Emma Ashford is a visiting research fellow at the Cato Institute. She holds a PhD and BA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia and an MA in International Affairs from American University's School of International Service. In what the Obama administration describes as a "years-long" coalition effort to "degrade and destroy" ISIS, the United States has reentered conflict in the Middle East. The White House heralds its close cooperation with Arab allies, including a number of petrostates such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, describing their cooperation as vital to the success of the campaign. But petrostates are unlikely to be good allies for the U.S. campaign in Iraq and Syria. The reliance of those countries on oil and gas revenues distorts both foreign policy decisions and their implementation. First, petrostates have weak foreign policy institutions, producing policy that is of poor quality and strongly driven by personalities. Second, the vast flow of oil income enables the states to back nonstate actors in conflicts, but their weak civil service cannot control the flow of arms or funds. Third, oil income also enriches private citizens, some of whom directly fund terrorist organizations such as ISIS. Thus, largely through ineptitude, those states have helped to foster Syria's civil war, indirectly facilitating the rise of ISIS. The idiosyncrasies of oil-rich states make them poor partners for the United States in this instance and in future conflicts. As allies, petrostates are especially likely to draw America into unnecessary and intractable conflicts. In particular, Washington should largely disentangle itself from the Saudi alliance and from reliance on Saudi intelligence and diplomatic services. Keeping Saudi Arabia at arm's length will help to minimize involvement in Middle East conflicts that are not vital to U.S. interests. PolicyAnalysis


This paper presents a streamlined approach to future Precision Autonomous Farming (PAF). It focuses on the preferred specification of the farming systems including the farming system layout, sensing systems and actuation units such as tractor-implement combinations. The authors propose the development of the Precision Farming Data Set (PFDS) which is formed off-line before the commencement of the crop cultivation and discusses its use in accomplishing reliable, cost effective and efficient farming systems. The work currently in progress towards the development of autonomous farming vehicles and the results obtained through detailed mathematical analysis of example actuation units will also be presented.


Raising critical current density Jc in high temperature superconductors (HTSs) is an important strategy towards performance-cost balanced HTS technology for commercialization. The development of strong nanoscale artificial pinning centers (APCs) in HTS, such as YBa2Cu3O7 or RE-123 in general, represents one of the most exciting progressions in HTS material research in the last decade. Significantly raised Jc has been demonstrated in APC/RE-123 nanocomposites by enhanced pinning on magnetic vortices in magnetic fields towards that demanded in practical applications. Among other processes, strain-mediated self-organization has been explored extensively for in situ formation of the APCs based on fundamental physics design rules. The desire in controlling the morphology, dimension, orientation, and concentration of APCs has led to a fundamental question on how strains interact in determining APCs at a macroscopic scale. Answering this question demands an interactive modeling-synthesis-characterization approach towards a thorough understanding of fundamental physics governing the strain-mediated self-organization of the APCs in the APC/RE-123 nanocomposites. Such an understanding is the key for a leap forward from the traditionally empirical method to materials-by-design to enable an optimal APC landscape to be achieved in epitaxial films of APC/YBCO nanocomposites under a precise guidance of fundamental physics. The paper intends to provide a review of recent progress made in the controllable generation of APCs using the interactive modeling-synthesis-characterization approach. The emphasis will be given to the understanding so far achieved using such an approach on the collective effect of the strain field on the morphology, dimension, and orientation of APCs in epitaxial APC/RE-123 nanocomposite films.


This paper provides novel evidence for the determinants of preferences for public health and the willingness to pay for health services using a survey experiment implemented during the third week of the lock-down in Spain. At the time of our experiment the confirmed COVID-19 cases reached the 100k mark in Spain and 1 million worldwide. We collect information on several health outcomes, which we are able to benchmark with results from previous surveys. Results show a substantial deterioration of mental health, which is more pronounced in groups of the population with less stable income sources. Furthermore, we implement two information treatments about the fatality rate across age groups and the incidence rate across regions. In the first case, the treatment is stronger for those in, or with relatives in the risk group. The fact that regions are on different parts of the trajectory creates variation across regions in the second treatment. We ask participants about their preferred budget allocation, which we can again benchmark against the enacted budget and previous surveys. Results suggest that preferences for health care expenditures have almost doubled. Furthermore, we ask respondents about their willingness to pay for one out of three randomly assigned health care improvements. Contributions for more ICU beds are significantly higher compered to medical treatments and a vaccine.


The cycle of Indian rebellion and government repression that characterized the first centuries of contact between European and Amerindian peoples can not yet be consigned to the history books. The eruption of an armed movement in southern Mexico, comprised primarily of destitute Maya Indians, as well as smaller demonstrations of resistance in Brazil, Ecuador, and elsewhere speaks eloquently to this fact. While the majority of conflicts between the estimated 40 million indigenous peoples in Latin America and the societies in which they live are now played out in the political arena, security issues continue to generate violent inter-ethnic conflict. (1) Since the Conquest, the interests of indigenous communities usually have conflicted with national governments' security policies. These include a dimension explicitly intended to control the autonomous tendencies of indigenous communities, suppress Indian political organizing, and erase the independent identity of Indian nations. Relations between Latin America's indigenous population and the state have always been militarized. The European conquistadors subdued native peoples with superior weapons and maintained control through force over the often rebellious indigenous populations of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies from administrative centers established in the viceroyalties and audiencias. After independence, the new states remained centralized, with the majority of the government apparatus located in the capital city and some important provincial commercial centers. By this time, the majority of the indigenous population had fled or been forced into the more remote areas of the country: the unexplored jungles, the highest mountain ranges, and along the blurry borders between the emerging nations. The borderlands were particularly desirable destinations, as they represented the furthest distance between the centralized power of adjacent states and thus the weakest zone of state power. Until very recently, these remote regions of indigenous population were controlled almost exclusively by two institutions: the Catholic Church, which in many countries received a mandate to care for the Indians' bodies and souls; and the military, charged with maintaining the tranquility of the indigenous population, projecting the power of the state, and patrolling contested borders. Areas of commercial agricultural value were ruled by the large landholding classes, backed up by the military when necessary. By the mid-20th century, little had changed in the indigenous regions of Latin America. From the highlands of Peru and Guatemala to Brazil, where the state remained a distant idea, the military represented state power to indigenous people. In the Amazon Basin. military presence increased, especially along the borders, under the national security regimes of the 1960s and 1970s, when military governments of the Amazonian countries--particularly Brazil--sent troops to defend and patrol their borders. Each encouraged the settlement of colonists in the vicinity to legitimize territorial claims. BORDER CONFLICTS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR NATURAL RESOURCES Prior to January 26, 1995, it would have been difficult to convince even experts on the region of the seriousness of border conflicts in Latin America. Machismo, hyper-nationalism, paranoia, and even illicit business opportunities are frequent excuses used to explain policies that mass troops along borders to defend against seemingly imaginary threats. When war broke out between Ecuador and Peru on that date, the unthinkable possibility of a shooting war between Latin American states became a reality, especially to the tens of thousands of Amerindians in villages along both sides of the border, who bore the brunt of months of military attacks. As soon as the first shots were fired, national Indian leaders from both countries appealed to the combatant governments and the international community to cease the fighting, which had resulted in the bombing of several Shuar communities and the evacuation of upwards of 8,000 Shuar from the area. …


Purpose
The purpose of this study was to determine whether a significant order effect exists in the binaural bithermal caloric test.

Method
Fifteen volunteers (mean age = 24.3 years, range = 18-38 years) with no history of vestibular disorder, hearing loss, concussion, or neurological disease underwent caloric testing on 3 occasions. Irrigations were randomized using 8 possible order combinations. The parameters of interest included unilateral weakness, directional preponderance, total response from the right ear, and total response from the left ear.

Results
Order effects were analyzed using 2 methods. The first analysis was done looking at the 8 possible orders. We also had an a priori established hypothesis that the first irrigation tested would influence the calculation of unilateral weakness more than the other 3 irrigations. To test this hypothesis, the 8 orders were condensed into 4 order conditions based on the first irrigation. The effect of order was determined using analysis of variance tests. Although the first irrigation tended to be the largest, no significant effects were observed.

Conclusions
This experiment demonstrated that while there is great inter-individual and intra-individual variability in caloric test results, the order of irrigations had no significant effect in the test. Future studies may explore the effects of nonphysiological factors on test results.


Censoring is a common phenomenon that arises in many longitudinal studies where an event of interest could not be recorded within the given time frame. Censoring causes missing time-to-event labels, and this effect is compounded when dealing with datasets which have high amounts of censored instances. In addition, dependent censoring in the data, where censoring is dependent on the covariates in the data leads to bias in standard survival estimators. This motivates us to develop an approach for pre-processing censored data which calibrates the right censored (RC) times in an attempt to reduce the bias in the survival estimators. This calibration is done using an imputation method which estimates the sparse inverse covariance matrix over the dataset in an iterative convergence framework. During estimation, we apply row and column-based regularization to account for both row and column-wise correlations between different instances while imputing them. This is followed by comparing these imputed censored times with the original RC times to obtain the final calibrated RC times. These calibrated RC times can now be used in the survival dataset in place of the original RC times for more effective prediction. One of the major benefits of our calibration approach is that it is a pre-processing method for censored data which can be used in conjunction with any survival prediction algorithm and improve its performance. We evaluate the goodness of our approach using a wide array of survival prediction algorithms which are applied over crowdfunding data, electronic health records (EHRs), and synthetic censored datasets. Experimental results indicate that our calibration method improves the AUC values of survival prediction algorithms, compared to applying them directly on the original survival data.


