The present work aimed at recovering, purifying, and testing rice cystatin or oryzacystatin I (OCI) bioavailability, to provide scientific evidence that rice cystatin can be used as a functional food ingredient. OCI was extracted from rice bran using 25 mM sodium phosphate buffer containing 0.15 M NaCl at pH 7.0. The resulting homogenate was heat treated, cooled and precipitated with ammonium sulfate. The recovered protein was dialyzed against 50 mM sodium acetate buffer pH 4.8 and sequentially purified by cation exchange, size exclusion, and anion exchange chromatography. Nine hundred and seventy micrograms of protein were obtained from 1 kg of rice bran. SDS-PAGE provided one pure band. MALDI-MS identified the protein at 11,538 Da. Overall there was a 14-fold increase in specific activity throughout the purification process. OCI was hydrolyzed with chymotrypsin in 20 mM sodium phosphate buffer pH 7.4 for 2.5 hours at 37oC at an enzyme to protein ratio of 1:100. The resulting chymotryptic peptides yielded a higher inhibitory activity compared to unhydrolyzed OCI (145% increase). The permeability of OCI and OCI chymotryptic peptides across Caco-2 cells was evaluated for 3 hours at 37oC. Unhydrolyzed OCI did not cross the cell monolayer. OCI chymotryptic peptides were uptaken by the Caco-2 cells, as they were not detected in the apical side of the cells either by MALDI MS or papain inhibitory activity assay. After three-hour incubation, only one peptide with a molecular weight of 5.8 kDa was detected in the basolateral side of the cells. The peptide that crossed the


Previous Sr-Nd isotopic models of two-component crust-mantle mixing (based on an apparently simple hyperbolic ϵNd-Sri array) have failed to account for all the geochemical and isotopic features of granitoids from the Lachlan fold belt, eastern Australia. Here we show that a three-component mixture of mantle-derived magma and two contrasting crustal components successfully explains the isotopic compositions of the granitoids. New isotopic data from the Moruya granitoids of the fold belt reveal that a separate isotopic trend exists at the most primitive end of the ϵNd-Sri array, defined by a depleted mantle component (ϵNd = +8.0; Sri = 0.7032) and a mafic crustal component (ϵNd = +2.7; Sri = 0.7049). This crustal component has isotopic characteristics similar to Cambrian greenstones within the fold belt, and appears to be widespread in the lower crust. After also considering data from the ubiquitous Ordovician turbidites which host the granitoids (ϵNd = −9.61 to −10.64; Sri = 0.7204 to 0.7273), three-component isotopic mixing curves are constructed that enclose all the granitoids of the fold belt, indicating that contributions from the Ordovician turbidites, Cambrian greenstones, and a depleted mantle component could produce the isotopic characteristics of the granitoids. Important implications of the model are that (1) S- and I-type granites appear to be mixtures of, rather than unique products from, contrasting sources and so Lachlan granitoids do not directly "image" their source-rock compositions; (2) the chemical variation lines defining granitoid suites are neither mixing lines nor lines reflecting restite separation; (3) previously inferred Precambrian continental basement beneath the fold belt is unnecessary; and (4) Lachlan granitoids may have formed in an environment related to subduction, where arc magmatism promoted crustal fusion and crust-mantle mixing.


In Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba, Ivor L. Miller shows how African migrants and their political fraternities played a formative role in the history of Cuba. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no large kingdoms controlled Nigeria and Cameroon's multilingual Cross River basin. Instead, each settlement had its own lodge of the initiation society called Ekpe, or "leopard," which was the highest indigenous authority. Ekpe lodges ruled local communities while also managing regional and long-distance trade. Cross River Africans, enslaved and forcibly brought to colonial Cuba, reorganized their Ekpe clubs covertly in Havana and Matanzas into a mutual-aid society called Abakua, which became foundational to Cuba's urban life and music. Miller's extensive fieldwork in Cuba and West Africa documents ritual languages and practices that survived the Middle Passage and evolved into a unifying charter for transplanted slaves and their successors. To gain deeper understanding of the material, Miller underwent Ekpe initiation rites in Nigeria after ten years' collaboration with Abakua initiates in Cuba and the United States. He argues that Cuban music, art, and even politics rely on complexities of these African-inspired codes of conduct and leadership. Voice of the Leopard is an unprecedented tracing of an African title-society to its Caribbean incarnation, which has deeply influenced Cuba's creative energy and popular consciousness.


The relationship between calcium conductances and developmental changes in the active and passive membrane properties of cerebellar Purkinje neurons from rats was studied in a culture model system by using current-clamp and voltage-clamp techniques. These cultures, at 6–21 d of age, represented the main period of morphological and physiological development of the Purkinje neuron. In the current-clamp studies, input resistance decreased and the current-voltage curve became more S-shaped as the neurons matured in culture. Spike-generating properties also changed. Immature Purkinje neurons without dendritic structure produced repetitive, fast TTX-sensitive simple spikes when stimulated electrically. The simple spike frequency increased with maturation. In older neurons (greater than or equal to 12 d in vitro) with well- developed dendritic structure, a burst event, the complex spike, preceded the repetitive simple spike firing. Magnesium (10 mM) and cadmium (50–100 microM), calcium channel blockers, antagonized the repetitive simple spike firing in both young and old neurons. The complex spike of the older neurons was also antagonized by magnesium (10 mM) but was resistant to cadmium (50–100 microM), suggesting that a pharmacologically distinct calcium conductance mediated this spike event. Whole-cell voltage-clamp recordings showed that the older Purkinje neurons expressed two calcium currents, a low-threshold rapidly inactivating calcium current resistant to cadmium (50–100 microM) and a high-threshold slowly inactivating calcium current antagonized by cadmium (50–100 microM). In young Purkinje neurons without dendritic structure (6–9 d in vitro), only the high-threshold calcium current was evident. The amplitude of this current increased approximately 50% during development. These results indicate that the developmental expression of calcium conductances plays a prominent role in the physiological maturation of the cultured Purkinje neurons, which closely simulate the physiologic cells they model. The high-threshold calcium conductance is expressed early in development and contributes to repetitive simple spike firing of both the young and old neurons. The low-threshold calcium conductance appears later in development, coincident with dendritic expression, and plays a major role in the generation of the complex spike.


The African catfish (Clarias gariepinus) has increasingly become an economically important food source especially in Africa, Asia and Europe, with exports extending to countries throughout the world. In the last 25 years, aquaculture of this species has been particularly effective with large increases in production and this is in part due to the catfish being highly resistant to disease. In order to further understand the immune system of the catfish, the spleen was investigated using a number of staining, immunohistochemical, light and transmission electron microscope techniques in order to verify the histological features of this organ. The gross histological features of the spleen confirmed the presence of a capsule containing numerous collagen fibers surrounded the spleen of the African catfish. Melanomacrophage centers, lymphocytes and surrounding arterial vessels were the main components of the white pulp whilst the red pulp contained sinusoids, capillaries and splenic cords of erythrocytes, macrophages and lymphocytes. Transmission electron microscopy identified Langerhans-like cells which were irregular to ovoid in shape with an electron lucent cytoplasm. The cells were characterized by the presence of numerous Birbeck-like granules, varying in shape from oval, round, rod to racket shaped granules. In total, three types of Birbeck-like granules were identified. The first type had heterogenic content, the second type were cored granules and the third type were racket shaped granules. Some of the racket shaped granules were enlarged and contained granular content. The Langerhans-like cells were further identified and characterised by showing a positive reaction with antibodies to S100 and CD1a. The existence of Langerhans-like cells within the spleen helps to identify the components of the immune system within the African catfish.


We consider the problem of answering queries about a sensitive dataset subject to differential privacy. The queries may be chosen adversarially from a larger set $Q$ of allowable queries in one of three ways, which we list in order from easiest to hardest to answer:Offline: The queries are chosen all at once and the differentially private mechanism answers the queries in a single batch.
Online: The queries are chosen all at once, but the mechanism only receives the queries in a streaming fashion and must answer each query before seeing the next query.
Adaptive: The queries are chosen one at a time and the mechanism must answer each query before the next query is chosen. In particular, each query may depend on the answers given to previous queries.Many differentially private mechanisms are just as efficient in the adaptive model as they are in the offline model. Meanwhile, most lower bounds for differential privacy hold in the offline setting. This suggests that the three models may be equivalent.
We prove that these models are all, in fact, distinct. Specifically, we show that there is a family of statistical queries such that exponentially more queries from this family can be answered in the offline model than in the online model. We also exhibit a family of search queries such that exponentially more queries from this family can be answered in the online model than in the adaptive model. We also investigate whether such separations might hold for simple queries like threshold queries over the real line.


