, a measure that soon led to open rebellion in western Pennsylvania.


Abstract Objective: To compare methods used to assess the validity of nutrient intake data obtained from a food-frequency questionnaire (FFQ), using folate and vitamin B12 as nutrient examples. Design: Cross-sectional sample from a population cohort. Setting: Two postcode areas west of Sydney, Australia. Subjects: In total, 2895 people aged 49 years and older provided dietary data using a semi-quantitative FFQ (79% of 3654 subjects examined). The validity of the FFQ was assessed against three 4-day weighed food records (WFRs) completed by 78 people (mean age 70 years). Results: Folate and vitamin B12 validity data were assessed using different methods. The Spearman ranked correlations (energy-adjusted) were 0.66 for folate and 0.38 for vitamin B12. Using the Bland–Altman method, following loge transformation, no linear trend existed between the differences and means for folate and vitamin B12. Large differences existed between the FFQ and WFR in individual cases, particularly for vitamin B12. Finally, data were divided into quintile categories for the test and reference method: 79% classified folate within one quintile, 65% classified vitamin B12 within one quintile; there was no gross misclassification for folate and only 3% misclassification for vitamin B12. Conclusions: Different methods of analysis provided different information about the validity of the FFQ. Correlation coefficients should not be used alone to assess the validity of nutrient data, but should be used in conjunction with Bland–Altman analyses. Depending on the use of the data, additional assessment of classification categories is recommended. This worked example demonstrates that absolute intakes of folate and vitamin B12 should be used with caution.


The use of implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) is widely accepted in current clinical practice and well recognised in published guidelines by international societies. The rate of uptake of this therapy continues to increase globally and particular in emerging/developing countries. It is well recognised that ICD therapy is expensive and carries a significant associated clinical burden. This clinical burden includes device infection, inappropriate shock therapy and device/lead failure. Consequently, there has been great endeavour to improve our risk stratification of patients at risk of sudden cardiac death, and so reduce the number of patients with ICDs that never receive therapy. Much of this focus has been targeted at the point of original implantation. However, it would seem logical to review this decision on an ongoing basis. The appropriate time to do this would be at the point of device replacement for battery depletion.

Cost efficacy analyses have consistently demonstrated that as a therapy it is considered cost effective. Market forces have, over the last decade, driven down the cost of ICDs. Many of these analyses were based upon the therapy in its early adoption and did not always factor in the long-term ongoing need for ICD replacement. A recent review of the data on cost effectiveness of ICD therapy continues to support its place as a mainstream therapy indicating its cost effectiveness to be comparable to that of renal dialysis (US$30 000–$50 000 per life-year saved).1 Dialysis has commonly been used as a benchmark for cost effectiveness.

Early landmark studies demonstrated that ICDs were an effective strategy for the primary prevention of sudden cardiac death in individuals deemed to be at risk. The …


High spatial resolution zircon U-Pb geochronological data obtained directly on the Kiirunavaara iron oxide-apatite (IOA) deposit, related orebodies, and host rocks provide new constraints on the timing of mineralization in these deposits. These data raise new arguments in the debate of a magmatic versus hydrothermal/metasomatic genesis of these major (2,500 Mt, 30–70 wt % Fe) Paleoproterozoic deposits. The main orebody at Kiirunavaara contains Ti-poor magnetite and minor (0.05–5 wt % P) apatite, located between a trachyandesite footwall and a rhyodacite hanging wall, which also hosts smaller orebodies (Nukutus, Rektorn, and Tuolluvaara). The pervasive Na and K metasomatism in the host rock is documented by whole-rock geochemical data and cathodoluminescence (CL) microscopy. Zircon U-Pb data for the metavolcanic rocks in the footwall and hanging wall cluster between 1884 ± 4 and 1880 ± 3 Ma. In the footwall, a syenite-aplite system yields ages of 1880 ± 7 and 1881 ± 4 Ma; a granite pluton exposed underground has an age of 1874 ± 4 Ma. Zircons in two ore samples, never directly dated before this study, yield ages of 1877 ± 4 and 1874 ± 7 Ma. Brecciation at the contacts between the ore and host rocks, the tight age at ca. 1880 Ma for most volcanic and plutonic rocks in the footwall and hanging wall, and the marginally younger age for ore at ca. 1877 to 74 Ma, matching the age of the spatially related granite pluton, suggest a magmatic-hydrothermal emplacement model for the Kiruna area IOA ores.


Glioma is the most common and aggressive primary adult brain tumor. The median survival time of the glioma patients is less than 15 months under conventional treatments. The etiology of the glioma is still unknown. The emerging evidence suggested that many factors contributed to human glioma formation, metastasis, relapse, and resistant to radiation, and chemotherapy/therapies resistance. Recent reports showed that the long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) had multifunctional roles in regulating human glioma tumorogenesis processes through both transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. In this review, the related lncRNAs which have been reported were summarized, the functions of the lncRNAs which acted as oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes during human glioma development was discussed, and the current mechanisms of lncRNAs was elaborated in a variety of biological properties of human glioma.


At the airport we line up, remove our shoes, empty our pockets, and hold still for three seconds in the body scanner. Deemed safe, we put ourselves back together and are free to buy the beverage we were prohibited from taking through security. In The Transparent Traveler Rachel Hall explains how the familiar routines of airport security choreograph passenger behavior to create submissive and docile travelers. The cultural performance of contemporary security practices mobilizes what Hall calls the "aesthetics of transparency." To appear transparent, a passenger must perform innocence and display a willingness to open their body to routine inspection and analysis. Those who cannot—whether because of race, immigration and citizenship status, disability, age, or religion—are deemed opaque, presumed to be a threat, and subject to search and detention. Analyzing everything from airport architecture, photography, and computer-generated imagery to full-body scanners and TSA behavior detection techniques, Hall theorizes the transparent traveler as the embodiment of a cultural ideal of submission to surveillance.


In this, the second in a series of articles on practicerelated aspects of pharmacology, drug therapy and applied nursing pharmacology, an overview is given of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) as a group, and some perspectives offered on their usefulness in clinical practice. NSAIDs constitute a diverse range of analgesic, antipyretic and anti-inflammatory agents, including aspirin, paracetamol and other traditional anti-inflammatory drugs, as well as the selective COX2 inhibitors. This series uses excerpts and diagrams with permission from the second edition of Pharmacology in Clinical Practice: Application Made Easy for Nurses and Allied Health Professionals , and is compiled and expanded upon by the author.


Abstract. In many parts of the world, climate projections for the next century depend on potential changes in the properties of the El Nino - Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The current staus of these projections is assessed by examining a large set of climate model experiments prepared for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Firstly, the patterns and time series of present-day ENSO-like model variability in the tropical Pacific Ocean are compared with that observed. Next, the strength of the coupled atmosphere-ocean feedback loops responsible for generating the ENSO cycle in the models are evaluated. Finally, we consider the projections of the models with, what we consider to be, the most realistic ENSO variability. Two of the models considered do not have interannual variability in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Three models show a very regular ENSO cycle due to a strong local wind feedback in the central Pacific and weak sea surface temperature (SST) damping. Six other models have a higher frequency ENSO cycle than observed due to a weak east Pacific upwelling feedback loop. One model has much stronger upwelling feedback than observed, and another one cannot be described simply by the analysis technique. The remaining six models have a reasonable balance of feedback mechanisms and in four of these the interannual mode also resembles the observed ENSO both spatially and temporally. Over the period 2051-2100 (under various scenarios) the most realistic six models show either no change in the mean state or a slight shift towards El Nino-like conditions with an amplitude at most a quarter of the present day interannual standard deviation. We see no statistically significant changes in amplitude of ENSO variability in the future, with changes in the standard deviation of a Southern Oscillation Index that are no larger than observed decadal variations. Uncertainties in the skewness of the variability are too large to make any statements about the future relative strength of El Nino and La Nina events. Based on this analysis of the multi-model ensemble, we expect very little influence of global warming on ENSO.


Shear strength and the permeability in a soil mass are two prime parameters that characterize the geotechnical behaviour of the soil. These parameters (c', O', k) help assess the bearing capacity and settlement characteristics of foundations, stability of slopes, lateral earth pressure on retaining walls and fluid infiltration. Geo environmental contamination resulting from chemicals and oil spills are becoming very common news and these alter the inter-particle behaviour of the soil, making it to lose its strength and deformability considerably and also become less permeable. This study focuses on the effects of contamination of sands with different grading size and particle shapes on its shear strength and its coefficient of permeability. Well graded and gap graded sand samples were used in the research. A simple statistical approach was used to define not only the particle size but also its shape distribution. Comparison of the shear strength of these sand samples were tested in an automated motorised direct shear apparatus under both dry and fully saturated conditions (with water and also with oil). The coefficient of permeability of the two sands under clean and contaminated conditions was obtained using a modified falling head permeability test. It was observed that the well graded sand which was submerged in oil apparently had the lowest peak shear strength values. However, a higher order of cohesion was apparent when the soil was contaminated with oil. Permeability was also an issue, as by virtue of its viscosity, the oil hindered the water seepage through the sand samples when compared with clean sands. However, it appeared that with more viscous liquid contaminants, the rate of water infiltration was notably higher. Permeability was also affected by the particle grading and shape distribution. The significant loss in strength and the tortuosity of water flow in the soils can cause major problems such as unwarranted floods and potential failures in civil engineering works. Therefore, the extent of the problem that is caused by oil contamination needs to be truly understood to minimize unwarranted construction risk.