Background Young people's advisory groups (YPAGs) for research are comprised of children or adolescents who work with researchers to shape different stages of the research process. Their involvement is expected to ensure studies better reflect the preferences and needs of targeted youth populations. However, despite their increasing use in health research, there is little systematic evidence on the methods and impacts associated with YPAGs. Method To address this gap, we conducted a scoping review of YPAGs in youth-focused health studies. We systematically searched MEDLINE for empirical studies in populations between 12 years and 18 years of age published in 2019. If a potential YPAG was identified, authors were contacted for additional information about the activities and level of involvement of the YPAG. Findings Of all studies that collected primary data from persons aged 12–18 years, only 21 studies reported using youth advice during their research. This represents less than 1% of all published empirical child and adolescent studies. There was variation in the type of research activity undertaken by YPAGs and their level of involvement. Most studies involved YPAGs in co-production of research design and/or in dissemination activities. The majority of authors that responded were positive about the impact of YPAGs. Interpretation Recommendations for consistent reporting of YPAG involvement in empirical studies include reporting on the match between YPAG and study populations, frequency/format of meetings, and the nature and level of involvement.


Abstract We present ground‐motion prediction equations (GMPEs) for vertical response spectra from Mexican interplate earthquakes at rock sites (National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program B class). Two options to obtain the vertical response spectrum are presented: (1) directly from the vertical‐attenuation model and (2) by multiplying the horizontal spectral ordinates by the vertical‐to‐horizontal ratios. The equations were built as functions of magnitude and distance to the fault surface of the earthquake, using 40 interplate earthquakes. We compared our results with previous attenuation models for inslab and interplate earthquakes in Mexico, and other vertical‐attenuation models in the world. The predicted intensities from the model were found to be in broad agreement with models derived with other models worldwide. Not many vertical and/or vertical‐to‐horizontal attenuation models were found in the literature, although the vertical response of structures is used in practice and included in design codes. Nevertheless, it seems to be a trend to pay more attention to this model. There was also found to be a lack of GMPEs for vertical response spectra applicable to subduction interplate earthquakes for a large range of distances and the region under study. Therefore, an attenuation model for interplate earthquakes was developed for distances up to around 400 km and M w from ∼5 to 8. The model could be useful for probabilistic seismic‐hazard assessment and as an aid for code writers.


Introduction: Impact force generates acceleration waves that travel through the body, and possible relationships may be exist between these acceleration waves and injuries. Several studies have analyzed the impact forces on the lower limb in healthy subjects wearing unstable shoes, but there is not accelerometric study analyzing the transmission of these impact forces along the locomotive system. The aim of the present study is to compare the acute effects of wearing unstable shoes (US) vs traditional shoes (TS), on maximum vertical acceleration, impact attenuation, cadence and stride length during gait. Methods: Fourty-three asymptomatic adults participated in the cross-sectional study. Subjects underwent gait analysis with simultaneously collecting heel and tibia peak acceleration, impact magnitude and acceleration rate, as well as shock attenuation and stride parameters (stride length, stride rate). Results: The results showed that wearing US increased cadence (10.99 steps/min; p<0.01), and decreased stride length (0.04 m; p<0.01). Additionally, an increase in maximum tibia peak acceleration, tibia impact magnitude and tibia acceleration rate were reported in the US condition compared to the TS condition, with a decrease of tibia attenuation in the US (p<0.05). Conclusion: Regarding shockwave transmission of ground reaction forces, a lower shock attenuation from the heel to the tibia was reported in the US vs TS condition. Bearing this in mind, it should be pointed that, while it is not yet clear if increased tibia acceleration is harmful to the musculoskeletal system, the US should be used with caution.


Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) must on the one hand innovate for company survival with the appropriate degree of product innovativeness, and on the other they need to collaborate and focus on core competences for efficiency matters. This research examines the relation of network characteristics and product innovativeness on innovation performance in SMEs. We tested hypotheses on the relationship between these three variables via data gathered from 60 SMEs, active in the medical devices sector. In this context we aim to offer consensus on the theoretical and empirical question of whether or not network characteristics and product innovativeness have a direct effect on innovation performance of SMEs. Results show no significant direct effect of product innovativeness on innovation performance. A positive interaction effect of multiple network characteristics on innovation performance was found, which confirms the significant importance of network configuration on innovation performance for SMEs. It indicates that, for SMEs in a highly regulated sector like the medical devices sector, the interaction of network characteristics is of crucial importance for high innovation performance. It is the combination of network characteristics that counts


Making good decisions requires people to appropriately explore their available options and generalize what they have learned. While computational models have successfully explained exploratory behavior in constrained laboratory tasks, it is unclear to what extent these models generalize to complex real world choice problems. We investigate the factors guiding exploratory behavior in a data set consisting of 195,333 customers placing 1,613,967 orders from a large online food delivery service. We find important hallmarks of adaptive exploration and generalization, which we analyze using computational models. We find evidence for several theoretical predictions: (1) customers engage in uncertainty-directed exploration, (2) they adjust their level of exploration to the average restaurant quality in a city, and (3) they use feature-based generalization to guide exploration towards promising restaurants. Our results provide new evidence that people use sophisticated strategies to explore complex, real-world environments.


The extent to which events are sustainable is an issue of considerable importance (Andersson, and Getz, 2008). While it may be that many do not adopt a marketing orientation (Mayfield & Crompton, 1995; Lade & Jackson, 2004; Mehmetoglu & Ellingsen, 2005) due to their more socialistic not-for profit nature there are still other factors that need to be addressed as sustainability will often depend upon the political and tangible support of key stakeholders (Andersson, and Getz, 2008). Using stakeholder theory and commitment-trust theory as applied to the events marketplace and taking a case study approach, this paper critically evaluates a major international motor sports event and the factors leading up to its demise along with its social, organisational, and political ramifications.


The livestock sector in Ethiopia contributes about 16.5% of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 35.6% of the agricultural GDP. It also contributes 15% of export earnings and 30% of agricultural employment, provides significant importance to the economies of Ethiopia and to local livelihood systems. However, in recent years official export has been declining while illegal export has been increasing. The Middle Eastern countries have been a traditional export market for Ethiopian animals but increasingly stringent health and quality control regulations restricted exports to these countries in recent years. Of the total household cash income from crop and livestock, livestock account the lion share in terms of revenue in different parts of the country, and the higher the cash income the higher is the share of livestock, indicating that increased cash income come primarily from livestock, particularly in the pastoral areas. However, current knowledge on livestock marketing, constraints, performance, opportunities, and prices is poor and inadequate for designing policies and institutions to overcome perceived problems in the marketing system. Knowledge on how marketing routes and systems could contribute to the spread of diseases and the implications of these for national and international trade in livestock is also highly inadequate to design any policy or institutional innovation to improve marketing for the benefit of the poor. Further, regaining the export market will require an understanding of the market potential in the importing countries including growth in demand, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) and other quality requirements, rules and regulations governing the market, Ethiopia's competitiveness in the market in relation to alternative suppliers and ability of the domestic market to respond to the export market opportunities. Since the livelihood of smallholders is highly dependent on the cash income from livestock and livestock products, alleviating challenges to the export market and domestic trade and marketing structure, improving market information, and upgrading marketing infrastructures including health and sanitary conditions will increase the welfare of smallholder producers, urban consumers and improve the national balance of payments. Keywords: Challenges, export, marketing, performance, phytosanitary


The energy integration of industrial processes is becoming increasingly more effective thanks to new methodological developments such as a pinch tecnology. The original method centers primarly on a consideration of the heat transfer exergy losses represented by the area between the composite curves on a Carnot factor versus heat rate diagram. the present paper proposes an extension of this approach to account for pressure drop exergy losses as well as for the gray exergy associated with the fabrication of the heat exchangers. It is proposed to graphically represent on the same Carnot factor versus heat rate diagram the above mentioned losses as well as other high exergy inputs and outputs linked, for example, to the introduction of heat pumps and cogeneration units. Such an extended exergy syntheses results in an improved and more coherent exergy balance for comparing energy recovery schemes. The proposed approach is suitable for future extension to include pollution and resource scarcity factors.


Previous studies have indicated that largely overlapping parts of a complex, mainly fronto-parietal, neural network are activated during both observation and execution of an action. If these two processes are inextricably linked, increases of neural activity contingent upon action observation should be found only for movements that can actually be performed. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated whether observation of possible and biomechanically impossible movements of fingers activated the same neural systems. Thirteen healthy subjects were scanned during observation of video-clips showing abduction/adduction movements of the right index or the little finger, which were defined as biomechanically possible or impossible according to the range of their angular displacement at the metacarpo-phalangeal joint. The mere observation of possible and impossible hand movements induced a selective activation of left precentral and left inferior frontal regions, thus indicating that motor-related areas map body actions even when they violate the constraints of human anatomy. An increase of the blood oxygen level-dependent signal selectively linked to observation of impossible hand movements was found in sensorimotor parietal regions. Our results suggest that while premotor areas code human actions regardless of whether they are biologically possible or impossible, sensorimotor parietal regions may be important for coding the plausibility of actions.


