It is very unsafe for Emergency Vehicle (EV) to wait near the traffic intersection for green signal. It needs to reach its destination as fast as possible. Even though emergency vehicles have higher priority on the road, but still at the traffic signal there is lag to give enough priority to pass through the signal. Sometimes they need to wait for the signal to favor them in a congested traffic or they may have to take part in dangerous movement which may result in collision. The better way to reduce the waiting time of such vehicles is by making the traffic signal green for providing easy pass through. So that the safety of other vehicles are also taken care. In this paper, whenever the emergency vehicle is approaching preemption messages are provided to the traffic signal unit. So these signals interrupt the normal operation of the traffic light and make it green for the emergency vehicle. It is a type of Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication. The proposed system uses GPS method to get the location data and employs ZigBee for communicating efficiently with the intersection module. There is no requirement of Line-of-Sight employed in infrared based preemption methods. Also eliminate the false trigger occurring in sound (siren) based method due to noise and fading. Using this approach, it is possible to serve multiple emergency vehicles reaching the traffic intersection according to their distance from the intersection and accurately taking the decision to turn the signal green for the particular vehicle. There is no involvement of driver of the EV in anyway, it is fully autonomous and it can be used as a part of ITS.


Outlines French law relating to advertising to children in France, and the comprehensive system for maintaining advertising standards. Deals with the specific regulatory areas of pornography, tobacco and cigarettes, alcohol, and other products like medicines and computer games; media regulations on television, internet and magazines; plus billboard advertising and other techniques direct marketing, competitions and promotions, and premium sales. Explains the role of the BVP as an effective body for industry self‐regulation, including BVP on easy identification of advertisements by children, social responsibility, dignity and decency, violence, safety, fair advertising, education of young consumers, interactive advertising, the internet, and eating habits.


Although cultural evolution clearly outpaces genetic evolution in the natural world due to its higher rates of reproduction, recombination and selection, it does so built on biological foundations. In the natural world, cultural change takes place in minutes, days, years or decades, whereas genetic change takes at least a decade and a half. In the natural and cultural worlds the media of evolutionary transmission behave differently: genes reproduce slowly; ideas reproduce quickly. In the artificial world of the computer, whether modeled on a cultural or genetic metaphor, the medium in which evolution unfolds is the same for both, and the generations through which they both unfold is regulated by same the system clock. Consequently, there is no a priori reason to assume that cultural processes will be quicker than genetic ones in an artificial world, simply because they are quicker in the natural world. Cultural algorithms may be faster, but if they are it is for more complex reasons, such as their richer combinatorial possibilities (ideas may come from anywhere, zygotes only come from couples having sex), their greater range of generational longevity (from fleeting notions to commandments carved in stone), and the varieties of their modes and units of selection. It seems likely that a science of culture may enrich evolutionary computation by offering a superset of evolutionary mechanisms to explore. Evolutionary computation will surely enrich a science of culture by offering a superset of modeling practices. Such a coevolutionary synthesis may be fruitful to explore.


SIR,-We were pleased to read the two articles concerning aerosol drug delivery to intubated neonates by O'Callaghan et al' and Grigg et al.2 In particular, methods to determine the dosage available from the various devices should prove useful for investigators developing new means for aerosol delivery to intubated patients. We have previously described a device similar to the Aerochamber and not unlike the 'collapsible spacer' of O'Callaghan et al. We characterised its performance using beclomethasone dipropionate.3 As noted in both of the new reports,' 2 most of the drug released from the metered dose inhaler (MDI) does not reach the lung. We found just over 50% of the drug was actually aerosolised into the spacer. With our device, the output from the tip of the endotracheal tube was 2-95±0-75% of the MDI dose, similar to that delivered by the collapsible spacer device of O'Callaghan et al. We also noted that this output would translate to a rather high dose/kg compared with adults. We would like to point out that if a spacer like the Aerochamber is shortened, however, then the dosage delivered from the endotracheal tube can be decreased. When the length of the spacer on our device was reduced from 16 cm to 7 5 cm, the output dropped from 1-17±0-29 p.g to 0-79±0-19 [tg. We are currently evaluating the effect of different spacer and endotracheal tube sizes on drug output. We too believe that drugs like beclomethasone, when delivered directly to the lungs, offer great promise. To that end we have begun a randomised, blinded trial of aerosolised beclomethasone versus systemic dexamethasone for the prevention of bronchopulmonary dysplasia.


The rapid advances in Marxian ecology in the last two decades have given rise to extensive debates within the left, reflecting competing conceptions of theory and practice in an age of planetary ecological and social crisis. One key area of dispute is the attempt by a growing number of radical environmental thinkers to deconstruct the labor theory of value in order to bring everything in existence within a single commodity logic. For many in Green circles, Karl Marx and a long tradition of Marxian theorists are to be faulted for not directly incorporating the expenditure of physical work/energy by extra-human nature into the theory of value. In response, this article argues that any form of analysis that seeks to eliminate the deep-seated dialectical contradictions between the natural form and the value form, as well as between the capitalist economy and the larger socioecological metabolism, fails to comprehend the complex, interdependent dialectics of nature and humanity.


The greatest anti-quality associated with eastern temperature pasture grasses is the result of ergot alkaloids found in endophyte-infected (Neotyphodium ceonophialum) tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) The relationship between the grass and the endophyte is mutualistic with greater persistence and herbage mass as a result of the endophyte. Ergot alkaloids reduce growth rate, lactation, and reproduction in livestock. Significant effects are the result of elevated body temperature and reduced peripheral blood flow such that necrosis may result. Perturbations also occur in a variety of body systems. Planting new pastures with seed containing a "non-toxic" endophyte appears to be a potential solution. Ergotism results from the ingestion of the scelerotia of Claviceps purpurea containing ergot alkaloids found on seed heads. Ergotism resembles the effects of endophyte-infected tall fescue. Endophyte-infected perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) contains ergot and lotirem alkaloids that result in reduced growth and tremors. Reed canarygrass (Phalaris Anundinacba L.) contains tryptamine, hordenine and gramine alkaloids that reduce growth. Annual ryegrass (Lolium multiplorum L. may contain galls with cornetoxins which result in neurological signs. DOI:10.2458/azu_jrm_v54i4_thompson


The event is a cult and an obligatory gathering for real fans of the Volkswagen brand - for the 34th time, the legendary GTI Meeting took place by Lake Worthersee in Austria on the weekend of 13 to 16 May. From all over Europe, proud owners of lovingly cared-for, upgraded or restored cars flocked to Carinthia in Austria to exhibit their magnificent vehicles and celebrate their brand. Some time ago, this high mass for VW fans burst the boundaries of the GTI cosmos, also attracting drivers of other high-powered brands and models created by the Wolfsburg-based group. At the 34th edition of the GTI Meeting, there was a very special premiere. The official part of the event program included two "100 Years" MAN TGX D38 trucks, whose dimensions were naturally strikingly different from the norm. In fact, their 560 hp and 2700 Nm torque called for 15.2 liters displacement and 6 cylinders. One of the trucks with the characteristic flaming lion on its cab was presented directly on the other side of the water on the VW stand. With a second truck, likewise a standard "100 Years" model, the MAN crew catered for smoking tires on the so-called "Rubber Square", an area near the main road where the fans traditionally leave piles of rubber lying on the tarmac.


This research paper explores the use of creative arts therapies with children and families in a pediatric hospital setting as experienced by the therapists who provide these services. The research investigates art therapy, music therapy and dance/movement therapy at Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), with an in depth consideration of the role of art therapy services in this setting. The researchers reviewed general literature regarding hospitalization, specifically its effects on children and families, availability and role of psychosocial services and the intensive care units (ICU). Literature discussing creative arts therapies (art therapy, music therapy and dance/movement therapy) was also reviewed, with a focus on art therapy and its role in medical settings with children/families, with pediatric cancer patients and in psychosocial services. Based on information gleaned from the literature review, the researchers crafted an online survey utilized to gather information regarding the experience of providing creative arts therapies in a pediatric hospital setting. The researchers conducted in-depth interviews with three selected survey respondents to further explore these experiences through interview questions and art making. The qualitative data from survey/interview responses, including the art, was reviewed and analyzed by the researchers. Analysis of the data resulted in five prominent themes from the online survey data: being present, family, support, change and identity. Four prominent themes emerged from the interview data: empowerment, culture, being present and identity. The researchers then examined these themes in the context of the general and art therapy literature. The meanings derived from these findings demonstrate the importance of continued and expanded use of creative arts therapies in pediatric hospitals. Running head: CREATIVE ARTS THERAPIES IN PEDIATRIC HOSPITALS 1


At the main crop production region of Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, potato is cultivated in two different growing seasons: autumn and spring. The objectives of this research paper were: i) identify potato clones with high yield potential and industrial quality for Autumn and Spring growing seasons in the northern/northeastern region of the state; ii) estimate the effects of environment and of the genotype x environment interaction on the expression of agronomic and processing quality traits of potato clones in order to determine the appropriate strategy for breeding potato for the target region. One hundred and seventy clones of nine families were developed and compared to the cultivars Atlantic, Baronesa, Catucha, Ciclamen, Hertha, Lady Roseta, Macaca, Monalisa and Vivaldi and to the clone SMIJ 461-1, in the autumn and spring of 2006, in Passo Fundo, northern Rio Grande do Sul state. The evaluated traits included number of tubers per plant, tuber weight, plant yield, presence of deep eyes, dry matter content and chip color. Genotype x environment interaction (G x E) was significant for the expression of all traits but processing quality traits like chip color were most influenced by the growing season conditions. Genetic potential expression for yield traits was maximized in the spring season. Superior clones combining agronomic and quality traits were identified at the two growing seasons. High correlation between the two growing seasons was observed for the presence of deep eyes and dry matter, indicating they can be selected at either season.