This study was undertaken to compare the effect of liquorice extract, probiotic, potassium chloride and sodium bicarbonate on productive performance of broilers exposed to heat stress. A total of 900 Fawbro broiler chicks were allocated at random into 6 treatments groups of 3 replicates each. Experimental treatments were as follows: Treatment 1: control group was subjected to heat stress; Treatment 2: control group was not subjected to heat stress; Treatment 3: Probiotic group were early exposed to 10 6 Colony Forming Unit (CFU) of Lactobacilli at their first day of age, and then subjected to heat stress; Treatment 4: heat distressed birds and supplemented with 0.5 % potassium chloride in their drinking water; Treatment 5: heat distressed birds and supplemented with 0.5% sodium bicarbonate in their drinking water; and Treatment 6: heat distressed birds and supplemented with 450 mg / liter liquorice extract in their drinking water. At the third week of age, birds in treatments 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 were exposed to heat stress (38 – 43 oC) for 6 hours(1200 – 1800 h) each day until the end of experiment (8 th week of age). Results revealed that treated the birds with probiotic or liquorice extract resulted in a significant improvement in mean body weight, feed conversion ratio, water consumption, cumulative body weight, cumulative weight gain, cumulative feed conversion ratio, livability, productive index, economic figure and dressing percentage with or without viscera as compared with control group which was subjected to heat stress, potassium chloride treatment and sodium bicarbonate treatment. Furthermore, liquorice extract treatment surpasses probiotic treatment in respect to mean body weight, water consumption, final body weight, cumulative feed consumption, livability, and dressing percentage with or without giblet. In conclusion, liquorice extract and probiotic can be used as an efficient tools in alleviate the deleterious effects of heat stress on productive performance of broiler chickens.


BACKGROUND & AIMS
Frailty is associated with mortality in patients with cirrhosis. We measured frailty using 3 simple tests and calculated Liver Frailty Index (LFI) scores for patients at multiple ambulatory centers. We investigated associations between LFI scores, ascites, and hepatic encephalopathy (HE) and mortality.

METHODS
Adults without hepatocellular carcinoma who were on the liver transplantation waitlist at 9 centers in the United States (N = 1044) were evaluated using the LFI; LFI scores of at least 4.5 indicated that patients were frail. We performed logistic regression analyses to assess associations between frailty and ascites or HE and competing risk regression analyses (with liver transplantation as the competing risk) to estimate sub-hazard ratios (sHRs) of waitlist mortality (death or removal from the waitlist).

RESULTS
Of study subjects, 36% had ascites, 41% had HE, and 25% were frail. The odds of frailty were higher for patients with ascites (adjusted odd ratio 1.56, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.15-2.14) or HE (odd ratio 2.45, 95% CI 1.80-3.33) than for those without these features. Larger proportions of frail patients with ascites (29%) or HE (30%) died while on the waitlist compared with patients who were not frail (17% of patients with ascites and 20% with HE). In univariable analysis, ascites (sHR 1.52, 95% CI 1.14-2.05), HE (sHR 1.84, 95% CI 1.38-2.45), and frailty (sHR 2.38, 95% CI 1.77-3.20) were associated with waitlist mortality. In adjusted models, only frailty remained significantly associated with waitlist mortality (sHR 1.82, 95% CI 1.31-2.52); ascites and HE were not.

CONCLUSIONS
Frailty is a prevalent complication of cirrhosis that is observed more frequently in patients with ascites or HE and independently associated with waitlist mortality. LFI scores can be used to objectively quantify risk of death related to frailty-in excess of liver disease severity-in patients with cirrhosis.


The global boreal forests comprise large stocks of organic carbon that vary with climate and fire regimes. Global warming is likely to influence several aspects of fire and cause shifts in carbon sequestration patterns. Fire severity or forest floor depth of burn is one important aspect that influences both carbon emission during combustion as well as post-fire ecosystem regeneration. Numerous publications on projections of future area burned exist, whereas scenarios on twenty-first century fire severity are more scarce, and the stand-typical response to severe fire weather is rarely taken into account. This paper aims to synthesize knowledge on boreal forest carbon stocks in relation to changes in fire severity for Quebec, Canada. Besides warming, this region may be subjected to an important increase in future precipitation. Future fire severity and area burned may well increase as fire weather will be drier, especially near the end of the twenty-first century. Moreover, the fire season peak may shift towards the late summer. Intense burning will favour tree cover development while the forest floor carbon stock may become less important. As a result, total Quebec boreal carbon sequestration may diminish. The development of dynamic vegetation models may improve scenarios on twenty-first century changes in carbon sequestration driven by climate change and fire severity and frequency effects.


Abstract Objective of the study: At the moment of study design, there was no data available on prevalence of subtelomeric imbalanced rearrangements in fetuses with abnormal phenotype assessed by ultrasound and with normal classical karyotype, consequently this study was initiated to fill in this gap. Material & Method: Amniotic fluid samples or chorionic villi from: 137 fetuses with abnormalities in two or more organ systems 96 fetuses with nuchal translucency above 3.5 mm (99th centile), 85 apparently healthy fetuses (control group) were studied by subtelomeric MLPA, using two kits (P036 and P070) in all cases. Confirmation of a rearrangement was obtained by means of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) studies. Results: In the group of fetuses with abnormalities in two or more organ systems, one subtelomeric deletion (de novo deletion (del1p36).) was detected, yielding the detection rate of cryptic subtelomeric imbalances in these pregnancies of 0.84%. In the control group and in the group of fetuses with NT measurement above 3.5 mm, no abnormalities were found. Conclusion: The low detection rate of subtelomeric rearrangements in the studied group, together with the low robustness of the method (only one sequence per telomere is studied in one experiment) and necessity to confirm the pathological findings with another method, imply low usefulness of the method in the prenatal setting. In the current era, there are genome-wide methods, like CGH-arrays or SNP-array, which are better-suited for prenatal diagnosis, because of higher yields and lack of necessity of confirmation of the pathological results.


We show that Newton's cubic methods (famous rational maps) have a locally connected Julia set except in some very specific cases. In particular, when those maps are infinitely renormalizable their Julia set is locally connected and contains small copies of nonlocally connected quadratic Julia sets. This also holds when Newton's method is renormalizable and has Cremer points, unlike the polynomial case. After a dynamical description we show the necessity of the Brjuno condition within this family.


Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., ed., African Americans and the Rise of Buffalo's Post-Industrial City, 1940 - Present, Volumes 1 & 2In 1899 when W.E.B. DuBois published his landmark study, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, he in part hoped that revealing the struggles and difficulties faced by African American residents would help mobilize action to improve their life circumstances. Years later, black sociologists trained at the University of Chicago and at the University of Pittsburgh also generated a series of important studies of African American life in the United States. They, too, saw their work as more than just academic exercises and hoped their research would lead to improvements in the lives of African Americans. While the ultimate success of those studies in achieving their aims is debatable, the belief of the authors in the need to produce solid research which can guide public policy is not. Much too often over the past thirty years, public policy, especially with regard to African Americans, has not rested upon a solidly researched understanding of their needs. Many times programs initiated to help have worked to undermine the infrastructures of those communities rather than support them.These volumes, produced jointly by the Buffalo Urban League, the Buffalo Common Council, and the Center for Applied Public Affairs Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo follow in the tradition begun by DuBois, Charles Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier and others. The current volume seeks to place carefully structured research at the center of future public policy decisions for the city of Buffalo. The authors believe that more needs to be known about the evolution of the post-industrial African American community in Buffalo and other cities. Patterns of employment, educational opportunities, housing choices, neighborhood development, and social organization changed substantially after 1940, they argue, and to under them properly, it is necessary to analyze the nature of those changes. The nine chapters in the second volume examine those topics as well as provide an historical overview and a set of policy recommendations. The first volume offers a synopsis of the findings in volume 2 for readers more interested in the conclusions drawn from the research than in a detailed exploration of the topics and the methodology.However, the research approach used by the authors of volume 2 should not be ignored. Each author has tried to acquire the most up-to-date information available in order to formulate their analysis and recommendations. Questionnaires, government records, telephone interviews, police statistics, and any reliable past or current sources of information were used by the researchers. From this material an intriguing picture of the evolution of the African American population in Buffalo after 1940 emerges. As a group they find themselves slowly marginalized by discrimination and the city's changing economic base. In addition, many people do not have the education needed to obtain post-industrial jobs. Their difficulties are reflected in higher unemployment figures, limited housing options, widening class differences, and increasing problems with crime. The picture presented of Buffalo is not a new one, similar descriptions apply to other cities, but the analysis provided of how the circumstances emerged is new.The authors systematically and chronologically follow change as it occurs. In the process they attempt to pinpoint the times or issues which shape the post-industrial Buffalo African community. …