Hierarchical agents have the potential to solve sequential decision making tasks with greater sample efficiency than their non-hierarchical counterparts because hierarchical agents can break down tasks into sets of subtasks that only require short sequences of decisions. In order to realize this potential of faster learning, hierarchical agents need to be able to learn their multiple levels of policies in parallel so these simpler subproblems can be solved simultaneously. Yet, learning multiple levels of policies in parallel is hard because it is inherently unstable: changes in a policy at one level of the hierarchy may cause changes in the transition and reward functions at higher levels in the hierarchy, making it difficult to jointly learn multiple levels of policies. In this paper, we introduce a new Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL) framework, Hierarchical Actor-Critic (HAC), that can overcome the instability issues that arise when agents try to jointly learn multiple levels of policies. The main idea behind HAC is to train each level of the hierarchy independently of the lower levels by training each level as if the lower level policies are already optimal. We demonstrate experimentally in both grid world and simulated robotics domains that our approach can significantly accelerate learning relative to other non-hierarchical and hierarchical methods. Indeed, our framework is the first to successfully learn 3-level hierarchies in parallel in tasks with continuous state and action spaces.


Abstract Development of chemoresistance remains a significant limitation for the treatment of cancer and contributes to recurrence of the disease. Both intrinsic and acquired mechanisms of chemoresistance are characteristics of cancer stem cells (CSCs) or stem-like cells (SLCs). The aim of the study was to assess the stem-like properties in the breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 during and after pulsed treatment with doxorubicin (DOX) in comparison to the untreated controls.The experimental cultures were exposed to therapeutic concentration of DOX for 48 hours (treatment cultures), and subcultured to post-treatment cultures 24 hours after the removal of DOX. Stem-like properties of the cellular populations in the treatment and post--treatment cultures were assessed by the expression of the stem-cell marker genes (CD24, CD44, ITGA6, ITGB1, POU5F1, NANOG, ALDH1A1), colony-formation efficiency, growth rates, and sensitivity to DOX, 5-fluorouracil (5FU), cisplatin (CIS), and vinblastine (VBL). Exposure to DOX induced formation of giant polyploid cells that persisted in the post-treatment culture. The recovery period was characterised by a decrease in the proliferation rate, viability, and cellular adherence. The post-treatment cultures displayed decreased sensitivity to DOX and increased sensitivities to 5FU, CIS, and VBL. Cells treated with DOX displayed increased expression levels of CD24, CD44, and ALDH1A, while their expression levels at least partially normalised in the post-treatment culture. The post-treatment cultures demonstrated significantly increased colony-formation ability. During treatment with sub-lethal levels of doxorubicin and during the acute recovery period, the survival mechanisms in the breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 may be mediated by formation of the cellular population with stem-like properties.


Since the launch of their first trial in Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) in 1959, the Medical Research Council (and latterly National Cancer Research Institute) has conducted randomised trials in AML uninterrupted for six decades. These sixty years have seen a transformation in the way we diagnose, characterise and treat the disease, (and indeed a sea change in clinical trial regulations) and a continuing improvement in outcomes. The increasing refinement of diagnosis, leading to the advent of tailored therapies, and the use of disease monitoring both have the potential to improve outcomes further, but the associated complexities will require an evolution in our approach to trial design. This article looks at the extent to which the guiding principles of the first AML trials remain relevant today, and the challenges facing the next generation of trials methodologists.


With the emergence of the recent Industry 4.0 movement, data integration is now also being driven along the production line, made possible primarily by the use of established concepts of intelligent supply chains, such as the digital avatars. Digital avatars - sometimes also called Digital Twins or more broadly Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) - are already successfully used in holistic systems for intelligent transport ecosystems, similar to the use of Big Data and artificial intelligence technologies interwoven with modern production and supply chains. The goal of this paper is to describe how data from interwoven, autonomous and intelligent supply chains can be integrated into the diverse data ecosystems of the Industry 4.0, influenced by a multitude of data exchange formats and varied data schemas. In this paper, we describe how a framework for supporting SMEs was established in the Lake Constance region and describe a demonstrator sprung from the framework. The demonstrator project's goal is to exhibit and compare two different approaches towards optimisation of manufacturing lines. The first approach is based upon static optimisation of production demand, i.e. exact or heuristic algorithms are used to plan and optimise the assignment of orders to individual machines. In the second scenario, we use real-time situational awareness - implemented as digital avatar - to assign local intelligence to jobs and raw materials in order to compare the results to the traditional planning methods of scenario one. The results are generated using event-discrete simulation and are compared to common (heuristic) job scheduling algorithms.


This research investigated attitudes and behaviours of socially excluded individuals as they engage with further learning through digital technologies in individually orientated and free informal learning settings. The study specifically explored the impact of socio-personal attitudinal and behavioural factors that may impede participation.

The research was concentrated in a South East London borough and based within a successful joint initiative between a local authority and third sector organisations. This unique partnership, of over 25 centres, provided access to the hardest to reach groups in the deprived communities of the borough. A number of case studies have been included that give a flavour of the poignant journeys of socially excluded individuals.]

Past research in this area has been mainly limited to the investigation of economic barriers. The principal focus of this study is Azjen's social psychological Theory of Planned Behaviour (TpB) which was concerned with localised social determinants of the individual. Research data was collected through questionnaires based on TpB and the raw data derived from these were statistically analysed using inferential statistics, chi-square (x2) on SPSS. In addition, a number of interviews were also carried out to gain further insight into the broad perceptions of the individuals. Interview transcripts were analysed and two emergent themes identified: attitude and behaviour.

The statistical analysis revealed that latent experiences and perception played a vital role in individuals' life choices. These provide the foundation of the socio-personal factors that impact on socially excluded adults and influence their attitudes, behaviour and decision making process. In this study these have been shown to have an impact on attitudes towards any sort of learning/training including IT skills. The combination of poor experiences of school, no/low academic achievement, low self-esteem and confidence, along with a fear of failure has led to lives of worklessness or a continuous cycle of low skilled, low-waged employment, vulnerable to economic change.

In addition, a minor analysis contributed through Bourdieu's concepts established that the individual's social class/group produced inherent issues of almost unconsciously accepted differentiation between the dominated and dominant classes.


The objective of this study was to investigate the validity of an objective gait measure for assessment of different motor states of advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. Seven PD patients performed a gait task up to 15 times while wearing sensors on their upper and lower limbs. Each task was performed at specific points during a test day, following a single dose of levodopa-carbidopa. At the time of the tasks the patients were video recorded and three movement disorder experts rated their motor function on three clinical scales: a treatment response scale (TRS) that ranged from −3 (very bradykinetic) to 0 (ON) to +3 (very dyskinetic), a dyskinesia score that ranged from 0 (no dyskinesia) to 4 (extreme dyskinesia), and a bradykinesia score that ranged from 0 (no bradykinesia) to 4 (extreme bradykinesia). Raw accelerometer and gyroscope data of the sensors were processed and analyzed with time series analysis methods to extract features. The utilized features quantified separate limb movements as well as movement symmetries between the limbs. The features were processed with principal component analysis and the components were used as predictors for separate support vector machine (SVM) models for each of the three scales. The performance of each model was evaluated in a leave-one-patient out setting where the observations of a single patient were used as the testing set and the observations of the other 6 patients as the training set. Root mean square error (RMSE) and correlation coefficients for the predictions showed a good ability of the models to map the sensor data into the rating scales. There were strong correlations between the SVM models and the mean ratings of TRS (0.79; RMSE=0.70), bradykinesia score (0.79; RMSE=0.47), and bradykinesia score (0.78; RMSE=0.46). The results presented in this paper indicate that the use of wearable sensors when performing gait tasks can generate measurements that have a good correlation to subjective expert assessments.


Fault injection, a critical aspect of testing robust systems, is often overlooked in the development of general-purpose software. We believe this is due to the absence of easy-to-use tools and to the extensive manual labor required to perform fault injection tests. This paper introduces LFI (L ibrary Fault Injector), a tool that automates the preparation of fault scenarios and their injection at the boundary between shared libraries and applications. LFI extends prior work by automatically profiling fault behaviors of libraries via static analysis of their binaries, thus reducing the dependence on human labor and perfect documentation. We present techniques for automatically generating injection scenarios and we describe a simple language for expressing such scenarios. LFI does not require access to libraries' source code and works for Linux, Windows, and Solaris on x86 and SPARC platforms.


OBJECTIVE
To assess changes in sexual behaviours among male factory workers in Ethiopia.

DESIGN
Open cohort studies in two factories near Addis Ababa.

DATA AND METHODS
At intake and biannual follow-up visits, data were collected on sexual behaviours including casual sex, sex with commercial sex workers (CSW), condom use, and history of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) as indicated by genital discharge and genital ulcer. Health education, HIV testing, and counselling were offered to all participants.

RESULTS
Between February 1997 and December 1999, 1124 males were enrolled in the two cohort studies. At intake, the prevalence of casual sex in the past year, sex with CSWs, condom use with the last casual partner, history of genital discharge in the past 5 years, and history of genital ulcer in the past 5 years were 9.7, 43.4, 38.8 (Akaki site only), 10.6 and 2.1%, respectively. At the Wonji site, the intake prevalence of casual sex, sex with CSW, and history of genital discharge decreased significantly by calendar year between 1997 and 1999. At both sites combined, between the first and the fourth follow-up visits, there was a decline in the proportion of males reporting recent causal sex (from 17.5 to 3.5%, P < 0.001), sex with CSWs (from 11.2 to 0.75%, P < 0.001), and genital discharge (from 2.1 to 0.6%, P = 0.004).