Globally in the field of Dental Technology, polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) resin continues to be the popular material for the fabrication of denture bases in removable prosthodontics. However, the mechanical strength of the denture base is a concern due to fractures occurring intra-orally or when accidentally dropped. The objective of this in vitro investigation was therefore to evaluate and compare the flexural strength and microstructure of stick® glass fibre and wire mesh reinforced PMMA resin after thermocycling. The selection of the materials used in this study was based primarily on their popularity and availability in South Africa. These materials were selected to ensure that the results of this study would have further implicational value in the commercial dental industry when published. This investigation was conducted by means of fabricating a total of 90 PMMA resin specimens and divided in three groups consisting of 30 specimens each. Sample groups 1 and 2 were reinforced with stick® glass fibres and wire mesh respectively. The un-reinforced sample group was the control. All 90 specimens were thermocycled in water at temperatures between 5˚C and 55˚C for 2100 cycles. The flexural strength of each specimen was tested using a universal testing machine and the microstructure of the fractured surfaces was then analysed using scanning electron microscopes (SEM). SPSS version 15.0 was used for data analysis. A p-value of <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Data were analysed using parametric and non-parametric statistical methods. Statistically significant differences in flexural strength existed between the three sample groups (p<0.001) with the stick® glass fibre and wire mesh sample groups being significantly superior to the control. Furthermore there was a significant association between fracture modes and sample groups. Microscopic analysis revealed the presence of voids. Statistically, in terms of microstructure (% of voids present), a significant difference existed between all sample groups. With regards to surface texture of the compression and tension sides of the test specimens, significant differences existed between the three sample groups. Furthermore microscopic analysis revealed partial impregnation and distribution of the fibres to the PMMA resin matrix and un-bonding between the wire mesh and PMMA resin matrix. Statistically, the Mann-Whitney test was conducted to compare flexural strength between sample groups with and without voids. The flexural strength was higher in sample groups with voids than those without. This is an important finding from the clinical perspective because, in some structures of dentures, toughness is a desired property. Nevertheless in order to find the long-term data especially on clinical behaviour of these new fibre reinforcement systems, more studies should be conducted.


Differences in social status might impede teamwork and cooperation among health professionals. Against this background, we study the social interaction between health professionals using a simple experimental tool from behavioral economics (the dictator game). In our setup, physicians, nurses, and student nurses had to allocate monetary endowments between themselves and recipients, whereby the professional status of the recipient (physician, nurse, and student nurse) was varied. This way, we obtain insights into the prosocial motives of health professionals. Our results indicate a considerable amount of pure altruistic concern for the welfare of others among health practitioners, which also reaches across professional boundaries. These findings put concerns expressed in the literature on the doctor–nurse relationship such as a potential lack of team identity, in-group favoritism, and overly strict hierarchies along professional boundaries into perspective. Our study also paves the way for further experimental research on the relationship between social status and cooperation in the medical sector.


Two erbium-doped fiber ring lasers (EDFRLs) wvith simultaneous emission at four different wavelengths are demonstrated. Both systems employ fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) to select the operation wavelengths within the ring. The sensing capability of the FBGs has been taken advantage of, allowing for the sources to be used as sensor multiplexing schemes. The first system employs four FBGs in a tree filter topology, achieving four output channels with -5 dBm power each. The second system comprises an in-line filtering topology with active fiber segments within the filter. This second source yields 2-dBm output signals and allows for a higher number of lines to be easily added to the system. A comparison between both topologies is carried out, and their capability for sensor multiplexing is demonstrated.


This article explores the role of social media in reading education in schools. It offers an analysis of literature on how social media are changing reading practices, and makes a case for learning conversations as a necessary condition for progress in reading development and information literacy. The argument is developed that reading development (i.e. improvement in comprehension and performance) may be greatly enhanced through learning conversations, or what is called discussion-based reading; even more so with social media reading (SMR), which is conceived of as reading in electronic forms. Based on an exemplary analysis of how learning conversations about readings in school settings can be done, guidelines are proposed for the use of learning conversations in SMR.


Science, founded in 1880, Is published each Friday by the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the Business Press, 10 McGovern Ave., Lancaster, Pa. Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at Lancaster, Pa., January 13, 1948, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Acceptance for mailing at the special rate postage provided for In the Act of February 28, 1925, embodied In Paragraph (d-2) Section 34.40 P. L. & R. of 1948. All correspondence should be sent to Science, 1515 Massachusetts Ave., N. W., Washington 5, D. C. The AAAS assumes no responsibility for the safety of manuscripts or for the opinions expressed by contributors. Four weeks' notice is required for change of address, and an address stencil label from a recent issue must be furnished. Claims for a missing number will be allowed only if received within 60 days from date of Issue.


This research project investigates current and previous local government greenhouse gas emission reporting
frameworks both internationally and within Australia. In addition a comparison of the affordability of
reporting for three case study Councils of varying sizes is discussed.

The debate within the scientific community has shifted from the existence of anthropogenic climate change to the ways in which society can reduce the causes and adapt to the impacts of climatic changes. Local Government in Australia are at the forefront of mitigating and adapting to climate change and as a result requires sound data for decision making.

The aim of this research project is to investigate the possible features of establishing a national reporting
system of local government greenhouse gas abatement for Australia and determine the affordability of reporting such abatement actions. This will include clarifying the point at which reporting becomes financially viable for a local government.

The key objectives of this research project are to:
• Research national reporting systems in operation internationally and any current and previous
systems in Australia.
• Critically evaluate the features of existing reporting systems and determine key reporting metrics.
• Identify the minimum reporting standards necessary to comply with Australian reporting legislation.
• Research existing literature with regards to local government information sharing.
• Undertake three case studies of local governments and quantify potential costs of reporting for local
government (both voluntary and compulsory).
• Identify possible support mechanisms to minimize the cost of reporting for local governments from
both government and non government sources.

This critical analysis of reporting requirements for Local Government will help to show that any future national reporting system of greenhouse gas abatement activities will need to strike a balance. The balance will be between the following:
• The value of information shared between local governments,
• The value of information collated and provided to federal policy makers , and
• The affordability to conduct such reporting.

As a result of this research, best practice criteria for local government abatement reporting has been developed and is recommended. This report also details the research undertaken to estimate the costs for Local Government to report greenhouse gas abatement actions.


GG918, a synthetic inhibitor of P-glycoprotein-mediated mammalian tumour multidrug resistance, was found to be equipotent to reserpine in enhancing the in vitro activity of norfloxacin and ciprofloxacin against strains of Staphylococcus aureus expressing distinct efflux-related multidrug resistance pumps. Four- to eight-fold reductions in MICs of these fluoroquinolones were observed for SA-1199B, a strain that overexpresses NorA (the major S. aureus multidrug transporter), and SA-K2068, which possesses a multidrug efflux-related pump distinct from NorA. Neither inhibitor potentiated the activity of newer fluoroquinolones such as levofloxacin or moxifloxacin by more than two-fold, and this effect was observed only in SA-1199B and SA-K2068. GG918 and reserpine exposure resulted in two- to four-fold reductions in norfloxacin and ciprofloxacin MICs in a fluoroquinolone-susceptible control strain and in strains expressing the MsrA and TetK proteins, which mediate efflux-related resistance to macrolides and tetracyclines, respectively, suggesting inhibition of as yet uncharacterized pumps for which norfloxacin and ciprofloxacin are substrates. In the MsrA- and TetK-expressing strains no more than a two-fold augmentation of erythromycin or tetracycline activity was observed with either inhibitor, suggesting minimal, if any, inhibitory activity against these efflux proteins. Using GG918 as a lead compound, a structure-activity evaluation may reveal a more potent and broader spectrum inhibitor of S. aureus antibiotic efflux pumps.


Spatial aspects of computation are becoming increasingly relevant in Computer Science, especially in the field of collective adaptive systems and when dealing with systems distributed in physical space. Traditional formal verification techniques are well suited to analyse the temporal evolution of programs; however, properties of space are typically not taken into account explicitly. We present a topology-based approach to formal verification of spatial properties depending upon physical space. We define an appropriate logic, stemming from the tradition of topological interpretations of modal logics, dating back to earlier logicians such as Tarski, where modalities describe neighbourhood. We lift the topological definitions to the more general setting of closure spaces, also encompassing discrete, graph-based structures. We extend the framework with a spatial surrounded operator, a propagation operator and with some collective operators. The latter are interpreted over arbitrary sets of points instead of individual points in space. We define efficient model checking procedures, both for the individual and the collective spatial fragments of the logic and provide a proof-of-concept tool.


Volcanic ash cloud-top height (ACTH) can be monitored on the global level using satellite remote sensing. Here we propose a photogrammetric method based on the parallax between data retrieved from geostationary and polar orbiting satellites to overcome some limitations of the existing methods of ACTH retrieval. SEVIRI HRV band and MODIS band 1 are a good choice because of their high resolution. The procedure works well if the data from both satellites are retrieved nearly simultaneously. MODIS does not retrieve the data at exactly the same time as SEVIRI. To compensate for advection we use two sequential SEVIRI images (one before and one after the MODIS retrieval) and interpolate the cloud position from SEVIRI data to the time of MODIS retrieval. The proposed method was tested for the case of the Eyjafjallajokull eruption in April 2010. The parallax between MODIS and SEVIRI data can reach 30 km, which implies an ACTH of approximately 12 km at the beginning of the eruption. At the end of April eruption an ACTH of 3–4 km is observed. The accuracy of ACTH was estimated to be 0.6 km.