More than 100,000 new asbestos claims were filed in 2003, the most ever in one year. Asbestos litigation thus continues to thrive even though 80-90% of claimants have no illness recognized by medical science, let alone suffer any lung impairment. To explain how this disconnect between medical science and tort litigation has come about, I cover the following subjects: 1) medical consequences of exposure to asbestos-containing materials; 2) the phenomenon of the unimpaired claimant; 3) medical evidence with regard to the incidence of asbestosis; 4) the effect on asbestos litigation of the failure of the Manville Trust audit to be approved; 5) the causes and effects of seemingly orchestrated changes in party and witness testimony with regard to the identification of asbestos-containing products at work sites; and 6) the Baron & Budd "script memo." The core of the article is an empirical analysis of attorney-sponsored asbestos screenings which account for approximately 90% of claims being generated. On the basis of that empirical research, I conclude that asbestos litigation today largely consists of former industrial and construction workers: (1) recruited by an extensive network of entrepreneurial screening companies which are employed by lawyers to "screen" hundreds of thousands of potential litigants each year at local union halls, hotel and motel rooms, shopping center parking lots, and other locations throughout the country; (2) asserting claims of injury though they have no medically cognizable injury and cannot demonstrate any statistically significant increased likelihood of contracting an asbestos-related disease in the future; (3) in a civil justice system that has been significantly modified to accommodate the interests of these litigants by dispensing with many evidentiary requirements and proof of proximate cause; (4) mostly in forum-shopped jurisdictions, where judges and juries often appear aligned with the interests of plaintiff lawyers; (5) often supported by specious medical evidence, including: (a) evidence generated by the entrepreneurial medical screening enterprises and B-readers - specially certified x-ray readers that the enterprises or plaintiff lawyers select, who fail to exercise good faith medical judgment but instead conform their findings and reports to the expectations of the plaintiff lawyers who retained them, and (b) pulmonary function tests which are often administered in knowing violation of standards established by the American Thoracic Society and result in findings of impairment which would not be found if the tests were properly administered; and (6) who frequently testify according to scripts prepared by their lawyers which include misstatements with regard to: (a) identifications of and relative quantities of asbestos-containing products that they came in contact with at work sites, (b) the information printed on the containers in which the products were sold, and (c) their own physical impairments. It is beyond cavil that asbestos litigation thus represents a massive civil justice system failure. Because of the awesome power of the asbestos plaintiffs' bar, the issues posed by this failure appear impervious to resolution by civil justice reform. Realistically, the only fora in which the issues of the mass production of bogus medical evidence and scripted client and witness testimony can be addressed is through an investigatory grand jury process. A review of the scholarly literature indicates a substantial degree of indifference to the causes of this civil justice system failure. Many of the published articles on asbestos litigation focus on transactional costs and ways in which the flow of money from defendants to plaintiffs and their lawyers can be expeditiously and efficiently prioritized and routed. The failure to acknowledge, let along analyze, the overriding reality of specious claiming and meritless claims demonstrates a disconnect between the scholarship and the reality of the litigation that is nearly as wide as the disconnect between rates of disease claiming and actual disease manifestation. In this article, I set forth some tentative explanations of this phenomenon.


Imagine that you are a defendant in an action for damages arising out of an automobile collision. The complaint predicates liability on alternative bases - negligence and intentional tort. Your automobile insurance policy covers negligent conduct but not intentional conduct. Your insurance company agrees to defend you in the lawsuit, pursuant to policy provisions, but sends a 'reservation of rights' letter to you, purporting to preserve its right to litigate the coverage question at a later date. What are your rights under the policy? Must you accept the insurer's selection of your attorneys? May you select your own attorney to protect your interests? If so, at whose expense? Who does the attorney eventually retained in the matter truly represent? What ethical problems will the attorney face in the representation? These questions have plagued the courts, the bar, and the insurance industry. This article examines the circumstances in which an insured should be permitted to select an attorney at the insurer's expense. It analyzes and critiques San Diego Navy Federal Credit Union v. Cumis Insurance Society, Inc., 162 Cal. App. 3d 358, 208 Cal. Rptr. 494 (1984), and the principles upon which it is based, reviews the attorney's obligations to the insured under the rules of professional responsibility, and suggests various devices insurers may employ to avoid or mitigate the impact of the Cumis rule. Finally, this article examines the law of Arizona and concludes that Arizona should adopt a Cumis-type rule.


CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing is a revolutionary technology that is transforming biological research. The explosive growth and advances in CRISPR research over the last few years, coupled with the potential for clinical applications and therapeutics, is heralding a new era for genome engineering. To further support this technology platform and to provide a universal CRISPR annotation system, we introduce the grID database (http://crispr.technology), an extensive compilation of gRNA properties including sequence and variations, thermodynamic parameters, off-target analyses, and alternative PAM sites, among others. To aid in the design of optimal gRNAs, the website is integrated with other prominent databases, providing a wealth of additional resources to guide users from in silico analysis through experimental CRISPR targeting. Here, we make available all the tools, protocols, and plasmids that are needed for successful CRISPR-based genome targeting.


Arabidopsis thaliana is a plant species common to North America, Europe and Asia. The cer10 mutant lacks wax structures responsible for water retention and stress tolerance. Our experiment looked to determine if temperature had differential effects on the growth of wild-type A. thaliana, and the cer10 mutant. We conducted a separate treatment experiment; placing four replicates of each group (each containing three pseudoreplicates) into three separate incubators (17°C, 20°C and 25°C). We tracked growth over 15 days by measuring the change in each pseudoreplicate's primary vein length. A two-way ANOVA test was conducted upon three respective sets of hypotheses. The first test supported our alternative hypothesis that temperature has an effect on the growth of A. thaliana (p -value of 1.86x10 -4 ). The second test supported our alternative hypothesis that the cer10 mutation has an effect on the growth of A. thaliana ( p -value of 2.27x10 -3 ). However, we failed to reject the third null hypothesis that temperature does not have a differential effect on growth between the two species classes ( p -value of 0.28). In conclusion, our experiment indicates that the effects of temperature are no different between wild-type and mutant A. thaliana , but nonetheless, both the cer10 mutation and temperature independently have an effect on the growth of A. thaliana.


The liberalization of the electricity supply industry has shifted the analyses and modelling activities from planning to operation. However, project studies and investment appraisal still require medium and long-term anticipation of the electricity market prices. The models traditionally used for making such projections i.e. statistical extrapolation or econometrics fail to capture the future structural changes in the emerging electricity markets. There is a need for a novel framework of modelling that could extend game theoretical assumptions to more complex ones. This paper proposes, in a decision-making perspective, a new multi-agent architecture specifically designed to support flexible planning activities in decentralized electricity markets. In this model, the concept of synthetic agents is used for modelling in flexible forms multi-functional market players, possible mergers and coalitions in the electricity market.


One-step-ahead forecasts of quarterly live cattle, live hog, and broiler prices are evaluated under two general approaches: accuracy-based measures and classification based measures which test the ability to categorize price movements directionally or within a forecasted range. Results suggest U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) price forecasts are not optimal. Broiler price forecasts are biased, and all the forecast series tend to repeat errors. While the USDA forecasts are more accurate than those of a univariate AR(4) time-series model, evidence suggests the USDA live cattle forecasts could be improved with a composite forecast that includes a time-series alternative. Despite this, the USDA correctly identifies the direction of price change in at least 70% of its forecasts over the sample period. Furthermore, actual prices fall within the USDA's forecasted range 48% of the time for broilers, but only 35% for hogs. Finally, there is some evidence that the USDA's price forecasting accuracy has improved over time for broilers, but has gotten marginally worse for hogs.


Innovative technologies have resulted in more effective ceramic composite as high rate loading-resistance and protective layer. The ceramic composite layer consists of ceramic frontal plate that bonded by softer-strong reinforced polymer network, consequently gains the heterogeneous condition. These materials serve specific purposes of defeating high rate loading and maintaining the structural integrity of the layer. Further due to the lack of a constituent material and tedious problem in heterogonous material modelling, a numerical homogenization is employed to analyse the isotropic material properties of ceramic composite layer in homogenous manner. The objective of this study is to derive a constitutive law of the ceramic composite using the multi-scale analysis. Two-dimensional symmetric macrostructure of the ceramic composite was numerically modelled using the hybrid finite-discrete element method to investigate the effective material properties and strength profile. The macrostructure was modelled as brittle material with nonlinear material properties. The finite element method is incorporated with a Rankine-Rotating Crack approach and discrete element to model the fracture onset. The prescribed uniaxial and biaxial loadings were imposed along the free boundaries to create different deformations. Due to crack initiation on the macrostructure, the averaged stresses were calculated to plot the stress-strain curves and the effective yield stress surface. From the multi-scale analysis, the rate-dependency of Mohr-Coulomb constitutive law was derived for the ceramic composite layer.