CONCLUSION
There was a decline over time in risky sexual behaviours reported by cohort participants. Part of this decline occurred independently of cohort interventions.


How does the immediate experience of musical sound relate to processes of meaning construction and discursive mediation?

This question lies at the heart of the studies presented in Experience and Meaning in Music Performance, a unique multi-authored work that both draws on and contributes to current debates in a wide range of disciplines, including ethnomusicology, musicology, psychology, and cognitive science. Addressing a wide range of musical practices from Indian raga and Afro-Brazilian Congado rituals to jazz, rock, and Canadian aboriginal fiddling, the coherence of this study is underpinned by its three main themes: experience, meaning, and performance. Central to all of the studies are moments of performance: those junctures when sound and meaning are actually produced. Experience-what people do, and what they feel, while engaging in music-is equally important. And considered alongside these is meaning: what people put into a performance, what they (and others) get out of it, and, more broadly, how discourses shape performances and experiences of music. In tracing trajectories from moments of musical execution, this volume a novel and productive view of how cultural practice relates to the experience and meaning of musical performance.

A model of interdisciplinary study, and including access to an array of audio-visual materials available on an extensive companion website, Experience and Meaning in Music Performance is essential reading for scholars and students of ethnomusicology and music psychology.


Progesterone opposes estrogen-induced uterine epithelial proliferation through the transcription factor Hand2. Estrogen and progesterone cooperate to establish the proper uterine environment for embryo implantation. In mice, a preovulatory surge of estrogen promotes proliferation of the uterine epithelium during the 2 days after ovulation. Progesterone then inhibits this growth and stimulates differentiation of epithelial cells into the decidua, which will contribute to the placenta and is required for implantation of fertilized zygotes on the fourth day after ovulation. Li et al. identified the basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor Hand2, which was localized to the stroma underlying the uterine epithelium, as a potential target of regulation by the progesterone receptor (PR). Hand2 transcripts decreased in abundance in peri-implantation uteri of mice treated with the PR antagonist RU-486 and increased in uterine stromal cells in animals injected with progesterone after ovariectomy. Conditional knockouts in which uterine Hand2 was deleted (Hand2d/d) resulted in female infertility due to implantation failure. Although the abundance of estrogen, progesterone, and their receptors was normal in Hand2d/d animals, the postovulation rise of progesterone failed to down-regulate estrogen signaling, as determined by the abundance of activated estrogen receptor α (ERα) and the expression of estrogen-responsive genes in the uterine epithelium, and failed to activate transcription of progesterone-responsive genes in both the epithelium and stroma. Uterine epithelial cells ceased proliferating 4 days after ovulation in wild-type (WT) mice but continued dividing in Hand2d/d animals. Four genes encoding fibroblast growth factors (FGFs)—Fgf1, Fgf2, Fgf9, and Fgf18—showed increased expression in Hand2d/d uterine stroma, and FGF signaling through the extracellular signal–regulated kinases 1 and 2 (ERK1/2) increased in Hand2d/d uterine epithelia on postovulation day 4 relative to that in WT mice. Treatment with an FGF receptor inhibitor or ERK inhibitor decreased proliferation and ERα activation in Hand2d/d uterine epithelia. These results support a model in which FGFs produced by the uterine stroma stimulate proliferation of the overlying epithelium, and progesterone-induced Hand2 interrupts this mitogenic paracrine signaling to allow implantation. Q. Li, A. Kannan, F. J. DeMayo, J. P. Lydon, P. S. Cooke, H. Yamagishi, D. Srivastava, M. K. Bagchi, I. C. Bagchi, The antiproliferative action of progesterone in uterine epithelium is mediated by Hand2. Science 331, 912–916 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text] S. C. Hewitt, K. S. Korach, A hand to support the implantation window. Science 331, 863–864 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Generating electricity from renewable sources is more expensive than conventional approaches, but reduces pollution externalities. Analyzing the tradeoff is much more challenging than often presumed, because the value of electricity is extremely dependent on the time and location at which it is produced, which is not very controllable with some renewables, such as wind and solar. Likewise, the pollution benefits from renewable generation depend on what type of generation it displaces, which also depends on time and location. Without incorporating these factors, cost-benefit analyses of alternatives are likely to be misleading. However, other common arguments for subsidizing renewable power - green jobs, energy security and driving down fossil energy prices - are unlikely to substantially alter the analysis. The role of intellectual property spillovers is a strong argument for subsidizing energy science research, but less persuasive as an enhancement to the value of installing current renewable energy technologies.


This paper examines the relationship between production and perception of prosodically marked lexical contrast, comparing 16 native speakers from three dialects of Korean known to exhibit variation in the use of prosodic features for lexical marking. A set of synthesized stimuli was constructed, where both F0 contour and syllable duration were manipulated. South Kyungsang speakers have F0 distinction in production and are sensitive to F0 variations in perception. Cholla speakers are sensitive to F0 in the opposite direction to Kyungsang speakers, suggesting that their 'interpretation' of the F0 is the critical factor of perceptual judgment. Some of the Seoul speakers show a duration contrast and are sensitive only to duration change. The results reveal general though incomplete correlation between production and perception of word prosody, suggestive of the different typological status of the three dialects.


The Roveto Valley is a narrow, elongated, NW-trending depression filled with continental Plio-Quaternary deposits that outcrop at different topographic elevations. A morpho-lithostratigraphic succession of the continental deposits has been defined in order to reconstruct the geological Quaternary evolution of the area. These deposits do not contain materials suitable for biostratigraphic dating; therefore, in order to determine their chronology, three different units were sampled for magnetostratigraphic investigations. Paleomagnetic results demonstrated that standard demagnetization techniques are effective in removing secondary remanence components and in isolating the characteristic remanent magnetization, allowing us to determine, for each cycle, whether it was deposited before or after the Brunhes-Matuyama geomagnetic reversal at 781 ka. Preliminary rock magnetic analyses indicated that magnetite is the main magnetic carrier and that hematite, which gives the pink colour to the matrix, is in the superparamagnetic grain-size range and thus does not retain any paleomagnetic remanence.


Single column models (SCMs) provide an economical framework for assessing the sensitivity of atmospheric temperature and humidity to natural and imposed perturbations, and also for developing improved representations of diabatic processes in weather and climate models. Their economy is achieved at the expense of ignoring interactions with the circulation dynamics; thus, advection by the large-scale flow is either prescribed or neglected. This artificial decoupling of the diabatic and adiabatic tendencies can often cause rapid error growth in SCM integrations, especially in the Tropics where large-scale vertical advection is important. As a result, SCMs can quickly develop highly unrealistic thermodynamic structures, making it pointless to study their subsequent evolution. This paper suggests one way around this fundamental difficulty through a simple coupling of the diabatic and adiabatic tendencies. In essence, the local vertical velocity at any instant is specified by a formula that links the local vertical temperature advection to the evolution of SCM-generated diabatic heating rates up to that instant. This vertical velocity is then used to determine vertical humidity advection, and also horizontal temperature and humidity advection under an additional assumption that the column is embedded in a uniform environment. The parameters in the formula are estimated in a separate set of calculations, from the approach to equilibrium of a linearized global primitive equation model forced by steady heat sources. As a test, the parameterized dynamics are used to predict the linear model's local response to oscillating heat sources, and found to perform remarkably well over a wide range of space and time scales. In a second test, the parameterization is found to capture important aspects of a general circulation model's vertical advection and temperature tendencies and their lead‐lag relationships with diabatic heating fluctuations at convectively active locations in the Tropics. When implemented in the NCAR SCM, the dynamically coupled SCM shows a clear improvement over its uncoupled counterpart for tropical conditions observed during the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean‐Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE). Coupling effectively stabilizes the SCM. As a result, short-term prediction errors are substantially reduced, the ensemble spread is reduced in ensemble runs, and the SCM is able to maintain realistic thermodynamic structures in extended runs. Such a dynamically coupled SCM should therefore be more useful not only for isolating physical parameterization errors in weather and climate models, but also for economical simulations of regional climate variability.


ABSTRACT The response of the Arctic atmosphere to low and high sea ice concentration phases based on European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) Re-Analysis Interim (ERA-Interim) atmospheric data and Hadley Centre's sea ice dataset (HadISST1) from 1989 until 2010 has been studied. Time slices of winter atmospheric circulation with high (1990–2000) and low (2001–2010) sea ice concentration in the preceding August/September have been analysed with respect to tropospheric interactions between planetary and baroclinic waves. It is shown that a changed sea ice concentration over the Arctic Ocean impacts differently the development of synoptic and planetary atmospheric circulation systems. During the low ice phase, stronger heat release to the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean reduces the atmospheric vertical static stability. This leads to an earlier onset of baroclinic instability that further modulates the non-linear interactions between baroclinic wave energy fluxes on time scales of 2.5–6 d and planetary scales of 10–90 d. Our analysis suggests that Arctic sea ice concentration changes exert a remote impact on the large-scale atmospheric circulation during winter, exhibiting a barotropic structure with similar patterns of pressure anomalies at the surface and in the mid-troposphere. These are connected to pronounced planetary wave train changes notably over the North Pacific.