Privacy at home is important for normal functioning of daily activity. However, in the context of housing in Malaysia, there are many opinions which suggest that existing terrace housing is incongruent with the privacy needs of its inhabitants. Inconsistency between the house as a site for privacy, and the occupants results in behavioural adaptation and redefining of privacy needs, which over time, changed the concept of privacy. Due to its importance, privacy is expected to be one of the main reasons for housing modification which has become a Malaysian culture. This research is focused on examining the concept of privacy in the context of housing among Malay families living in terrace housing, and the relationship between privacy and terrace housing design and modification. The research employed a combination of survey
interview and case study which uses in-depth interview, analytical review of housing layout drawings and site observation. The research involved 374 respondents for the survey interview and 11 respondents for the case study from three housing schemes in Gombak and Kajang. SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science Software) was used to analyse data from survey interview. Data from case study were interpreted and transcribed to provide consistent results which complement each of the analyses. The research found that the concept of privacy in the context of terrace housing among Malay families has changed. Privacy of the family is given importance as compared to community ties and individual privacy. The changes are partly attributed to terrace house and housing environment which do not support the privacy needs of Malay family. It was found that at the private level, privacy is most affected by some aspects of terrace housing design particularly the lack of a clear division between the public and private spaces. At the public level, privacy is affected by the overall arrangement of housing units and the external factors of housing environment. Privacy is found to influence housing modification base on the specifics of design attributes modified. However, financial resources of the family, availability of space, individual family's privacy perceptions and expectations and housing environment influenced the level of privacy achieved after housing modification.


Long term, secondary implant fixation of Total Disc Replacements (TDR) can be enhanced by hydroxyapatite or similar osseo-conductive coatings. These coatings are routinely applied to metal substrates. The objective of this in vivo study was to investigate the early stability and subsequent bone response adjacent to an all polymer TDR implant over a period of six months in an animal model. Six skeletally mature male baboons (Papio annubis) were followed for a period of 6 months. Using a transperitoneal exposure, a custom-sized Cadisc L device was implanted into the disc space one level above the lumbo-sacral junction in all subjects. Radiographs of the lumbar spine were acquired prior to surgery, and post-operatively at intervals up to 6 months to assess implant stability. Flourochrome markers (which contain molecules that bind to mineralization fronts) were injected at specified intervals in order to investigate bone remodeling with time. Animals were humanely euthanized six months after index surgery. Test and control specimens were retrieved, fixed and subjected to histological processing to assess the bone-implant-bone interface. Fluorescence microscopy and confocal scanning laser microscopy were utilized with BioQuant image analysis to determine the bone mineral apposition rates and gross morphology. Radiographic evaluation revealed no loss of disc height at the operative level or adjacent levels. No evidence of subsidence or significant migration of the implant up to 6 months. Heterotopic ossification was observed to varying degrees at the operated level. Histology revealed the implant primary fixation features embedded within the adjacent vertebral endplates. Flourochrome distribution revealed active bone remodeling occurring adjacent to the polymeric end-plate with no evidence of adverse biological responses. Mineral apposition rates of between 0.7 and 1.7 microns / day are in keeping with literature values for hydroxyapatite coated implants in cancellous sites of various species. Radiographic assessment demonstrates that the Cadisc L implant remains stable in vivo with no evidence of subsidence or significant migration. Histological analysis suggests the primary fixation features are engaged, and in close apposition with the adjacent vertebral bone. Flourochrome markers provide evidence of a positive bone remodelling response in the presence of the implant.


Inception of the boiling, in pool or flow boiling, is the formation of the vapour bubble at active nucleation site. The bubble dynamics plays an important role in the boiling process. It is critical as it unfolds many facets especially when channel size is reduced to submicron. The detailed knowledge of the bubble dynamics is helpful in establishing the thermal and hydraulic flow behaviour in microchannel. In this paper, the bubble dynamics which include bubble nucleation at nucleation site, its growth, departure and motion along the flow in a microchannel are discussed in details. Different models are developed for the critical cavity radius are compiled and observed that they show large variation when compare. The bubble growth models are compiled and concluded that a development of more generalized bubble growth model is necessary to account for the inertia controlled and thermal diffusion controlled regions. The bubble at the nucleation site in a microchannel grows under the influence of various forces such as surface tension, inertia, shear, gravitational and evaporation momentum. Parametric variations of these forces are critically studied and reckoned that the slope of these forces seems to be reduced beyond 500 μm. Eventually, possible impact of the various factors such as operating conditions, geometrical parameters, and thermophysical properties of fluid on bubble dynamics in microchannel has been reported.


A comprehensive, authoritative reference source which brings together centuries of scholarship and the latest research on every aspect of Egyptian life. Featuring 600 original articles written by leading scholars The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt goes far beyond the records of archaeology to make available what we know about the full social, political, religious, cultural and artistic legacy of this 5,000 year civilization. Of special interest is the Encyclopedia's coverage of themes and issues that are particularly controversial - such as new theories of the origins of complex society in the Nile Valley, new findings from the Nile Delta, new discoveries about Greco-Roman Egypt, and new developments in literature, religion, linguistics and other fields, including the debates about Egypt's African legacy. Because of its scope, depth, authority, and its design for the widest possible access, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt serves a remarkable variety of readers - students, teachers, and scholars in fields ranging from Near East archeology and classics to ancient art, architecture, history, language and religion, as well as general readers fascinated by a world that remains-even today-incompletely mapped. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt is available in print and as an e-reference text from Oxford's Digital Reference Shelf.


Science appears, to the eyes of contemporary man, as the most reliable guide to the human enterprise. However, we possess little awareness as to what the proper meaning of scientific specialization is, and this knowledge is indispensable if we are not to proceed mindlessly in our relations to being. One of the most profound, coherent, and penetrating insights into this matter is constituted by the work of contemporary Italian philosopher Emanuele Severino, whose discourse demonstrates how scientific specialization is the most coherent consequence of humanity's most ancestral relationship to being, how every human decision enacts the essence of scientific specialization, and thus why all denunciations of scientific specialization have fallen, and must continue to fall, unheeded, by necessity. Thus, by focusing on one of Severino's major theoretical works ( Oltre il linguaggio , 1992), but also with an eye to several other key texts, this essay aims to introduce international readers to Severino's discourse, and in order to do so translates passages of his work that have never appeared in English.


N ADVISORY GROUP on development of primary A health care programs for the southern Sudan (Lolik et al. 1976) recommended that "understanding between traditional healers and [official] health personnel [should be achieved] through regular discussions" and suggested that traditional healers might be enlisted as grassroots cooperators in community health programs. This suggestion is consistent with the growing interest of the World Health Organization, as well as of Third World governments in Africa and elsewhere, in increased communications and cooperation between traditional healers and practitioners of "Western" medicine. To these ends, a WHO Regional Expert Committee on Traditional Medicine in Africa was convened in 1976 (WHO 1976), alternative approaches to African traditional medicine have been advocated by individual scholars (Dunlop 1975; Nchinda 1976) and at least one training program for traditional healers has been organized in Ghana preliminary to their incorporation within primary health care ef-


CONTEXT
Decreasing the time from stroke onset to hospital arrival and improving control of stroke risk factors depend on public knowledge of stroke warning signs and risk factors.

OBJECTIVE
To assess current public knowledge of stroke warning signs and risk factors.

DESIGN
A population-based telephone interview survey using random digit dialing conducted in 1995.

SETTING
The Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, metropolitan area, the population of which is similar to that of the United States overall in age, sex, percentage of blacks, and economic status.

PARTICIPANTS
Respondents with age, race, and sex that matched the population of patients with acute stroke.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Knowledge of risk factors for stroke and warning signs of stroke as defined by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

RESULTS
Telephone calls were made to 17634 households, which yielded 2642 demographically eligible individuals. Interviews were completed by 1880 respondents (response rate, 71.2%). A total of 1066 respondents (57%) correctly listed at least 1 of the 5 established stroke warning signs, and of all respondents, 1274 (68%) correctly listed at least 1 of the established stroke risk factors. Of the respondents, 469 (57%) of 818 respondents with a history of hypertension listed hypertension, 142 (35%) of 402 respondents who were current smokers listed smoking, and 32 (13%) of 255 respondents with diabetes listed diabetes as a risk factor for stroke. Compared with those younger than 75 years, respondents 75 years or older were less likely to correctly list at least 1 stroke warning sign (60% vs 47%, respectively; P<.001) and were less likely to list at least 1 stroke risk factor (72% vs 56%, respectively; P<.001).

CONCLUSION
Considerable education is needed to increase the public's awareness of the warning signs and risk factors for stroke. Respondents with self-reported risk factors for stroke are largely unaware of their increased risk. The population at greatest risk for stroke, the very elderly, are the least knowledgeable about stroke warning signs and risk factors.