Cooperation, ubiquitous in nature, is difficult to explain from an evolutionary perspective. Many modeling studies strive to resolve this challenge, but their simplifying assumptions on population and interaction structure are rarely met in ecological settings. Here we use a modeling approach that includes more ecological detail to investigate evolution of cooperation in spatially self-organized mussel beds. Mussels cooperate with each other through aggregative movement and attachment using byssal threads. These cooperative behaviors shape the spatial structure of the mussel bed, which can range from scattered distributions to labyrinth-like patterns and dense mussel clumps. The spatial pattern in turn impacts an individual's fitness at two levels: (i) proper attachment to neighboring individuals decreases predation risk, and (ii) attachment to a sufficiently large group prevents dislodgement by wave stress. Without this second level of selection, our simulations do typically not result in evolutionary attractors that lead to the labyrinth-like spatial patterns that are characteristic for natural mussel beds. Yet, when group-level selection is included, labyrinth-like patterns emerge under a wide range of conditions. Our model demonstrates that multiple selection factors working at different spatial scales – predation of individuals and dislodgement of entire mussel clumps – combinedly determine evolution of cooperative traits in mussels and thereby result in emergence of the labyrinth-like spatial patterns that we observe in natural mussel beds.


For over thirty years a debate has raged over genetically modified (GM) food. While a wide range of individuals and organisations have waged a vitriolic campaign against GM food and its proponents, a number of GM crops have met with widespread adoption in the USA, Australia and elsewhere. It is surprising that after so many years, with around 70% of processed food in the USA containing GMOs, the anti-GM movement's main debating points and the level of emotion in their expression have changed little.
The aim of this thesis is to explore whether one of the factors motivating the anti-GM cause is romanticism. This worldview, and its polar opposite, classicism (or scientism), are explored through an examination of the readings in sociology, philosophy, psychology and politics on this subject. This is followed by a discussion of the influence of romanticism on the modern green movement and alternative attitudes to food, as well as its relationship with science.
While initially discussing both romanticism and classicism, the reasons for focussing on romanticism are that the views of GM proponents are fairly straightforward – GMOs are created to provide an advantage in particular agricultural food production systems, the science is sound and they make a profit, but romanticism as a worldview, though widely referenced in the arts and occasionally discussed as an influence in the environment movement, is rarely discussed in detail.
Supporters of anti-GM Facebook pages based in Australia were surveyed using an instrument designed to assess a person's relative position on the Romanticism–Classicism spectrum. The participants were found to score significantly at the romanticism end of the scale. The answers to open questions about attitudes to GM food contained emotionally charged phrases consistent with a romantic outlook. The findings are consistent with the proposition that individuals involved with the movement against GM food in Australia are influenced by a worldview based on romanticism.


This chapter charts a brief history of the conceptual tools used to understand gender relations with respect to wars and armed conflicts. The chapter begins by summarizing some of the dominant theories of second wave feminism, including radical feminism, liberal feminism, black, lesbian and Third World feminism. It explores critiques of feminist theory, as well as the roles of equality and agency in feminist studies on women and war, the tensions between Western feminism and feminism outside of the West, and the impact of a constructivist analytical lens on feminist scholarship. It depicts how specific violent conflicts influenced feminist thinking in the 1990s and the early 2000s, tracing a genealogy from genocide in Rwanda and the war in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to 9/11 and the War on Terror.


This paper explores a territorial approach to rural development in Latin America. It first reviews evidence that progress in rural social development has not been accompanied by reductions in income poverty and inequality. It then assesses qualitative changes that have occurred in rural incomes and the emergence of new opportunities for rural poverty reduction and draws implications for the potential of a territorial approach to rural development. Recent experiences with territorial approaches are briefly reviewed and lessons extracted for the implementation of such an approach. It concludes with a series of recommendations for implementation of a territorial approach to rural development.


The EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020 has recently turned five. As for any anniversary worthy of the name, a general assessment of both the first results and the necessary steps forward needs to be made.
This Policy Brief investigates the progress attained by the EU Framework in relation to a specific component of so-called Roma integration policies, i.e. the gender dimension. Recognized as one of the 10 Common Basic Principles on Roma Inclusion in 2009, the Awareness of the gender dimension does not yet play a significant role in the design, implementation and evaluation of Roma-related policies. Rather, it seems to have gradually faded in recent years' EU policy-making on Roma inclusion, being relegated to the more featureless category of horizontal policy measure and/or crosscutting issue.


Congress founded the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1934 in the wake of the greatest financial collapse in history. More than seventy years later, the SEC, charged by Congress with a mandate to preserve the national public interest through fair and honest markets, remains a critical force in policing U.S. markets. But while the scope and authority of the SEC's power has expanded over time, so too have the crimes it seeks to prevent. Over the last five years, a carousel of large, international frauds by well-known and well-regarded financiers undermined the integrity of global securities markets and international cooperation in market enforcement. Specifically, these crimes, perpetrated by rogue financiers like Bernard Madoff and Sir Allen Stanford, have cost investors in the Americas and beyond billions of dollars. In light of these inventive frauds, no simple solution can prevent all forms of financial crime; however, this Note advocates an expansion of SEC authority to place a substantial hurdle in the way of these clandestine conmen in the hopes of stripping them of a primary tool-the use of offshore financial centers (OFCs). To prevent conmen from avoiding SEC jurisdiction and capitalizing on self-interested local regulation in OFCs, this Note encourages Congress to grant the SEC the authority to initiate investigations on foreign soil-with prior consent from foreign regulators-when it perceives a substantial threat to investors in the United States. To support such an expansion of authority, this Note first provides a primer on OFCs and their use by international fraudsters, drawing from three recent case studies of securities fraud. Then, this Note will explain the expansion of SEC authority while addressing both the inefficiencies in the SEC's current cooperative model and the precedent for such an expansion of authority-Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act. Finally, this Note will apply the SEC's expanded jurisdiction to the three case studies discussed earlier to demonstrate how this new approach can prevent the types of frauds that threaten the integrity of U.S. markets and the national public interest. I. Enhancing SEC Jurisdiction to Combat International Fraud - An Introduction In light of persistent technological innovation and the integration of global markets, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) must adapt constantly to new challenges threatening its domain.1 As the recent financial crisis again demonstrates, the effects of adverse market conditions in one nation can cause unforeseeable damage across the world.2 Moreover, given the speed of modern transactions, where money deposited in Omaha before breakfast can be in London for tea and in Hong Kong by dinner, regulators often have trouble keeping pace with increasingly complex, rapid communications.3 Amidst this changing economic and regulatory landscape, a new villain has emerged to challenge the SEC: the international fraudster or conman.4 Recently, these conmen, like Sir Allen Stanford and Bernard Madoff, have dominated the press with the exploits of their multi-billiondollar frauds.5 To impede the proliferation of international conmen, this Note will investigate the role that offshore financial centers (OFCs) play in modern cons and offer a possible mechanism by which the SEC may be able to mitigate the damage done by fraudsters. Specifically, the manner in which conmen utilize OFCs in their frauds often raises red flags that something is amiss, giving regulators an opportunity to stop a fraud before it escalates.6 However, despite the prevalence of these indicators, the SEC cannot act peremptorily to halt a growing fraud because it is unable to rely on foreign regulators in these OFCs,7 and it lacks the authority to initiate unilateral investigations within foreign borders.8 As a result, conmen engage in OFC-based activity to avoid SEC jurisdiction and capitalize on self-interested local regulation,9 placing substantial hurdles in the way of the SECs enforcement efforts. …


ABSTRACT New strategies for sugarcane production have been very important since the incorporation of ethanol in the Brazilian energy mix in the early 1970s. Prior to planting sugarcane, the soil is prepared, and this process can affect root development and, consequently, sugarcane production. This study was conducted in an area of sugarcane crop renewal in the Cerrado biome (Brazilian tropical savanna), with the objective of identifying which tillage system generates the better root development and improved yield in sugarcane. The [...]