This chapter considers the role of women in British silent film comedy from 1895 to the end of the 1920s and their legacy into the early sound period. It argues that women comedians became increasingly marginalized as cinema developed into an industry, with the codes, form and style of the "mature silent cinema" restricting women into a narrow range of stereotypes that negated female agency and prioritized looks and glamour over personality or character. The dominance of a few male directors in British cinema, particularly Asquith and Hitchcock, narrowed opportunities for comedic women with their preponderance for objectifying women. It commences with a resume of women performing slapstick and physical comedy, using the Edwardian Tilly Girl comedies as case studies, arguing that women enjoyed relative comic freedom until the Great War, despite the plethora of stereotypes—coy young ladies, "old maids," suffragettes, domineering wives etc—that characterized their representation in early cinema. Florence Turner is presented as a key figure in the pivotal period immediately following World War I, before falling victim to one of British cinema's periodic recessions. Betty Balfour's ingenue "Squibs" is emblematic of the early 1920s, but even her star wanes as she outgrows her youthful persona, becoming the butt of jokes around ageing in A Little Bit of Fluff (1928).


### Background

For the past 37 years the Mineralogical Society of America, and in conjunction with the Geochemical Society (since 2000), have sponsored and published 72 review volumes that communicate the results of significant advances in research in the Earth sciences. Several of these have either directly or indirectly addressed the fundamental importance, role, and behavior of volatile components on processes influencing magma rheology, crystallization, evolution, eruption, and related metasomatism and mineralization. Volume 30—which was published in 1994—focused on this topic broadly, and this volume has provided a lasting summary on the geochemical and physical behaviors of a wide variety of magmatic volatiles (Carroll and Holloway 1994). Since that year, continued research has brought important and new knowledge about the role of the volatile component sulfur in natural magmas, and significant progress was made simultaneously in understanding the role of sulfur in industrial or technical processes such as glass or steel production. Here, in volume 73, we have assembled in 15 chapters the current state of research concerning sulfur in melts based on the extensive experience of various authors practically working on these topics.

The behavior of sulfur in melts and its implications for natural and industrial processes are still insufficiently understood, and hence, are difficult to apply as a tool for interpreting problems of geological or industrial interest. In recent decades, various new investigations in the geosciences as well as in the engineering and material sciences have employed modern spectroscopic, analytical, theoretical, and experimental techniques to improve our understanding of the complex and volatile behavior of sulfur in a wide variety of molten systems. However, these different research initiatives (e.g., empirical vs. applied research and natural vs. technical applications) were rarely well integrated, and the scientific goals were usually approached with specific and relatively focused points of view. Consequently, bridging this …


Hierarchical (multi-core) Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) networks present a challenging design problem to the network designer who wishes to establish all-optical circuits end-to-end and across multiple network cores. Due to the nature of the hierarchical structure and its traffi distribution, it is likely that the inner core requires more capacity when compared to the capacity required by the metro cores, which are individually connected to the inner core. This capacity mismatch cannot be addressed by assigning distinct transmission rates to each core, as this solution would result in using electronic time division add-drop multiplexer to interconnect the traffi across cores with distinct rates. An alternative solution to addressing the capacity mismatch between WDM metro and inner core is explored in this paper, which is based on a limited number of wavelengths (a subset of the full set) being used in the metro core, when compared to the full set of wavelengths being used in the inner core. Two available architectures are presented in the paper, discussing their respective advantages and disadvantages.


This study examines how the professional work of elite corporate lawyers is constructed by influence from different types of clients. The data presented include interviews with 24 lawyers from six elite corporate law firms in China and the author's participant-observation in one of the firms. For these elite Chinese corporate law firms, foreign corporations, state-owned enterprises, and private enterprises constitute their extremely diversified client types. Accordingly, lawyers' work becomes flexible and adaptive to accommodate the different demands of the clients. Meanwhile, client influence on lawyers' professional work is mediated by the division of labor within the corporate law firm: whereas partners have solid control over the process of diagnosis, inference, and treatment and thus enjoy a high degree of professional autonomy, associates are largely stripped of this cultural machinery in the workplace, and their work becomes vulnerable to client influence. As a result, client influence on professional work appears to decrease with a lawyer's seniority. Corporate law practice is rapidly taking over an increasingly large proportion of the global market for legal services before we are able to fully understand its nature and development. Even in China, where the legal profession is still in its formative stage (Michelson 2003, 2006), a small sector of elite corporate lawyers has already emerged and controls much of the most profitable and prestigious legal work. Although they share many characteristics with elite corporate lawyers in other places (Galanter 1983; Nelson 1988; Lazega 2001), the different types of clients they servenamely, foreign corporations, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and private enterprises-constitute an extremely diversified external environment for the work of the new legal elite in China. Mostly trained in Britain, the United States, Germany, and Japan, and many with work experience in world-renowned firms, these Chinese elite corporate lawyers nevertheless display distinct behaviors when dealing with the three types of clients. Moreover, partners and associates hold divergent views of client influence on their professional work: whereas associates often describe client influence as a strong and pervasive force in shaping their work, partners seem to care little about the effects of variation in client types on their attitudes and behavior. These observations raise the central empirical questions for this study: Why do these high-status corporate lawyers develop different work strategies for different types of clients? Why does client influence on lawyers' professional work seem to diminish with seniority? And, more theoretically, how can we reconcile these diversified patterns of lawyer-client relationship with the issue of professional autonomy? By conducting a close examination of lawyer-client interactions in six elite corporate law firms in Beijing, I argue that, embedded in a multicultural and diversified work environment, Chinese corporate lawyers have adopted distinct methods and produced various legal products to serve different client interests, yet the cultural machinery by which they transform the client's problem into legal issues, establish the link between problem and solution, and produce the legal opinions for the client do not vary across different client types. Meanwhile, client influence on lawyers' professional work is mediated by the division of labor within the corporate law firm: whereas partners have solid control over the process of diagnosis, inference, and treatment (Abbott 1988) and thus enjoy a high degree of professional autonomy, associates are largely stripped of this cultural machinery in the workplace, and their work becomes vulnerable to client influence. After theoretical discussions on the nature of lawyers' professional work and some notes on data and methods, the empirical part of the article is divided into three sections. I first provide a brief overview of the history of the corporate law market in China since the 1980s and the client environment in which the work of elite corporate lawyers is embedded. …


This study explored relationships between obesity and emotional adjustment across lifecourse to contribute to an ongoing debate about a causal relationship between obesity and depression. Using a British birth cohort born in 1958 (Men=1583, Women =1723, complete cases), BMI and emotional adjustment collected at age 16, 23, and 45 were used to test possible inter-relationships between obesity and psychological health. Path analysis was used to identify significant pathways between these factors across lifecourse. In addition, we included physical activities at age 16 and 23 in the model to examine the role on BMI and emotional adjustment at age 23 and 45. Limited among men, our findings supported the pathway from emotional adjustment to BMI, but not the pathway from BMI to emotional adjustment. Poor emotional adjustment at age 16 was associated with increased BMI at age 23. Surprisingly, poor emotional adjustment at age 23 contributed to a leaner body mass at age 45. Physical activities at age 16 were associated with increased BMI at age 23. In women, there was nothing to indicate significant relationships between BMI and emotional adjustment at any time points. These findings are independent of emotional adjustment, BMI, physical activities, and socio-economic status at age 11. In conclusion, men's psychological health can contribute to their BMI across lifecourse. However, there may be middle aged men who gained weight in their response to poor emotional adjustment in young adulthood as well as those who lost weight.


Automated sports commentary is a form of automated narrative and human-computer interaction. Sports commentary exists to keep the viewer informed and entertained. One way to entertain the viewer is by telling brief stories relevant to the game in progress. We introduce a system called the Sports Commentary Recommendation System (SCoReS) that can automatically suggest stories for commentators to tell during games. Through several user studies, we compared commentary using SCoReS to three other types of commentary and showed that SCoReS adds significantly to the broadcast across several enjoyment metrics. We also collected interview data from professional sports commentators who positively evaluated a demonstration of the system. We conclude that SCoReS can be a useful broadcast tool, effective at selecting stories that add to the enjoyment and watchability of sports. SCoReS is a step toward automating sports commentary, and thus automating narrative.


Applications of human action recognition in interactive systems such as games require the robust real-time recognition of human actions at low latencies from a stream of observations. The current paradigms of action recognition either treat the pre-segmented sequence as a whole unit to be classified, or classify a range of frames as action, evaluating the performance using a frame-by-frame measure. We argue that both paradigms are limited when addressing latency requirements. Instead, we propose the notion of "action points" to serve as natural temporal anchors of simple human actions. Action points enable latency-aware training and evaluation of online recognition systems. To demonstrate the usefulness of action points we show how two different systems, a Hidden Markov Model and a direct classification approach can be used with action point annotations. We evaluate our approach on two data sets with different input modalities and show that our abstraction of action points is useful in settings where human action recognition has to be performed online and at low latencies.


With the rapid growth of the World Wide Web, clients attempting to access some popular web sites are experiencing slow response times due to server load and network congestion. Replacing the single server machine with a set of replicated servers is a cost-effective solution to partition server load which also allows incremental scalability and fault transparency. Distributing these replicated servers geographically can reduce network congestion and increase availability. However, distributed web sites are faced with the issue of allocating servers: how do clients find out about the replicas and how do they decide which one to contact? Popular web sites have well publicized server names and require a transparent mapping of the public server name to replicated servers. Unlike most traditional approaches, we propose a technique which pushes the server allocation functionality onto the client. We argue that this approach scales well and results in increased performance in many cases. Building on theoretical work based on game theory, we show that the usage of individual replicas can be effectively controlled with cost functions even when the clients are noncooperative. We present the design and implementation of WebSeAl, our prototype system realizing these techniques. WebSeAl does not require any changes to existing client and server code, conforms to all standards, and does not generate any control messages. Preliminary experiments utilizing servers on six continents and in controlled settings indicate that WebSeal improves performance significantly while imposing little overhead.