The spatiotemporal control of neuronal excitability is fundamental to the inhibitory process. We now have a wealth of information about the active dendritic properties of cortical neurons including axonally generated sodium action potentials as well as local sodium spikelets generated in the dendrites, calcium plateau spikes, and NMDA spikes. All of these events have been shown to be highly modified by the spatiotemporal pattern of nearby inhibitory input which can drastically change the output firing mode of the neuron. This means that particular populations of interneurons embedded in the neocortical microcircuitry can more precisely control pyramidal cell output than has previously been thought. Furthermore, the output of any given neuron tends to feed back onto inhibitory circuits making the resultant network activity further dependent on inhibition. Network activity is therefore ultimately governed by the subcellular microcircuitry of the cortex and it is impossible to ignore the subcompartmentalization of inhibitory influence at the neuronal level in order to understand its effects at the network level. In this article, we summarize the inhibitory circuits that have been shown so far to act on specific dendritic compartments in vivo.


This article seeks to contribute to greater understanding of the challenges faced by pension funds in developing countries. This paper reviews the investment decisions and strategies of two government owned pension funds in a highly politicized environment. The Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) and the Social Security System (SSS) are both government owned pension funds located in the Philippines. Interviews were conducted in 2007 with representatives from both pension funds, and other public and private sector interviewees as part of a broader research into the turbulent corporate governance landscape of the country. A review of politicisation and presidential appointments provide the context in which the two pension funds operate in the country. Being government institutions, these two funds have experienced the delicate balancing act of pursuing organizational objectives concurrently with political wishes – more often than not, at the expense of the former to appease the latter. One of the ongoing debates in Western corporate governance is the exercise of influence and activism by institutional investors. In this context, the institutional investor influence of GSIS and SSS are examined. The actions of the pension funds in an episode involving former Philippine President Joseph Estrada and a bank merger provide an insight into how institutional investor activism is exercised and conducted in a non-Anglo American corporate governance environment, and a developing economy with a weak bureaucratic state.


The viewing of Islamic based films or films that contain Islamic message is seen as a contribution towards positive actions. Therefore, this study aims to determine the relationship between the viewing of Islamic based films and the development of pro-social personality among teenaged audience. The social cognitive theory was used as the theoretical framework via the three constructs (observational learning, symbolic modeling through characters and self-efficacy) as the mediating variables. The research design employed was a cross-sectional survey where data were collected through the distribution of questionnaire by using the stratified random sampling as the sampling technique. 1028 students from 5 public universities in the Klang Valley were taken as the sample from the 3324 total of the population. The questionnaire was generated from Prosocial Personality Battery (PSB) (Penner et al., 1995; Penner, 2002) and General Self-Efficacy Scale (SGSE) (Sherer et al., 1982). The quantitative data were analyzed by using the SPSS 18 through the univariate and multivariate statistical inferential analysis.


The design and performance of a wide bandwidth linear polarization modulator based on the Faraday effect is described. Faraday Rotation Modulators (FRMs) are solid-state polarization switches that are capable of modulation up to 10 kHz. Six FRMs were utilized during the 2006 observing season in the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP) experiment; three FRMs were used at each of BICEP's 100 and 150 GHz frequency bands. The technology was verified through high signal-to-noise detection of Galactic polarization using two of the six FRMs during four observing runs in 2006. The features exhibit strong agreement with BICEP's measurements of the Galaxy using non-FRM pixels and with the Galactic polarization models. This marks the first detection of high signal-to-noise mm-wave celestial polarization using fast, active optical modulation. The performance of the FRMs during periods when they were not modulated was also analyzed and compared to results from BICEP's 43 pixels without FRMs.


EACH number of Notes and Records contains a short bibliography of books and articles dealing with the history of the Royal Society or its Fellows which have been noted since the publication of the last number. If Fellows would be good enough to draw the Editor's attention to omissions these would be added to the list in the next issue.


In our study we explore and analyze 6 627 insider trades made on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm between 2010 and 2014. We ask if publicly available information on insider trading can give insight into where stock prices will head in the future and if outside investors can earn abnormal returns by creating portfolios based on such information. We conduct our research using the event-study methodology as described by MacKinlay (1997) and show that insiders are better informed about the overall future performance of their company, indicating a violation of the semi-strong form market efficiency hypothesis. We show that different firm characteristics such as market capitalization, financial leverage and industry, together with individual characteristics such as insider type and traded volume, can emphasize differences in abnormal returns following insider trades. Based on our findings we create three rule-based insider portfolios. We show that we are able to gain risk-adjusted returns above the market, but when controlling for transaction costs the risk-adjusted return vanish. Our study has implications for market efficiency and offers important insights for those who seek to earn higher returns by following strategies based on the publication of insider trades.


It is becoming increasingly challenging for the contemporary Internet to satisfy the explosion in networking services and applications with their widely diverse and dynamic QoS requirements and resource demands. For smarter networking management and operations, we hypothesize that next generation networks should be endowed with "memory"-like (i.e., functionally similar to human memory) capabilities and should explicitly manage their resources and services. In this paper, we introduce SmartNet, a new memory-enabled autonomic network architecture that is scalable, resilient and adaptable at runtime. SmartNet's memory, we term NetMem, manages data related to multiple networking concerns, namely application, communication, and resource concerns. SmartNet's NetMem maintains "knowledge" - the fourth networking concern in our networking model - in a distributed knowledge plane that can be rapidly accessed in a simple and systematic way by SmartCells (SmartNet's basic building block) and the services they implement. Each SmartCell has intrinsic monitoring, control and analysis capabilities and can acquire resources on demand. For scalability and to facilitate inter-communications and services' support between SmartCells, regions, termed CellDomains, may be dynamically formed. CellDomains would incorporate favored services or resources. Our simulation results demonstrate an improvement in networking operations with our memory-enabled network management.


Recent policies aiming to prolong worklives have increased older males' labor supply. Yet, little is known about their intergenerational effects. Using unique Dutch administrative data covering three consecutive generations, this paper studies the impact of increased grandfathers' labor supply following a reform in unemployment insurance for persons aged 57.5+ on grandchildren's educational performance. We find that increased grandfathers' labor supply increases grandchildren's test scores in 6 grade. The effect is driven by substitution of grandparents' informal care by formal childcare.


Equine chorionic gonadotropin is secreted by the mare placenta and possesses both LH and FSH bioactivities in nonequine species. In ruminants, eCG is used commercially to induce superovulation. The production of commercial eCG is hampered by the variation in FSH and LH bioactivity of eCG between mares, and potentially results in batch-to-batch variation in eCG bioactivity. The objective of this study was to establish a cell-line-based bioassay of FSH activity in serum for use at eCG production facilities. Several cell lines were used for this study: HEK293 (kidney cells), KGN (a human granulosa cell line), and a new bovine granulosa cell line. The HEK293 and bovine granulosa cell lines did not express the FSH receptor (FSHR); therefore, the strategy was to cotransfect those cells with a FSHR expression plasmid and a cAMP reporter gene (β-galactosidase; β-Gal). The KGN cells transfected with β-Gal failed to respond to FSH and were not used further. The HEK293 and bovine cell lines responded to FSH in a dose-dependent manner, with a visible increase in β-Gal activity measured by colorimetric assay. The cells responded to eCG but not to LH, IGF1, or estradiol, demonstrating specificity for FSH activity. The minimum time of incubation required for clear bioactivity was 4 h. Activity was detected in serum from pregnant but not estrous mares. Attempts to create stable cell lines expressing both FSHR and β-Gal plasmids were not productive. We therefore attempted to create frozen batches of transiently transfected HEK293 cells. Several incubation conditions were tested and we succeeded in detecting β-Gal activity in response to eCG in thawed cells. The choice of serum during transfection had a major effect on the ability of the cells to respond to eCG after thawing, and the time interval between transfection and freezing significantly altered the magnitude of the response to eCG. The cells responded visibly to eCG treatment after 4-h incubation. In summary, we have developed a reasonably fast, colorimetric bioassay for FSH activity that can be used for serum in an on-farm setting. Supported by NSERC, AAFC, and Bioniche Animal Health.


Global Citizenship Education (GCE) has received increasing attention as a means of supporting children and young people in developing their knowledge and understanding of multiple global issues (Bourn, 2015; Fricke & Gathercole, 2015). Despite this increasing prominence, it is apparent that GCE remains a highly contested notion (Marshall, 2005; Hartung, 2017; Jooste & Heleta, 2017). The report draws on an analysis of nine Global Citizenship Education teacher education programmes across four EU countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Ireland and Italy. The methodology adopted is a multiple-site case study design (Yin, 2014), using ethnography as main method. The research employed a qualitative framework, seeking a description of practices and meaning making to behavioural patterns. Within each country, the research focused on an analysis of two typologies of settings: a) a training course for in-service primary school teachers organized by the project partner in the framework of the project, b) a training course organized by a different organization on themes related to Global Citizenship Education. The selection of the second setting was based on extreme case sampling. This setting was selected for being as different as possible from the initial one, in terms of approach, goals, teachers' trainers and organization (but on the same or related theme). The theoretical assumption behind this choice is that being organized by a different institution the ideas behind course implementation are more likely to be different.
Based on this the report argues that the teacher education programmes examined present an argument as to how teacher education programmes at the focus of this research present a transformational approach to GCE, where the concepts of critical thinking and self-reflection are perceived as the foundations towards action for a more just and sustainable world. This conception echoes aspects of Freirean pedagogy, itself an important GCE theoretical framework (Scheunpflug & Asbrand, 2006). However, less evident was the 'critical' approach to GCE, illustrated in the work of Andreotti (2006).