The thesis comprises of two major parts; firstly, the responses of overweight/obese and lean females´ body weight and selected appetite-regulating hormones (fasting and postprandial) to an 8 weeks exercise-training program avoiding bias towards weight loss by internal and external motivation were investigated. A single blind design was conducted with concealed aims and objectives and exclusion of individuals with intention to lose weight. Overweight/obese (OV/OB) (n=23, BMI= 30.27±3.66 kg m-2; age= 23.39±5.70 years) and lean (L) (n=11; BMI= 22.41±2.14 kg m-2; age= 24.55±6.93 years) completed the study. Results: both OV/OB and L groups resulted in no significant changes in body weight. Of the selected appetite hormones, amylin levels were significantly altered in the OV/OB group affecting fasting and postprandial amylin with reductions (-24.2% and -14.1%, respectively); no changes were detected in L group. Multi regression analysis revealed that leptin and postprandial amylin levels were significant predictors of BMI changes after the exercise intervention explaining 45% of the variance in the OV/OB group. Conclusion: The findings suggest that under ad libitum condition, un-biased by internal and external motivation for weight loss, 8 weeks exercise training did not result in weight loss in overweight/obese and lean females.
Secondly, the effects of acute exercise bouts of moderate and high intensity on food craving dimensions, implicit and explicit attitude towards food, and on selected appetite hormones in lean and overweight/obese sedentary females were investigated. In the second part two studies have been conducted, a pilot study with lean sedentary females (n=10, BMI= 21.93±2.16kg m-2, age= 23.50±2.95years) and a trial with 19 sedentary females (lean individuals (L) n=9, BMI= 20.94±2.84kg m-2, age= 21.56±2.66 years; overweight individuals (OV/OB) n=10, BMI= 29.51±4.31kg m-2, age= 23.70±5.05years). In the trial females performed one high (HI) (90% O2peak) and one moderate intensity (MI) 50% O2peak)exercise bout on cycle ergometers with matched energy expenditure in a counterbalanced design, followed by a test meal. Selected appetite hormone measures were taken at fasting, pre exercise, post exercise and 1 hour post exercise. Food craving questionnaire-state (FCQ-S for savoury and sweet foods) measures were taken at fasting, postprandial, pre exercise, post exercise, 1 hour post exercise, post-test meal and 30 minutes post-test meal. Results: An acute bout of exercise, at both moderate- and high-intensity, resulted in a significant suppression of appetite for both sweet and savoury foods in OV/OB individuals (P 0.05). With regard to hormonal response; the findings indicated that an acute bout of exercise result in a significant reduction post-exercise in amylin concentration, with the greatest response evident following the high-intensity protocol where amylin was reduced from pre- to 1h post-exercise by 46% in OV/OB group. The study also demonstrated that OV/OB individuals have a greater drive to eat in a postprandial state following the ingestion of a 300 kcal test-meal. Conclusion: OV/OB females experience a larger decline in craving after exercise than lean; otherwise, this might be overcompensated by the increased craving in the postprandial state by OV/OB.
The collective findings of this thesis suggest that the utility of exercise alone as a mediator of weight loss seems unsupported at least in the limitations of gender and exercise duration used for our research design. Our investigations in both lean and overweight females suggest that exercise should be used in conjunction with dietary restriction to maximise the chance of success for weight loss programs. Studies that have formerly reported weight loss in females may be confounded by the participants desire to lose weight during the study, exhibiting increased self-control in their eating behaviour alongside the exercise intervention.


Many common option pricing problems require numerical solution techniques. One standard tool is to solve a finite difference approximation to the instrument's fundamental partial differential equation (PDE), with appropriate boundary conditions. The approximation will converge to the true solution of the PDE asymptotically as the time and price steps go to zero. In practice, of course, finite step sizes must be selected as a compromise between accuracy and computation time. But this can lead to numerical difficulties in computation. Often these problems are difficult to spot a priori because they only occur for certain parameter values that seem improbable economically. Unfortunately, in searching for correct estimates, a calibration routine can still stumble onto such problem parameter values, and then break down or deliver highly inaccurate results. One such numerical problem occurs at time 0, when the probability density at the initial asset price is a Dirac delta function. In this short article, Hurn, Jeisman and Lindsay offer a simple solution to the problem by reformulating the calculation into one based on the transitional cumulative distribution function (CDF) instead of the transitional density. Simulation analysis suggests that the new approach may not greatly reduce calculation times, although performance can be enhanced with a minor modification. But a plain vanilla real world example of fitting a simple interest rate model on 1-month LIBOR demonstrates the fragility of the standard methodology and the improvement in robustness provided by the new technique.


Conflict and collaboration are often treated as mutually exclusive modes of stakeholder interaction, with little understanding of the contexts in which stakeholder relationships take place. The conceptual framework in this paper addresses accommodating multiple interests as an evolving, cyclical, iterative process, swinging back and forth from collaborative to conflictive situations. A typology is presented with nine contextual facets that come into play in accommodating multiple interests the nature of the problem, the stakeholders, the convenor, the networks, stakeholders' capacities, stakeholders' choices over procedures to deal with conflict, negotiation, and dispute resolution. The nine facets function as lenses through which to analyse multiple stakeholder situations. The typology is used to analyse four existing approaches, Collaborative Management, Collaborative Learning, Rapid Appraisal of Agricultural Knowledge Systems (RAAKS) and "linked local learning". A set of criteria to assess their impact is developed, and desirable future directions for methodological development are discussed.


In the development of the Dutch National Vegetation Classification, little emphasis was placed on ordination or gradient analysis. The current study provides a national-scale ordination analysis of salt-marsh communities in the Netherlands and presents it in the context of the National Classification. A series of 4 DCA ordinations derived from synoptic tables of 21 salt-marsh communities, each varying in their emphasis on dominant species, showed that the importance of dominance vs. overall assemblages of species in classifying communities varies with the communities in question: for species-poor communities such as the Spartinetea, T hero-Salicornietea, and portions of the Asteretea tripollii (Puccinellion maritimae and Puccinellio-Spergularion salinae), dominant species were critical in distinguishing communities while for more diverse communities (the Armerion maritimae and the Saginetea maritima of the Astereteae tripolii), total floristic composition was important and over-emphasis on dominant species obscured differences between several communities. Ordination scores were strongly correlated with mean Ellenberg indicator values for salinity and pH, but only weakly with moisture values. In this respect, Ellenberg values do not appear to reflect the critical conditions of duration and timing of flooding in Dutch salt-marsh vegetation. Ordinations based on both synoptic tables and on individual releves were carried out to study the validity of previously-reported classifications of several related associations. The analysis resolved the question of whether the Suaedetum maritimae is best placed in the Thero-Salicornietea or in the Cakiletea maritimae; it was clearly associated with the Thero-Salicornietea. As for the question of whether certain related associations better belong within the Lolio-Potentillion or within the saltmarsh alliance Armerion maritimae, both options are possible from the point of view of this study. The approach used here of ordinating synoptic tables to locate possible overlap between syntaxa and then using ordinations of individual releves within these to examine the problem areas further provides a useful method for verifying and revising classifications at the national level.


The hypothesis is presented that an abrupt rise in atmospheric radiocarbon concentration evident in the Cariaco Basin varve record at 12,837 ± 10 cal yr BP, contemporaneous with the Rancholabrean termination, may have been produced by a super-sized solar proton event (SPE) having a fluence of ~1.3 × 1011 protons/cm2. A SPE of this magnitude would have been large enough to deliver a lethal radiation dose of at least 3–6 Sv to the Earth's surface, and hence could have been a principal cause of the final termination of the Pleistocene megafauna and several genera of smaller mammals and birds. The event time-correlates with a large-magnitude acidity spike found at 1708.65 m in the GISP2 Greenland ice record, which is associated with high NO-3 ion concentrations and a rapid rise in 10Be deposition rate, all of which are indicators of a sudden cosmicray influx. The depletion of nitrate ions within this acidic ice layer suggests that the snowpack surface at that time was exposed to intense UV for a prolonged period, which is consistent with a temporary destruction of the polar ozone layer by solar cosmic rays. The acidity event also coincides with a large-magnitude, abrupt climatic excursion and is associated with elevated ammonium ion concentrations, an indicator of global fires.


BACKGROUND
The continued high recurrence and mortality rate in ovarian cancer is a significant problem and the major obstacle in the treatment of ovarian cancer patients is chemotherapy resistance. Thus, finding predictive markers of chemoresistance and elucidating resistance mechanisms is crucial for individualising treatment and improving survival of ovarian cancer patients.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Using array comparative genomic hybridisation (CGH), this pilot study analysed the tumour genomes of patients treated with docetaxel/carboplatin as first-line chemotherapy (6 resistant versus 24 sensitive cases). This is the first array CGH study of such material.

RESULTS
The study identified genetic alterations specific to chemoresistant (gains in 9p13.2-13.1, 9q21.2-21.32, 9q21.33, 9q22.2-22.31, 9q22.32-22.33 and 9q33.1-34.11) and chemosensitive (losses in 8p23.3-23.1 and 8p22) disease. Additionally, when comparing the results to previously analysed tumour material from patients treated with paclitaxel/carboplatin, the two datasets identified different genetic alteration profiles.