BACKGROUND
False-positive mammography results are common. Biennial screening may decrease the cumulative probability of false-positive results across many years of repeated screening but could also delay cancer diagnosis.

OBJECTIVE
To compare the cumulative probability of false-positive results and the stage distribution of incident breast cancer after 10 years of annual or biennial screening mammography.

DESIGN
Prospective cohort study.

SETTING
7 mammography registries in the National Cancer Institute-funded Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium.

PARTICIPANTS
169,456 women who underwent first screening mammography at age 40 to 59 years between 1994 and 2006 and 4492 women with incident invasive breast cancer diagnosed between 1996 and 2006.

MEASUREMENTS
False-positive recalls and biopsy recommendations stage distribution of incident breast cancer.

RESULTS
False-positive recall probability was 16.3% at first and 9.6% at subsequent mammography. Probability of false-positive biopsy recommendation was 2.5% at first and 1.0% at subsequent examinations. Availability of comparison mammograms halved the odds of a false-positive recall (adjusted odds ratio, 0.50 [95% CI, 0.45 to 0.56]). When screening began at age 40 years, the cumulative probability of a woman receiving at least 1 false-positive recall after 10 years was 61.3% (CI, 59.4% to 63.1%) with annual and 41.6% (CI, 40.6% to 42.5%) with biennial screening. Cumulative probability of false-positive biopsy recommendation was 7.0% (CI, 6.1% to 7.8%) with annual and 4.8% (CI, 4.4% to 5.2%) with biennial screening. Estimates were similar when screening began at age 50 years. A non-statistically significant increase in the proportion of late-stage cancers was observed with biennial compared with annual screening (absolute increases, 3.3 percentage points [CI, -1.1 to 7.8 percentage points] for women age 40 to 49 years and 2.3 percentage points [CI, -1.0 to 5.7 percentage points] for women age 50 to 59 years) among women with incident breast cancer.

LIMITATIONS
Few women underwent screening over the entire 10-year period. Radiologist characteristics influence recall rates and were unavailable. Most mammograms were film rather than digital. Incident cancer was analyzed in a small sample of women who developed cancer.

CONCLUSION
After 10 years of annual screening, more than half of women will receive at least 1 false-positive recall, and 7% to 9% will receive a false-positive biopsy recommendation. Biennial screening appears to reduce the cumulative probability of false-positive results after 10 years but may be associated with a small absolute increase in the probability of late-stage cancer diagnosis.

PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE
National Cancer Institute.


Surface treatment was carried out on E-glass fiber surface using different concentrations of hydrochloric acid solutions [0.01M-2.0M], The morphologies of untreated and treated E-glass fiber surfaces were analysed by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the peak of silanol group was identified by using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR). The treated glass fiber composites at 0.01 MHCI showed
the improvement on the tensile properties as compared to untreated and treated glass fiber composites at concentrations ranging from 0.1M to 2.0MHCI. Apart from that, the modified epoxy resin had also been studied by adding epoxidized palm oil (EPO) in the synthetic epoxy resin and it has a potential to partially substitute and toughen synthetic epoxy resin. The EPO was blended with the DGEBA type epoxy resin to determine the stoichiometric ratio for each ingredient for modified epoxy resin. Epoxidized Palm Oil modified epoxy resin was successfully cured by using aliphatic amine curing agent in the presence of imidazole catalyst of varied percentage ranging from 5% to 35%. The curing characteristics of modified epoxy resins were studied by using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermal gravimetric analyser (TGA). DSC and TGA thermograms revealed that 5% of imidazole catalyst provides good thermal stability as compared to the other percentages of imidazole catalyst. The value of glass transition temperature of modified epoxy resin that contains 5% imidazole catalyst gave the low Tg value and it indicates the flexibility properties. The
modified epoxy resin exhibited rubbery behaviour due to the flexibility of fatty acid chain of EPO thus, improved the toughness of synthetic epoxy resin properties. Furthermore, the composition of cured modified epoxy resin was analysed using FTIR to identify the functional groups that produced after crosslinking reaction between
EPO, epoxy and amine curing agent. According to the FTIR spectrum of the hybrid polymer resin indicates that the intensity of epoxide band decreased with the increment of the hydroxyl group intensity. It was proven that the curing reaction occurs with the opening of functional group of epoxide ring. Laminated glass fiber epoxy composite was fabricated by hand lay-up technique and it consists of one to four layers of glass fiber. Whereas for the hybrid polymer resin composite, it was fabricated using hand lay-up and dipping techniques. The mechanical and physical
properties of the laminated glass fiber epoxy composites were analysed and compared with the properties of hybrid polymer resin composites. The tensile results of hybrid
polymer resin composites showed the decrement on the tensile properties but for the impact result, it shows the increment of impact strength due to toughening properties
of hybrid polymer resin about 210.6 kJ/m2. For the water absorption results, it shows that hybrid polymer resin composite absorbs more water compared to laminate glass
fiber composite. It would be happen due to the effect of crosslinking density. Meanwhile, the diffusion coefficient value of laminated glass fiber composite is high due to the polarity effect.


the time of every working member of the community is money, but even if this were not the case, long delay in the treatment of a worrying and painful if not life-endangering condition is inhumane irrespective of the socioeconomic status of the patient. As for "individual attention," can the standards of our profession have become so debased that this should be dismissed as a rich man's fancy? If the development of a healthy independent medical service can do something


We show how to sequentially optimize magnetic resonance imaging measurement designs over stacks of neighbouring image slices, by performing convex variational inference on a large scale non-Gaussian linear dynamical system, tracking dominating directions of posterior covariance without imposing any factorization constraints. Our approach can be scaled up to high-resolution images by reductions to numerical mathematics primitives and parallelization on several levels. In a first study, designs are found that improve significantly on others chosen independently for each slice or drawn at random.


Silver nanoclusters (AgNCs) stabilized by DNA are promising materials with tunable fluorescent properties, which have been employed in a plethora of sensing systems. In this report, we explore their antimicrobial properties in Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. After testing 9 oligonucleotides with different sequence and length, we found that the antibacterial activity depends on the sequence of the oligonucleotide employed. The sequences tested yielded fluorescent AgNCs, which can be grouped in blue, yellow, and red emitters. Interestingly, blue emitters yielded poor antibacterial activity, whereas yellow and red emitters afforded an activity similar to silver nitrate. Furthermore, structural studies using circular dichroism indicate the formation of complexes with different stability and structure, which might be one of the factors that modulate their activity. Finally, we prepared a trimeric structure containing the sequence that afforded the best antimicrobial activity, which inhibited the growth of Gram-positive and negative bacteria in the submicromolar range.


All life depends upon water. For man, however, water can
supply the power necessary to relieve him from the drudgeries
of life and give the time and means to enrich his existence
beyond the bounds set by the mere need to survive.
Large scale hydropower makes a significant contribution to the
total generated power of the developed world. The means of
harnessing water power for large flows and heads above three
metres are efficient and well established. There remains
however, the fact that many people, especially in developing
countries live adjacent to water courses and tidal estuaries
where heads of 2 metres or less exist but are not exploited.
The reasons for this are often that practical machines do not
exist or are insufficiently well developed to be used. Much
effort has been made in recent years to develop equipment
suitable for small, low-head sites in remote places.
The writer has worked on three such devices in both the
laboratory and on site - these are the Salford Transverse
Oscillator, the AUR Water Engine and the Underwater Motor.
This thesis describes these machines in detail together with
other contemporary devices.
The initial chapter contains an assessment of machines used in
the past to exploit low head sites. There is little doubt that
some of these older machines, suitably brought up to date in
design and materials, would be more suited to the needs of
developing peoples than many of the esoteric devices described
in later chapters.
The thesis is concerned mainly with the need to provide a means
of generating power rather than the assessment or suitability
of a site for power generation. The writer draws on experience
gained in the laboratory, and as a Mechanical Engineering
Consultant for small installations in the United Kingdom and
overseas.


Background: Soybean is one of the 8 foods that causes the most significant rate of food allergies in the USA and Europe. Thermal processing may impact on the allergenic potential of certain foods. We aimed to investigate modifications of the IgE-binding properties of soybean proteins due to processing methods that have been previously found to impact on the allergenicity of legumes such as peanut. Methods: Soybean seeds were subjected to different thermal processing treatments. To evaluate their impact on the IgE-binding capacity of soybean proteins, individual sera from 25 patients sensitized to soybean were used in in vitro immunoassays. Detection of specific soybean allergens in untreated and treated samples was carried out with specific monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies. In vivo studies of skin prick testing (SPT) were also performed. Results: The IgE reactivity of soybean was resistant to boiling up to 30 min, and this treatment had a higher impact when applied for 60 min. Treatment that combined heat and pressure produced a fragmentation of proteins in both soluble and insoluble fractions that went along with a decreased capacity to bind IgE and reduced the SPT wheal size. However, allergens such as 7S globulins survived this treatment. Conclusions: Thermal-processing methods able to attenuate the capacity of soybean proteins to bind IgE may contribute to the improvement of food safety and could constitute a potential strategy for the induction of tolerance to soybean.