Several studies have suggested that those who have experienced childhood sexual abuse (CSA) are at greater risk for sexually-transmitted infections later in life than are their non-abused counterparts. For the most part, the populations investigated to date have consisted of women, men who have sex with men, and high-risk clinical or homeless populations. As such, little is known in this domain about men who have sex with women (MSW). Furthermore, even among the most frequently studied populations, research that has been devoted to identifying and examining potential mediators in the CSA - sexual risk relationship is scarce. To address these gaps, the current studies evaluated the presence and possible mediators of the CSA - sexual risk relationship among a community sample of MSW. Paper I reviews the research on CSA and sexual risk-taking that has been conducted to date among MSW and highlights the role that alcohol consumption may play as a mediator in such a relationship. Paper I goes on to present a longitudinal study that examined the effect of CSA on several later sexual risk indices and evaluates the extent to which alcohol-related variables factor into this relationship. Paper I also presents findings related to idiosyncratic CSA characteristics and how such characteristics may affect alcohol- and sexual risk-related outcomes. Paper II extends Paper I by introducing and reviewing additional, non-alcohol-related variables that may play a mediational role in the CSA - sexual risk relationship. Paper II then proceeds to present a longitudinal study that examined mood and anxiety symptoms and sex motives as mediators in the relationship between CSA and number of sexual partners. The results from these studies extend previous findings concerning the relationship between one's history of CSA and one's subsequent sexual risk-related behaviors. Furthermore, the current studies underscore the importance of ongoing research to further refine our understanding of sexual risk-taking in the wake of sexual abuse.


We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. 2011 A major question in the study of second language learning is the extent to which mispronunciations originate in the inability to correctly perceive vs. the inability to correctly produce foreign language structures. The goal of this thesis is to determine the extent to which second language (L2) learners' pronunciation errors reflect errors in perception or gestural mistiming, by investigating Korean L2 learners' production and perception of English stop-nasal sequences. Such sequences are prohibited in Korean, where a stop before a nasal obligatorily undergoes nasalization (/kukmul/[kuŋmul] 'soup'). In production experiments where Korean L2 learners pronounced English nonsense words containing those sequences, vowel insertion after the stop and devoicing of the stop were common errors even though nasalization is the native repair strategy. More importantly, two asymmetries in the choice of repair were that (1) vowel insertion occurred almost exclusively after voiced stops, especially after velar stops (tegnaltegVnal) and (2) devoicing occurred most frequently with labial stops (tebnaltepnal). These asymmetric repair choices are puzzling because neither of the languages in contact provides evidence for such repairs. Investigation of Korean speakers' perception of these sequences employing both behavioral tasks and EEG revealed that the greater frequency of vowel insertion after voiced stops was rooted in misperception: Korean listeners tended to hear an illusory vowel after voiced stops and had difficulty distinguishing voiced stop-nasal sequences from voiced stop-vowel-nasal sequences. This misperception is an effect of the native language system, in which voiced stops occur only preceding a vowel. In contrast, the frequent devoicing of labial consonants was not reflected in perception. I propose that instead, this pattern has its origin in the articulatory timing patterns of Korean, in which bilabial stops are much more closely overlapped with a following consonant than are velar stops, causing devoicing of [b]. Results of this project show that second language phonology involves a complex interplay between the native language grammar, misperception through the filter of L1, and mastery of new articulatory programs.


We propose a stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (SG-MCMC) algorithm for scalable inference in mixed-membership stochastic blockmodels (MMSB). Our algorithm is based on the stochastic gradient Riemannian Langevin sampler and achieves both faster speed and higher accuracy at every iteration than the current state-of-the-art algorithm based on stochastic variational inference. In addition we develop an approximation that can handle models that entertain a very large number of communities. The experimental results show that SG-MCMC strictly dominates competing algorithms in all cases.


The so–called 'triple–layered' enameloid of neoselachian sharks is made of two main units: a superficial one and an internal one including the parallel–bundled enameloid and the tangled–bundled enameloid. The Triassic Synechodontiformes possess a parallel–bundled enameloid in which radial bundles are not very well–developed, contrary to what have been observed in more recent Synechodontiformes and other neoselachian sharks. The well–developed enameloid ridges that ornament the crown of many Synechodontiform sharks are superficial structures and show exactly the same organisation as in the cutting edges of more recent neoselachian sharks. We propose that two different mechanisms lead to the formation of ridges at the surface of the crown in neoselachian shark teeth. Ridges may result from an early mineralisation process during tooth development, or may mineralise near the end of the tooth development. Finally, on the basis of both tooth morphology and enameloid microstructure, the species "Hybodus" minor is transferred into the genus Rhomphaiodon. Contents


Dictionaries are didactic books used as consultation instruments for self-teaching. They are composed by an ordered set of linguistic units which reflects a double structure, the macrostructure which correspond to the word list and the microstructure that refers to the contents of each lemma. The great value of dictionaries nests in the fact that they establish a standard nomenclature and prevent in that way the appearance of new useless synonyms. This dictionary contains a total of about 27,500 main English entries, and over of 130,000 translations that should normally sufficiently cover all fields of life sciences. The basic criteria used to accept a word a part of the dictionary during the development period in order of importance were usage, up-to-dateness, specificity, simplicity and conceptual relationships.The dictionary meets the standards of higher education and covers all main fields of life sciences by setting its primary focus on the vastly developing fields of cell biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, immunology, developmental biology, microbiology, genetics and also the fields of human anatomy, histology, pathology, physiology, zoology and botany. The fields of ecology, paleontology, systematics, evolution, biostatistics, plant physiology, plant anatomy, plant histology, biometry and lab techniques have been sufficiently covered but in a more general manner. The latest Latin international anatomical terminology "Terminologia Anatomica" or "TA" has been fully incorporated and all anatomical entries have been given their international Latin TA synonym. This dictionary will be a valuable and helpful tool for all scientists, teachers, students and generally all those that work within the fields of life sciences.


This study investigated levels of implementation and perceptions of adequacy of the voluntary Queensland Responsible Gambling Code of Practice with thirty managers and staff in selected casinos, hotels and licensed clubs in three regions in Queensland. This particular paper examines those factors that act as facilitators of, and impediments to, implementation of the Code and reflects on how organization size has influenced implementation of the Code. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, venues with small gaming installations had a lower implementation rate (56%) of the Code's practices than venues with large gaming installations (85%). Facilitators included: adequate staff training and education; industry association membership; understanding of the philosophy of the Code; appropriate support materials; legislative overlap; prior experience with responsible gambling; regular audits; and links to community support networks. In contrast, impediments included: high staff turnover; managerial apathy; remote location; and being a busy small business manager.


Argonne National Laboratory hosted the Nineteenth Annual Argonne Symposium for Undergraduates of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics on November 7 th , 2008. Undergraduate students from colleges of the Midwest were given an opportunity to present their research in a tenminute presentation. The day filled with numerous exciting events started with registration, breakfast, and numerous tours around the Argonne Laboratories. Following was a keynote address by Dr. Ross Stephen Johnson, Assistant Professor of the Department of Biological Science of Chicago State University. After his interesting speech titled, "Science, Cells, IPods, and You-Tube: Making the Transition from Student to Innovator," participants headed to the conference rooms of their interest. There was a total of seventeen secessions, some of which were analytical chemistry, astrophysics and geophysics, biochemistry, cell biology, material sciences, genetics, genomics, and structural biology. The secessions started around eleven in the morning and continued until five in the evening. Attendees included students, professors and scientists. After the ten-minute presentation a question and answer secession followed in which the audience had a chance to find more insights into the fascinating work of these young researchers. The presenters and listeners were strongly encouraged to visit numerous presentations to learn about the various research projects taking place in the scientific field. Eight Lake Forest College students were able to shine among approximately 200 undergraduates, representing four out of the six laboratories in the biology department. Each lab is specific to an area of study: behavioral ecology, developmental genetics, molecular biology, and neuroscience. At Lake Forest College, students are able to perform research at other institutions. For example, Daryn Cass presented her extensive research which she performed at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. Throughout the day, professors Shubhik DebBurman and Karen Kirk accompanied students, and acknowledgements are owed to them. The Argonne Symposium proved to be a challenging experience for Lake Forest College students, but the students rose to the challenges and achieved great success. The countless hours spent preparing for the presentations were well worth the feedback that Lake Forest students received. Numerous scientists came up to presenters to acknowledge their hard work and their dedication to their research. After a long successful day, everybody gathered for a dinner and to hear another outstanding keynote speaker Dr. Uwe Hansen, an Executive Director of Indiana State University. The speech was titled, "Musical Acoustics: Science & Performance," which discussed how physics can be explained using music. His speech was fascinating because in his career he was able to combine two fields that he loves, physics and music; his speech showed that a science major allows for a wide range of opportunities. The Argonne Undergraduate Symposium was a great success for Lake Forest College students. It allowed the students to use their presenting skills, which are greatly emphasized and taught by the college, in a professional setting. Also, it gave an opportunity for the students to share their summer research with the scientific community and receive feedback from professionals. Lake Forest students continued the tradition of great presentations and hard work at the Argonne Undergraduate Symposium.


This thesis examines the politics of forest management in colonial Burma. Chapter 1 establishes the theoretical and analytical concerns of the study. Chapter 2 describes the laissez-faire practices in early colonial Tenasserim which resulted in the depletion of that territory's teak forests. Chapter 3 examines how the Forest Department sought to regulate shifting cultivators, timber traders and peasants between 1856 and 1881. Chapter 4 points out that the growth of a professional forest service meant not only that the relationship between forest and civil officials had to be clarified, but also that state and societal forest rights needed differentiation. Chapters 5 and 6 trace the efforts of the Forest Department to rationalize forest use in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the era of expansion (1881-1902), which is the subject of Chapter 5, forest management was extended to new territories and activities, but was above all reflected in the growth of reserved forests. Chapter 6 relates that during the era of consolidation (1902-23) these reserves were the focus of departmental activity. But, if the concentration of teak extraction in the hands of the European firms eased forest management in one respect, broad societal and ecological changes intensified the conflict between the Forest Department and the peasantry. After the introduction of partial self-rule in 1923, that conflict became more pronounced as forest management was politicized. Chapter 7 assesses the implications of this change for forest politics up to the Japanese invasion (1942). Chapter 8 situates the politics of forest management in colonial Burma in a wider context. The Burmese experience is summarized and then compared with that of Dutch-ruled Java, British India and autonomous Siam in order to clarify the nature of Asian forest politics in colonial times.