CONCLUSION
Specific genetic alterations were identified and associated with chemotherapy response in ovarian cancer. It will be interesting to investigate these exciting data further in larger independent series of ovarian tumours, and hopefully will contribute to the establishment of predictive markers.


A right-lateral strike-slip fault offset of a shallowly buried fluvial paleochannel is interpreted from three-dimensional (3-D) seismic data in the eastern offshore area of Trinidad. The fault represents the eastern offshore continuation of the main South America–Caribbean plate boundary zone in Trinidad, the Central Range fault zone. Previous global positioning system–based geodetic studies and trenching have shown that the 50-km-long on-land segment of the Central Range fault zone accommodates a significant part of the present-day interplate motion. The 3-D seismic data shown here reveal that the 60-km-long offshore continuation of the Central Range fault zone forms a prominent seafloor lineament and dextrally offsets a shallowly buried (83 m below sea level), late Quaternary fluvial channel by 322–506 m. Based on the eustatic sea-level curve, we infer that the channel began to be incised during the beginning of the Last Glacial Maximum ca. 30 ka and was subsequently offset by the Central Range fault zone. Using the offset amounts and our inferred age for the filled channel, we can estimate a long-term slip along the fault of 17–19 mm/yr for the Central Range fault zone. Because no documented earthquake has occurred on the Central Range since A.D. 1800, as much as 3.7 m of elastic strain may have accumulated on the Central Range fault zone that could be released by a future magnitude >M7.5 earthquake.


OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether clonidine, enoximone, and enalaprilat reduce ischaemia-related myocardial cell damage in cardiac surgery. DESIGN: Prospective randomised controlled trial. SETTING: Clinical investigation in a cardiac anaesthesia department of a university hospital. PATIENTS: 88 consecutive patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery. INTERVENTIONS: After induction of anaesthesia patients continuously received the alpha 2 agonist clonidine (group 1, n = 22), the phosphodiesterase (PDE) III inhibitor enoximone (group 2, n = 22), the angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor enalaprilat (group 3, n = 22), or saline solution as placebo (control group, n = 22). The infusion was stopped immediately before the start of cardiopulmonary bypass. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The ST segment was analysed and the activity of creatine kinase isoenzyme MB (CKMB), cardiac troponin T (TnT), and the BB isoenzyme of glycogen phosphorylase (GPBB) were measured before the start of infusion (baseline), after weaning from cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), at the end of surgery, 5 h after CPB, and on the morning of the first and third postoperative days. RESULTS: Biometric data and time of cross-clamping were not significantly different in the four groups. Changes in the ST segment indicating ischaemia were least common in the enalaprilat group (P < 0.05). Postoperatively, CKMB activity was significantly higher in the clonidine and the control groups. Both new markers of myocardial cell damage increased more after CPB and postoperatively in the control patients (TnT peak: (mean (SD)) 3.99 (0.35) microgram/1; GPBB peak: 82 (15) ng/ml) and the clonidine-treated group (TnT peak: 3.80 (0.3) microgram/1; GPBB peak: 85 (14) ng/ml). Enalaprilat-treated patients showed the smallest overall changes in standard (CKMB) and new serological markers of myocardial ischaemia (TnT peak: 0.71 (0.1) microgram/1; GPBB peak: 44 (14) ng/ml). CONCLUSIONS: In patients treated with enalaprilat before CPB, both new, more sensitive markers of ischaemic myocardial tissue damage increased significantly less than in an untreated control group. Those treated with enoximone also had lower plasma concentration of TnT and GPBB than the control group, whereas clonidine did not reduce the concentration of these markers of myocardial ischaemia. Pharmacological interventions, such as the continuous infusion of the ACE inhibitor enalaprilat, before start of CPB may help to protect the heart against ischaemia/reperfusion injury.


Islamic venture capital financing is a new emerging type of ICT equity financing in Malaysia. Conventional ICT venture capitalists are all the while have been facing agency problems, as for that there is a need for a strategy on mitigating agency problem throughout the Islamic venture capital processes. Experiences by conventional venture capitalists are greatly needed in order to come out with strategy to reduce the risk created by agent. Firstly, this research was the first attempt to investigate Islamic venture capital financing and related agency problem in Malaysia and formulate guideline to mitigate those problems. Secondly, this research attempts to formulate guideline to implement the best practices of ICT projects financing by Islamic venture capital for Kazakhstan based on Malaysian experience. To achieve these objectives, mix-research methods have been used, such as data collection and qualitative methods. The proposed guideline will be helpful firstly to implement in Kazakhstan ICT projects financing by Islamic venture capital and secondly to mitigate agency problem which will face any Islamic Venture capitalists in ICT venture projects financing.


Motivated by a realistic scenario for cognitive radio systems, we model the underlay cognitive radio network (CRN) under interference power constraint imposed by the primary network as an M/G/1/K queueing system. The respective embedded Markov chain is provided to analyze several key queueing performance measures. In particular, the equilibrium probabilities of all states are derived and utilized to evaluate throughput, blocking probability, mean packet transmission time, mean number of packets in the system, and mean waiting time of an underlay CRN with Nakagami-m fading channels.


Robots depend on captured images for perceiving the environment. A robot can replace a human in capturing quality photographs for publishing. In this paper, we employ an iterative photo capture by robots (by repositioning itself) to capture good quality photographs. Our image quality assessment approach is based on few high level features of the image combined with some of the aesthetic guidelines of professional photography. Our system can also be used in web image search applications to rank images. We test our quality assessment approach on a large and diversified dataset and our system is able to achieve a classification accuracy of 79%. We assess the aesthetic error in the captured image and estimate the change required in orientation of the robot to retake an aesthetically better photograph. Our experiments are conducted on NAO robot with no stereo vision. The results demonstrate that our system can be used to capture professional photographs which are in accord with the human professional photography.


Irregular bodies of goethite and hematite, termed ironstone pods , in the Barberton greenstone belt, South Africa, have been previously interpreted as the Earth9s most ancient submarine hydrothermal vent deposits and have yielded putative evidence about Archean hydrothermal systems, ocean composition and temperature, and early life. This report summarizes geologic, sedimentological, and petrographic evidence from three widely separated areas showing that the ironstone was deposited on and directly below the modern ground surface by active groundwater and spring systems, probably during periods of higher rainfall in the Pleistocene. The deposits include a recently active spring terrace and outflow system containing iron oxide–encrusted microbial filaments, shallow subsurface groundwater areas showing ironstone deposited between chert blocks and replacing chert, degraded spring and outflow deposits, and goethite-cemented Pleistocene landslide breccias and regolith. The predominance of goethite, a thermally unstable iron oxide; widely developed slope-parallel stratification; abundant primary open cavities, some with vertical goethite dripstone; and the lack of structural deformation collectively indicate that these bodies formed during relatively recent time. Veins and displaced masses of coarsely crystalline quartz show corrosion and represent relict Archean vein and cavity-fill quartz after iron oxide replacement of surrounding chert. Iron was sourced by Archean sideritic sedimentary units that hold up high ridges on which the ironstone bodies occur. Siderite was dissolved by circulating groundwater, and the iron deposited as oxides within the shallow subsurface groundwater system and around springs where the Fe-rich water flowed onto the surface. These deposits represent a remarkable iron oxide–depositing Quaternary hydrologic system but provide no information about conditions or life on the early Earth.


Cicero's general interest in Dicaearchus' ethical and political thought can be detected in his letters to Atticus and De legibus. At present, however, we do not possess a clear and detailed picture of Dicaearchus' influence on Cicero's own ethical and political thought. This chapter argues that, despite these obstacles, we can construct a positive account of the nature and extent of Dicaearchus' influence that offers new insights into key aspects of Cicero's philosophical thought and practice. First it offers a novel reconstruction of Dicaearchus' argument for the supremacy of the praktikos bios and his relationship with Aristotle and Theophrastus in the Peripatetic tradition. The chapter then considers how Dicaearchus figures in Cicero's political and ethical deliberations by analysing a letter to Atticus in which Dicaearchus is referred to by name. At this point we are in a position to identify the precise nature of Dicaearchus' influence on Cicero's De republica, which is the subject of the final and concluding section. Here the chapter argues that Cicero's vision of philosophy and its role in Roman political culture, as showcased in the preface to De republica, is appropriated in all fundamental respects from Dicaearchus


This book is a collection of research reports and concepts papers on the teaching and learning of English as a Second Language (ESL). The book attempts to highlights certain issues that are considered critical in improving the teaching and learning process of English Language. The topics discussed in this book include the training of pre-service teachers, the teaching of literature component in Malaysian schools, note-taking strategies as useful tools for language learners, the use of authoring software in English Language teaching and the practice of assessment for students' placement purposes. The strength of this book lies in the wide-ranging topics of its content and the easy-to-read manner the book is written. This makes the book a suitable reading material for teachers, language instructors and tertiary students.