The recent SCI excessive pricing decision marks a significant development in the landscape of the jurisprudence in South Africa dealing with abuse of dominance. It is the only case involving excessive pricing in South Africa since Mittal, almost a decade ago. The decision is also important as the Competition Tribunal adopts a different methodology to determine an "excessive price" to that set out by the Competition Appeal Court in Mittal. Mittal Steel South Africa Limited and two Others v Harmony Gold Mining Company Ltd and Another Case No 70/CAC/Apr07). The shift in methodology is likely to be of interest to dominant firms in determining pricing.


The review process is the critical activity which controls the quality and appropriateness of papers published in the International Journal of Fluid Power. To ensure that only work of highest quality is accepted, it is important that each manuscript be carefully reviewed by the most competent scientists in the appropriate area of specialty. The International Journal of Fluid Power would like to thank all reviewers listed below for their support in the past 10 years.


In this paper, we investigate the energy-efficient job dispatching algorithm for transcoding as a service (TaaS) in a multimedia cloud. We aim to minimize the energy consumption of service engines in the cloud while achieving low delay for TaaS. We formulate the job-dispatching problem as a constrained optimization problem under the framework of Lyapunov optimization. Using the drift-pluspenalty function, we propose an online algorithm that dispatches the transcoding jobs to service engines, with an objective to Reduce Energy consumption while achieving the QUEue STability (REQUEST).We first characterize the fundamental tradeoff between energy consumption and queue delay for the REQUEST algorithm numerically and obtain its performance bound theoretically. We study the robustness of the REQUEST algorithm, with numerical results indicating that the REQUEST algorithm is robust to the inaccuracy of estimating the transcoding time. We compare the performance of the REQUEST algorithm with the other two algorithms, i.e., the Round Robin and Random Rate algorithms. We show that by appropriately choosing the control variable, the REQUEST algorithm outperforms the Round Robin and Random Rate algorithms, with smaller time average energy consumption and time average queue length. The proposed REQUEST algorithm can be applied in cloud-assisted multimedia transcoding service.


Virtual campuses are gradually becoming a reality with the advances in e-learning and Web technologies, distributed systems and broadband communication, as well as the emerging needs of remote Universities for collaboration on offering common programs. The advances in grid-based distributed infrastructures have further significantly contributed to this fact providing optimized and real-time system performance and support for virtual communities even under synchronous distributed multi-user usage contexts executing complex simulations in virtual lab applications. This paper focuses on realizing fundamental rich-media e-learning services for synchronous shared and interactive virtual labs offerings and asynchronous personalized learning paradigms towards enabling virtual campuses in a real-life context. The paper further presents evaluation results of the developed e-learning services on both learning and usability aspects in real-life learning contexts involving participation of student communities from remote collaborating Universities. The evaluation results showcase the interest of learning communities in such systems as they evolve to be more advanced and user-friendly and their impact in realizing virtual campuses.


The Quantitative Imaging Network (QIN), supported by the National Cancer Institute, is designed to promote research and development of quantitative imaging methods and candidate biomarkers for the measurement of tumor response in clinical trial settings. An integral aspect of the QIN mission is to facilitate collaborative activities that seek to develop best practices for the analysis of cancer imaging data. The QIN working groups and teams are developing new algorithms for image analysis and novel biomarkers for the assessment of response to therapy. To validate these algorithms and biomarkers and translate them into clinical practice, algorithms need to be compared and evaluated on large and diverse data sets. Analysis competitions, or "challenges," are being conducted within the QIN as a means to accomplish this goal. The QIN has demonstrated, through its leveraging of The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA), that data sharing of clinical images across multiple sites is feasible and that it can enable and support these challenges. In addition to Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) imaging data, many TCIA collections provide linked clinical, pathology, and "ground truth" data generated by readers that could be used for further challenges. The TCIA-QIN partnership is a successful model that provides resources for multisite sharing of clinical imaging data and the implementation of challenges to support algorithm and biomarker validation.


Imaginative analytical and critical work on British music of the early twentieth century has been hindered by perceptions of the repertory as insular in its references and backward in its style and syntax, escaping the modernity that surrounded its composers. Recent research has begun to break down these perceptions and has found intriguing links between British music and modernism. This book brings together contributions from scholars working in analysis, hermeneutics, reception history, critical theory and the history of ideas. Three overall themes emerge from its chapters: accounts of British reactions to Continental modernism and the forms they took; links between music and the visual arts; and analysis and interpretation of compositions in the light of recent theoretical work on form, tonality and pitch organization.


We assess the evolution of international banking integration at the light of gravity equations on banks' bilateral consolidated foreign claims data. Our estimates on a panel of 14 reporting countries and their 186 partners between 1999 and 2012 reveal: 1) the forward march of banking integration has reversed only as far as euro area countries are concerned as source or destination countries. 2) Euro area banks have reduced their international exposure inside and outside the euro area to a similar extent. 3) This decline is not a correction of previous overshooting but a marked desintegration. 4) In the rest of the world, the banking integration has strengthened since the financial crisis.


At first glance, the names of the localities in Judg 18:12
 do not seem to fit the framework of chapter 18. Traditionally, v.12 (in
 particular 12ba) is therefore labelled as an etiological note which was added
 later. P. J. van Dijk has made it clear, however, that texts viewed as
 etiological often do not explain or legitimize any phenomena, but -as rhetorical
 devices -lend credibility to stories. However, the fact that a place named
 Mahaneh-dan is unknown to us argues against both the classical-etiological
 understanding of v.12 and that of van Dijk. A solution to the problem begins
 with the geographical location and the theological meaning of the city of
 Kiriath-jearim. Geographically, Kiriath-jearim is in Judah, on the boundary of
 the Northern Kingdom; theologically the city may be associated with the ark of
 the covenant, and thereby with the Torah of YHWH. That the Danites are encamped
 at or beyond of Kiriath-jearim, shows from a Judean perspective that they
 distance themselves from Judah and the Torah of YHWH. Their way -leading
 diagonally from the Southwest to the Northeast through the Northern Kingdom, and
 therefore representing pars pro toto the conduct of life for all of the Northern
 tribes -is a way of brutal force and uninhibited serving of idols. Because the
 location of the encampment of the Danites is called Mahaneh-dan, "Dan's Camp",
 the Danites are characterized as anti-Yahwist desperados. Judg 18:12 is neither
 a classical etiology nor a rhetorical device, but a metaphorical etiology, i.e.
 a verse governed by its context in such a way, that it signifies something other
 than what it appears to signify.


Over five million children in the United States have a parent living with a serious mental illness. These offspring are at higher risk for developing mental health problems themselves due to a complex interplay of biological, psychological, and psychosocial factors. Life with a parent with psychiatric symptoms can be scary, confusing, overwhelming, and sad; children often blame themselves for their parent's problems, find their parent's behavior embarrassing, and struggle to explain the illness to their friends. Unfortunately, these children's needs and experiences are often ignored by overwhelmed parents, worried family members and relatives, separate mental health systems of care for adults and children that often fail to coordinate care, and even well-intentioned health-care providers. Family medicine teams have an opportunity to detect and support these families in unique ways. We offer four recommendations for family medicine teams to help families managing parental mental illness including assessing functioning, treatment needs, and impacts on each family member; educating all family members about mental illness; instilling hope, noting the range of effective treatments for mental illness; and encouraging the use of supports and referral options. Providers can leverage family members' strengths, work with community-based resources, and offer continuity to these families, as they struggle with an oftentimes chronic, relapsing disease that has ripple effects throughout the family system.


Abstract: This research aims to understand how informal non-legal factors, such as normative climates, and formal legal factors, such as open-container laws, seat-belt laws, and police force strength are related to variation in drunk driving (DUI) enforcement across U.S. counties. In particular, this study focuses on explaining whether differences in the macro-level normative climates toward drinking (i.e., anti-drinking normative climates and pro-drinking normative climates) are related to levels of DUI enforcement by police. It is unclear whether informal factors exert effects on DUI enforcement, independent of formal legal factors. This study takes a population-based approach and uses cross-sectional information (1999-2001) compiled from a variety of official agencies that disseminate county-level data. Results from Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) and Spatial Regression Analyses suggest that areas with anti-drinking normative climates are associated with higher levels of DUI enforcement. Conversely, areas with pro-drinking normative climates tend to be associated with lower levels of DUI enforcement. Overall, these findings suggest that normative climates toward drinking account for some of the variation in rates of DUI enforcement, independent of formal legal factors. Limitations and implications for DUI control and future research are discussed. Keywords: arrest rates, counties, drunk driving, DUI, normative climates INTRODUCTION Effective control of drunk driving (DUI) is a priority of interest groups, public health officials, policy makers, and law enforcement agencies in the United States. Efforts to control DUI generally rely on a deterrence model-that lower rates of DUI are associated with increased formal sanctions and increased certainty of arrest (Jacobs 1989; Ross 1992). However, macro-level informal factors, which are not part of the formal legal system, may also be related to levels of DUI enforcement in an area. Drunk driving varies considerably across the United States, but the factors that account for differences in DUI enforcement by police remain unclear. While a large body of empirical research has examined how formal legal factors, such as DUI laws, are related to variation in DUI behavior (e.g., DeJong and Hingson 1998), much less research has focused on understanding how informal norms may account for variation in DUI enforcement across geographical areas. Informal social norms are fundamental to social organization and human behavior; norms provide informal rules about how people "ought" to behave (Homans 1961). The informal rules, values, and beliefs regarding alcohol consumption are different among groups and across areas of the U.S. In some areas, drinking alcohol is acceptable and normative behavior, whereas in other areas, there is a strong normative climate that severely regulates acceptable drinking. While it is well established that community political and social climates influence police practice (Wilson 1968) and departmental contexts shape police behavior (Mastrofski, Ritti, and Hoffmaster 1987), it is unclear whether police enforcement of DUI varies in relation to macro-level normative climates toward drinking. In contrast to informal factors, the formal legal system features a number of laws, policies, ordinances, and police practices to control drunk driving. However, these laws are not applied equally across areas of the U.S. and they are not equally enforced. For example, several states have laws permitting roadside sobriety checkpoints, but even though checkpoints are legal, there is within-state variation in the frequency in which they are conducted by police. Although DUI-control laws in some areas are associated with lower rates of drunk driving, the extent to which area-wide informal norms exerts effects independent of formal laws has not been established in previous research. The overarching goal of this research is to explain differences in drunk driving across areas and to understand why some places experience higher levels of DUI enforcement than others. …