'Reconstructing Atticus Finch' is a reexamination of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. The essay takes another look at Atticus's tactics in the defense of Tom Robinson, particularly from the perspective of the alleged victim, Mayella Ewell. The essay considers a previously unasked question: What if Mayella was telling the truth? Texts, especially literary texts, are always subject to reinterpretation. Notwithstanding the reaction of generations of readers, it turns out that To Kill a Mockingbird contains a submerged narrative in which Mayella's story of rape becomes credible. Once we contemplate the possibility that Mayella might have been raped, we can no longer unquestioningly accept Atticus Finch as a paragon of lawyerly virtue. It may be that he was simply another working lawyer, using the tools at hand in his best effort to exonerate a client. And since the crime was rape, Atticus used the time-worn strategy of attacking the victim's character. That tactic has been roundly condemned in other contexts; on the other hand, it may be the only available defense in a prosecution corrupted by racism. Viewing Mayella as a possible crime victim rather than as a conniving liar requires us to ask a series of uncomfortable questions. Do ethics depend on the guilt or innocence of one's client? Are some tactics simply impermissible? May stereotypes ever be exploited by trial counsel, even in defense of the innocent?


Over the past decade randomized field experiments have gained prominence in the toolkit of empirical economics and policy making. In an article titled "Field Experiments in Economics: The Past, the Present, and the Future," Levitt and List (2009) make three main claims about the history, philosophy, and future of field experiments in economics. (1) They claim that field experiments in economics began in the 1920s and 1930s in agricultural work by Neyman and Fisher. (2) They claim that artificial randomization is essential for good experimental design because, they claim, randomization is the only valid justification for Student's test of significance. (3) They claim that decision-making in private sector firms will be advanced by partnering with economists doing randomized experiments. Several areas of research have been influenced by the article despite the absence of historical and methodological review. This paper seeks to fill that gap in the literature. The power and efficiency of balanced over random designs — discovered by William S. Gosset aka Student, and confirmed by Pearson, Neyman, Jeffreys, and others adopting a balanced, decision-theoretic and/or Bayesian approach to experiments — is not mentioned in the Levitt and List article. Neglect of Student is regrettable. A body of evidence descending from Student (1911) and extending to Heckman and Vytlacil (2007) suggests that artificial randomization is neither necessary nor sufficient for improving efficiency, identifying causal relationships, and discovering economically significant differences. Three easy ways to improve field experiments are proposed and briefly illustrated.


In this experiment, we used a vacuum impregnation method to prepare shape stabilized PCM that contained sodium montmorillonite (Na-MMT) and Exfoliated graphite nanoplatelets (xGnP), to improve the thermal conductivity of PCMs, and prevent leakage of the liquid state of PCMs. Na-MMT has low cost and natural abundance, high adsorption and absorption capacities, and fire retardant heating rate. In the used materials, xGnP, usually produced from graphite intercalated compounds, are particles consisting of several layers of graphene sheets. As a result, we found that the FTIR adsorption spectra of paraffinic PCMs did not change, and there was no chemical interaction between paraffinic PCMs and xGnP/Na-MMT mixture. From the DSC analysis, xGnP made an impact on the thermal properties of the paraffinic PCMs/Na-MMT composites. The oxidation rate of paraffinic PCMs based composite with xGnP was greater than that of the composite without xGnP. FTIR, DSC, TGA and TCi were used to determine the characteristics of the paraffinic PCMs/Na-MMT composites.


Amplification of the ocean carbon sink during El Niño events partially offset terrestrial biosphere carbon losses to the atmosphere, but uncertainties in the magnitude, timing, and spatial extent of the ocean response confound our understanding of the global carbon budget and its sensitivity to climate. Here, we examine the mechanisms controlling the anomalous tropical Pacific Ocean CO2 drawdown during El Niño events harnessing multidecadal ocean pCO2 observations in conjunction with a state‐of‐the‐art ocean biogeochemical model. We show that poleward Ekman transport dramatically amplifies the near‐equatorial pCO2 anomaly identified in prior work and that this amplification varies considerably between El Niño events. During central Pacific events, the CO2 flux anomaly can vary up to fourfold between events (2002/2003 vs. 2015/2016), but it always recedes during the boreal winter to spring transition and the poleward transport of the anomaly mostly extends into the Northern Hemisphere. During eastern Pacific events characterized by an equatorially centered intertropical convergence zone (e.g., 1997/1998), the intense CO2 flux anomaly persists into boreal summer and can extend further into the Southern Hemisphere. The hemispheric asymmetry (northward vs. southward extension) and the termination (boreal winter/spring for central Pacific events vs. boreal summer for eastern Pacific events) of the ocean CO2 response are tied to the El Niño dynamics in the near‐equatorial region and also how it is amplified by poleward Ekman transport. Finally, we evaluate how differences in the ocean response influence atmospheric CO2 and discuss the potential of atmospheric CO2 satellite data to provide observational constraints.


Autism is a life-long invisible impairment with an unknown etiology. Current literature shows an increase in the diagnosis of autism worldwide. This qualitative study explores the attitudes and beliefs which surround childhood autism in Ghana. In-depth interviews were conducted with four (4) parents whose children have autism and three (3) key informants; a Religious Leader, a Health Worker and an Administrator of a Special school in Accra, Ghana. A semi-structured interview guide was used for the interviews and the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) used for the data analysis. Results show that parents whose children have autism attribute the cause of autism to biological, environmental and to unknown factors. Parents and their children with autism relied on institutions for children with autism, family members and other non-relatives for support. It was indicated that the characteristics of autism, the cultural expectations from parents and their children as well as conflicting beliefs with regards to the appropriate intervention for the child with autism were major challenges. Parents employed behavior training and religious interventions to manage their children's autism. Despite these approaches, parents are uncertain about the future of their children.


We present data on 13 post-nova systems. This includes the recovery via UBVR photometry of the five post-novae X Cir, V2104 Oph, V363 Sgr, V928 Sgr and V1274 Sgr and their spectroscopic confirmation. We provide accurate coordinates and finding charts for those objects. Additional first-time or improved spectroscopic data are presented for V356 Aql, V500 Aql, V604 Aql, V1370 Aql, MT Cen, V693 CrA, V697 Sco and MU Ser. Investigating the behaviour of a few easily accessible parameters yields (limited) information on the accretion state and the system inclination. We predict that X Cir and V697 Sco are likely to reveal their orbital period via time series photometry and that long-term photometric monitoring of V356 Aql, V500 Aql, V1370 Aql and X Cir has a good chance of discovering outburst-like behaviour in these systems.


Pholiderpeton scutigerum is an eogyrinid amphibian from the Coal Measures of Yorkshire (Westphalian A). The holotype has been prepared by airbrasive and dental-mallet techniques to reveal the most completely preserved of British embolomeres. The skull and braincase morphology of Pholiderpeton is closely similar to that of Eogyrinus but has provided new information about many of the skull roofing bones and palate, in particular the pterygoid-epipterygoid complex. The braincase has augmented information gained from other embolomere specimens and a new reconstruction has been attempted. A supraoccipital was not present but the otic capsule was roofed dorsally by the opisthotics, as in loxommatids. Study of jaw function in Pholiderpeton suggests that it did not conform to a pure 'kinetic inertial' system but that it was essentially unspecialized. The so-called 'kinetic line' at the junction of the eogyrinid skull table and cheek was not mobile but was probably a butt joint to resist vertical compression generated during jaw closure. Present on the specimen, and previously undescribed in eogyrinids, were elements of the cervical region, including the atlas neural arch and pleurocentrum, the axis neural arch and rib as well as the pectoral girdle and forelimb, allowing reconstruction of these regions to be made. The eogyrinids resemble Archeria in the structure of pectoral limb and girdle. Forelimb function in Pholiderpeton was more flexible than that proposed for the related Proterogyrinus . The evidence suggests that the eogyrinids, like the archeriids, were long-bodied with a presacral count of 40. The cervical region of embolomeres shows some similarities with that of Proterogyrinus but with a more fully ossified atlas pleurocentrum. The atlas vertebra is also compared with that of Archeria , previously undescribed. A study of the skull table in the genus Archeria is included to assist in taxonomic studies of eogyrinids. A number of consistent characters were found to exist in this region within one species of embolomere. The genus Pholiderpeton Huxley (1869) is shown to be synonymous with Eogyrinus Watson (1926) and therefore takes nomenclatural priority, but it may be distinguished from the related Palaeoherpeton on a number of characters. The isolated skull table pertaining to Pteroplax is not that of an eogyrinid, and is removed from the family. It shows resemblances to Archeria and Proterogyrinus . The North American eogyrinids are retained within the family Eogyrinidae. The family Eogyrinidae is most closely related to the monogeneric family Anthracosauridae, and together these two form the sister-group of the Archeriidae. The Proterogyrinidae is the sister-group of all three, and together these families form the group Embolomeri. A cladogram to express these relationships is presented.