Abstract Short-term variations in rates of taxonomic extinction and origination in the fossil record may be the result of true changes in rates of turnover, variable rates of fossil preservation, or some combination of the two. Here, positive extinction and origination rate excursions among Phanerozoic marine animal genera are reexpressed in terms of the amount of normal, background time they represent. In addition to providing a background-adjusted calibration of rate intensities, this reexpression determines the durations of sampling gaps that would be required to explain entirely all observed rate excursions as sampling artifacts. This possibility is explored by analyzing a new compilation of the timing and duration of sedimentary hiatuses in North America. Hiatuses spanning more than approximately one million years (Myr) in the marine sedimentary rock record have a mean duration of 73 Myr. There are two major hiatus types—those that form in response to long-duration tectonic cycles and that bound the major Sloss-scale sequences (mean duration 200 Myr), and those that form in response to shorter-duration changes in sediment accommodation space and that occur within major Sloss-scale sequences (mean duration less than 23 Myr). The latter are approximately exponentially distributed and have a mean duration that is comparable to the mean duration of intervening sedimentary rock packages. Although sedimentary hiatuses are generally long enough in duration to accommodate the hypothesis that short-term variations in rates of genus origination and extinction are artifacts of sampling failures at major unconformities ("Unconformity Bias" hypothesis), the observed evolutionary rates are not correlated with hiatus durations. Moreover, hiatuses that follow the major mass extinctions are not long in comparison to most other non–mass extinction intervals. These results do not support the hypothesis that hiatuses at major unconformities alone have artificially clustered genus first and last occurrences, thereby causing many of the documented statistical similarities between the temporal structure of the sedimentary rock record and macroevolutionary patterns. Instead, environmental changes related to the expansion and contraction of marine environments may have been the primary forcers of both biological turnover and the spatio-temporal pattern of sediment accumulation. Fully testing this "Common Cause" hypothesis requires quantifying and overcoming lingering taxonomic, biostratigraphic, facies, and numerous other biases that are both inherent in geologic data and imposed by imperfect knowledge of the fossil record.


MEDICAL PERIOPERATIVE MANAGEMENT '89/'90 International Edition Edited by Susan D. Wolfsthal, MD Published by Appleton & Lange, 1989. £9.95, 426pp + Index. ISBN 08385-6249-3 This compact paperback achieves its stated aims of being a concise quick-reference, pocket sized reference book. Small enough to be carried in a white coat pocket, it is divided into two parts. The first, larger part, deals with the body systems in turn while the last few chapters deal with specific groups of surgical patients. Having effectively used headings and bold type, quick reference to specific topics is easy. It has obviously been written for the USA market but having said that, I still think it would be a useful addition to anyone's library who is dealing daily with surgical patients and the slight difference in clinical practice between the USA and UK add, rather than detract, from the book. It would be especially useful to the newcomer, the house officer and anaesthetist in the first few years of training. The book is not designed to be a manual for the management of medical or anaesthetic emergencies but is a good guide to the pre and post operative care of patients. At £9.95 I can recommend it as providing good value for money. I. Skipsey


SUMMARY The ability of some insects to engage in complex orchestrations of tracheal gas exchange has been well demonstrated, but its evolutionary origin remains obscure. According to a recently proposed hypothesis, insects may employ spiracular control of gas exchange to guard tissues against long-term oxidative damage by using the discontinuous gas-exchange cycle (DGC) to limit internal oxygen partial pressure (PO2). This manuscript describes a different approach to oxygen guarding in the lower termite Zootermopsis nevadensis. These insects do not display a DGC but respond to elevated oxygen concentrations by restricting spiracular area, resulting in a transient decline in CO2 emission. High internal CO2 concentrations are then maintained; restoring normoxia results in a transient reciprocal increase in CO2 emission caused by release of excess endotracheal CO2. These changes in spiracular area reflect active guarding of low internal O2 concentrations and demonstrate that regulation of endotracheal hypoxia takes physiological priority over prevention of CO2 build-up. This adaptation may reflect the need to protect oxygen-sensitive symbionts (or, gut bug guarding). Termites may eschew the DGC because periodic flushing of the tracheal system with air may harm the obligate anaerobes upon which the lower termites depend for survival on their native diet of chewed wood.


Abstract. Estimating evapotranspiration in hilly watersheds is paramount for managing water resources, especially in semiarid/subhumid regions. The eddy covariance (EC) technique allows continuous measurements of latent heat flux (LE). However, time series of EC measurements often experience large portions of missing data because of instrumental malfunctions or quality filtering. Existing gap-filling methods are questionable over hilly crop fields because of changes in airflow inclination and subsequent aerodynamic properties. We evaluated the performances of different gap-filling methods before and after tailoring to conditions of hilly crop fields. The tailoring consisted of splitting the LE time series beforehand on the basis of upslope and downslope winds. The experiment was setup within an agricultural hilly watershed in northeastern Tunisia. EC measurements were collected throughout the growth cycle of three wheat crops, two of them located in adjacent fields on opposite hillslopes, and the third one located in a flat field. We considered four gap-filling methods: the REddyProc method, the linear regression between LE and net radiation (Rn), the multi-linear regression of LE against the other energy fluxes, and the use of evaporative fraction (EF). Regardless of the method, the splitting of the LE time series did not impact the gap-filling rate, and it might improve the accuracies on LE retrievals in some cases. Regardless of the method, the obtained accuracies on LE estimates after gap filling were close to instrumental accuracies, and they were comparable to those reported in previous studies over flat and mountainous terrains. Overall, REddyProc was the most appropriate method, for both gap-filling rate and retrieval accuracy. Thus, it seems possible to conduct gap filling for LE time series collected over hilly crop fields, provided the LE time series are split beforehand on the basis of upslope–downslope winds. Future works should address consecutive vegetation growth cycles for a larger panel of conditions in terms of climate, vegetation, and water status.


Background: The most prevalent form of inflammatory arthritis is rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and it usually involves elbows, feet, wrists, knees, and ankles. The foot is the first region of the body to display RA signs and symptoms for certain patients. This research aimed to assess the prevalence of foot disorders in RA patients, identifying the relationship between the activity of the RA disease and foot disorders, as well as their effect and deformities occurrence. Patients and methods: A total of 300 RA patients were included in this report. There were 240 women and 60 men, aged between 18 and 74. The following were done to all patients: complete historical review, complete clinical examination, and the evaluation of disease occurrence Complete blood count (CBC), Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), c-reactive protein (CRP), rheumatoid factor (RF) titer, and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (anti-CCP Ab) titer were used and X Ray on foot done to all patients Results: We found that 31.6% of the study patients had foot deformities. 214 patients (71.3%) had normal gait while 86 patients (28.7.0%) had pathological gait. Hallux valgus was common among old age and obese RA patients. The foot deformities are associated with moderate and high DAS28 activity. Obese RA patients are more susceptible to have foot problems 2.89 times more than normal-weight RA patients. 176 patients (58.6%) had narrowing, 97 patients (32.33%) had osteoporosis 87 patients (29.0%) had erosion, 20 patients (6.67%) had bone cyst, 17 patients (5.6%) had subluxation and 14 patients (4.6%) had amalgamation. Conclusion: This study showed that foot disorders in RA patients were substantially high. It accounted for about 59.3% of the total patients surveyed. This study demonstrated that there were 31.6% had foot deformities. Hallux valgus and overriding toes were the most prevalent foot deformities detected in RA patients. RA patients with a high risk of developing foot disorders had high BMI, high disease activity, and longer disease duration.


A common complaint is that media in this country give scant attention to Mexico except in times of crisis. Clearly one does not have to read far into the periodical press of the United States and Mexico to note a definite difference. United States affairs loom large in the press of Mexico while newspapers north of the border are most obviously not preoccupied with Mexican affairs. A notable exception to these generalizations is the work of Edward H. Harte, publisher of the Corpus Christi-Caller Times . While his newspapers may not give any more space to Mexican affairs than any other borderlands daily, Harte's own column, appearing regularly in the Sunday edition, has more and more focused on Mexico. That a newspaper publisher is regularly writing for the paper is somewhat unusual, but that this publisher, a key figure in the Harte-Hanks chain of media activities, is so concerned with Mexico is of special interest to anyone with even a passing interest in the Mexican-United States borderlands. By examining Harte's writings on Mexico from the time the column began in 1973 through 1985, this paper will attempt to describe and evaluate the development of the concerns of Ed Harte regarding Mexico. For a significant and influential South Texan to have such an interest in Mexican affairs is important in shaping attitudes toward Mexico over a wide area of South Texas.