Not all patients with bicuspid aortic valves behave similarly. Some patients have early valve dysfunction and require intervention in infancy or childhood. More commonly, bicuspid valves degenerate gradually throughout adulthood and valve failure does not occur until the fifth decade or later. Some patients have primarily aortic stenosis while others have aortic regurgitation. Others have mixed valve dysfunction. The aorta dilates in some, but not all patients with bicuspid aortic valves. Furthermore, dilation can occur at the sinuses, in the mid-ascending aorta, or in both regions. Numerous authors have attempted to explain this heterogeneity in valve dysfunction and aortic morphology. However, to date, the reason for the variability in presentation remains incompletely explained.

The most common way to categorise bicuspid aortic valves is according to the morphology of leaflet fusion, since most valves are trileaflet with a fused commissure. Fusion of the right and left coronary cusps (RL fusion) is most common, followed by fusion of the right and non-coronary cusps (RN fusion). Fusion of the left and non-coronary cusps is quite rare. Some valves have no identifiable raphe and are described as 'true' or 'pure' bicuspid aortic valves.

Because the morphology of bicuspid aortic valves is usually easy to define by echocardiography, it is tempting to ascribe …


Over the past century, personality theory and research has successfully identified core sets of characteristics that consistently describe and explain fundamental differences in the way people think, feel and behave. Such characteristics were derived through theory, dictionary analyses, and survey research using explicit self-reports. The availability of social media data spanning millions of users now makes it possible to automatically derive characteristics from behavioral data—language use—at large scale. Taking advantage of linguistic information available through Facebook, we study the process of inferring a new set of potential human traits based on unprompted language use. We subject these new traits to a comprehensive set of evaluations and compare them with a popular five factor model of personality. We find that our language-based trait construct is often more generalizable in that it often predicts non-questionnaire-based outcomes better than questionnaire-based traits (e.g. entities someone likes, income and intelligence quotient), while the factors remain nearly as stable as traditional factors. Our approach suggests a value in new constructs of personality derived from everyday human language use.


The field experiment was conducted at the BRAC Agricultural Research and Development Centre, Gazipur from June to October, 2012 to investigate the effect of different fertilizer rates on the growth and yield of transplanted aman rice genotypes. The experiment was carried out in split-plot design with three replications accommodating the genotypes (G1= CNI 9012, G2= GSR IRRI I 2, G3= BINA dhan7 and G4= Aloran) in sub plot and different fertilizer rates (F1= No fertilizer, F2= Half of recommendation rate, F3= Two third of recommendation rate and F4= Recommendation rate) in the main plot. Crop growth duration, plant height, tillers no. hill-1, panicle no. hill-1, panicle length, total grains panicle-1, fertility%, 1000 grain-wt. and grain yield were compared for different treatments. Genotypes showed significant results for all the traits except grain yield but fertilizer and their interaction exhibit insignificant results for most of the characters studied. The maximum mean for producing grain yield was observed in F2 (5.0 t ha-1) but the minimum in F1 (4.6 t ha-1). Therefore, application of no fertilizer had negative impact on grain yield. Apparently, the highest value for grain yield (5.2 t ha-1) was found in the combinations of G1 × F3, G3 × F2 and G4 × F2 as well as the lowest (4.2 t ha-1) from G1 × F1 combination. Maximum gross return (62500 Tk. ha-1) and gross margin (58255 Tk. ha-1) with F2 suggested that this fertilizer rate was best for profitable cultivation on tested transplanted aman rice genotypes. * Corresponding Author: A. Ahmed  email@example.com International Journal of Agronomy and Agricultural Research (IJAAR) ISSN: 2223-7054 (Print) 2225-3610 (Online) http://www.innspub.net Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 47-54, 2016 International Journal of Agronomy and Agricultural Research (IJAAR) ISSN: 2223-7054 (Print) 2225-3610 (Online) http://www.innspub.net Vol. 5, No. 1, p. 14-22, 2014


The Puebla de Guzman and Valverde del Camino Anticlines consist of fault-propagation folds linked to a frontal thrust system striking N110oE. In the Puebla de Guzman Anticline, the thrust system has a fan imbricated geometry and represents a ~40 km-long and 4-5 km-wide frontal ramp; its internal structure results from the tectonic stacking of thrust sheets with normal stratigraphic polarities. Some thrusts show relay geometries, as for example the Valdecascajos and the Sierra de la Estrella Thrusts. An antiform-sinform system is developed in the intervening thrust sheet. Fault-propagation folds are very conspicuous in the hanging wall of most internal thrusts, where a rather continuous reverse limb is present. Both thrust system and fault-propagation folds, as well as a locally developed crenulation cleavage, were generated in a second tectonic phase.


This paper reviews a series of studies on the effects of accent on second language listening comprehension (L2 LC). It is shown that some of the studies have been misinterpreted as indicating the existence of an own, or local, accent advantage in L2 listening. From the review, it is clear that there is insufficient evidence to support such conclusions. Given previous research findings and current state of knowledge concerning the LC process, it is hypothesised that different but familiar accents should cause no problems for L2 listeners. This hypothesis is tested in an experiment featuring 63 Hong Kong school students. The results support the hypothesis. From the findings, it is argued that degree of familiarity is the crucial issue with regard to whether a particular accent causes LC problems for L2 listeners to English. In contrast, whether or not a speaker's accent is similar to the listener's is a secondary issue, which is important only in so far as it relates to the issue of familiarity.


In this work, we introduce a solution-processed CdS interlayer for use in inverted bulk heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells, and compare this material to a series of standard organic and inorganic cathode interlayers. Different combinations of solution-processed CdS, ZnO and conjugated polyelectrolyte (CPE) layers were compared as cathode interlayers on indium tin oxide (ITO) substrates to construct inverted solar cells based on poly[[4,8-bis[(2-ethylhexyl)oxy]benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene-2,6-diyl][3-fluoro-2-[(2-ethylhexyl)carbonyl]thieno[3,4-b]thiophenediyl]]:[6,6]-phenyl-C71-butyric acid methyl-ester (PTB7:PC71BM) and a poly(3-hexylthiophene):[6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT:PC61BM) as photoactive layers. Introduction of a CdS interlayer significantly improved the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of inverted PTB7:PC71BM devices from 2.0% to 4.9%, however, this efficiency was still fairly low compared to benchmark ZnO or CPE interlayers due to a low open circuit voltage (VOC). The VOC was greatly improved by introducing a conjugated polyelectrolyte (CPE) layer on top of the CdS layer, yielding outstanding diode characteristics and a PCE of 6.8%. These results indicate that the deep conduction band energy of CdS limits the VOC possible when used as an ETL in polymer fullerene solar cells, however, we have discovered that this issue can be readily overcome via the incorporation of an organic interfacial dipole layer. The best performing interlayer, however, was a single CPE layer alone, which yielded a VOC of 0.727 V, a FF of 63.2%, and a PCE of 7.89%. Using P3HT:PC61BM as an active layer, similar trends were observed. Solar cells without the cathode interlayer yielded a PCE of 0.46% with a poor VOC of 0.197 V and FF of 34.3%. In contrast, the use of inorganic/organic ZnO/CPE interlayers as the cathode interlayer considerably improved the VOC of 0.599 V and FF of 53.3%, resulting in a PCE of 2.99%. Our results indicate that the CdS layer yields excellent diode characteristics, however, performs slightly worse than benchmark ZnO and CPE layers in solar cell devices due to parasitic absorption below 550 nm. These results suggest that layered inorganic/organic interfacial materials are promising candidates as cathode interlayers for high efficiency inverted solar cells through the modification of interfacial contacts.


Plants from the genera Urtica, often better known as the stinging nettle, can be distinguished by their stinging hairs, and in some species, their serrated leaf edges. Historical records of the various uses of Urtica date back to at least the Bronze Age (3000-2000 BC). Nettles have traditionally been used as a nutritious food source particularly in rural areas of the United Kingdom and Canada. Since ancient times Urtica species have also been used in herbal remedies as an expectorant or diuretic, or for the treatment of eczema, rheumatism, haemorrhoids and ulcers, and the nettle continues to be an important medicinal plant up to the present day.This volume explores the historical and modern uses of the Urtica genus. An account of the botanical aspects of the genus is followed by a comprehensive review of the recent research into its biologically active constituents. With further coverage of the therapeutic uses and its nutritional value, this book presents an absorbing and all-encompassing account of the medicinal potential of Urtica which will be of considerable interest to herbalists, health scientists and botanists as well as researchers in the pharmaceutical industry.


This thesis first presents a review of the literature that has been published on adaptive educational software. After briefly describing the evolution of these programs, the review covers the main educational and computational features of current systems.

The next section of the thesis discusses the survey conducted in order to ascertain information about the performance of Intelligent Tutoring Systems. The results of this survey are used to inform the following section.

After the survey, the thesis outlines a proposed architecture for the decentralised distribution of adaptive educational software and discusses the issues surrounding the architecture. The results from implementing this architecture follow in the next section.

Conclusions and possible further research are presented last to complete the work. Key results and have been appended as well as a glossary of acronyms.