Food possesses a great importance in the lives of human beings as it provides energy and strength to the human body to think, grow and develop. The global population is increasing day by day, becoming even more difficult to manage food for every human being on earth. It is the responsibility of every state to provide food for its citizens. "Zero Hunger" is one of the major goals of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs') which aims to eradicate hunger from world. Several causes of food insecurity are identified by researchers and policy makers. This paper explains the importance of financial intermediation in food security as food is a basic human right and one of the foremost major issues of the nations which needs addressed. Pakistan is considered one of those countries which are food insecure, while most of its population is poor and have large family sizes. There are many causes of food shortage and malnutrition like poverty, unemployment, inequalities in income, among others but the most pronounced is the weak agriculture sector and limited financial capacity of majority of its people. Nobel Prize winner "Amartya Sen" discussed the issue of food insecurity with respect to poverty (i.e. low purchasing power), however, this paper addresses the issue of food insecurity from the supply side. The aim of the study is to analyze the impact of credit on food production. Financial intermediation can increase food supply by encouraging the use of quality inputs which aids food security. Primary data is collected through a survey, and the Cobb Douglas Production Function is used for econometric analysis. Results indicate that the credit plays a significant and positive role in the increase of food production. Production of the borrowers increased after utilizing the credit due to the use of quality farming inputs. Increased production leads to low prices which increases the purchasing power of the people and ensures food security by providing ample quantity of food for everyone and everywhere. It also reveals that credit is not only helpful in achieving the "zero hunger challenge but also for reducing poverty by increasing the income of the borrowers. The paper concludes with policy suggestions to strengthen the agriculture sector, financial institutions and credit policies thus ensuring food security.


Synthetic jets, often abbreviated as 'SJs' or 'Synjets' are a type of Zero Net Mass Flux (ZNMF) jets which have gained popularity due to their ability to transfer momentum without transferring mass. This property distinguishes SJs from their counterpart traditional continuous jets. Over a stretch of time, SJs have been employed extensively in applications such as active flow control, impingement heat transfer, miniature electronics cooling, etc. However, researchers are now slowly extending the frontiers of SJ research and making efforts to utilize excellent properties of SJs in novel applications such as AUVs, marine systems, bio-inspired propulsion systems, etc. This paper strives to identify the gaps in the current research and the areas which have remained unexplored yet. The article begins with a discussion of the origin of SJs i.e. 'acoustic streaming'. The resulting segments talk about the formation criteria and the recent works employing various configurations of orifices and cavities. The paper discusses critical concepts such as JIF, volumetric efficiency, and propulsive efficiency of synthetic jets. It is followed by the introduction of novel flow control systems employing SJs such as gurney flaps, bumps, and electroactive synthetic jets. Finally, the most innovative applications of SJs such as AUVs, UAVs, jetting cavities. Pulsatile jet flows found in jellyfish, cephalopod, squid and salp have been discussed in great detail. The exhaustive discussion on future prospects strives not only to provide reader with comprehensive insights into SJs, but also to motivate future researchers to overcome the gaps identified in this paper.


The increasing visibility of armed women in violent conflicts in the modern world has unsettled conventional beliefs of inferiority, weakness, innocence, and the resultant fragility and victimhood of women. Although in theory it is possible to conceptualize armed woman and violence as empowerment, in practice, the temporal realities that inevitably haunt any discussion of 'terrorism' and 'terrorists' in conflict ridden polarized societies severely curtail the terminology available to frame militancy in general and the 'terror' it generates as 'liberatory'. However, fictional and non-fictional literary work that were published in the aftermath of Sri Lanka's war (1983-2009) between the state forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) seem to push the boundaries of the discourse on women, violence, and terror. This paper analyzes the representation of armed women in The Seasons of Trouble (Mohan, 2014), Island of a Thousand Mirrors (Munaweera, 2014), Tamil Tigress (De Soyza, 2013), and Under the Shadow of a Sharp Edged Sword (trans.) (Jeyakumaran, 2016) with the assumption that the genres of auto/biography and fiction offer an alternative archive within which seemingly polarized 'truths' entrenched in nationalist conflicts can be explored in their nuanced complexity. This paper assesses how literary portrayals of female militancy vis-à-vis violence, empowerment, and victimhood challenge conventional history and narratives and, in doing so, contribute to expand the boundaries of our understanding of female militancy in times of violent conflict. In conclusion, this paper suggests that the location of violence and female militancy within an ambivalent space of agency in narrative literature may also entail an unsettling of conventional figurations of war in gendered terms.


BACKGROUND
There are a limited number of studies that have examined gender differences in the neurocognitive test performances of alcohol-dependent individuals. Those that have been conducted reported that compared with men, women's visuospatial skills, psychomotor speed, and working memory are more profoundly affected by chronic alcohol abuse despite a shorter duration of drinking and a lesser quantity of alcohol consumed.

METHODS
The performances of Russian male and female alcoholic and nonalcoholic control subjects were compared on a series of neurocognitive tasks that assess motor speed, visuoperceptual processing, visuospatial processing, decision making, and cognitive flexibility.

RESULTS
Group and gender differences emerged on specific components of each task administered. Female compared with male alcoholic subjects exhibited poorer performances on tests of visual working memory, spatial planning and problem solving, and cognitive flexibility.

CONCLUSION
The data support and extend prior research demonstrating a more deleterious impact of alcohol dependence on female alcoholic subjects' cognitive functioning compared with male alcoholic subjects. Several theories are offered to account for gender differences in neurocognitive performance.


Natural hazards have a great number of influencing factors. Machine-learning approaches have been employed to understand the individual and joint relations of these factors. However, it is a challenging process for a machine learning algorithm to learn the relations of a large parameter space. In this circumstance, the success of the model is highly dependent on the applied parameter reduction procedure. As a state-of-the-art neural network model, representative learning assumes full responsibility of learning from feature extraction to prediction. In this study, a representative learning technique, recurrent neural network (RNN), was applied to a natural hazard problem. To that end, it aimed to assess the landslide problem by two objectives: Landslide susceptibility and inventory. Regarding the first objective, an empirical study was performed to explore the most convenient parameter set. In landslide inventory studies, the capability of the implemented RNN on predicting the subsequent landslides based on the events before a certain time was investigated respecting the resulting parameter set of the first objective. To evaluate the behavior of implemented neural models, receiver operating characteristic analysis was performed. Precision, recall, f-measure, and accuracy values were additionally measured by changing the classification threshold. Here, it was proposed that recall metric be utilized for an evaluation of landslide mapping. Results showed that the implemented RNN achieves a high estimation capability for landslide susceptibility. By increasing the network complexity, the model started to predict the exact label of the corresponding landslide initiation point instead of estimating the susceptibility level.


The paper addresses two issues: how poor regulation has contributed to the crisis, and how current regulatory responses to the crisis are (not) differing from the poor regulation that originated it. In the first part, the paper offers an overview of the most relevant examples of poor regulation that have arguably played a role in determining the crisis, with a focus on the US and the EU: from the institutional design of central banks (that influences the type of monetary policy they implement), to the rules at the basis of fractional reserve banking (a source of great systemic instability, according to the perspective adopted in the paper); from the prescriptions in the Basel Accords I and II (that strongly encouraged banks to invest in the "wrong" assets), to the several policies adopted by the US authorities to encourage the purchase of a house by American households (resulted in a bubble whose burst triggered the global financial turmoil); from the regulatory requirements entrenching the oligopoly of credit rating agencies (more competition might have meant improved overall rating abilities), to the deposit insurance schemes (a source of great moral hazard and financial irresponsibility of consumers); from some shortcomings that can be identified in the way the institutions of the EU and of the Eurozone were designed (a major source of the current turmoil in this area), to the policies making the size of government grow, resulting in an increase of spending, taxation, deficit and public debt (something highly unhealthy for the economy from the perspective adopted in the paper), to some features of "regulation" narrowly meant (at best, an obstacle to the proper functioning of the markets). The concluding paragraph explains how all these failures might have led to the crisis, and reflects on what lessons can be derived from the inquiry made, what would be appropriate responses from legislators and regulators, and what mistakes it should be wise to avoid repeating: in particular, it is argued that definitely not more, but less regulation (and government intervention in general) is needed. In the second part, the lessons summarized in the former one are contrasted with the actual legislative and regulatory responses adopted by the US and the EU: from the changes in central banking (that not only have fallen short of reducing the power of central banks to manipulate money, but have instead entrusted these institutions with even more power), to (non-existent) changes in fractional reserve banking (that unfortunately has not been subject to any rethinking in the mainstream thought); from the rules of Basel III (that do not seem to be truly capturing what went wrong with its two predecessors), to the still ongoing distortions of the real estate sector (GSEs were eventually bailed out and not surprisingly subprime mortgages seem to have resumed); from the legislative proposals in the field of credit rating agencies (that go as far as proposing the establishment of a public European-wide credit rating agency), to the EU agreement to set up a common deposit-insurance scheme (that will probably encourage consumers' recklessness to an even greater extent than national schemes); from the many attempts to fine-tune the European architecture (that do not seem bound to remedy the identified pre-crisis shortcomings), to the many decisions further increasing spending, taxation, deficit and public debt (thus putting recovery at stake), to the new flood of "regulation" (narrowly meant) that has struck the markets (all but helping them to restore their ordinary functioning). The final paragraph offers some reflections on what is the role that law and regulation should instead play in financial markets, and argues that it should be confined to a set of clear, broad and general principles, giving up the idea of pre-determining the outcome of the competitive game, but simply dictating its rules, in the spirit of Hayek's lesson in the first volume of Law, Legislation and Liberty .