The digital transformation (digitalisation) becomes an important item in strategies and plans for development and improvement of higher education The implementation of new approaches in education, new ways of information sharing and group work are expected to improve and transform all processes and services within the higher education institutions The digital transformation should not underestimate the security aspects of ICT use and specific Cyber Security Culture (CSC), part of the wider organisational culture should be directed, shaped and supported CSC of organizations refers to the knowledge, beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, assumptions, norms and values of people regarding cybersecurity and how they are manifested in people's behaviour with information technologies The attitude towards security measures in academic organisations is usually oriented towards free and open sharing of information and knowledge This positive direction has to be maintained and preserved, but also to be changed and adapted to current threats and security environment The balance between openness and security has to be analysed, rationally implemented, and monitored through establishment of organisational programme dedicated to CSC as a measure to influence the human factor in cybersecurity This article presents best practices of universities' digitalisation from the cyber security and CRC point of view ENISA's CSC development guidance was used as the main tool for developing the general CSC programme for universities The required changes of CSC and possible programme implementation are considered based on cases from several Bulgarian universities


The main goal of this research is to extract the full mechanical properties of stitch biax and triax composite materials which are necessary for finite element analysis, based on limited available experimental data and without performing full static characterization tests. Utilized experimental data are limited to elastic modulus of two 0 o and 45 o directions. Using presented technique and aforementioned data, mechanical properties of unidirectiona l fabrics of biax and triax are obtained and consequently mechanical properties of biax and triax composites are calculated. Evaluation of the results proved proper performance of the technique in this research.


This thesis treats the safety format for non-linear analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) structures subjected to multiple failure modes. The purpose is to identify questions which are poorly understood and ambiguous about the behaviour of structures that may fail due to a number of possible failure modes (e.g., bending, shear, buckling, crack propagation, fatigue) which might be used as a focus for the development of a more comprehensive approach to the evaluation of the structural safety level.Nowadays non-linear analysis in concrete structures cannot be considered only as a research tool to improve the understanding of structural behaviour, but it is also a useful mean to design more and more enhanced structures and to estimate the actual safety level in existing structures. As a consequence, semi-probabilistic safety formats for the non-linear analysis of RC structures are of great practical interest for structural engineers.Safety formats for non-linear analysis have mainly been tested on beams and columns subjected to normal forces and bending moments. Only recently there has been a noticeable effort in understanding whether available safety formats lead to the intended reliability when they are applied to structures that also may fail due to shear forces. However, the road ahead is still long and challenging.The definition of a suitable safety format involves the clarification of (i) which values of geometric and material properties should be used in the non-linear analysis, considering that they all influence both the resistance and the ultimate behaviour of the whole system, (ii) when the incremental process of non-linear analysis should stop, and (iii) how to derive from the failure load the ultimate load that can be carried by the structure with the safety margins that are required by the semi-probabilistic approach. This thesis considers in some sense all three of these aspects.The following major conclusions are based on the studies described in the appended papers: (1) the scatter of the shear capacity of RC slender members seems to be mainly due to the randomness of both tensile strength of concrete and shrinkage; (2) the structural behaviour at ultimate load of RC structures designed according to Eurocodes 2 is not unambiguous and may significantly vary depending on the structural system, load configuration, and capacity design; (3) the resistance of RC structures subjected to flexural and shear failure modes seems to be mainly influenced by the combination of mechanical properties of both longitudinal reinforcement and stirrups, and tensile strength of concrete; and (4) the resistance of RC structures subjected to multiple failure modes may have a general multimodal probability density function, in which each mode represents a specific failure mechanism.


The drivers of mining stock prices are known to be several. Sharp spikes on the stocks return distribution have been linked to the presence of unusually high volatility signifying the presence of high levels of kurtosis. The accurate measurement of the stocks' underlying co-movements for more accurate CVaR portfolio optimization requires, therefore, the utilization of sophisticated and specific-specialized techniques which could adequately capture and model these characteristics. Here this issue is addressed by applying statistical-graphical models for dependence estimation. Twenty mining stocks, out of the 801 listed in the ASX as of December 2012, have been selected for the analysis under the criteria of satisfying the eight years trading period sought, having very weak or no autocorrelation of residuals and displaying the highest kurtosis. Models' estimations of dependence are compared and inserted into a differential evolution algorithm for non-convex global optimization in order to conduct risk controlled CVaR portfolio optimization (Ardia, Boudt, Carl, Mullen & Peterson, 2011) and be able to identify the one yielding the highest portfolio return. The findings are of relevance in portfolio allocation and portfolio risk management. Energy and mining stock markets are subjected to numerous price drivers holding complex relationships. The dynamics of production and consumption based on seasonality features, transportation and storage, weather conditions, commodity price fluctuations, currency changes, market confidence and expectations, trading speculations and the domestic and international states of the economy impact mining stock prices in particular and unobvious ways reflected in high volatility with sudden spikes in the stock's return distribution (Pilipovic, 1998). The generation of accurate measurements of the dependence matrix of mining stock's return series is therefore both, a non-trivial task due to the hard to decipher characteristics present in return series suffering from high levels of kurtosis (Carvalho, Lopes & Aguilar, 2010) and, a crucial element in portfolio optimization and portfolio risk management. The use of graphical techniques in this study is justified on the basis of their utility and suitableness. Graphical models such as pair c-vine copulas, the graphical lasso and adaptive graphical lasso provide, for instance, the visualization and flexibility to represent a problem in a more simplified and dissected form (Lauritzen, 1996). Graphs also appear to be naturally adequate to express the interaction of variables and thus facilitate the analysis of their dependency. The models of dependence estimation and CVaR portfolio optimization, on the other hand, are desirable due to mathematical and statistical framework they provide which may lead to satisfactory results and, their apparent ability to overcome the flaws (i.e. standardized model application to all joint distributions, restrictive and deterministic linear and monotonic modelling functions as in the Pearson and Spearman) traditional measures display when dealing with highly kurtotic data, joint distributions with stronger dependence in the tails and controlled risk non-convex portfolio optimization problems. Findings indicate that the highest portfolio returns are generated by inserting the covariance output matrix from the student-t copula into the differential optimization algorithm and, the student-t copula fitting with separate modelling of the marginal distributions appears to be the most desirable modelling choice. The portfolio return by the adaptive graphical lasso is lower than that of the student-t and is followed by the Gaussian pair c-vine copula. The regular graphical lasso produced the lowest portfolio return and the covariance matrix values were higher for models producing the highest portfolio returns implying that the models generating the lowest portfolio returns underestimated the dependence of the assets. The implications of the findings suggest that specific modelling of each marginal distribution, as compared to modelling based on a Gaussian framework, may lead to an edge in the estimations due to the distribution differences encountered on each marginal. Furthermore, the ability of the model to capture dependence in the tails, as it is the case of the student-t copula, does provide a modelling advantage too. This paper appears to be the first one in, comparing the portfolio performance of the models of dependence estimation in the context of controlled CVaR, applying the models treated to a highly kurtotic mining sample of stocks from the Australian market and modelling separately the distribution of the marginals when fitting the student-t copula.


Purpose Although association studies of genetic variations with the clinical outcomes of breast cancer patients treated with tamoxifen have been reported, genetic factors which could determine individual response to tamoxifen are not fully clarified. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to identify novel genetic markers for response to tamoxifen. Experimental design We prospectively collected 347 blood samples from patients with hormone receptor-positive and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative, invasive breast cancer receiving preoperative tamoxifen monotherapy for 14 to 28 days. We used Ki-67 response in breast cancer tissues after preoperative short-term tamoxifen therapy as a surrogate marker for response to tamoxifen. We performed GWAS and genotype imputation using 275 patients, and an independent set of 72 patients was used for replication study. Results The combined result of GWAS and the replication study, and subsequent imputation analysis indicated possible association of three loci with Ki-67 response after tamoxifen therapy (rs17198973 on chromosome 4q34.3, rs4577773 on 6q12, and rs7087428 on 10p13, Pcombined = 5.69 x 10−6, 1.64 x 10−5, and 9.77 x 10−6, respectively). When patients were classified into three groups by the scoring system based on the genotypes of the three SNPs, patients with higher scores showed significantly higher after/before ratio of Ki-67 compared to those with lower scores (P = 1.8 x 10−12), suggesting the cumulative effect of the three SNPs. Conclusion We identified three novel loci, which could be associated with clinical response to tamoxifen. These findings provide new insights into personalized hormonal therapy for the patients with breast cancer.