The objective of this work was to determine the method of stand correction more adequate to estimate productivity in cornfields of 33 varieties in eight situations. The methods tested were: without correction, rules of three, method of Zuber, covariance of medium stand, covariance of ideal stand, proposed by Cruz, proposed by Vencovsky & Cruz, the method proposed in this work, which consisted of a stratified correction based on the combined productivity for the characteristic stand, by Scott Knott's test. The methods proposed in this work, covariance of ideal stand and that proposed by Vencovsky & Cruz were considered the most appropriate ones, because they presented lower values for the coefficient of variation and high value of F, which was confirmed by the low values of Pi and Pi multivariate in the combined analysis. The methods rules of three and proposed by Cruz showed the highest averages of productivity, which overestimate the real value of the average production. The method proposed in this work was efficient to correct the productivity of the corn varieties, once the most productive varieties were also those with higher potential to leave descendants, measured by the average stand.


Extracting coal from underground mineworkings causes the overlying rocks to subside with associated changes in the stress regime. The aim of the study reported here was to apply the surface seismic reflection method to study the effect of subsidence on seismic velocity. Two sets of time-lapse surveys were carried out over two longwall mining panels in the Selby Coalfield. Seismic lines were profiled parallel and perpendicular to adjacent panels H45 and H46, respectively. A total of twenty-one repeated surveys were carried out along the two lines over a period of three years. The effect monitored was due to mining in the Bamsley Seam, at 550 m depth. As mining progressed, the traveltime of a strong reflection event from an anhydrite bed at 150 m depth was measured after processing the data with standard techniques. An overall increase in traveltime of about 4 % was observed. The progressive increase in traveltime over panel H45 correlated well with empirical calculations of differential subsidence between the surface and the anhydrite. However, the magnitude of the change must principally be accounted for by a decrease in seismic velocity, associated with a reduction in the vertical effective stress. Although the traveltime over panel H46 was also found to increase, and to correlate quite well with die expected differential subsidence, the agreement was less good along this transverse profile. This is attributed to asymmetric subsidence effects because the ground on the SW side of the panel had already been worked by panel H45, but the ground on the NE side was unworked. At the time of each seismic survey across panel H46, the profile was also levelled, and it was found that surface subsidence values along the profile increased towards panel H45. As most of the subsidence caused by mining panel H45 would have been completed by the time the H46 profile was surveyed, the effect must be at least partly attributed to asymmetric subsidence due to panel H46. Where the ground had been weakened by subsidence due to mining H45, near-total subsidence from mining H46 took place rapidly; but in the previously unworked ground on the NE side of panel H46, the residual subsidence was presumably delayed by competent strata in the overburden. Further work is needed to confirm whether this explanation is correct.


Background
Distant metastasis accounts for 90% of deaths from colorectal cancer (CRC). Genomic heterogeneity has been reported in various solid malignancies, but remains largely under-explored in metastatic CRC tumors, especially in primary to metastatic tumor evolution.

Patients and methods
We conducted high-depth whole-exome sequencing in multiple regions of matched primary and metastatic CRC tumors. Using a total of 28 tumor, normal, and lymph node tissues, we analyzed inter- and intra-individual heterogeneity, inferred the tumor subclonal architectures, and depicted the subclonal evolutionary routes from primary to metastatic tumors.

Results
CRC has significant inter-individual but relatively limited intra-individual heterogeneity. Genomic landscapes were more similar within primary, metastatic, or lymph node tumors than across these types. Metastatic tumors exhibited less intratumor heterogeneity than primary tumors, indicating that single-region sequencing may be adequate to identify important metastasis mutations to guide treatment. Remarkably, all metastatic tumors inherited multiple genetically distinct subclones from primary tumors, supporting a possible polyclonal seeding mechanism for metastasis. Analysis of one patient with the trio samples of primary, metastatic, and lymph node tumors supported a mechanism of synchronous parallel dissemination from the primary to metastatic tumors that was not mediated through lymph nodes.

Conclusions
In CRC, metastatic tumors have different but less heterogeneous genomic landscapes than primary tumors. It is possible that CRC metastasis is, at least partly, mediated through a polyclonal seeding mechanism. These findings demonstrated the rationale and feasibility for identifying and targeting primary tumor-derived metastasis-potent subclones for the prediction, prevention, and treatment of CRC metastasis.


Optimized GPU kernels are sufficiently complicated to write that they often are specialized to input data, target architectures, or applications. This paper presents a multi-search abstraction for computing multiple breadth-first searches in parallel and demonstrates a high-performance, general implementation. Our abstraction removes the burden of orchestrating graph traversal from the user while providing high performance and low energy usage, an often overlooked component of algorithm design. Energy consumption has become a first-class hardware design constraint for both massive and embedded computing platforms. Our abstraction can be applied to such problems as the all-pairs shortest-path problem, community detection, reachability querying, and others. To map graph traversal efficiently to the GPU, our hybrid implementation chooses between processing active vertices with a single thread or an entire warp based on vertex outdegree. For a set of twelve varied graphs, the implementation of our abstraction saves 42% time and 62% energy on average compared to representative implementations of specific applications from existing literature.


This paper theoretically explores the inconsistencies in the definition and composition of inbound tourists. A detailed review of existing literature was conducted to establish the evidence in support of the inclusion of foreign students as part of inbound tourists. The three most obvious consequences are cross-border movement, economic impacts and socio-cultural consequences. These evidences in support of foreign students as inbound tourists were extracted from both the academic and industry reports where foreign students are regarded as a significant part of inbound tourist source of revenue through foreign exchange earnings. Thus, confirming their economic impact on the host country through living costs, payment of tuition fees and travelling expenses. Notable among their reasons for travelling is to relax, have fun, chill out, and participate with friends in sightseeing. A major implication in this paper is that it has availed tourist researchers the opportunities to use foreign students as potential respondents in inbound tourist research. It concludes with some recommendations for future researches.


Critical zone evolution, structure, and function are driven by energy and mass fluxes into and through the terrestrial subsurface. We have developed an approach to quantifying the effective energy and mass transfer (EEMT, MJ m−2 yr−1) to the subsurface that accounts for local variations in topography, water and energy balances, and primary production. Our objectives were to quantify how (i) local topography controls coupled energy and water transfer to the subsurface, and (ii) vegetation effects on local‐scale evapotranspiration and primary production controls of energy and mass transfer to the critical zone, both at the pedon‐ to hillslope‐scale resolution, in the context of quantifying controls on EEMT. The model was tested across a semiarid environmental gradient in southern Arizona, spanning desert scrub to mixed conifer ecosystems. Data indicated clear variations in EEMT by topography, via both aspect and local water redistribution, and with current vegetative cover. Key findings include: (i) greater values of EEMT on north‐facing slopes in a given elevation zone, with a north‐facing aspect equivalent to an ∼300‐m elevation gain; (ii) a power law relationship between aboveground biomass and EEMT, with disturbance in the form of stand‐replacing wildfire substantially reducing estimates of EEMT; and (iii) improved correlation of EEMT to pedon‐scale variations in critical zone structure with EEMT values that include topography. Incorporating greater levels of environmental variation and complexity presents an improved approach to estimating the transfer of energy and mass to the subsurface, which is important to our understanding of critical zone structure and function.


: Research on IS solutions for environmental sustainability have evolved to a modest, but firm body of knowledge. Despite this progressive understanding about the potential of IS in enabling environmental sustainability, our academic practices seem widely unaffected by these insights. The way we do research or conduct teaching is rarely influenced by sustainability considerations. For example, before the pandemic many of us belonged to a hypermobile group that travelled 5-6 times more than the average employee. Our research is also often not aligned with environmental goals. We research digital technologies without sufficiently acknowledging the significant amounts of resources they consume. Similarly, our teaching often focuses on the effective development and use of information systems; however, rebound, second order, or spillover effects are barely covered. Based on these observations we raise the question: Are we practicing enough of what we preach? While recognizing several efforts of IS researchers, we can no longer ignore the 'environmental elephant in the room'. In our panel report, we discuss the status-quo and ideas to improve the environmental and societal impact of our academic practices and present three ideas to move forward: Leverage virtualization and limit air travel, overhaul teaching curricula, and recalibrate incentives and evaluation regimes.


The article substantiates the essence of dysfunctions as a key phenomenon that leads to deformation or partial failure to perform functions by the subjects of the internal consumer market. The features of the influence of socio-economic factors investigated within the functioning efficiency of the regional food market. The evaluation of the influence for the food market factors in the region carried out by classifying the factors by the influence sphere and the regulation degree, assessing the influence of the food market factors on the main indicator models. These models contain indicators, despite the existing system of statistical observation in the region, studying the relationships between factors and indicators characterizing food market and identifying the results of dysfunctions. A block of socio-economic determinants of realizing the potential of the consumer (food) market in the region is proposed. Correlation analysis of factors affecting the food market and the volume of products sold (agriculture, food production, beverages) has been carried out. The authors built a system of correlation between the socio-economic factors of the food market and the export of agricultural products and the food industry in the region. A system of interrelation of socio-economic factors and their influence on the wholesale turnover of food products in the region proposed, as well as a system of interrelation of socio-economic factors with the resulting "gross regional product". The nature of the emergence and the essence of dysfunctions in the regulation of the consumer market development are concretized. The consequences of state regulation dysfunctions for the development of the consumer goods internal market are determined and characterized. The main dysfunctional factors of influence on the regulators of the regional market development grouped in the aspect of competitive markets.