The notion of 'bizarre delusion' has come into question in contemporary anglophone psychopathology. In DSM-5, it no longer serves as a special criterion for diagnosing schizophrenia nor as an exclusion criterion for delusional disorder. Empirical studies influencing this development have, however, been relatively sparse and subject to methodological criticism. Major reviews have concluded that current conceptualizations of bizarre delusions may require rethinking and refinement. Defining bizarreness entails a return to Jaspers, whose influential views on the supposed incomprehensibility of bizarre delusions and schizophrenic experience are more nuanced than is generally recognized. Jaspers insisted we must 'get behind' three 'external characteristics' (extraordinary conviction, imperviousness, impossible content) in order to acknowledge a 'primary experience traceable to the illness' in the 'delusions proper' of schizophrenia. He also denied that one could empathize with or otherwise 'understand' this basis. Here, we focus on three features of bizarre delusions that Jaspers foregrounded as illustrating schizophrenic incomprehensibility: disturbance of the cogito, certitude combined with inconsequentiality, delusional mood. We link these with the contemporary ipseity disturbance model of schizophrenia, arguing that Jaspers' examples of incomprehensibility can be understood as manifestations of the three complementary aspects of ipseity-disturbance: diminished self-presence, hyperreflexivity and disturbed grip/hold. We follow Jaspers' lead in acknowledging a distinctive strangeness that defies ready comprehension, but we challenge the absolutism of Jaspers' skepticism by offering a phenomenological account that comprehends bizarreness in two ways: rendering it psychologically understandable, and fitting the various instances of bizarreness into a comprehensive explanatory framework.


Modern microprocessors can achieve high performance on linear algebra kernels but this currently requires extensive machine-specific hand tuning. We have developed a methodology whereby near-peak performance on a wide range of systems can be achieved automatically for such routines. First, by analyzing current machines and C compilers, we''ve developed guidelines for writing Portable, High-Performance, ANSI C (PHiPAC, pronounced "fee-pack"). Second, rather than code by hand, we produce parameterized code generators. Third, we write search scripts that find the best parameters for a given system. We report on a BLAS GEMM compatible multi-level cache-blocked matrix multiply generator which produces code that achieves around 90% of peak on the Sparcstation-20/61, IBM RS/6000-590, HP 712/80i, SGI Power Challenge R8k, and SGI Octane R10k, and over 80% of peak on the SGI Indigo R4k. In this paper, we provide a detailed description of the PHiPAC V1.0 matrix multiply distribution. We describe the code generator in detail including the various register and higher level blocking strategies. We also document the organization and parameters of the search scripts. This technical report is an expanded version of a previous paper that appeared in ICS97.


Application tracing in production systems requires dynamic and flexible instrumentation mechanisms with lowoverhead. Tracing tools may be required to be started at anytime, and it can take potentially long time periods to collect enough information, but at the same time should not adversely affect service quality. Existing user-space code monitoring solutions are either inflexible developer-driven static instrumentation which require manual effort, or black-box dynamic instrumentation techniques which are flexible but have high overhead. To solve this problem, we introduce a new hybrid instrumentation technique for user-space code monitoring called iProbe, which is flexible and has low overhead. iProbe takes a novel 2-stage design, and offloads much of the dynamic instrumentation complexity to an offline compilation stage. It leverages standard compiler flags to introduce "place-holders" for hooks in the program executables. Then it utilizes an efficient userspace HotPatching mechanism which dynamically instruments the functions to be traced and enables execution of instrumented code in a safe and secure manner. We implemented iProbe as a dynamic application profiling framework. In its evaluation on micro-benchmarks and SPEC CPU2006 benchmark applications, the iProbe prototype achieved the instrumentation overhead an order of magnitude lower than existing state-of-the-art dynamic instrumentation tools like SystemTap and DynInst. We also built a hardware event profiling tool based on iProbe, and were able to obtain function-level hardware event breakdown on SPEC CPU2006 applications with controlled performance overhead (e.g., under 5%).


Introduction Contemporary natural resource management is expanding its focus as a result of the dynamic interchange between conservationists and local people residing in or near the world's protected wildlands. "Whereas conservation efforts previously focused on the biological aspects of particular wild areas, todays conservation involves local, national, and international stakeholders in a broader, more sociopolitically-charged context. This paper illustrates the different variables involved in natural resource management from the local to international sphere, and discusses the new emphasis in management programs that involve culture and local involvement as crucial components to their success. Following this discussion, the paper will illustrate how these variables have broken down in the Ecuadorian Amazon, resulting in desperate attempts by local communities to surpass national resource managers and appeal to the international conservation community for protection of their native environment. The process of contextualizing natural resource management is difficult, especially when viewed at the external or international level. However, integration of different cultural perspectives concerning natural resource management at die local level, with acknowledgement of sitespecificity, may prove to be die new paradigm in conservation. It is upon the social stage, radier than the economic, diat conservation of culture and conservation of-environment will be viewed as die same process. And it is when local perspectives and cultural contexts are respected and valued, that conservation becomes an effective process. The Politics of International Conservation Conservation projects in the developing world have been historically driven at the national or international level by interest groups concerned with preserving biological diversity. International and national-level non-government organizations (NGOs) and other conservation institutions around the globe have oftentimes undertaken projects which reflect dieir biases for preservation of biological diversity over cultural integrity, without reflection upon the relationship between the two. Policies with direct implications for local communities are oftentimes formulated in international arenas (Milton 1993), radier than at the sites of their administration. Acceptance of national parks has been shown to increase proportionately with increased distance to the area (Rentsch 1988), afindingwhich reflects the decontextualized nature of park delimitation. This decontextualization in environmental policy making can have drastic consequences upon local communities "who may find their everyday activities banned by international laws, or their economies undermined by the campaigning efforts of NGOs" (Milton 1993: 5). As notes Einarsson, "in the realpolitik of international relations, ethnocentric assumptions can be forced upon cultures that deviate from what hegemonic cultural superpowers define as civilized and acceptable" (1993: 81-2). He further states that, "greater understanding of the cultural barriers that are crossed when policies are implemented could make these policies more sensitive to local needs" (Milton 1993: 5). Developing countries, many of which retain large expanses of wildlands in unprotected or newly-protected status, may be forced politically or economically to accept natural resource policies that ignore the cultural context of resource use. While management successes such as the debtfor-nature swaps and ecotourism have served to combine wildland protection with economic planning (Hendee et al. 1990), their effects upon local people in terms of social, rather than economic, factors have not been fully explored. The decontextualized nature of international conservation projects often results in a breakdown in enforceability at the local level. It has been noted that the Western ideals of parks and preserves have protected externally-valued areas at the expense of local rural peoples, who view the reserves as taking away local life support (Field and Burch 1988). …


A New History of the Irish in Australia-Elizabeth Malcolm Hall 2019-02-06 In 1986, Patrick O'Farrell published a landmark book, The Irish in Australia. This was an important volume given that after the English, the Irish were the largest population in Australia between 1788 and 1945, comprising nearly 25 per cent of all non-Indigenous Australians by 1901. Drawing on source materials unused until now, A New History of the Irish in Australia focuses on key areas previously ignored, including race. Indeed, the Irish were seen as a different, inferior ethnic group, despised and feared. Catholic Irish were often seen as a threat to the empire in their supposed failure to show loyalty to the crown. Their alleged recklessness and moral shortcomings meant Irish men and women were perceived as a threat to good manners and society, often the butt of jokes in popular culture. This important book also looks at the Australian-Irish experience in the context of the worldwide Irish diaspora, revealing much about what Irish-Australians shared with Irish communities elsewhere and showing that the Irish-Australian experience was unique.


Written from the ninth to the twentieth century, these poems represent the peak of Islamic Mystical writing, from Rabia Basri to Mian Mohammad Baksh. Reflecting both private devotional love and the attempt to attain union with God and become absorbed into the Divine, many poems in this edition are imbued with the symbols and metaphors that develop many of the central ideas of Sufism: the Lover, the Beloved, the Wine, and the Tavern; while others are more personal and echo the poet's battle to leave earthly love behind. These translations capture the passion of the original poetry and are accompanied by an introduction on Sufism and the common themes apparent in the works. This edition also includes suggested further reading.


We infer a history of three great megathrust earthquakes during the past 2000 years at the Nehalem River estuary based on the lateral extent of sharp (≤3 mm) peat-mud stratigraphic contacts in cores and outcrops, coseismic subsidence as interpreted from fossil diatom assemblages and reconstructed with foraminiferal assemblages using a Bayesian transfer function, and regional correlation of 14C-modeled ages for the times of subsidence. A subsidence contact from 1700 CE (contact A), sometimes overlain by tsunami-deposited sand, can be traced over distances of 7 km. Contacts B and D, which record subsidence during two earlier megathrust earthquakes, are much less extensive but are traced across a 700-m by 270-m tidal marsh. Although some other Cascadia studies report evidence for an earthquake between contacts B and D, our lack of extensive evidence for such an earthquake may result from the complexities of preserving identifiable evidence of it in the rapidly shifting shoreline environments of the lower river and bay. Ages (95% intervals) and subsidence for contacts are: A, 1700 CE (1.1 ± 0.5 m); B, 942–764 cal a BP (0.7 ± 0.4 m and 1.0 m ± 0.4 m); and D, 1568–1361 cal a BP (1.0 m ± 0.4 m). Comparisons of contact subsidence and the degree of overlap of their modeled ages with ages for other Cascadia sites are consistent with megathrust ruptures many hundreds of kilometers long. But these data cannot conclusively distinguish among different types or lengths of ruptures recorded by the three great earthquake contacts at the Nehalem River estuary.