Four types of Sindbis virus vectors, each carrying two promoters for subgenomic mRNA synthesis, were designed to measure relative promoter strengths and to survey potential contextual effects on promoter strengths. One of the promoters in each vector was used as the reference promoter, while the other was the one being tested. We used these vectors to measure the relative strengths of four promoters: the minimal promoter, an extended sequence believed to have full promoter activity, and two mutant promoters, one with an inactivating 3-nucleotide insertion called CR4.1 and the other with a 4-nucleotide deletion called delta 4. The strengths of the promoters were measured by quantitating the RNA transcribed from each promoter in vivo and also by assaying for chloramphenicol acetyltransferase activity encoded by one of the two transcripts. We found that the relative strengths of the promoters were similar in different contexts. The complete promoter was 6-fold more active, the delta 4 promoter was (surprisingly) about twice as active, and the CR4.1 promoter was 100-fold less active than the minimal promoter. At least two contextual effects were identified that can alter the activity of one or both promoters in the vectors. One effect is that given identical promoters, the 3'-proximal promoter on the minus-strand template can be more active than the 5'-proximal promoter. This may be due to preferential association of one or more components of the transcription complex for the 3' end of the minus-strand template. A second effect is promoter competition, particularly when the promoters are closely spaced.


An efficient protocol is described for the study of the kinetics of retinyl esters in whole plasma and several lipoprotein fractions following the consumption of an oral fat load containing vitamin A (retinol). To allow for a more complete characterization of the kinetics of retinyl esters in different lipoprotein fractions, a simplified two-step ultracentrifugation procedure is reported for the efficient and reproducible isolation of triglyceride-rich chylomicrons from nonfasting subjects, VLDL-sized lipoprotein particles, and the triglyceride-poor lipoprotein fraction. The present method for the determination of retinyl esters is based on the direct application of the lipid fraction onto a normal phase HPLC column without requiring the lipid extract to be desiccated and resolubilized. All of the commonly occurring esters of retinol elute as a single peak with a retention time of 1.6-1.8 min followed by retinyl acetate (serving as the internal standard) and retinol with retention times of 2-2.5 min and 5-5.5 min, respectively. With this system, a new sample can be processed every 10 min and a complete set of 60 samples from a typical oral fat load can analyzed in one working day with minimal technical interaction. By normalizing to the area under the internal standard to correct for variability in the injected volume, the coefficient of variability for the concentration retinyl esters within a single run is less than 5% and less than 10% between runs.


Although past scholarship shows that group inequalities in economic and political power ("Horizontal Inequalities") correlate with dissent, violence, and civil wars, there is no direct empirical test of the perceptual explanation for this relationship at the individual level. Such explanation is vital to understanding how integration, inclusion in power-sharing agreements, and exclusion from political power filter down to mass publics. Moreover, subjective perceptions of group conditions do not always correspond to objective group realities. We hypothesize subjective perceptions attenuate the effect of objective exclusion on support for violence in ethnically divided societies. Cross-national comparative multilevel analyses of the 2005/6 Afrobarometer dataset (N = 19,278) confirm that subjective perceptions both amplify the effect of exclusion on acceptance of violence and alter the readiness of included groups to dissent. These findings carry implications for research, state-building, and conflict management.


AIMS
Doxorubicin (DOX) is an effective anti-cancer therapeutic, but is associated with both acute and late-stage cardiotoxicity. Children are particularly sensitive to DOX-induced heart failure. Here, the impact of p53 inhibition on acute vs. late-stage DOX cardiotoxicity was examined in a juvenile model.

METHODS AND RESULTS
Two-week-old MHC-CB7 mice (which express dominant-interfering p53 in cardiomyocytes) and their non-transgenic (NON-TXG) littermates received weekly DOX injections for 5 weeks (25 mg/kg cumulative dose). One week after the last DOX treatment (acute stage), MHC-CB7 mice exhibited improved cardiac function and lower levels of cardiomyocyte apoptosis when compared with the NON-TXG mice. Surprisingly, by 13 weeks following the last DOX treatment (late stage), MHC-CB7 exhibited a progressive decrease in cardiac function and higher rates of cardiomyocyte apoptosis when compared with NON-TXG mice. p53 inhibition blocked transient DOX-induced STAT3 activation in MHC-CB7 mice, which was associated with enhanced induction of the DNA repair proteins Ku70 and Ku80. Mice with cardiomyocyte-restricted deletion of STAT3 exhibited worse cardiac function, higher levels of cardiomyocyte apoptosis, and a greater induction of Ku70 and Ku80 in response to DOX treatment during the acute stage when compared with control animals.

CONCLUSION
These data support a model wherein a p53-dependent cardioprotective pathway, mediated via STAT3 activation, mitigates DOX-induced myocardial stress during drug delivery. Furthermore, these data suggest an explanation as to how p53 inhibition can result in cardioprotection during drug treatment and, paradoxically, enhanced cardiotoxicity long after the cessation of drug treatment.


This study examines the nature of staff quality and the extent to which it can explain variations in service delivery outcomes using two selected District Assemblies in Ghana. Staff quality is measured by the interaction of individual-level competences and public service motivation. Depending on intensity, the interaction of competence and public service motivation produced four types of staff quality with varied implications for service delivery outcomes. It is argued that the relationship between decentralisation and service delivery remains complex, and therefore the role of staff quality remains critical. This is important in the light of calls to implement full devolution in Ghana where all decentralised services will operate directly under the District Assembly. It is imperative for public administration and human resource experts to look more closely at attracting employees with the demonstrable public service motivation and skillsets needed for decentralisation, and to create favourable social conditions that support family life.


English has long been a significant force in Philippine schools. A product of colonialism, scholars often erroneously view this dominance as stemming from governmental mandate. This article argues that the drive for Anglophone classrooms comes from all facets of Philippine society. Indeed, even many minority language speakers view English as integral to producing ideal citizens. Through a language governmentality framework, the perceptions of the ideal Filipino are seen to be constantly evolving. With them, the motivations behind the push for English have shifted. Recently, English has again been repositioned, with public support for the use of home languages in the classroom. The initiative, however, is designed to produce greater English proficiency and the notion of the ideal English-speaking Filipino will likely remain.


For sustained profitability, architects must position themselves to attract new clients. This involves understanding potential clients' choices and how these might impact on subsequent satisfaction. The study ranked criteria for architect selection and how these predict satisfaction among first-time private sector clients in Lagos, Nigeria. Data from a questionnaire survey were analysed using descriptive statistics, relative importance index and categorical regression, identifying timely delivery, cost of service and quality of previous services as the most important criteria. Although personal relationship has been said to influence selection of a professional service provider, this criterion was found to be of relatively low importance here. To attract private sector clients, architects should prioritise improved service delivery and construction skill development.


The purpose of this invited article is to describe the process of translating research into public health practice. An example is provided, showing how questions arose in the practice setting, a researcher was identified to help answer the questions, and findings from the research were applied in the practice setting. In this example, Dr. Lea LaFave (Community Health Institute/JSI in New Hampshire) worked with Dr. Danielle Varda (Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado/ Denver, School of Public Affairs) to use social network analysis to better understand a network of coalitions focused on underage substance abuse. The social network analysis revealed that networks varied significantly in the number and depth of collaborations (from none to fully integrated) within each network. The larger implications of these findings suggest that the way people conceptualize complex systems varies tremendously, and that this has fundamental importance for understanding how to improve such systems.


This book is a practical, user-friendly guide for health care researchers across multiple disciplines who are involved in intervention research. It provides all of the essential elements needed for understanding how to design, conduct, analyze, and fund intervention studies that are replicable and can withstand the scrutiny of the Institutional Review Board and peer review. Developed from an annual continuing education workshop on intervention studies conducted by Dr. Melnyk, this text is the most comprehensive body of information available on this topic. Contributors address the design of interventions that are ethically considerate and sensitive to culture, race/ethnicity, and gender, minimizing threats to external and internal validity, measurement, and budgeting. The guide explores such implementation issues as subject recruitment and retention, data management, and specialized settings, cost analysis, and explaining intervention effects. The text also guides readers in writing grant applications that fund , and addresses how to move intervention study findings into the real world. A unique addition to the book is the availability of digital examples of progress reports, final reports, and research grant applications that have received funding from the National Institutes of Health and other relevant organizations. This text is a valuable resource for all health care professionals conducting research and for doctoral students in health care studies.