A module for Digital Elevation Model (DEM) extraction from Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite stereo-pair imagery is developed and used for a flood plain mapping applications at an ungauged basin. A procedure for parallel processing of cascading image tiles is used for handling the large datasets requirements of VHR satellite imagery. The Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) algorithm is used to detect potentially homogeneous features in the members of the stereo-pair. The resulting feature pairs are filtered using the RANdom SAmple Consensus (RANSAC) algorithm by using a variable distance threshold. Finally, homogeneous pairs are converted to point cloud ground coordinates for DEM generation. A 0.5 m × 0.5 m Geoeye-1 stereo-pair acquired over an area of 25 km2 in the island of Crete, Greece is used as input for the module. The resulting 1.5 m × 1.5 m DEM has superior detail over previously developed 2 m and 5 m DEMs that are used as reference, and yields a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of about 1 m compared to ground truth measurements. 1D and 2D hydraulic models are used to simulate the rainfall-runoff characteristics and the flood wave kinematics, of the flash flood event of October 17th, 2006 that occurred in Almirida basin, by using the 1.5 m VHR-DEM as an input. Results show that the hydraulic simulation based on the generated VHR-DEM, calibrated and validated via field data, produces an accurate extent and water level of the flooded area, proving that Remote Sensing stereo reconstruction is a promising alternative to the traditional survey methods in flood mapping applications.


Traditional public housing management in the United States focuses almost entirely on physical plant maintenance and financial management, even though public housing residents' needs extend far beyond bricks and mortar. Crime, socioeconomic disparity, deteriorating physical conditions, and the absence of any linkages to other communities require a new approach to management and a revised allocation of resources. Resident involvement, increased reliance on public and private assistance, provision of supportive services, and a restructuring of the existing socioeconomic mix of public housing developments and their neighborhoods must be instituted and incorporated into planning for public housing communities.


Why did the notoriously antimontage film theorist Andre Bazin champion Nicole Vedres's Paris 1900 (1947), a kaleidoscopic film de montage compiled from scraps of archival film, including footage of a death recorded live? How did archival films and death on film together mediate for Bazin the fatal coupling of "total war" and "total History," and why were archival films seen by others to raise urgent questions of historical philosophy? This essay explores the intensified historical consciousness that developed around archival films and the representability of death after the Second World War. Reinserting documentary as the missing key to Bazin's so-called realist film theory, I argue that Bazin found in Paris 1900 a new archive-inflected and essayistic model of film's historicity whose full potential continues to be realized in the explosion of archival filmmaking today.


Herman Knell was nineteen and living in Wurtzburg in March of 1945 when hundreds of Allied planes arrived overhead, unleashing a torrent of bombs on the city. Wurtzburg's tightly packed medieval housing exploded in a firestorm, killing six thousand people in one night and destroying 92 percent of the city's structures. Despite the fact that Wurtzburg had no strategic value, the city emerged from World War II second only to Dresden in material destruction inflicted from the air. The experience led Knell to years of research on the history, development, and effects of the strategy of area bombing.To Destroy a City is the result of the author's long and unrelenting investigation. His analysis of this form of warfare, which reached its zenith during World War II, covers the history and the development of wide-area bombing since 1914, examines its wartime effectiveness and the consequences. But the extra dimension that Knell's book offers is his firsthand experience of the tension, fear, tentative defiance, and, finally, utter catastrophe of being on the receiving end of overwhelming air power. For Americans, who fortunately did not experience bombing during the war, this is essential reading.


In this thesis, we study several interior point continuous trajectories for linearly constrained convex programming (CP) and convex semidefinite programming (SDP). The continuous trajectories are characterized as the solution trajectories of corresponding ordinary differential equation (ODE) systems. All our ODE systems are closely related to interior point methods. First, we propose and analyze three continuous trajectories, which are the solutions of three ODE systems for linearly constrained convex programming. The three ODE systems are formulated based on an variant of the affine scaling direction, the central path, and the affine scaling direction in interior point methods. The resulting solutions of the first two ODE systems are called generalized affine scaling trajectory and generalized central path, respectively. Under some mild conditions, the properties of the continuous trajectories, the optimality and convergence of the continuous trajectories are all obtained. Furthermore, we show that for the example of Gilbert et al. [Math. Program., 103, 63-94 (2005)], where the central path does not converge, our generalized central path converges to an optimal solution of the same example in the limit. Then we analyze two primal dual continuous trajectories for convex programming. The two continuous trajectories are derived from the primal-dual path-following method and the primal-dual affine scaling method, respectively. Theoretical properties of the two interior point continuous trajectories are fully studied. The optimality and convergence of both interior point continuous trajectories are obtained for any interior feasible point under some mild conditions. In particular, with proper choice of some parameters, the convergence for both continuous trajectories does not require the strict complementarity or the analyticity of the objective function. For convex semidefinite programming, four interior continuous trajectories defined by matrix differential equations are proposed and analyzed. Optimality and convergence of the continuous trajectories are also obtained under some mild conditions.


Stress has become one of the major mental health problems in Malaysia. Most Malaysians underestimate and neglect this critical issue, not knowing what the consequences might be due to the lack of knowledge on stress analysis. Many researchers are trying to identify the causes and ways to overcome stress. With the help of advancing electronic systems engineering, primed heart rate biomarker has been earmarked as the tool to analyse stress. However, the relationship between heart rate variability approach and the quantification of stress is still an open research challenge. Therefore, the goal of this study is to explore the role of heart rate variability (HRV) and psychometric scale on stress and resilience analysis among university students and the effectiveness of interventions and Heart Rate Variability devices on improving resilience. 30 students, 15 males and 15 females aged 23 to 24 years old were picked as the subjects for this experiment according to their stress and resilience scores obtained from two questionnaires, Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) and Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS21). Their heart rate variability was measured using HeartMath EmWave device to observe the changes of their heart rhythm when a stimulus and an intervention is given. The data acquired from HeartMath EmWave were analyzed using Kubios HRV software, where it provides more in-depth analysis regarding the subjects' heart rate during the experiment. According to the results, most of the subjects' heart rate becomes incoherent during the stimulus phase. However, their heart rate changes into a coherence state due to the effectiveness of slow breathing techniques as an intervention. It helps the subjects to become calmer and synchronize their autonomic nervous system (ANS) with their brain and heart. Therefore, choosing the right intervention is vital to get a coherent heart rate, thus train how our body responds to stressors. The results also provide fruitful insight relating to how a human reacts when they are facing something difficult in their lives and indicates that heart rate variability biofeedback is important to achieve human wellness and validate the quantification of resilience and stress. This study concludes that the heart rate variability device and measurement are effective and have a vital impact to create stress awareness.


One goal in the development of distributed virtual environments (DVEs) is to create a system such that users are unaware of the distribution-the distribution should be transparent. The paper begins by discussing the general issues in DVEs that might make this possible, and a system that allows some level of distribution transparency is described. The system described suffers from effects of inconsistency, which in turn cause undesirable visual effects. The causal surface is introduced as a solution that removes these visual effects. The paper then introduces two determining factors of distribution transparency relating to user perception and performance. With regard to these factors, two hypotheses are stated relating to the causal surface. A user-trial on forty-five subjects is used to validate the hypotheses. A discussion of the results of the trial concludes that the causal surface solution does significantly improve the distribution transparency in a DVE.


Here we make the first quantitative estimates of the maximum total number of large terrestrial impact craters that can survive until the current era on Earth. Our estimates of crater survival are made using the age of Earth's crust and the expected flux of large extraterrestrial bodies striking Earth. This analysis neglects effects such as weathering and burial, which tend to preferentially erase smaller craters. Thus, our results represent the maximum number of craters we expect to exist on Earth today. Although the constant recycling of crustal material creates a strong bias toward younger ages, our model suggests that the terrestrial cratering record can be used to determine the size frequency distribution of the impactors that bombarded Earth over the past 3.5 G.y. However, our model suggests that the cratering record cannot be used to distinguish between scenarios with a constant flux of impactors over time and scenarios where the bombardment rate was considerably higher in Earth's ancient history. Luckily, layers of distal impact ejecta may act as records of impacts even when the source craters have been tectonically recycled. We suggest that searches for these distal impact ejecta layers will be more fruitful for constraining the bombardment history of Earth than searches for large craters.


The recent proliferation of smart-phones and other wearable devices has lead to a surge of new mobile applications. Partially observable Markov decision processes provide a natural framework to design applications that continuously make decisions based on noisy sensor measurements. However, given the limited battery life, there is a need to minimize the amount of online computation. This can be achieved by compiling a policy into a finite state controller since there is no need for belief monitoring or online search. In this paper, we propose a new branch and bound technique to search for a good controller. In contrast to many existing algorithms for controllers, our search technique is not subject to local optima. We also show how to reduce the amount of search by avoiding the enumeration of isomorphic controllers and by taking advantage of suitable upper and lower bounds. The approach is demonstrated on several benchmark problems as well as a smart-phone application to assist persons with Alzheimer's to wayfind.


A systematic study on the phase transformation of Ni-Ti shape memory and superelastic alloys subjected to Severe Plastic Deformation (SPD) – High Pressure Torsion (HPT) technique has been carried out. Ni-Ti alloys of three compositions were chosen for the study. Specimens of these alloys in as-received (AR) condition and after HPT have been subjected to Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD) analyses. In this study, while comparing the results of DSC thermograms and XRD spectra for the same sample conditions, some differences were observed. In the case of NiTi-H alloy after HPT, there appeared one stage phase transformation with DSC both while heating and cooling suggesting Martensite↔Austenite transformation but, with respect to XRD spectra while cooling, at the intermediate temperature of 55°C, the R-phase peaks corresponding to (1 1 2)R and (3 0 0)R planes appeared. In the thermogram obtained for the NiTi-B alloy subjected to HPT, it is observed that, while cooling, the Austenite to R-phase transformation is merged with R-phase to Martensite transformation. The results of the XRD obtained at -180°C show the presence of R-phase along with M-phase. The DSC curve of the NiTi-S alloy subjected to HPT corresponds to one stage phase transformation both while heating and cooling but, the diffractogram of the sample obtained at -180°C corresponds to the presence of both R-phase and M-phase.