In this work, we propose KeRNS: an algorithm for episodic reinforcement learning in non-stationary Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) whose state-action set is endowed with a metric. Using a non-parametric model of the MDP built with time-dependent kernels, we prove a regret bound that scales with the covering dimension of the state-action space and the total variation of the MDP with time, which quantifies its level of non-stationarity. Our method generalizes previous approaches based on sliding windows and exponential discounting used to handle changing environments. We further propose a practical implementation of KeRNS, we analyze its regret and validate it experimentally.


During Ocean Drilling Program Leg 167, the California continental margin was drilled from about 30°N to 42°N to sample high-resolution paleoceanographic and paleoclimatic records in the California Current system. Because of typically high sedimentation rates along the margin (80 to >200 m/m.y.), drilling has proved necessary to collect late Pleistocene sedimentary records that usually are sampled by standard piston cores in other oceanic regions. Triple piston coring on Leg 167 enabled us to construct continuous submillennial paleoceanographic records to about 2 Ma. In the offshore drill sites, continuous records were constructed into the Miocene. The oldest sediments recovered on Leg 167 have an age of ~14 Ma. The California margin has an active diagenetic system driven by the degradation of organic matter. Leg 167 drilling provided a means to quantify the diagenetic processes within the deep sediment column and to study the links between sediment diagenesis and primary productivity. This synthesis chapter also documents the oceanographic variability along the California margin at all time scales, from 10 3 to 10 6 yr. Millennial-scale variability is found in Santa Barbara Basin (drilled during Leg 146) and in nearby basins drilled during Leg 167. Leg 167 cores also captured millennial-scale variability in the northern and central California margin. Orbitally forced insolation changes invoke a strong response throughout the California margin. Sea-surface temperature (SST) measured by the alkenone paleothermometer is highly coherent with the oxygen isotope record, being cold in glacials and much warmer in interglacials. Faunal and floral plankton assemblages vary strongly on the glacial–interglacial scale. Coastal plant communities show a glacial–interglacial variability that is most pronounced in the north, near the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. Major changes in the sediments prior to the Pleistocene mark major late Neogene oceanographic events. Opaline silica burial in the middle and upper Miocene sections have step-like drops from high opal deposition in the middle Miocene. One major drop occurs at ~11 Ma and is roughly correlative with the eastern equatorial Pacific Miocene carbonate crash. A second major drop occurs at about 8 Ma, equivalent in age to the end of the Monterey Formation. A third drop occurs slightly younger than the end of the Miocene. A lower Pliocene interval, roughly from 5 to 4.2 Ma, is low in all biogenic components. It separates the Miocene high-opal sediments from upper Pliocene high-carbonate sediments. High CaCO 3 deposition occurred all along the entire California margin in the late Pliocene, but CaCO 3 burial dropped abruptly with the beginning of Northern Hemisphere glaciation (2.6 Ma). U k′ 37


This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of foreign direct investment in the MENA region by providing empirical evidence on the relative importance of the manufacturing and services sectors to the non-GCC and GCC countries. Panel data analysis for fifteen MENA countries spanning the period from 1980 to 2003 provides evidence of the heterogeneous nature of the MENA region. The results show that FDI in the non-GCC nations is linked to the expansion of the manufacturing sector whereas for the GCC countries there is a strong association between inward FDI and the services sector. These results have policy implications since the drivers of FDI to the manufacturing sector are different from those to the services sector.


Metric-temporal databases are a new database model that combines metric spaces with temporal databases to process similarity queries within a time interval or snapshot. The Historical FHQT is a metric-temporal index which has shown to be competitive answering this type of queries. This index store a list of valid snapshots where each one contains an Fixed Height Queries Tree that indexes all objects existing at that instant. In this paper we present an improvement to this access method that consists in using different sets of pivots for the Fixed Height Queries Tree that correspond to consecutive time instants. The experimental results show this modification improves the filtering capacity of the index.


In this paper, we study the influence of video stalling on QoE. We provide QoE models that are obtained in realistic scenarios on the smartphone, and provide energy-saving approaches for smartphone by leveraging the proposed QoE models in relation to energy. Results show that approximately 5J is saved in a 3 minutes video clip with an acceptable Mean Opinion Score (MOS) level when the video frames are skipped. If the video frames are not skipped, then it is suggested to avoid freezes during a video stream as the freezes highly increase the energy waste on the smartphones.


There is nowhere else in the world quite like Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story commercial and residential structure in the heart of Hong Kong's tourist district. A remarkably motley group of people call the building home; Pakistani phone stall operators, Chinese guesthouse workers, Nepalese heroin addicts, Indonesian sex workers, and traders and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work there - even backpacking tourists rent rooms. In short, it is possibly the most globalized spot on the planet. But as "Ghetto at the Center of the World" shows us, a trip to Chungking Mansions reveals a far less glamorous side of globalization. A world away from the gleaming headquarters of multinational corporations, Chungking Mansions is emblematic of the way globalization actually works for most of the world's people. Gordon Mathews' intimate portrayal of the building's polyethnic residents lays bare their intricate connections to the international circulation of goods, money, and ideas. We come to understand the day-to-day realities of globalization through the stories of entrepreneurs from Africa carting cell phones in their luggage to sell back home and temporary workers from South Asia struggling to earn money to bring to their families. And we see that this so-called ghetto - which inspires fear in many of Hong Kong's other residents, despite its low crime rate-is not a place of darkness and desperation but a beacon of hope. Gordon Mathews' compendium of riveting stories enthralls and instructs in equal measure, making Ghetto at the Center of the World not just a fascinating tour of a singular place but also a peek into the future of life on our shrinking planet.


Native human IL-1 beta and IL-1 alpha stimulated prostaglandin E2 secretion by human embryonic lung fibroblasts at half-maximal concentrations of 3 +/- 1.2 pM (+/- SEM) and 10 +/- 2.3 pM, respectively. In contrast to the 20-50-fold lower affinities previously found for IL-1-R on 3T3 cells as well as murine and human lymphoblastoid lines, monoiodo 125I-IL-1 beta bound to normal human fibroblasts with a Kd of 8.4 +/- 4.1 pM in direct binding experiments, and with a Ki of 11.2 +/- 2.8 pM in competitive binding experiments. IL- 1 alpha bound to the receptor identified by 125I-IL-1 beta with a Ki of 50 +/- 18 pM. The receptor exhibited homogeneous affinity for IL-1 beta or IL-1 alpha. The receptor did not recognize IL-2, IFN-gamma, tumor necrosis factor alpha, a functionally related monokine, or bovine acidic fibroblast growth factor, a structurally related mediator. Comparison of the biological response curves and binding curves obtained for IL-1 alpha and IL-1 beta showed that they were parallel and that 10-15% occupancy of the estimated 3,000 sites by either species of IL-1 was sufficient to give half-maximal stimulation of prostaglandin E2 secretion. Thus, the amount of apparent signal amplification observed on fibroblasts was considerably lower than the 100-100,000 fold amplification previously reported for lymphoid lines. Crosslinking experiments revealed a major band with a corrected molecular mass of approximately 80 kD and a minor band of approximately 200 kD. Labeling of these bands was blocked by IL-1 beta and IL-1 alpha but not by IL-2, IFN-gamma, or tumor necrosis factor alpha. These results demonstrate that normal human embryonic lung fibroblasts bear IL-1-R of sufficiently high affinity to mediate their biological responsiveness to low picomolar concentrations of IL-1 beta and IL-1 alpha and are consistent with the existence of a single receptor mediating the biological properties of both human IL-1 species.


This study investigated whether studying dynamic-static visualizations prepared first-year
Biology students better for an out-of-classroom experience in an aquarium than learning
how to identify species with more traditional instructional materials. During an initial
classroom phase, learners either watched underwater videos of 15 freshwater fish species
(video-group, n=46) or they were asked to identify preserved specimens of the same fish
with the help of a dichotomous identification key (key-group, n=43). Subsequently, all
students were asked to identify the taught species during their visit to the aquarium. Our
results indicate that the video-group was able to identify more species correctly than the
key-group directly after the classroom instruction, whereas both groups performed equally
well after the aquarium visit.


Family planning (FP) is urgently needed in Pakistan but progress remains slow. In its 2002 Population Policy the country pledged to reduce its total fertility rate to 2.2 by 2020; at the London Summit in 2012 it further committed to increase the contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) to 55 percent by the same year. Despite some important achievements Pakistan's current CPR is only 35 percent the total fertility rate is 3.8 and an alarming 20 percent of married couples of reproductive age express an unmet need for FP (NIPS and Measure DHS 2013). Thus far FP programming in the country has largely been directed at women their husbands regarded at best as interested bystanders and at worst as grudging gatekeeepers impeding women's use of contraception. This has been mainly due to men's own perceptions of FP as women's business and their culturally-driven unease with the idea of family planning. However recent research indicates that men's attitudes toward FP are changing and they are eager to be involved. In several of its recent studies the Population Council has focused on men's perspectives of FP in order to support an evidence-based agenda that brings men into mainstream FP programming. This paper synthesizes the data from these studies as well as from other research1 on Pakistani men's readiness to be more involved in FP the challenges they face in FP adoption and continuation and the preparedness of the health sector to respond to their needs.