The introduction of English as 'high' language and the designs to reshape the 'native vernaculars' under its influence through colonial educational policy altered the universe of communicative and cultural practices on the subcontinent. Colonial bilingualism also introduced hierachical and ideological divisions between the newly-educated and 'illiterate', 'English-knowing' and 'vernacular-speaking' sections of native society. On the basis of an analysis of the possibilities for a laicised literate order opened up through the severely elitist project of colonial education, the thesis proposes an argument about the structural links between these crucial cultural shifts and the strategies adopted by the colonial intelligentsia in western India to achieve a hegemonic position. The main argument of my thesis is set against a discussion of the relations between linguistic hierarchies, textual practices and power in precolonial western India. My thesis is a study of the bilingual relation between English and Marathi and it traces the hierarchical relation between the English and vernacular spheres in the Bombay-Pune region between 1830-1880. The initiatives to establish the first native Marathi newspaper, the Bombay Durpan. a bilingual weekly, in 1832 signified the beginning of the intelligentsia's efforts to disseminate the new discourses among wider audiences and to establish a sphere of critical exchange through the vernacular. Later attempts, from the 1860s onwards, to aestheticise vernacular discourse by creating 'high' 'modern' literary forms were undoubtedly important in enhancing the intelligentsia's hegemonic claims, but they also corresponded with crucial shifts in their self-perception and their ideological orientation. The emergence of Kesari and the Maratha in early 1881 indicated that the bilingual relation that structured the colonial-modern public sphere had, by this time, yielded two separate, largely monolingual literate communities within native society. Concomitantly, by the early 1880s, the upper-caste intelligentsia had renounced even the minimal scope that had existed for them to act as agents for a more egalitarian cultural and social order. In analysing the conditions under which the colonial intelligentsia in western India were able to achieve a position of ideological influence, the thesis also aims to raise questions about the displacement of the meanings and spaces for hegemonic articulation within colonial modernity.


Due to the influence of Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege, twentieth-century philosophers have devoted a great deal of attention to questions concerning the logic and metaphysics of relations. However, systematic philosophical interest in relations does not originate in the twentieth century, or even in the modern era. On the contrary, it originates in antiquity, dating back at least to Aristotle's short treatise, the Categories.(1) In the Categories, Aristotle identifies relations (or relatives, ta pros ti) as one of the ten irreducible kinds of being, and devotes an entire chapter--the seventh chapter of his treatise--to analyzing their nature and ontological status. Aristotle's discussion in Categories 7 provides the starting point for a long and rich tradition of thinking about relations, one which stems from antiquity, runs through the Middle Ages, and eventually makes its way into the early modern period. What is distinctive about this tradition is the commitment of its adherents to the view that relations are in some sense reducible to the monadic properties of related things. Twentieth-century philosophers typically assume that, if Simmias is taller than Socrates, this is to be explained by an entity to which both Simmias and Socrates are somehow jointly attached (namely, the dyadic or two-place property being-taller-than). By contrast, Aristotle and his followers assume that Simmias's being taller than Socrates is to be explained by a pair of monadic properties, one of which inheres hi Simmias and points him toward (pros) Socrates, and another of which inheres in Socrates and points him toward Simmias. Despite the prominence of the Aristotelian tradition in the history of philosophy, and despite the stature of the philosophers whose support it claims, reductionism about relations is now widely rejected on the basis of broadly logical considerations. Bertrand Russell, for example, has argued that the meaning of relational propositions is unanalyzable;(2) and C. I. Lewis and C. H. Langford have constructed a formal proof which allegedly shows that dyadic relations cannot, without contradiction, be reduced to monadic predicates or concepts.(3) Due to the influence of these sorts of considerations, there is widespread conviction that advances in twentieth-century logic have discredited theories that are in any way reductive of relations. In this paper, I challenge the reigning consensus by examining one theory representative of the Aristotelian tradition. On the basis of this examination, I argue that reductive theories are capable of far more subtlety and sophistication than contemporary philosophers have recognized, and that when properly understood, they can be defended against all the standard logical objections. In what follows I focus on the work of Peter Abelard (1079-1142), an influential medieval logician who developed his theory of relations in the course of commenting on Categories 7.(4) Like other Aristotelians, Abelard accepts the view that relations are reducible to the monadic properties of related things. On his theory, however, the relation between Simmias and Socrates is not to be explained by a set of peculiar monadic properties--say, being-taller-than-Socrates and being-shorter-than-Simmias. Rather it is to be explained by a pair of ordinary heights--say, being-six-feet-tall in the case of Simmias and being-five-feet-ten in the case of Socrates. Indeed, according to Abelard, the relation between Simmias and Socrates is nothing over and above the possession by these individuals of their respective heights. Although Abelard commits himself to a form of reductionism about relations, we shall see that his theory is perfectly compatible with the advances made by twentieth-century logicians. Abelard is careful to distinguish questions about ontology from questions about logic, and to commit himself to reducing relations only at the level of ontology. Thus, he argues that Simmias's being taller than Socrates is nothing but Simmias, Socrates, and their respective heights. …


The pharmacological effects of a number of centrally acting drugs have been compared in euthyroid mice and mice made hyperthyroid by pretreatment with sodium-1-thyroxine. The potencies of two barbiturates, pentobarbitone and thiopentone - as indicated by the duration of their hypnotic actions and their acute toxicities - are increased in hyperthyroid mice. An acutely active uncoupler of phosphorylative oxidation is 2, 4-dinitrophenol, an agent which proved to be a potent hypnotic when administered intracerebrally. An attempt has been made to relate the mechanism of action of the barbiturates to the uncoupling effects of thyroxine and 2, 4-dinitrophenol. The pharmacological effects of chlorpromazine, reserpine and amphetamine-like drugs have also been studied in hyperthyroid mice. After pretreatment with thyroxine, mice show a reduced tendency to become hypothermic after chlorpromazine or reserpine; in fact, under suitable laboratory conditions these agents produce a hyperthermic effect. Yet their known depressant effects upon locomotor activity were not substantially altered. Thus it appeared that depression of locomotor activity and hypothermia are not necessarily correlated, an observation at variance with previously held opinion. These results have been discussed in the light of our knowledge of the role of the thyroid gland in thermoregulation. The actions of tremorine and its metabolite, oxotremorine, have also been examined. Hyperthyroid animals are less susceptible to both the hypothermia and tremor produced by these agents. An attempt is made to explain these observations, in view of the known mechanism of action of oxotremorine and the tremorgenic actions that thyroxine may have. A number of experimental methods have been used to study the anti-nociceptive (analgesic) effects of drugs in euthyroid and hyperthyroid mice. The sites and mechanisms of action of these drugs and the known actions of thyroxine have been discussed.


The Sultanate of Oman harbours rich populations of sponges, especially in the four coral reef areas (Musandam Peninsula, Muscat coast & Daymaniyat islands, coasts of Masirah Island, and the Khuriya Muriya Islands). Up till now, apart from a few incidental samples, the sponges of Oman were known only from five dredge stations made by the John Murray Expedition 1933-1934 off the south coasts of Oman, near the Khuriya Muriya Islands, between 13.5 and 1415 m. Descriptions of the sponges obtained in these dredges were published by Burton (1959) and the specimens are deposited in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London. To complement these dredge samples, we recently obtained samples collected by SCUBA and shore collecting, mostly from the northern part of Oman, deposited in the collections of the Zoological Museum of the University of Amsterdam. We studied the combined Oman collections of the Amsterdam and London Museums. In the present contribution we treat the species belonging to the tetractinellid and hadromerid Demospongiae. The sponges of the Zoological Museum of Amsterdam are fully described and illustrated, those of the John Murray Expedition are annotated and illustrated here with habit photographs, as these were entirely lacking from Burton's (1959) report. The collection studied here contains 30 species, two of which are new to science, six are up till now known only from Oman waters, while the remaining 24 species are shared with other areas. The Indian subcontinent shares the most species with Oman, followed by East African areas, while the nearby Arabian coasts share only few species, probably due to the poor knowledge of sponges from this region.


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We study efficient distributed algorithms for the fundamental problem of principal component analysis and leading eigenvector computation on the sphere, when the data are randomly distributed among a set of computational nodes. We propose a new quantized variant of Riemannian gradient descent to solve this problem, and prove that the algorithm converges with high probability under a set of necessary spherical-convexity properties. We give bounds on the number of bits transmitted by the algorithm under common initialization schemes, and investigate the dependency on the problem dimension in each case.


A method is presented which allows the use of nonlinear section lift data in the calculation of the spanwise lift distribution of unswept wings with flaps or ailerons. This method is based upon lifting line theory and is an extension to the method described in NACA rep. 865. The mathematical treatment of the discontinuity in absolute angle of attack at the end of the flap or aileron involves the use of a correction factor which accounts for the inability of a limited trigonometric series to represent adequately the spanwise lift distribution. A treatment of the apparent discontinuity in maximum section lift coefficient is also described. Simplified computing forms containing detailed examples are given for both symmetrical and asymmetrical lift distributions. A few comparisons of calculated characteristics with those obtained experimentally are also presented.