The 6-pixel low-speed Visual Motion Sensor (VMS) inspired by insects' visual systems presented here performs local 1-D angular speed measurements ranging from 1.5°/s to 25°/s and weighs only 2.8 g. The entire optic flow processing system, including the spatial and temporal filtering stages, has been updated with respect to the original design. This new lightweight sensor was tested under free-flying outdoor conditions over various fields onboard a 80 kg unmanned helicopter called ReSSAC. The visual disturbances encountered included helicopter vibrations, uncontrolled illuminance, trees, roads, and houses. The optic flow measurements obtained were finely analyzed online and also offline, using the sensors of various kinds mounted onboard ReSSAC. The results show that the optic flow measured despite the complex disturbances encountered closely matched the approximate ground-truth optic flow.


Background It is unknown if the association between delirium and mortality is consistent for individuals across the whole range of health states. A bimodal relationship has been proposed, where delirium is particularly adverse for those with underlying frailty, but may have a smaller effect (perhaps even protective) if it is an early indicator of acute illness in fitter people. We investigated the impact of delirium on mortality in a cohort simultaneously evaluated for frailty. Methods We undertook an exploratory analysis of a cohort of consecutive acute medical admissions aged ≥70. Delirium on admission was ascertained by psychiatrists. A Frailty Index (FI) was derived according to a standard approach. Deaths were notified from linked national mortality statistics. Cox regression was used to estimate associations between delirium, frailty and their interactions on mortality. Results The sample consisted of 710 individuals. Both delirium and frailty were independently associated with increased mortality rates (delirium: HR 2.4, 95%CI 1.8-3.3, p<0.01; frailty (per SD): HR 3.5, 95%CI 1.2-9.9, p=0.02). Estimating the effect of delirium in tertiles of FI, mortality was greatest in the lowest tertile: tertile 1 HR 3.4 (95%CI 2.1-5.6); tertile 2 HR 2.7 (95%CI 1.5-4.6); tertile 3 HR 1.9 (95% CI 1.2-3.0). Conclusion While delirium and frailty contribute to mortality, the overall impact of delirium on admission appears to be greater at lower levels of frailty. In contrast to the hypothesis that there is a bimodal distribution for mortality, delirium appears to be particularly adverse when precipitated in fitter individuals.


Due to the advancement in the communication system, all the information are easily available. This includes the mobile application system which can act as tracking and educational tools for Muslim consumers to validate JAKIM halal logo. The study was conducted in Gadek, Alor Gajah Malacca to gauge the perceptions of consumers towards these mobile application systems. The data was collected using questionnaires and was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). A total of 150 respondents were selected by systematic sampling. The study demonstrates that the consumers do not put high trust towards the mobile application system. They also claimed that they did know and understand the current available systems. However, the consumers agree that these mobile applications can act as educational tools to inculcate awareness about halal products among Muslim. The inferential statistic also indicates that there is a significant relationship between the usage of mobile applications system and the purchasing of halal cosmetics (r = 0.279, p = 0.000). This study gives implication to JAKIM, HDC, KPDNKK and consumer associations to play a role in shaping the culture of buying halal products among consumers through mobile application system. Nevertheless, comprehensive awareness activities need to be done to ensure the success of this system.


Building upon existing scholarship on media representation of hackers and the social history of personal computing, this essay positions U.S. families making sense of microcomputers in the mid-1980s as central to the history of hacking. Archival material for this project consists of 74 issues of youth- and family-focused computing magazines of this era, within which discussions of hacking were frequent. This essay maps an array of discourses about young hackers constructed in relation to hopes and anxieties about networked technologies. Besides connecting microcomputers to particular family ideals, these magazines also put forth a family-friendly notion of youth hackers. While microcomputers entered the home with notions of hacking attached, I argue that family computing in turn shaped contemporary conceptions of hacking.


OBJECTIVES
The purpose of this study was to identify the journals most cited in public health and community nursing and to determine which databases provide the most thorough indexing access to these journals. This study is part of the Medical Library Association Nursing and Allied Health Resource Section's project to map the nursing literature.

METHODS
Two source journals of public health nursing, Public Health Nursing and Journal of Community Health Nursing, were subjected to citation analysis based on Bradford's Law of Scattering.

RESULTS
A group of 18 titles comprised 34% (1,387) of the 4,100 citations, another third were dispersed among 104 journal titles, with the remaining third scattered across 703 journal titles. The core 18 journals included both of the source journals, 3 major public health journals, and several general medical and nursing journals.

CONCLUSIONS
PubMed provided the best overall indexing coverage for the journals, followed by Social Science Citation Index and CINAHL. In terms of source journal coverage, several databases provided complete coverage for the journal Public Health Nursing, while only EMBASE provided complete coverage for the Journal of Community Health Nursing.


Fjordic systems in temperate and Arctic regions often feature extensive kelp forests at their shallow coastal margins as well as extensive terrestrial forests. Detrital export from these shallow-water and terrestrial ecosystems is an important source of carbon for deep-sea communities in the form of kelp and wood falls. Benthic landers with experimental substrates (wood blocks and kelp parcels) were deployed for 10 mo at a depth of 530 m in a deep Norwegian fjord to investigate and compare macro- and megabenthic community structure, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning on kelp and wood falls. Results revealed that while wood and kelp falls can support a similar number of species and abundance of fauna, they support significantly different faunal communities. Biomass and secondary production on both wood and kelp substrates were significantly greater than in the control samples. Secondary production estimates were similar or higher than those reported from soft-sediment ecosystems at shallower European marine sites. Biological trait analysis showed that macrofaunal assemblages were distinct between the kelp and wood, providing evidence for differences in ecosystem function between the substrates. This case study from a deep-sea fjord in Norway provides clear evidence that while wood and kelp organic falls can support similar abundances of fauna, the associated benthic biodiversity, community structure and ecosystem functioning can be dramatically different between these substrates. The work presented here aims to provide information that is useful in assessing the extent of anthropogenic impacts on deep fjord ecosystems with respect to informing future conservation and management strategies.


In a world marked by financial instability, limited growth, rising inequality, deteriorating environment, growing corporate consolidation, and political turmoil, calls are made to shift the dominant competition law paradigm towards new directions. These may bring competition law beyond its usual comfort zone of assessing business, or government, practices from the point of view of their effect on prices, output and, more broadly, on consumer welfare.

Competition law is seen as a tool to be used in various circumstances in order to 'correct' market as well as non-market (e.g. government) failures, that result from restrictions of competition, to the extent that these affect social welfare. These failures may relate to the protection of personal data and privacy, the protection of the environment, the promotion of social mobility, the harnessing of disruptive innovation, or the mitigation of technology risks. Some go even further and argue that competition law may well be employed in order to preserve a number of other 'values' of social justice, thought to be intrinsic in democratic capitalism and the liberal order, and to which competition law should be sensitive.

By putting forward the model of 'polycentric competition law' and by explaining how this compares with the mainstream 'monocentric' vision that has prevailed so far, the study aims to unveil and portray the rites of passage in this transition, and to explore the liminal condition of modern competition law.


Spherically complete ball spaces provide a simple framework for the encoding of completeness properties of various spaces and ordered structures. This allows to prove generic versions of theorems that work with these completeness properties, such as fixed point theorems and related results. For the purpose of applying the generic theorems, it is important to have methods for the construction of new spherically complete ball spaces from existing ones. Given various ball spaces on the same underlying set, we discuss the construction of new ball spaces through set theoretic operations on the balls. A definition of continuity for functions on ball spaces leads to the notion of quotient spaces. Further, we show the existence of products and coproducts and use this to derive a topological category associated with ball spaces.


Collaborative research has become more prevalent and important across disciplines because it stimulates innovation and interaction between scholars. Seeing as existing studies relatively disregarded the institutional conditions triggering collaborative research, this work aims to analyze the changing trend in collaborative work patterns among Korean social scientists. The focus of this research is the performance of social scientists who received research grants through the government's Social Science Korea (SSK) program. Using quantitative statistical methods, collaborative research patterns in a total of 2,354 papers published under the umbrella of the SSK program in peer-reviewed scholarly journals from 2013 to 2016 were examined to identify changing trends and triggering factors in collaborative research. A notable finding is that the share of collaborative research is overwhelmingly higher than that of individual research. In particular, levels of collaborative research surpassed 70%, increasing much quicker compared to other research done in the social sciences. Additionally, the most common composition of collaborative research was for two or three researchers to conduct joint research as coauthors, and this proportion has also increased steadily. Finally, a strong association between international journals and co-authorship patterns was found for the papers published by SSK program researchers from 2013 to 2016. The SSK program can be seen as the driving force behind collaboration between social scientists. Its emphasis on competition through a merit-based financial support system along with a rigorous evaluation process seems to have influenced researchers to cooperate with those who have similar research interests. Keywords—Co-authorship, collaboration, competition, cooperation, Social Science Korea, policy