Abstract Characterization of the size and mechanical properties of interphases is essential when designing multicomponent materials. When nanoindentation is used to investigate the size and mechanical properties of an interphase, a common challenge is that the indenter or the stress zone formed around it are often restricted by the reinforcement, making it difficult to distinguish the mechanical property variations caused by the interphase itself from those caused by the boundary effect. In this work, a testing system was developed that allows determining the indent affected zone and accounting for it in the interphase measurements of an epoxy/Cu system. Using finite element analysis, we confirmed the validity of the proposed system. Nanoindentation was used to investigate the interphase between copper and two different epoxy systems; amine-cured and anhydride-cured. Nanoindentation results showed that a copper layer that is only 10 nm thick still exhibits a constriction effect on the indentations in its vicinity. The amine-cured epoxy did not show any sign of interphase existence using the introduced method. However, a soft interphase with a thickness of ~1.7 μm was measured on the anhydride-cured epoxy. Furthermore, we show that the proposed system can be used to determine the interphase thickness as well as its relative mechanical properties regardless of the indentation depth. This system can be further used for investigating other polymer/metal interphases to better understand the factors influencing them, thus helping engineer the interphase size and properties to enhance composite performance.


The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, we derive the asymptotic null distribution of the familiar augmented Dickey-Fuller [ADF] statistics in the case where the shocks follow a linear process driven by infinite variance innovations. We show that these distributions are free of serial correlation nuisance parameters but depend on the tail index of the infinite variance process. These distributions are shown to coincide with the corresponding results for the case where the shocks follow a finite autoregression, provided the lag length in the ADF regression satisfies the same o(T1/3) rate condition as is required in the finite variance case. In addition, we establish the rates of consistency and (where they exist) the asymptotic distributions of the ordinary least squares sieve estimates from the ADF regression. Given the dependence of their null distributions on the unknown tail index, our second contribution is to explore sieve wild bootstrap implementations of the ADF tests. Under the assumption of symmetry, we demonstrate the asymptotic validity (bootstrap consistency) of the wild bootstrap ADF tests. This is done by establishing that (conditional on the data) the wild bootstrap ADF statistics attain the same limiting distribution as that of the original ADF statistics taken conditional on the magnitude of the innovations.


Following resolution of a long-standing debate over the timing of the initial settlement of New Zealand from Polynesia (late 13th century), a prevailing paradigm has developed that invokes rapid transformation of the landscape, principally by fire, within a few decades of the first arrivals. This model has been constructed from evidence mostly from southern and eastern regions of New Zealand, but a more complicated pattern may apply in the more humid western and northern regions where forests are more resilient to burning. We present a new pollen record from Lake Pupuke, Auckland, northern New Zealand, that charts the changing vegetation cover over the last 1000 years, before and after the arrival of people. Previous results from this site concurred with the rapid transformation model, although sampling resolution, chronology and sediment disturbance make that interpretation equivocal. Our new record is dated principally by tephrochronology together with radiocarbon dating and includes a cryptotephra deposit identified as Kaharoa tephra, a key marker for first settlement in northern New Zealand. Its discovery and stratigraphic position below two Rangitoto-derived tephras enables a clearer picture of environmental change to be drawn. The new pollen record shows an early phase (step 1) of minor, localised forest clearance around the time of Kaharoa tephra (c. 1314 AD) followed by a later, more extensive deforestation phase (step 2) commencing at around the time of deposition of the Rangitoto tephras (c. 1400–1450 AD). This pattern, which needs to be corroborated from other well-resolved records from northern New Zealand, concurs with an emerging hypothesis that the 'Little Ice Age' had a significant impact on pre-European Māori with the onset of harsher conditions causing a consolidation of populations and later environmental impact in northern New Zealand.


In many machine learning applications, it is important to explain the predictions of a black-box classifier. For example, why does a deep neural network assign an image to a particular class? We cast interpretability of black-box classifiers as a combinatorial maximization problem and propose an efficient streaming algorithm to solve it subject to cardinality constraints. By extending ideas from Badanidiyuru et al. [2014], we provide a constant factor approximation guarantee for our algorithm in the case of random stream order and a weakly submodular objective function. This is the first such theoretical guarantee for this general class of functions, and we also show that no such algorithm exists for a worst case stream order. Our algorithm obtains similar explanations of Inception V3 predictions $10$ times faster than the state-of-the-art LIME framework of Ribeiro et al. [2016].


Rainwater
harvesting techniques are ancient practices that have been used for many years
by different countries and civilizations. Runoff water harvesting is a
promising technique to collect water and store it effectively in surrounding
plant or crop areas. With global warming and climate change, water availability
and accessibility are becoming even more critical, particularly in arid and
semi-arid areas of the world. Annual rainfall is either scarce or insufficient
to support farming practices in many areas. Thus, it is necessary to capture,
store, and utilize water when it is sufficient for the growing season of
different crops. In this sense, it is also important to evaluate differences in
watersheds in terms of determining where the water flows (runoff areas) and
where it can be collected for in situ use (run on areas). Based on land use,
surface types, land cover, and soil group parameters, the amount of water
changes within a watershed so it is crucial to determine and combine those
factors. The aim of this study is to develop methodologies for determining the
runoff harvesting potential of watersheds in arid and semi-arid areas.
Specifically, to: 1) Identify potential areas for in-situ runoff harvesting
(IRH)within watersheds; and 2) Estimate surface runoff volumes in areas as
identified. The pilot study area for this study is Winters Wash Watershed,
which is a sub-watershed of Centennial Wash located in Arizona (HUC number:
15070104). This watershed serves as a
proxy for arid and semi-arid areas and was selected because it has sufficient
data for the planned analysis. Based on the analysis, 17,615
ha (25% of the watershed area) were classified as being suitable or highly suitable
as runoff sources, while 14,092 ha (20% of the watershed area) were better
suited as run on collection areas. Total collectible runoff was determined on
an average annual basis. Finally, recommendations on suitable water
harvesting techniques were made based on land use, soil, surface structure, and
slope in the watershed. The results will provide a methodology for the
decision-making process for identifying both run on and runoff areas and
examples of real practices that could be used in places that are arid and
semi-arid.


Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has been a pervasive paradigm in conservation circles for three decades. Despite many potentially attractive attributes it has been extensively critiqued from both ecological and sociological perspectives with respect to theory and practice (for example Leach et al. 1999; Berkes 2004; Fabricius et al. 2004; Blaikie 2006). Nonetheless, many successful examples exist, although an equal number have seemingly not met expectations. Is this because of poor implementation or rather a generally flawed model? If the criteria and conditions for success are so onerous that relatively few projects or situations are likely to qualify, what then is the value of the model? The questions thus become: how and what can we learn from the past theory and practice to develop a new generation of flexible, locally responsive and implementable CBNRM models, and what are likely to be the attributes of such models?


Value-added models help to evaluate the knowledge that school districts, schools, and teachers add to student learning as students progress through school. In this article, the well-known Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS) is examined. The author presents a practical investigation of the methodological issues associated with the model. Specifically, she argues that, although EVAAS is probably the most sophisticated value-added model, it has flaws that must be addressed before widespread adoption. She explores in depth the shortage of external reviews and validity studies of the model, its insufficient user-friendliness, and methodological issues about missing data, regression to the mean, and student background variables. She also examines a paradigm case in which the model was used to advance unfounded assertions.


The master connecting rod of a reciprocating aircraft engine revealed cracks during routine inspection. The rods were forged from 4337 (AMS 6412) steel and heat treated to a specified hardness of 36 to 40 HRC. H-shaped cracks in the wall between the knuckle-pin flanges were revealed by visual examination. The cracks were originated as circumferential cracks and then propagated transversely into the bearing-bore wall. No inclusions in the master rod were detected by magnetic-particle and x-ray inspection. Three large inclusions lying approximately parallel to the grain direction and fatigue beach marks around two of the inclusions were revealed by macroscopic examination of the fracture surface. Large nonmetallic inclusions that consisted of heavy concentrations of aluminum oxide (Al2O3) were revealed by microscopic examination of a section through the fracture origin. The forging vendors were notified about the excess size of the nonmetallic inclusions in the master connecting rods and a nondestructive-testing procedure for detection of large nonmetallic inclusions was established.


The recent Baby Jessica case and others like it have renewed the nature versus nurture debate in family law. Baby Jessica's biological parents, the Schmidts, sought to obtain permanent custody of their daughter after giving her up for adoption to the DeBoer family. Their argument was one that found its basis in biology and the idea of a traditional family. On the other hand, with the assistance of Professor Scarnecchia, the DeBoers argued that it was more important forJessica's overall health to remain with her primary caretakers of two years. Courts, however, have taken a more traditional view of this complex situation. Historically, there has been great resistance to the argument that the best interests of the child should rule over a biological relationship. As a result, the Schmidts won custody of Baby Jessica. In the following speech, Professor Scarnecchia articulates the limitations of a biological approach to child custody cases. She argues for a children's rightsbased decision making process in family law. Professor Scarnecchia presented this speech at The American University Journal of Gender & the Law symposium "Gender, Family and Change: Developments in the Legal Regulation of Family Life" on April 9, 1994.


The best analyses of the concept 'rights' maintain that Hohfeldian claims, privileges, powers, immunities, liabilities, and clusters of these positions, all qualify as rights when they satisfy some further condition, such as serving their holder's interests, or fulfilling some alternative function. But duties, disabilities and no-rights can also satisfy this further condition. For example, many duties, disabilities and no-rights serve their holder's interests, and fulfil 'right-like' functions. Why, then, do we disallow such duties, disabilities and no-rights from qualifying as rights?